Welp, I guess it’s time to get the Sanity Cloak now

If I’m understanding the changes to Echoes of Ny’alotha in today’s updates correctly, they won’t drop anymore unless at least one character on the account has the Sanity Cloak. Guess I’d better go get that now, so that’ll be how I spend my WoW session this evening, after the kids are in bed.

The Sanity Cloak is Wrathion’s project, which reminds me of this thing that I observed during the 15th Anniversary Event, but don’t remember seeing commentary about at the time*:

During the 15th Anniversary event, which began during Patch 8.2.5, with its “Where’s Wrathion?” questline**, I observed Wrathion, in whelpling form, accompanied by Medivh in arcane raven form, flying around in the Caverns of Time. They aren’t there now, so I wonder if they were just there during Patch 8.2.5, or even just during the Anniversary event? What is Wrathion not telling us about what Medivh and/or Khadgar are up to these days? He must know something…

* at least in the main body of posts on Blizzard Watch or Wowhead, though it may have been mentioned in the comments

** which now seems to be unavailable — I haven’t seen it pop up for any of my recently dinged 120s

Read Full Post »

wibbly wobbly timey wimey Shadowlands

As if the time travel shenanigans of the first two Hour of Twilight dungeons in Cataclysm and the entirety of Warlords of Draenor weren’t enough, a recent interview by Ion Hazzikostas (Wowhead summary here) reveals that time has a “complicated”, “chaotic” flow in the Shadowlands, with consequences to the player character that may not be fully revealed until the end of the expansion*…

Here is where being the player and not the character allows some RP meta-gaming.
A few years ago, I wrote a story about Kerisa’s family. Since then, I’ve added to it. I’d already been thinking that because I’ve now described Kerisa as a mother of two small children — and with two small children myself — I couldn’t bear to put her family through the trauma of having her disappear into the Shadowlands. And if there’s going to be time screwiness happening, too…
So: once the new character customizations go live, which I hope will be in the pre-launch events patch, we will meet a new character, an Alter Ego level 12050 Tauren Druid: Kaurinka, a palomino with red-and-blue arm warpaint who devotes herself more strongly to An’she than to Mu’sha (though not to the degree of the Sunwalkers). The name is derived from the original name of Gnomecore’s Gnome Priest, “Aurinko”, which, if I am remembering correctly, is a Finnish word meaning “sun” or “sunlight” — a fitting name for a sun-colored devotee of An’she.

One might ask, “You have a BfA-level Night Elf Druid, why not finish leveling that character to be the Druid who does Ardenweald? With there being some Tyrande story in Ardenweald, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to experience that with a Night Elf anyway? Or what about your Highmountain Tauren Druid?”
Um, well…
I’ve already got Kerisa at level 120 and working through improving her stuff.
Furthermore, I’m trying to focus my altoholism and keep the number of characters I plan to take to Shadowlands — and thus need to prep with BfA endgame activities & gearing — as minimal as I can manage. This academic year that just ended was just one thing after another, and the next one is probably not going to be any easier.

* …or, at any rate, until the next expansion is announced at Blizzcon 2021 😛

Read Full Post »

in which Kaelinda KonMaries her bank

I wanted to find a particular piece of non-Moggable RP gear. I thought Kaelinda might be the one who had it. When I looked in her bank, this is what I saw:

What a heap of stuff! Thank goodness for the bags & bank search function!

She didn’t have the item — and neither did anyone else whose bank I looked in — but it’s a craftable from a past expansion that had a readily available recipe purchase cost and a cheap enough materials cost that I simply acquired the recipe and crafted it.

Just looking at that overstuffed bank made me feel a bit overwhelmed, so I decided it was time to clean out all the stuff she’d been hanging on to for Mogging purposes and hadn’t really needed to since the introduction of the Appearances Collections during Warlords.

I didn’t get rid of everything, though. I kept any items that are no longer obtainable, some white quality (non-Moggable) items, her Legion Legendaries, an assortment of other expansion- or patch event-specific items as souveniers, a handful of Soulbound grey quality items with interesting flavor text, a few readable documents from quests, and holiday clothes (just in case she ever wants to wear any of them out-of-season).

Ahhhh, much better!

One of these days, I ought to get around to doing the same thing for Kamalia, Kerisa, Kaylynda, and Karaelia…

Read Full Post »

what I did on the first day of Patch 8.3

To begin with, I failed my Will Save against Order of the Stick: Blood Runs in the Family. I got us the most recent OOTS book for Christmas, so I’ve been reading through all of the earlier compilations. After I got the kids to bed, I thought, oh, I’ll just finish the chapter I started earlier this evening, there’s only a few pages left. Two hours and a third of the book later…

Once I finally got logged into WoW, I didn’t feel like I had enough time to do anything major, so I just ran around doing small things.
I picked up the first quest of the N’Zoth Campaign and watched the cinematic, but didn’t continue to the Chamber of Heart. I finally got Kamalia’s Heart of Azeroth to level 70 over the weekend, but I haven’t done the final questchain for the Crucible of Flames yet. I want to do that before I do any of the major Patch 8.3 questline. Besides, I’ve been thinking about giving Kamalia an early retirement by not doing the major Patch 8.3 stuff with her, but rather waiting to do it until I’ve got one or the other of my Mages leveled to 120.
I saw that there was a new quest on the boat and followed Lillian Voss to Tirisfal Glades.
I went to the Orgrimmar Embassy, but didn’t actually pick up and begin the Vulpera recruitment questchain.
I noted Baine Bloodhoof and Mayla Highmountain standing in the Stormwind throne room at the beginning of the cinematic, and observed that Baine is now in the hot seat in Grommash Hold. Then I spent most of the rest of my relatively brief time in-game running around trying to find the questchain that would lead to the cinematic that explains how he got there. Is the new Horde leadership cinematic embedded in the major patch intro questline somehow?

Read Full Post »

Patch 8.2 dance card

Looking at the Patch 8.2 notes on Wowhead, it seems that there will be a certain sequence of events.

First, Nazjatar.

After the Nazjatar base is established, then the Patch 8.2 War Campaign quest appears, as does the Mechagon starter quest.

The Tauren Heritage Armor questline has the 8.2 War Campaign as prerequisite, so Kam will at least have to do the opening sequence of Nazjatar to be able to get her Tauren Heritage Armor. *sigh*

I doubt that she’ll be there with the crowd next Tuesday, though, as she still has Tides of Vengeance and the 8.1.5 War Campaign to do — which will also unlock the Zandalari Allied Race recruitment scenario and the rest of the Vol’jin questline. She’ll go to Nazjatar whenever she manages to get all that stuff done.

After that, who knows how long it’ll be until I get BfA flying? Long, though. Definitely NOT “Soon”.

Read Full Post »

some stuff from Blizzcon that interests me

* Tauren Heritage Armor!
* Nazjatar and Mechagon — new zones are always exciting just for the new landscapes they offer, even if I don’t manage to get all my alts through the questlines required to fully access them (I’ve only taken a few characters to Argus, and only one has gotten all the way to Mac’Aree, which is a bit of a shame because Mac’Aree is the nicest of the Argus sub-zones)
* Worgen model updates — that sweet smile on the new Female Worgen shown fits my Kymberlea a lot better than the original wierd side-growl face
* the Darkmoon Faire Roller Coaster will get me back to the Faire at least once just to see what it does
* centralized portal rooms in Orgrimmar and Stormwind — it’s about time!

Read Full Post »

how to (temporarily) change your race for Mog modelling

Methods for appearing as a character of another player race while still wearing your own clothes, for the purpose of taking more varied Transmogrification pictures.

To appear as a Human, Dwarf, or Gnome: enter Escape from Durnholde Keep or Culling of Stratholme in the Caverns of Time as a Horde character or as an Alliance character of a race that wasn’t part of the Alliance until after the Third War.

Which race you become is randomly chosen each time you enter the instance, so you might have to try a few times if you want to appear as a specific one of these three races.

To appear as a Night Elf: enter the Well of Eternity in the Caverns of Time

To appear as a Blood Elf: use the Orb of the Sin’dorei

To appear as a factional counterpart race: use the Orb of Deception

This swaps Tauren/Gnome, Orc/Human, Troll/Dwarf, Undead/Night Elf, Blood Elf/Draenei, Goblin/Worgen, Pandaren/Random, Nightborne/Void Elf, Highmountain Tauren/Lightforged Draenei
(I’d have set it up as Undead/Human, Orc/Dwarf, Troll/Night Elf)

There are various other toys and effects that allow you to look like someone else entirely, but these are all the ones I can think of that still show your own clothes. Can you think of any that I’ve forgotten?

Read Full Post »

micropost: something wicked this way comes

After reading the announcement for the new Hearthstone expansion, “The Witchwood”, now I have the “Something Wicked This Way Comes” track from the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban soundtrack looping in my head.

Read Full Post »

thinking ahead about the Battle to come

With the next expansion announced, the clock is ticking on Legion. Time to stop frittering away my limited playtime on World Quests and rep gathering — I can come back and do that stuff later — and focus on getting alts leveled and through their Order Hall campaigns. I need to do that stuff while Legion is still current because of all the required dungeon runs… At the moment, the Demon Hunter needs to kill 15 dungeon bosses to finish what I think is probably the penultimate step of her 7.0 Order Hall campaign, and my Paladin has one dungeon quest and my Druid has four dungeon quests for Chapter 3 of their respective Order Hall campaigns. Queue times even for DPS have been about 30 – 45 minutes lately, so I think I can probably spare that much time a few nights a week to log on with an alt, hop in the LFD queue, and then go do some questing while I wait for the dungeon to pop.

Despite being significantly less excited about Battle for Azeroth than I have been about previous WoW expansions, I still can’t help thinking about what I might want to do when it launches.

BTH has been playing the heck out of Stellaris for the past few months, but lately, he’s been making noises about maybe re-subbing to WoW. I’ll believe it when it actually happens. If BTH does decide to play WoW again for awhile, then I’ll most likely play Battle for Azeroth on launch day (or the day after), and level Kamalia first.

If BTH decides not to play WoW again, then I don’t think I’ll play Battle for Azeroth on launch day unless I’ve managed to complete my level 110 Legion goals — finish Suramar with the Blood Elf Mage, do Broken Shore up through getting the additional Champion with everyone, do Argus with at least one character, do the Xe’ra questline with the Demon Hunter, do the Deaths of Chromie with the Paladin. If I haven’t completed my Legion goals by the time Battle for Azeroth launches, then I might not play the new expansion until I’ve finished the stuff I want to do in the current one.
I will also most likely play Kaylynda first, because I’m a lot more interested in finding out what’s going on with Jaina than going to schmooze with the Zandalari Trolls.
I’ll want to level Kamalia eventually, though, so that I can then roll and level a Highmountain Tauren.
I will probably dither about whether I want/need Mages of the other five Allied Races from now until I’ve unlocked them…

Will I want to level all my alts of all the other classes, though? Depends on how excited I get about the new armor & Mogging options as those details come out of the beta.

Read Full Post »

minipost: Stitch, is that you?

Is it just me, or do the Marsuul creatures that will be found on Argus indeed look quite a bit like Stitch?

image from Petopia

image from Wikipedia

Read Full Post »