thrice more through the Maw

I didn’t play on Monday because I was busy doing other things, nor on Tuesday because the authentication issues prevented me from logging it. That still left plenty of time to bring Kaelyla, Keliora, and Kalaneia through the Maw into Oribos. That will do, for now.

I also took those three characters, as well as Kaelinda and Kaurinka, to the Darkmoon Faire. It’s been many months since I last visited the Faire, because beyond making the first set of crafted gear for each of the armor types, I ignored Professions during Battle for Azeroth. But with Professions being, by all reports, more reasonable to level and more genuinely useful in Shadowlands, I thought it was worth my time again to get those 5 free Profession skill points. My Druid is an Herbalist and Scribe; all my other Herbalists will funnel their herbs to her to craft Staves and Missives. Kaelinda is an Herbalist and Tailor; all the rest will send her their cloth so she can craft the Shrouded Cloth and Shadowlace sets. Kalaneia is an Herbalist and Alchemist; I’ll work on leveling her Alchemy after my Druid has reached her crafting goals. Keliora is a Miner and Engineer (because Goggles); leveling her Engineering will be slower because no-one else will be feeding her ore. Kaelyla is an Herbalist and Miner, but she’s Alliance, so all of her materials will go on the AH and make her rich!

I’ve been contemplating what I might do about raiding in this expansion. I sat out LFR entirely in Warlords and did very little in Legion and Battle for Azeroth. It sounds like just getting ready for raiding — even at the LFR level — is a long haul of dungeon running and shelling out gold for crafted gear, plus running Torghast to craft whatever Legendary is BIS for one’s class & spec. Of course I haven’t gotten there yet, but I’m not sure if I’ll like Torghast very much. After all, I only did as much of Horrific Visions as I needed to get the first Shroud of Resolve appearance upgrade. Even though I think the second appearance upgrade for the Shroud of Resolve is very pretty, whenever I have thought about doing more Horrific Visions — and more Black Empire Assaults to buy those attempts — I end up saying, “meh, I don’t feel like doing that.” So I think I only want to raid with one toon at most, if I can even manage that. That toon will probably be my Druid because I like the leather set from Castle Nathria ever so much more than the cloth set.

But then how to get all of the different Covenant weapons? Hmm… If I pick up a Castle Nathria weapon token and use it for one Covenant, then change Covenants, I know that I won’t be able to use that weapon appearance with that character anymore — but will I still be able to use it with other characters in that Covenant? So could I get a Castle Nathria weapon token, spend it with the Covenant I’m currently in, change Covenants, get another Castle Nathria weapon token and spend it with the new Covenant, and so on until I’ve gotten the Castle Nathria weapons for all of the Covenants? I would just try for all of the Staves, I think — though that Night Fae Harp is lovely and after I’ve gotten all the Staves and come back to the Night Fae, I’d want to get one more Castle Nathria weapon token to spend on that. From an RP standpoint, Kaurinka will want to stay devoted to the Night Fae, but Kaiuna might be up for some Covenant-hopping….

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spring fever

My college’s Spring Break is officially next week. Classes were cancelled this week, and I should have spent the time practicing with screencasting and web-conferencing software to get ready for taking my courses online after Spring Break. Spring Fever hit me hard in the middle of the week, though, and I spent an afternoon playing Kinevra through chapters 4 – 6 of the 8.0 Alliance War Campaign and doing the Tyrande’s Vengeance questline instead of working. While doing those things, I was sitting in LFR queue for the second wing of Dazar’alor — trying for the crown, of course. Since she reached level 120 a few weeks ago, Kinevra has also achieved Friendly with both Mechagon and Nazjatar to get the Rank 1 versions of those Essences. Kinevra’s ilevel and Heart level have both surpassed Kamalia’s.

Now with Blizzard implementing double XP gain for the next month, I’m sorely tempted to finish leveling Kerisa, Kaelinda, and Karaelia to 120 instead of doing schoolwork…

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Sunday on the Promenade 72

Faction dichotomy takes the stage in this week’s installment of the Sunday Mog Show.

Druid of the Talon

Dragonhawk Hat, Preened Ironfeather Shoulders, Vest of Sobbing, Narf’s Explosiveproof Strand, Oil Gush Leggings, Discarded Slaughterhouse Gloves, Scourgebane Treads, Fordragon Blades
I first saw this glaive carried by the Druids of the Talon at the Shrine of Aviana. I’d never noticed it as a player weapon before, so I assumed that it was an NPC-exclusive model. When the Wardrobe came out, I searched for it in the array of polearms that I hadn’t yet collected, but couldn’t find it, so I continued to think that it was an NPC-only model. Recently, Alunaria tipped me off that it is an Alliance-exclusive model from the Trial of the Crusader. My Horde Druid still can’t imitate the Druids of the Talon, but now my Alliance Druid can!
The NPCs are wearing a brown recolor of the Feralheart hat that isn’t available to players. The Dragonhawk Hat seemed like the best substitute.
Some of the other Druids of the Talon, most notably the female Tauren, are wearing the Phantasmal Headdress, a recolor of the shoulders that is only available to players in mail, the Vest of Restraint, and pants that match the vest but are unavailable to players.
The Druids of the Talon found at Skysea Ridge on Draenor-of-the-alternate-timeway are wearing different armor, but carry the same glaive.

Paku’ai or Raptari?

Coarse Leather Armor with Chieftain’s Headdress and Warmongering Combatant’s Battle Staff
The Horde version of the Battle for Azeroth crafted leather gear (also the Jambani quest set from Zuldazar and the Brutohide BOE set) is the outfit worn by the Paku’ai flight masters of Zandalar. These devotees of the pterrodax loa Pa’ku are led by Hexlord Raal. This armor is also worn by Wardruid Loti, the leader of the followers of the raptor loa Gonk. Given that Loti and Raal are Zandalar’s version of Beatrice and Benedick and that Raal incites his followers to an intense (and rather juvenile) rivalry with hers, the shared armor appearance leads to all manner of annoyingamusing confusions.

Tidespray Linen


Tidespray Linen set with Fangcaller’s Staff (H)/Tidespray Linen set with Lord Aldrius’ Greatstaff (A)
The crafted gear from Battle for Azeroth has faction-dichotomous appearances. For Horde characters, the tailored Tidespray Linen set has the same appearance as the Loa Speaker quest set from Nazmir. For Alliance characters, the Tidespray Linen set has the same appearance as the Wickerwoven quest set from Drustvar. If Horde characters want the Alliance appearance, they should look for the Heartsbane set on the AH. If Alliance characters want the Horde appearance, they should look for the Bloodhex set on the AH.

~*~*~

This series of posts began because I set myself a goal to document new Transmogrification outfits in a more timely fashion. As soon as I create a new outfit, I write it up in a draft post. As the weekend approaches, I start working on taking fashion screenshots, processing them, and updating “Things my [Class] Wears” posts. On Sunday — though not every Sunday — I publish the collection of my recent efforts. Then I begin the next “Sunday on the Promenade” draft post.

Occasionally, I have ideas for themed Transmogrification collections that take several months to completely assemble. Thus, some of these outfits might get re-posted at a later date as part of such a themed Transmogrification collection.

If any of you, my dear readers, have kits that you’d like to share, I’d be happy to add you to the show! Just email me your picture(s), along with a list of the items in the outfit. I don’t regularly check my blog email, though, so if you’ve sent me an outfit, please make a comment on the most recent Sunday Mog Show post so that I know to check my blog email for your contribution.

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4 weeks until BfA; 0 weeks until Patch 8.0

Cenarius finally coughed up the lookalike of the Emerald Nighthold Druid tier robe for Kerisa. Hooray!

My Warlock finished her Order Hall Campaign. Five done, seven left. Can I manage to get seven more Order Hall Campaigns completed in only four weeks — three and a half, really, because of this conference I’m going to at the end of the month?
I was surprised that compassion — albeit in the somewhat limited sense of even if you don’t give a damn about the rest of the world, you should still take care of the people who are part of your own community — emerged as one of the main themes of that story. I wasn’t expecting that from the Warlocks. Good job, devs!

I went and did the Wound quests in Silithus with Kamalia and Kaylynda, just in case they might go away in Patch 8.0.

I had been under the impression that one had to complete the Broken Shore campaign to do the Mage Tower Challenge, and I just didn’t have time energy or desire to do that. Reading posts about the imminent end of the Mage Tower Challenge, I realized that I’d been mistaken. So Kaelinda hurried to do the questchain that leads up to the Mage Tower Challenge, and do to the Wound quests in Silithus to get her Artifacts to be OP, and then I started trying the Frost Mage challenge. It is a kiting fight, and I am rubbish at kiting. After making a half-dozen-ish rather feeble attempts in which I felt like I was making little to no progress, I decided that I had other things — both in-game and out — that I’d rather spend my Monday evening doing. Specifically, my Rogue finished Chapter 3 of her Order Hall Campaign.

Many many thanks to Coffee Cakes & Crits, who tipped me off that the Tabard of the Lightbringer is BoE and can sometimes be found on the AH. I looked, and there it was. The list price of 255 K might not be much for some folks, but for me, it took a bit of pooling cash — with Kamalia and Kaelinda, who have been level 110 the longest and thus have had the most time to rake in gold from Order Hall missions, being the major donors — to be able to afford it.

Now Patch 8.0 is here, but there’s another week before the pre-launch-event quests begin. I’ll need to do those with the characters who will eventually be heading off into BfA content.
For the Blue Team, we have Kaylynda the Human Mage, Kerithian the Night Elf Druid, Kjerstin the Dwarf Shaman, and Kyraleia the Dwarf Paladin.
For the Red Team, we have Kaelinda the Blood Elf Mage, Kerisa the Tauren Druid, Kamalia the Tauren Shaman, and Keija the Tauren Warrior. Kaelinda, Kamalia, and Keija will have to go to Zandalar eventually because the only Professions I care about any more are the ones that make me things I can use for Mogging and they are my Tailor, Leatherworker, and Blacksmith, respectively. The leather-wearer position for the Red Team is theoretically flexible, but it will probably end up being Kerisa because of my four level 110 Horde leather-wearers, I am the most attached to her.

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5 weeks until BfA; 1 week until Patch 8.0

I’m still trying for that Druid robe from Emerald Nighthold.

It was Darkmoon Faire week. Normally I do the Darkmoon Faire on Sunday, or maybe Monday, but last week I was more interested in pushing the Warlock and the Rogue through to 110. So I didn’t do the Darkmoon Faire until Wednesday. About half of my alts will get to 800 skill points in their primary professions next month, just before BfA launches. The rest will get to 800 skill points in September, just after BfA launches and the profession skill cap goes up again…

It was World Quests bonus week. Thirteen alts was too many; I didn’t get it done on all of them… let alone the ones who actually needed it the most.

I was distracted by re-mogging all of my characters who’d gotten dressed up for the Midsummer Fire Festival and needed to change their clothes after the holiday ended.

And there was some more RL family stuff, too.

End result: I didn’t get any Order Hall Campaign advancement done.

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6 weeks until BfA; 2 weeks until Patch 8.0

Kerisa was so close to completing the Druid campaign that I decided to just finish it up — including going to the Broken Shore and recruiting Thisalee Crow. I’ll probably do this — go to the Broken Shore to recruit the 9th champion as soon as I finish up the 7.0 campaign — with my remaining characters, too. Cenarius still didn’t give her the Emerald Nighthold Druid tier lookalike robe, though.

By queueing up for LFD while doing zone questing, I managed to get both the Warlock and the Rogue to level 110. Whew!

So now that everyone is finally at 110, what next?
Finishing eight more Order Hall Campaigns, of course.
I’m debating whether to try to focus them down one at a time or do a little bit with multiple characters each night. The first method would probably help me keep track of the stories better — I confess that with over a year between when I pushed everyone through Chapter 2 of their Order Hall Campaigns shortly before we got our baby and now, I don’t really remember what’s going on in any of them.

My Paladin and Monk also need to run 8 different dungeons to get their Order Hall pants. I’m keeping track of which dungeons they have to run as part of their Campaign so that then I can just run the ones they haven’t already done for the pants. I’d also like to get the Order Hall pants for my Warrior, Death Knight, Hunter, and Priest — but they can come back and solo Legion dungeons at level 120. It’s only the Paladin and Monk that I want to get done while Legion is still current content, because those are the Order Hall sets that I’m the most interested wearing as complete sets.

And I really need to go to Argus with somebody. When it’s Kirin Tor Emissary, I’ve been picking up Argussian Reach tokens with my Demon Hunter and Army of the Light tokens with my Alliance Mage. Because I’m more interested in the Void Elves than in the Lightforged Draenei, it’ll probably be the Demon Hunter who goes to Argus first.

Meanwhile, in the world beyond Azeroth…

One of my colleagues took a job at another institution in the state, so I spent a couple of weeks of June in search committee meetings finding his replacement. Our new faculty member has a lot of experience teaching general chemistry, but the person she’s replacing didn’t have any standard general chemistry in his courseload. To help her feel more comfortable in her first semester at a new institution, I decided to give her the option to take the section of general chemistry that has been “mine” for the past four years. She took it, so now I am rearranging my schedule and preparing to teach the rest of the courseload that had been assigned to the person who left: general education chemistry and physical science. These are two classes that I’ve never taught before, and I have a month and a half to prep them… So as much as I might like to daydream about tackling the Mage Tower Challenge with Kaelinda to get that beautiful Challenge apppearance for Ebonchill, or with Kelisanna to get those amazing rapiers for the Dreadblades, I really can’t afford to let myself get distracted by that…

We got our adoption legally finalized in April. We then waited until BTH’s parents returned from their mission to serve in the Bern Switzerland Temple before getting our adoption ecclesiastically finalized by having our son sealed to us in our local Temple this Saturday. Now we can finally say that our little boy is 100% ours!

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7 weeks until BfA

All done with Trial of Valor, hurray! Kaelinda got the Priest lookalike shoulders from Cenarius, but Kerisa is still trying to get Cenarius to give her the Druid lookalike robe.

I was feeling tired of leveling. There was a cluster of extended family events this week. I acquired and read Before the Storm. Midsummer Fire Festival began and I had a heap of holiday-related Mogging I wanted to do. So neither the Rogue nor the Warlock did any leveling this week. Maybe next week.

Most of my recent level 110s are sitting on Order Hall quests that have them going out into the wide world to do non-dungeon things. Kerisa had a quest for Eye of Azshara that was the last thing she needed to do to recruit her 7th Champion, so I went and did that just so that I wouldn’t have made no progress at all on either leveling or Order Hall campaigns this week.

I enjoyed Before the Storm. I particularly liked the characters of Vellcinda (who is not an actual NPC in the game) and Parqual Fintallas (who is); it seems my Kivrinne has friends in Undercity that I didn’t know about yet.

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8 weeks until BfA

…But how many weeks until Patch 8.0?

Kamalia and Kerisa finished the Trial of Valor quest. Yay, I only have to listen to Odyn and Helya griping about each other once next week! Emerald Nightmare gave me only Artifact Power… sigh.

Monk dinged level 110. Only Rogue and Warlock remain. Somehow those two are always the last two to get leveled, even though I do rather have fun playing them when I do play them.

Keija reached Exalted with Valarjar. Now she can work on Suramar and Highmountain.

Katewatha got the Legend of the Monkey King to unlock the Hidden appearance of Fu-Zan on only her second day of tapping the Bubbling Keg. She would switch that Order Hall upgrade over to the other choice that buffs her troops… except she doesn’t have enough Order Hall Resources on hand to do so.

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9 weeks until BfA

Although I didn’t get any of the things I was going in for from Emerald Nightmare this past week, Kerisa did get the lookalike of the Rogue pants, a legendary trinket (Kil’jaeden’s Burning Wish), and Mark of the Glade Guardian — the Hidden appearance item for the Guardian Artifact. Another Druid in the raid asked if I needed the Mark of the Glade Guardian, and because I don’t play Guardian, I replied that I didn’t. Unfortunately, the item was already soulbound and I couldn’t trade it 😦

I’m still plugging away at Trial of Valor and Helarjar Landings. My Paladin got the LFR gloves this week, to match the boots she got last week.

I sent an Abundant Cache of Order Resources care package to Kaylynda, allowing her to upgrade her Order Hall to the point where she can get the Insta-WQ item. I’ve been using it exclusively for gear items. If I can just get her gear up to 800, hopefully that will be good enough to survive the Void Elf recruitment scenario — and the first several quests in Kul Tiras.

Even though I knew that I didn’t actually need to have a level 110 character on Duskwood to be able to create Highmountain Tauren characters there (once I get around to recruiting them, that is), I’d been leveling mini-Kam anyway by Garrison flower picking and Order Hall character XP missions. After Kaylynda dinged 110, mini-Kam picked up the Safari Hat. She’d reached about 70% of the way through level 109, so when I saw that there was a demon invasion up in Highmountain on Friday evening, I decided to finish off her leveling that way. Lemme tell ya, trying to do demon invasions in sub-700 gear is painful. I couldn’t really accomplish anything unless I was tagging along behind a Horde level 110 or two. By being patient and persistent, I got the ding. I’ll probably make her some crafted gear… but first, I’ll have to farm up the Stormscales.

My Death Knight did Highmountain and part of Stormheim on her way to 110. On a bit of a whim, I put her in Blood spec to do Highmountain. I used the Broadaxe of the Ebon Blade rather than the Maw of the Damned, but even without the ilevel, relics, and traits of the Artifact, the spec felt easier to play than Arms Warrior or Enhancement Shaman. I did spend a fair amount of time waiting for runes to refresh, though, which the relics and Artifact traits probably smooth out.

Death Knight is No. Nine of the Twelve Classes. Just… three… more… to go! Monk, Rogue, and Warlock… Having all my alts already at level 106 has definitely made pushing another one through to 110 each week much more doable than it would have been otherwise!

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10 weeks until BfA

Kaylynda reached level 110, but I can’t just run off willy nilly to recruit the Void Elves. For one thing, I haven’t yet gotten anyone out to Argus. For another, because she leveled by Garrison flower picking, Pet Battles, and Order Hall XP missions, the state of Kaylynda’s gear is… rather dreadful. Kaelinda didn’t have much trouble with the Nightborne recruitment scenario, but her gear was in the high 800s already when she did it. I worry that if she tried the Void Elf recruitment scenario at her current gear level, Kaylynda would just get squashed, repeatedly.

Kerisa got her Emerald Nighthold Tier shoulders from Tichondrius — yay, no more running that LFR wing! She got the belt from Cenarius, but she still needs the robe. Kaelinda got the lookalike of the Priest robe from the Dragons of Nightmare, but she still needs the lookalike of the Priest shoulders from Cenarius.

My Priest worked her way through the main story questlines of Highmountain and Stormheim. With the boosting of the Blue Team, she is technically my 12th level 110 character. But they are all doubles of classes I’d already gotten to level 110 the hard way, so they kind of don’t count. Kaohana is the 8th of the Twelve Classes to reach level 110. Four more to go…

My Warrior had three quests for Maw of Souls more or less right when she got to level 110. My Priest had three quests for Halls of Valor: the end-of-zone quest for Stormheim, the next step of Chapter Three of her Order Hall Campaign (a quest she’d actually been sitting on for awhile), and an Enchanting quest. So on Monday night, I went and did it. Then I decided to queue up for Black Rook Hold (on Normal) to get the book for the Hidden appearance of the Disc Artifact that is found in that dungeon. I got a group really fast because there happened to be a World Quest up for that dungeon. So then I queued up for Black Rook Hold (on Normal) again with my Paladin because she had an Order Hall Campaign quest for that dungeon. I hated that place the first few times I did it with Kamalia because the layout is so confusing when one is just chasing a tank, because those circular stairs are awful for line of sight for healing, and because I am terrible at movement challenges like dodging boulders rolling down said circular stairs. Somehow, it wasn’t so bad these times… perhaps it was because everyone else in my groups was overgeared, so the bosses died without performing their major mechanics and I barely had to heal at all?

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