A Shifty World #3: Dungeon Downers and Stupid Sojourning (tWW day 3)

After the overwhelming reset day with a lot of random activities, I had a more focused approach on day 3. Since Loremaster, clearing quest log, farming herbs and getting big gear upgrades from renown all came from doing more side quests and wandering around the overworld that's what I did. And some odd heroic to get some variation and valorstones.

Side quests

• Quality of side quests still variable. Some really good sad ones, the odd npc powertrip and some hopeless fetch quests.

• Getting the renown for gear was pretty easy, I managed to get all the veteran pieces today.

• Getting the Sojourner achievements for Loremaster was harder. Two of the Hallowfall ones were bugged for me; I have done them (and confirmed with youtube and wowhead) but they were not tagged for achievement. The other zones has quests I can't find, and I'm not in the mood to have to google them up just yet.

• Got Pathfinder, which was really nice. Herbing in the expansion has been a bit annoying since everything is so vertical, so if you have to land on the ground to pick a herb and run out of vigor you can't back up and have to wait. It was a nice quality of life.

• At the end of the day, my quest log is still mostly full. But I still have hope to clear it out before the season starts.

• Overall still happy with the quests, except the bugs for tracking things.

Dungeons

• Mostly stuck with Heroics today, and completed about 5. The amount of failed runs though...

• Problem 1: Loads of people are targeting loot in heroic with reduced ilevel drops on day 3 of them being available, and leaving if they don't drop. Usually that's a tank/healer duo that leaves the dps stranded and facing a new 10 minute wait after waiting 10 mins to get into a one boss dungeon run.

• Problem 2: Rage. Tanks pulling all trash between bosses. Tanks not pulling all trash between bosses. Not trading. Trading. Doing quest. Not doing quest. Not doing mechanics fast enough. Doing mechanics fast so they can't see. Literally everything causes someone to snap. I don't think I've ever had this large a percentage of dungeons runs have someone be mad, and even my ranked League of Legends games in silver was calmer.

• I simply don't like half the dungeons, so I am already weary of doing random HC. Not great.

• At this point, I am hoping Delves will save me from dungeons.

End of day status:

I think I am getting to whatever the ilevel requirement for the normal raids will be. I need some boots that is at least on Explorer track to drop from anywhere, and then I can just farm some Valorstones to pump my gear up to 580 if I need to.

I don't know about playing Balance so much though. Playing Druid is very practical for doing all the content, but the current Balance rotation is... odd. Might be that everything in dungeons die so fast normal rotation doesn't really apply, so can hope it gets better in raid, but seeing how all the Balance mains fled the spec I'm not so sure...

A Shifty World #2: Overwhelming First Reset (tWW day 2)

Once again there was light, and the first reset of the expansion was upon us. And boy, I keep getting more overwhelmed...

I have tried to make a list of everything I could do (and maybe should do), but not sure if it's exhaustive:

• Dungeons (Normal and heroic - heroic with lower than normal gear)

• Weekly Open World quests (like World Soul that gives you a craft for sparking)

• Events (like the Theater or the Machine)

• Delves

• Side quests

• Rep farm

• Professions

• Rares

• Achievements like Pathfinder and Loremaster

I didn't really choose since I didn't know what was going to pay off, but I did a bunch of side quests, delves and dungeons to scout what the content was like.

Dungeons

• Normals while leveling was a stomp.

• Normals at 80 while badly geared was rough.

• Heroics at 80 has generally been easier than normals. Go figure.

• Just two days since heroics were introduced, people are throwing tantrums, targeting items and leaving group after the boss they are after and generally it's been the worst state of dungeons I've ever had in WoW.

• The dungeons themselves have been very mixed, I get Shadowlands vibes here. Ara-Kara, Rookery, Stonevault and Priory were all fine. Cinderbrew and and City of Threads I find annoying. Dawnbreaker and Darkflame might be the two worst dungeons for m+ in the game I've encountered. So I'm not getting more hyped for season 1 when it comes to dungeons...

• A fairly negative experience, but I did a couple runs with guildies which were fine for gearing purposes.

Side quests

• The quest log was bursting at the seams, so I had to get rid of some. Why is there a quest limit, and why isn't it visible again?

• There's been several side quests I enjoyed a lot more than the main quest. Wandering around cursed areas figuring things out, helping kobolds and goblins with random projects and some... really sad tales. As usual the side quests are the best quests!

• There's also been some REALLY dull ones - drop quests which doesn't really have any story related to them, the beat up elites with your main character friends who are just that much better than you and they know it and some general dogsbody assignments.

• I found out that at renown 7 (Council and Hollowfall) and 8 (Assembly) you could get Veteran gear, one slot for each, so my side questing was going to pay off some days later... No more gear hidden at Exalted when you get better from elsewhere!

• Overall very enjoyable, but it's only going to be fun once.

Delves

• Since all of them has a quest, I needed to do some to unclog as motivation.

• I have a really hard time telling them apart. I cannot remember the name of one I did and what was in it.

• As far as I can tell there are 4 types: Jump on mushrooms, don't step on webs, run around with a candle and ones with circles you don't want to stay in. Or a mix of them at the same time.

• Bronn is not too bad for an npc companion, but the constant spam of "nice" or something like that when you pick up treasure and stuff gets old, fast.

• I was not overly entertained, nor was I bored like I was with Torghast.

• Sailing up as alternative to m+ dungeons as side content to raids and professions, but needs to have reasonable amounts of crests per run to have a point when it comes to gear for me.

End of day status:

I enjoyed the first day of max level more than I did leveling. Variation and less playtime might be the reason :)

A Shifty World #1: First day of War Within & Esmëriel Level 80

The first day of "normal" World Within release was yesterday, and I found myself regretting having bought the expansion and not dodged the release like I did Legion. But still, I played most of the day... And reached level 80 on the Druid! Dinged by picking a herb, as is tradition.

State after day 1 was this:

Some thoughts on the leveling bit

• I spent about 10 hours from 70 to 80, which involved a longer dinner break and some chores.

• I attempted to just stick to the main quest to get all of it in one go and avoid Shadowlands-like leveling traps where you overlevel the quasi-scaled zones. I was 75 when I came to the last zone which started at 78, so I backtracked doing sidequests and delves to 76 and a bit - and ended the campaign at 78 and did more sidequests and delves. This was not a good idea. If I did it again, I'd pick up side quests near the main quest and avoid having to do the same mobs 2-3 times and cut 1-2 hours of leveling time.

• The main quest story was ok. I like the big bad and hope they flesh her out a lot during the next 6 years, and I am somewhat curious about where Alleria ends up in the end.

• The zones lived up to the expectations, high quality as usual. Hard to pick a favorite, but Ringing Deeps if I had to pick one at gunpoint.

• I leveled as Guardian, which worked well - bad dps never turned into a problem.