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.

Ready for War Within

Everything set up to go for tWW now! I will start during "general" release, and not the early access bit as I didn't feel 3 extra days for €40 was worth it, and I need to complete Baldur's Gate 3 before I end up in the WoW bubble again. It's looking like the entire guild except me are playing Early Access and so are most of my friends, so I will be doing it all on my lonesome. It's also the first time since BFA I have not played the beta beforehand, so going in blind will be a new and fresh experience :)

For the first time ever I did a proper inventory cleanup before the expansion release, somewhat helped by the addition of the Warband bank.

• Deleted about a dozen characters after clearing out their stuff, and would delete a few more if they didn't come with a guild (and guild bank) attached. [Was capped on characters.]

• Cleared out all old gear and old profession materials back to and including Legion. Which was a lot. [Kept some vanilla profession mats in case I ever get around crafting the legendaries.]

• Cleared out all quest logs.

• Monetized as much of the random currencies and BOA thingies as I could.

• Cleared out most of the consumables except some vials and potions that might be handy for leveling.

Should make it less of a chore to log on old characters I might level up, and obviously freed up loads of bag space and generated some gold.

After considering a bunch of scenarios and what other people play at the moment, I ended up wanting to try my hand at Druid - I have signed as Balance for raiding, and will try to tank and heal dungeons while leveling and at level cap with guildies if DPSing in dungeon is overcrowded.

The inventory clean out generated about 700 000 gold, on top of the 1 000 000 gold I had spread out over all the characters. There's more in the 3 personal guild banks I have, but I've had enough cleaning out for now.

Reasons for choosing Druid as starter

• Guild raid roster is nearly full, but had no druids when I changed to it - a resto druid decided last minute not to reroll after all - but seems to be the class people flee from at the moment.

• Guardian seems ok in m+.

• As it currently stands, could try for full leather groups at the start for loot trading.

• Being able to play ranged in raid while also being able to tank in m+

• I considered druid for BFA, Shadowlands and Dragonflight but chickened out every time, so using the lack of pressure on me to fill some role to actually make it happen.

• Guild raid will have 3-4 Mages, 3-4 Paladins and 2-4 Hunters so will drown out in the competition for keys and loot overlap in raids.

• Have some hope to try out Resto in raids and m+ properly, I enjoy it more than Holy Paladin and Shaman doesn't have a tank spec.

• I can steal Ruthe's builds and ideas she might blog about :D