Now that season is over, I thought I’d recap how the second season went for me.
I got Keystone Hero on my main, a resto shaman, with a rating of 2695.0 and earned all the portals. My normal group didn’t really push at the end, so I pug’d to get the portals, which went very smoothly this season. I earned Keystone Master on my fury warrior. Besides them, I played a little on alts; I earned Keystone Conqueror on my frost mage and Keystone Explorer on my hunter, priest, and evoker.
I stopped on my main when I got the portals. For my alts, I was honestly just grinding certain crests to unlock transmog.
Let’s look at some of the open world activities from patch 10.1 that I completed.
Snail Racing
Look at this beautiful snail, Big Slick in the City! I love this mount.
This is Bulleto and me on our snails! I short collection of dailies, and the little snail was mine.
Researchers Under Fire
Researchers Under Fire seemed interesting at first but quickly lost its appeal. I think this happens with a lot of the world content that starts at set times. It just became a chore. However, it offered three mounts and two pets. I earned everything. This is my favorite mount from the activity, the Subterranean Magmammoth.
Sniffenseeking
Sniffenseeking is the activity in Zaralek Cavern in which you dig with Myrrit. They were pretty fun little scenarios that offered a change of pace to the standard game. I did all of them and found all the quest items, earning the Sniffenseeker title and the Salverun pet, who whispers things to you.
Fyrakk Assaults
Fyrakk Assaults basically boiled down to showing up and defeating a bunch of enemies, but it had a little bit of complexity by forcing to you to target more powerful enemies. What I liked about the assaults were that there were four transmog sets to collect, one for each armor type. Here’s my druid with the leather set. There were also some drake manuscripts, a toy, and some pets. I collected everything.
Aberrus was a really good raid with some fun, varied fights. I earned Ahead of the Curve on my shaman, warrior, and evoker. On my hunter, I finished normal. Other classes did some bosses or LFR only. With 9 bosses in the raid, I only had issues with a couple of them.
The Amalgamation Chamber, The Forgotten Experiments, and Magmorax seemed rather boring. Magmorax was especially trivial, but somehow I disliked The Amalgamation Chamber and The Forgotten Experiments even more, possibly because they were two boring fights in a row.
Opening with Kazzara, the Hellforged was fantastic. I’m glad we started with a dragon.
I also really loved the flow between Assault of the Zaqali and Rashok, the Elder. We stop the Zaqali from infiltrating deeper into Aberrus, yet when we find Rashok, we initially think he got past us before the Echo of Neltharion reveals that the Zaqali were there to free Rashok. I know the idea of us having to defeat innocent or good characters who have gone mad has been done a ton in WoW, but I still have to feel bad for Rashok!
The Echo of Neltharion was a fun penultimate fight, and the reveal that the Echo was actually a Faceless One seems to have been missed by a lot of people.
Sarkareth is a complex fight that was a lot of fun – even though I once dispelled immediately when I wasn’t thinking and immediately caused a wipe. I wish Sarkareth has been built up more. I know his story existed in the Forbidden Reach and tied to the dracthyr, but I didn’t find myself caring all that much about the lore.
This was the first time Bulleto and I defeated Sarkareth I think, which would make this an LFR or normal screenshot.
My Ahead of the Curve kill on my shaman is at the top of this post. It was kind of an odd tier because my raid group did splits, and I wasn’t in the group that was pushing as hard. I still ran with the raid group, but I was ahead through pugging and got my AOTC in a pug group.
Here’s where we earned Glory of the Aberrus Raider. These achievements are interesting; I used to think of them as a challenge to obtain slowly but now it’s just a single run.
Here’s some of the raid group with our Shadowflame Shalewing, the Glory reward, right after we earned it.
And here’s Bulleto and I on them outside of Aberrus.
I think this is from the time Bulleto earned her AOTC.
This is the Highland Drake: Embodiment of the Hellforged customization that drops from Sarkareth. I’m glad I got it, because it’s awesome! It looks like the first boss, Kazzara.
Here’s a closer look at it with Bulleto and I carrying eggs!
Hopefully Amirdrassil, the Dream’s Hope will be just as fun!
Hallow’s End just finished in World of Warcraft, and it was the second holiday to get a “holiday refresh” in Dragonflight. This felt a lot more like a refresh than the Brewfest one did. The biggest change in my opinion was the addition of a quest series about the history of the Headless Horseman, including who he was in life and his wife.
The fight itself is also updated, including a hard more. The hard mode increases the chance of receiving the mount, the drake manuscript, and the Arfus pet (with the drake manuscript and Arfus being new). It’s still not difficult, but you have to actually pay attention and can’t queue as a tank/healer while being dps, which I think was the right thing to do previously to speed up not only queue times but also the fight.
I included a video above of the hard mode fight!
gem and I both got the Hallow’s End armor drake manuscript. It adds a jack-o-lantern to the back of the drake!
Here we are with the Eve’s Ghastly Rider, a broomstick mount from the Trading Post. During Hallow’s End, it’s instant-cast.
This is after the completion of the Headless Horseman fight. There’s little Arfus too!
I’m a flying pumpkin boy!
Here I am in my pumpkin costume after fighting the Headless Horseman. I have my new Bucket of Morbid Treats offhand that looks like a jack-o-lantern!
This is little Arfus, a good little ghost dog pet!
He’s really adorable when he sleeps too!
I dressed up my paladin in plate armor to match The Horseman’s Horrific Hood.
He doesn’t seem to notice that I have his horse.
Here’s my paladin with The Horseman’s Horrific Hood, The Horseman’s Sinister Slicer, and the Bucket of Morbid Treats. You’ll note that I’m taking screenshots and not helping with the fight at all. Oh well.
This is probably my favorite in-game holiday because I love Halloween so much. The refresh wasn’t huge, but I liked it a lot. I’ll leave you with the poems said when the Horseman is summoned!
Horseman rise… Your time is nigh… You felt death once… Now, know demise!
It is over, your search is done. Let fate choose now, the righteous one.