Covenant Cavorting Continues

Kateleina and Kaelyra reached Renown 80 with the Necrolords and the Kyrian, respectively, from “Replenish the Reservoir” last week. Time to do those 9.0 Covenant Campaigns…

Then I had a thought: Why waste opportunities for gaining Renown? I could start gaining Renown with another Covenant. I can just switch back when I’m really ready to begin doing these Campaigns…

And so Kaelyla (as Khrysanthemina) is now hanging out with the Venthyr in Sinfall, and Kaelinda (as herself) is chumming around with the Night Fae in the Heart of the Forest.

Kaelyla will activate the Venthyr Anima Conductor, upgrade it to level 2, and reinforce the Treasure Box and World Quest streams. She won’t bother with any of the other features — not even the Travel Network. I’ve already got all the Venthyr cosmetics that I want, so after she’s finished with the Anima Conductor, all of the rest of the Anima that she collects while working her Renown up to 80 will get turned into Traveler’s Anima Caches to be used for Night Fae and Kyrian cosmetics.

Kaelinda will do the same with the Night Fae Anima Conductor, so that she can use its activities to get her the Court of Night rep she needs to use some of the Night Fae backpieces. She’ll also fully upgrade the Night Fae Travel Network, not just because I find it to be useful but also because she needs the Marasmius rep to use some of the Night Fae backpieces and because I enjoy doing most of the Marasmius dailies.

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Renowned! Covenant cavorting ensues

Kaelinda and Kaelyla both reached Renown 80 last week.

I ran them both through setting their Renown to 40 with each of the other three Covenants using Broker Marks of Distinction. Much to my disappointment, I discovered that the Renown 40 Covenant titles require you to be currently a member of that Covenant to use them. I also sent Broker Marks of Distinction to Kalaneia and Kamalia. Kalaneia is thrilled to now be able to style herself Baroness Kalaneia; Kamalia prefers to remain Farseer Kamalia.

Everyone who is at least level 50 — I checked with my Paladin and Priest, who are level 50 but haven’t been to the Shadowlands yet — now has access to all armor-type-appropriate Venthyr and Night Fae cosmetics that I have collected thus far. To get the rest, Kaelinda (as Kateleina) will need to get to Renown 80 with the Necrolords, and Kaelyla (as Kaelyra) will need to get to Renown 80 with the Kyrian.

In the process of getting to Renown 80, Kaelyla completed the 9.0 Night Fae Campaign. Although there were a couple of times when I kept dying, I quite enjoyed it — it was nicely very different from the Venthyr Campaign, and I liked the visits back to Azeroth locations (the visits to the Maw, not so much!). Getting that goal completed left me feeling energized to jump into the remaining two 9.0 Covenant Campaigns. So with this week’s reset, before I did anything in the Shadowlands, I took Kaelinda and Kaelyla to the Hall of Curiosities in Oribos, and Kateleina

and Kaelyra

emerged to begin gathering Anima, Souls, and Renown for the Necrolords and the Kyrian, respectively. I intend to build up those Sanctums to level 3 Travel Network, level 2 Anima Conductor with treasure box and extra world quest reinforced, and the other features activated but left at level 1.

Meanwhile, WoW’s Anniversary is on. Kasheena is once again camping out in the Caverns of Time for easy XP from Historian Ju’pa’s daily trivia quiz; for the last couple of years, Kaelyla was her companion in that endeavor, but this year it is Kamalia.

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in which Kamalia goes to the Shadowlands at last

The first thing I did on Tuesday was bring Kamalia to Oribos and then to the Heart of the Forest. At level 50 and 1 Renown, I am delighted that she can wear her covenant’s Renown 60 cosmetic armor! She had been wearing her Eternal Traveler outfit for almost a year, so she was very ready for a new outfit!

Next, Kasheena visited the Barbershop in New Dalaran to check out the new customizations for Highmountain Tauren.

She came out with some super cute beaded braids in her hair and a fun tail decoration. She decided it was about time for a new outfit, too.

Then it was time to visit the Barbershop with Kaelinda and Kaelyla to establish some new Alter Ego appearances.

When my Blood Elf Mage is Necrolord, she will be Kateleina:

When my Void Elf Mage is Kyrian, she will be Kaelyra, a High Elf who never left the Allliance:

I am very pleased with the tentacles in some Void Elf hairstyles now being an optional toggle! I’ll have to remember to think about changing up Kaelyla’s hairstyle in addition to her outfit from time to time 😀

I can now also do this “Kaelyla AU Alliance” look with my Void Elf Mage —

— what she looked like while she was still Quel’dorei, before the Fall of Quel’thalas.

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Considering Covenant Hopping, Again

The implications of unrestricted Covenant swapping once at least one alt has reached Renown 80, combined with RL factors that are pushing me toward focusing on fewer alts, and how very far behind the content consumption curve I am, are leading me to contemplate some rather dramatic changes to my plans for which characters will do what for the remainder of Shadowlands.

Specifically, I am thinking about proceeding through the rest of the expansion with only Kaelinda and Kaelyla, and setting aside all other alts until the end-of-expansion doldrums (though I’ll still bring Kamalia through to the Heart of the Forest).

Kaelinda is at Renown 68 and could get to Renown 80 soon enough if I start doing Return Lost Souls and/or Callings again in addition to Replenish the Reservoir. Kaelyla is at Renown 62 and could also reach Renown 80 fairly soon if I put more effort into obtaining Renown.

Kaelinda is Venthyr, and from having done the Venthyr Campaign, I know that it intersects with/shares a climactic cinematic with the Necrolords Campaign. Kaelyla is Night Fae, and I’ve been spoiled enough to know that the Night Fae Campaign intersects with/shares a climactic cinematic with the Kyrian Campaign.

Kaelinda is Exalted with all of the 9.0 leveling zone factions. The Undying Army have cosmetic backpieces available for Exalted+Necrolords; the Ascended do not have any cosmetics for Exalted+Kyrian.

So, my thoughts are running thusly —
1) Get both Kaelinda and Kaelyla to Renown 80
2) Do Night Fae Campaign with Kaelyla
3a) Covenant swap Kaelinda to Necrolords and do Necrolords Campaign, perhaps as Kaelydia or as a yet-to-be-discovered new Alter Ego
3b) Covenant swap Kaelyla to Kyrian and do Kyrian Campaign as a new Alter Ego who is a never-left-the-Alliance High Elf, using one of the new natural hair color customization options for Void Elves that are coming in Patch 9.1.5
4) Covenant swap Kaelinda and Kaelyla back to their “home” Covenants
5) Do Korthia Campaign with both Kaelinda and Kaelyla
6a) Collect Venthyr and Night Fae sets from Korthia dailies
6b) Get to Exalted with Death’s Advance with both Kaelinda and Kaelyla and obtain the Venthyr and Night Fae sets from that source
7) Covenant swap Kaelinda and Kaelyla to their secondary Covenants
8a) Collect Necrolords and Kyrian sets from Korthia dailies and Death’s Advance
8b) Obtain any 9.0 Necrolords and Kyrian cosmetic items that I am interested in acquiring
9) Covenant swap Kaelinda and Kaelyla back to their home Covenants
10a) Do Ember Court and Broken Mirrors with Kaelinda until shoulders of the associated Venthyr Campaign set recolors have been obtained
10b) Do Queen’s Conservatory with Kaelyla until the associated recolor of the Night Fae Campaign set and the pink/purple version of the moths backpiece have been obtained
11) Round-robin Kaelinda and Kaelyla through the Covenants they haven’t been in yet so as to get access to all Covenant cosmetics
12) Return Kaelinda and Kaelyla to their home Covenants
13) Repeat this process as necessary to collect all Covenant cosmetics from 9.2, etc, until the end of the expansion

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considering Covenant hopping

Like my four year-old who is so excited for Halloween, I “can’t wait” for Patch 9.1.5 because I’m so excited to be able to bring Kamalia to the Shadowlands without having to go through that introductory Maw experience one more time. As I’ve played with my Mages, Druid, Priest, and Warlock, I’ve found myself missing slinging Flame Shocks and Lava Bursts and Chain Lightnings and Earthquakes as an Elemental Shaman. I also just miss being Kamalia because she’s my oldest and “flagship” character.

With Kamalia in the Shadowlands, I’ll have three of the four armor classes there. That makes it tempting to also bring out my Paladin, Karelia. Then I’d want to bring my Tauren Priest, Kaohana, so that I’ll have all four armor classes as Tauren, and because the twins don’t like to be separated. But I know that that’s more alts than I can really manage, so I am telling myself quite firmly that I am only going to advance Kamalia.

I plan to matriculate Kamalia with the Night Fae and then slowly level her with my favorite no or minimal combat World Quests. After Kamalia has acquired all of the Night Fae stuff I’d like her to have, I’ll covenant swap her to the Kyrian to get their gorgeous set — at least the Campaign coloration; I may or may not also go for the Renown coloration — then swap back to the Night Fae.

In thinking about what kind of Covenant hopping I might want to do with my other characters, I began to think about which characters I might want to bring ahead to 10.0. Which characters will need to cycle through all the Covenants so that they’ll have access to all the things to Mog with in the future? Over the past few expansions (Shadowlands included), I’ve figured out that I can handle about four active characters at a time. The four characters I want to keep actively playing for as long as I keep playing WoW are Kamalia, Kerisa, Kaelinda, and Kaelyla. Kamalia only wants Night Fae and Kyrian stuff, and Kerisa only wants Night Fae stuff. It’s just the Mages who really want stuff from all four of the Covenants. So, after Kaelinda has reached 80 Renown and unlocked unlimited Covenant hopping, and after I’ve completed all of the 9.0 Covenant Campaigns with the designated characters, I’ll want Kaelinda and Kaelyla to each take turns with all of the Covenants. I’m imagining having them work together to collect the sets from the Korthia daily quests…

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The best thing about Patch 9.1…

…is the Spectacles, of course!


Several years ago, I drew Kamalia wearing glasses.

None of This Nonsense, Please



Dazzling Spectacles, Black Velvet Robes, Shadow Council Boots, Tower of Theramore
Patricia C Wrede is my favorite author; The Enchanted Forest Chronicles are my favorite of her works; Morwen is my favorite character in that series. I was thirteen or fourteen when I first met Morwen, and I wanted to be like her when I grew up (spoiler alert: I’m not as much like her as I thought I wanted to be). When I was first venturing onto the internet over twenty years ago, I used “Morwen” as my screenname. So somehow it was no surprise that my primary Mage character ended up with an appearance very much like Morwen’s description. The Dazzling Spectacles are what I needed to finally complete that look!

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must… have… moar… Anima…

Kaelinda finished acquiring the Renown recolor of her Covenant armor set this week. She doesn’t want any more of the Venthyr Anima collectibles, so she’s Done. She doesn’t need to clear the map of all the Anima WQs she’s willing to do anymore. She can rest and relax and be satisfied with 1000 Anima per week — half of it just from rescuing 20 souls from the Maw — until I’ve finished the other three Covenant campaigns and am ready to start playing the Ember Court.
I’ve been farming Anima so intensively with her for the past however many weeks that it’s being a bit hard to resist wanting to take her out to clear those Anima WQs, though…

Meanwhile, I’d given Kaurinka the task of acquiring all of the Night Fae backpieces that are available from various vendors. There are seven in all: one from the Wild Hunt, two from Marasmius, two from Renown, and two from the Court of Night. I’ve been slowly ramping up her Anima farming, and she’s now got five of the seven; she just needs the two from the Court of Night. When she’s got those, she’ll start saving up the 25K Anima to get the Winterborn recolor of her Covenant armor set from the Court of Night; the Renown recolor is my least favorite version of that set, whereas the Winterborn recolor might be my most favorite. I’d also eventually like to get the Renown recolors of the staff and harp, but perhaps Kaelyla can work on acquiring those. Anyhow, now that Kaelinda is Done, Kaurinka will have first dibs on going out to do WQs each day, and her Anima farming will go faster.

Well, I guess Kaelinda can’t completely take a break. She’ll want to keep running the Blood From Stone wing of Castle Nathria LFR until either the Stone Generals themselves or the Great Vault cough up the robe version of the chestpiece. And she does still have to go to Torghast a few more times to get through the questchains that will be required to unlock the Patch 9.1 content. At least once she’s done that, the rest of the crew will be able to skip that stuff!

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sklonklish in the Shadowlands

I first heard the word “sklonklish” in a movie starring teenage Shirley Temple that my family watched when my sisters and I were teenagers. It became part of my family’s lexicon immediately because it perfectly describes that feeling of being vaguely irritated and out-of-sorts with the world. It’s sort of like ennui, only with a bit more of a disgruntled edge.

~*~*~

Kaelinda and Kaurinka have each finally finished reinforcing the fourth stream for their Anima Conductor; since I don’t intend to upgrade the Anima Conductor to stage 3, I am now Done with it, which is something of a relief. With my remaining three characters, I’m thinking that I’ll just do stage 1 of the Anima Conductor and just reinforce the stream to the Treasure, since that’s the activity that I have done the most consistently with the first two.
The Travel Network is likely to be the only Sanctum feature that all five characters will fully upgrade.

Kaelinda reached Exalted with Bastion last week. She kept grinding away at Maldraxxus, trying to do one or two WQs in Maldraxxus each day. This week’s WQ rep buff, plus a string of Maldraxxus Callings, allowed me to finally finish that off, too. Phew! I intensely dislike Maldraxxus as an environment, so now I can mostly ignore Maldraxxus with everyone except Kalaneia (my designated Necrolords character)*.

I have also been actively farming Anima with Kaelinda. I don’t try to clear the map of Anima-rewarding WQs, but I’ll often do as many of the available ones as I find tolerable to do. She has gotten both of the Venthyr Renown backpieces and has been spending Anima as fast as she gets enough of it on acquiring the rest of the Renown recolor of the Venthyr Covenant armor set, after which she will be Done with Covenant collectibles (at least until Patch 9.1). She needs 11000 more Anima to accomplish this goal.

I’ve been pushing hard to finish these reputation and collection goals because I’m wanting to just be Done with Kaelinda — to be able to put her/the Venthyr on the bench for awhile** and move on to the campaigns of the other three Covenants. I intend to do Night Fae first, then Kyrian, then Necrolords.

Since the news from the Patch 9.1 PTR is that the Korthia extension of the Covenant campaigns brings them all together right from the beginning, making them all essentially the same except with variations in the window dressing, I’m thinking that I want to get all of the 9.0 Covenant campaigns completed before I jump into the new Patch 9.1 content — even if that means that Patch 9.1 will have been out for quite some time before I finally get there.

Anyhow, the result of pushing rep and Anima with Kaelinda so hard recently is that I am feeling a bit burned out and can barely bring myself to do much of anything with Kaurinka (even though there is a lot more Night Fae stuff that I want than Venthyr stuff). As I’ve mentioned before, though, part of that feeling of burnout is spillover from RL right now. It’s the penultimate week of the semester, and I am feeling greater than usual end-of-semester weariness.

~*~*~

* Well, Keliora has to complete the House of Constructs storyline in Maldraxxus before she turns on Threads of Fate because saving Kyrians. But after that, Kalaneia will be the only person who has to be in Maldraxxus.

** I do want to play the Ember Court (and the Queen’s Conservatory) before Shadowlands ends, though. I’ve learned that if I don’t do an activity while the expansion it debuted in is current, I’m not going to come back to do it later (e.g., Deaths of Chromie). I can worry about gathering Anima for those upgrades, however, when I’m ready to actually do that content.

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more Anima? it’s a drop in the ocean — but yes, please

Yesterday, Wowhead reported a hotfix that gives increased Anima income for having activated all four of the Sanctum Features, then another increase when they’re all upgraded to stage 2, and final increase when they’re all upgraded to stage 3. The first level, at least, seemed worth spending a couple thousand Anima on before I purchase any more Anima cosmetics, so Kaelinda and Kaurinka have both invested in the first stages of the Command Table and the Ember Court/Queen’s Conservatory. Having done so, I will henceforth continue to ignore the Command Table completely, and the Ember Court/Queen’s Conservatory until I’m ready to sink the time into them that they apparently demand.

This also changes my plans for my remaining three characters. I’d been planning to activate stage 1 of the Anima Conductor, then to activate and fully upgrade the Travel Network, then to upgrade the Anima Conductor to stage 2. Now, I’ll be spending their first 4000 Anima on activating all four of the Sanctum Features. After that, I’ll probably continue with the original plan.

Kaelinda and Kaurinka both already had fully upgraded Travel Networks and stage 2 Anima Conductors. The investment of 2000 Anima (4000 Anima for my remaining characters) to get the first achievement definitely felt worth it. The investment of 10000 Anima (20000 Anima for my remaining characters) to get the Command Table and Special Feature to stage 2 doesn’t seem like it will really be worth it, considering the small increment of the Anima income, but I’ll probably do it anyway. The investment of 30000 Anima (40000 Anima for my remaining characters) to get the Anima Conductor, Command Table, and Special Feature all to stage 3 definitely will not be worth the additional small increment to Anima income, particularly since I have no interest in the Command Table at all, no interest in the actual benefits of the third stage of the Anima Conductor, and my interest in the Special Feature varies by Covenant (yes for Ember Court and Queen’s Conservatory, maybe for Path of Ascension, nope for Stitchyard).

In other Shadowlands progression…

I got another couple of chapters of Ardenweald done with Kaelyla and she is now about 30% through level 58. She’s getting really bored of her current outfit, but she needs to keep wearing it until she’s all the way through the Ardenweald main storyline because Ardenweald has multiple nifty on-quest visual effects that this outfit was specifically created to coordinate with. I already have an outfit idea in mind for proceeding into the first chapter of Revendreth…

I decided to stop trying to push Bastion and Maldraxxus rep with both Kaelinda and Kaurinka and just focus it down with Kaelinda. I’m almost done with Bastion and am about halfway through Revered with Maldraxxus.

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taking the Castle Nathria tour

This weekend, I finally got myself into Castle Nathria LFR. I did Leeching Depths and Blood from Stone on Saturday night, then Reliquary of Opulence and Audience with Arrogance on Sunday night.

Those are some pretty hectic, crazy fights even on LFR! I can’t even imagine how much crazier Artificer Xy’mox and Sire Denathrius must be on Heroic or Mythic! Doing these fights made me miss raid healing with Kamalia a little bit. Not enough to go through the introductory Maw experience again, though, or to add one more character to my leveling, etc queue… at least not until a skip for that intro experience gets patched in… and not until I’ve completed my primary expansion objective of playing through all four of the Covenant stories.

I held onto the quest from defeating Sire Denathrius until today, so that I could turn it in after reset and get Kaelinda’s 1K Anima quest for the week done in one fell swoop.

Having done a full Castle Nathria clear also meant that I could loot the Great Vault today!
These were my choices:

I took the trinket, because it was an upgrade and I already have an ilevel 194 weapon.

Although I’ve said previously that I’d probably only do Castle Nathria LFR once, I’d like to go do the Reliquary of Opulence at least one more time. I failed the Dance Intermission because I didn’t recognize what I was supposed to be looking for to find my place — for some reason, I was looking for ordinary raid markers to pop up, or something — so I’d like to give it another try and do it right this time. I’ll also be running Blood from Stone again, likely for some weeks to come; I’ve decided that I want to have the robe version of the chestpiece, which drops from the Stone Legion Generals, for the sake of having something from every raid set (or its PVP recolor) — though maybe it will be my Warlock who wears it, not my Mage! And hey, that’ll give me more chances at Great Vault loot, too!

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