Recently I went back to get my DK class mount from Legion. I had finished the order hall campaign and figured it couldn’t be too much work to get the mount. At one time you had to finish the Legionfall campaign, but it seems that’s no longer the case. I doubt it took me longer than an hour or two to get the mount. Spoilers for the quest series follow.
The quests involve finding the remains for a powerful red dragon and raising it in undeath. One quest has you enter the Ruby Sanctum. Originally, there was a feat of strength you could earn for slaying all the red dragons in the sanctum, but Blizzard removed it because they decided it wasn’t fair to give a reward like that for something you could miss. Since it was removed by the time I tried to do the quest, I took the opposite approach; I got in and out without killing anything.
Here’s a video I edited together of the lore parts of the quest series. Starting at 9:26 you can see the three forms of the mount. I mostly play unholy, but I think it’s the worst variation. I like the frost one!
Last week I earned Keystone Master, and this week the last of my 5-man group earned it too! (He would have had it earlier but he fills multiple roles and splits his time between multiple characters.) As is tradition, we took this screenshot on our mounts on the edge of Oribos. From left to right, we are Mushkin (Matt), Delarm (Elias), Sotiros (me, Peter), Todesfall (Marc), Max (Todesfall’s pet), and Mooglegem (gem).
On 3/26 we defeated the Jailer in Sepulcher of the First Ones normal! I guess I got behind on updating the blog. It’s a fun fight, but Anduin feels like better fight and something closer to a final boss. Maybe that’ll feel different on higher difficulties.
We’ve moved on to heroic progression and are currently 3/11. Hopefully we push further this week!
We’re in the 7th week of the Shadowlands Season 3, but I never discussed how mythic+ season 2 ended for me.
I ended with a 2294.1 rating, almost entirely healing. According to raider.io, globally I was in the top 6% of all characters, 4.9% of healers, 7.2% of shamans, and 7.5% of restoration shamans. I was the 65th best Horde shaman on Kil’jaeden and 48th best resto shaman on Kil’jaeden.
My top key ratings worked out like this (with asterisks indicating key level increase like raider.io’s UI):
Dungeon
Fortified
Tyrannical
De Other Side
17*
20
Halls of Atonement
16*
19
Mists of Tirna Scithe
20*
19*
Plaguefall
19
18
Sanguine Depths
20
18**
Spires of Ascension
19
20*
The Necrotic Wake
17**
18*
Theater of Pain
21
20*
I earned Keystone Hero for Theater of Pain, Spires of Ascension, and Mists of Tirna Scithe for completing them on +20 or higher (in this case, +20, haha). While they were far from easy for me, I think others were within reach had I pushed to do them earlier. I didn’t try until the last couple weeks of the season, and our group had to split up to earn them.
Korthia and the covenant assaults in the Maw brought a lot of new mounts to hung back in 9.1. With 9.2 here, I’ve been looking back at my 9.1 goals. I got most of the 9.1 Korthia/Maw mounts except the Hand of Nilganihmaht (putting the rings together), the Fierce Razorwing (Death’s Advance paragon reward), Tamed Mauler (Archivists’ Codex paragon), and Hand of Salaranga (Breaking the Chains, Korthia meta achievement).
This is my favorite mount from the patch and one of my favorite all time mounts – the Fallen Charger! The gold looks awesome!
The Rampaging Mauler from Konthrogz the Obliterator is also pretty.
I don’t use the Mastercraft Gravewing from Stygian Stonecrusher a ton because it’s so big, but I do think it’s really cool.
The Forsworn Aquilon from Wild Worldcracker is really cool. I know Kyrians already had other tints of this, but I like this one!
While not from this expansion at all, my group has been occasionally going back to Mechagon to get Aerial Unit R-21/X from the hard mode. Only one party member can get it per run, and I came in last! But I did get it last patch. Sweet!
With the release of 9.2, I wanted to look at the transmog I’ve been collecting this expansion. Here’s what I earned, with more details and screenshots below:
Kyrian, cloth – campaign and renown
Venthyr, plate – campaign, renown, and Ember Court
Night fae, leather – campaign, renown, Queen’s Conservatory, and Winterborn
Necrolord, mail – campaign, renown, Abominable Stitching, and Unity
Kyrian 9.1 – all four
Venthyr 9.1 – five of the eight
Night fae 9.1 – all four
Necrolord 9.1 – all four
Castle Nathria – all four LFR sets
Sanctum of Domination – cloth, leather, and plate LFR sets
PVP Season 1 – cloth aspirant and gladiator
PVP season 2 – cloth aspirant, gladiator, and elite
First, these are my completed Sanctum of Domination sets. I got the LFR sets for leather, plate, and cloth. I actually like the cloth raid finder tint (the last one above), but the other raid finder ones are rather boring. I didn’t try for mail raid finder because I was pushing heroic on my mail character, but I didn’t finish the set. Funny thing is, I don’t think I’d use the cloth LFR tint despite initially liking it because I like the PVP variant much more.
These are the Shadowlands Season 2 PVP sets I collected – all three cloth sets. The aspirant is the same as last season’s aspirant. The gladiator variant is really cool although the elite set has the extra flair.
These are the raid sets I collected from the first tier – all four LFR tints. These are actually all pretty cool in their own way. In order above, those are the mail, plate, cloth, and leather sets. I used the mail set on my shaman for a while.
In season 1 of PVP, I only managed to get the aspirant and gladiator variants. As I mentioned above, the aspirant is the same set in both season 1 and 2. While I prefer my priest in a robe over pants, I think the gladiator tint doesn’t look as nice as the LFR tint.
I got all four of the Aspirant’s Regalia tints, the Kyrian sets from 9.1. I think they fit Kyrian pretty well.
I collected the four Night fae tints from 9.1. They’re cool, but I think I like the 9.0 leather sets better.
I can’t really imagine using any of these even though I did collect all four Necromantic Vestments tints for Necrolords in 9.1.
I’m not sure why, but Venthyr had two different sets each with four tints in 9.1. This is the set with pants, Court Attire. I collected three of the four variants.
And I collected two of the four Inquisitor’s Vestments tints.
My first character this expansion was my Kyrian priest, and I collected two of the cloth Kyrian tints. I didn’t progress much in Path of Ascension so was unable to collect the other tints.
After my Kyrian priest, I played by Venthyr DK. I got three of the plate tints, with the campaign version being the coolest.
I played my Night fae druid third and got all four of the leather tints. I like the one with purple leaves best!
I played a Necrlord shaman last and collected all four mail tints despite not liking any of them. Why did I spend my time doing that?
I’m not sure how many of the ones I missed I plan on getting. I’ll continue pooling my anima to get the missing 9.1 Venthyr tints. I dobut I’m going back to old raids. Doing Path of Ascension for the missing Kyrian cloth tints or the mirrors for the missing Venthyr plate tint isn’t high on my priorities. I like a lot of the Kyrian armor actually, but I absolutely do not want to grind more Grateful Offerings!
While my druid normally uses one of the Night fae ones, my other three toons use different transmog. While not related to collecting Shadowlands sets, let’s finish the post by talking about them.
I love my priest in T10 from Icecrown Citadel, including a weapon from ICC. There is a touch of Shadowlands there – the back piece is Kyrian.
When we started doing rated battlegrounds, Moogle and I were aiming to get the Vicious War Gorm. As you can see, we got our wish.
Here’s a closer look because I think it’s so cool!
I also wanted to collect the gladiator set, which I thought looked great. I know I usually like my priest in blues and whites, but this just looked awesome, at least for PVP, and appropriate for the expansion.
I wasn’t expecting to collect the elite set! We pushed hard the final week of the season. On 2/10, I was at 32.5% and Moogle was at 25% progress toward our seasonal mounts. We had to win at least 30 games over a week and a half, and luckily we made it. However, I wish we pushed earlier so that we could have pushed higher. We both hit 1954 rating without really hitting a wall. If we had more time, I’d love to see how high we could go!
On the last night of Winter Veil, four members of Carpe Flux Capacitor decided to go on a Winter Veil sleigh ride through Orgrimmar together! From left to right, that’s Syravia (Marc), me, Mooglegem (gem), and Mushkin (Matt).
I look especially silly in this one I think, but I’m also blocking Mooglegem unfortunately.
We’re gonna hit the camera!
I also recorded our little ride too.
As an added bonus, can I just say that cutscenes are way more fun when I’m in my Winter Veil transmog?
When am I ever going to see a ranking like that again? I ran some Legion timewalking mythic+ and realized that I had a shot at topping the rankings without too much effort. I managed to become the #1 shaman on US Kil’jaeden for Legion timewalking! I expect to fall as more people play, but it was fun to get here for now.
Happy 17 years to World of Warcraft! It’s crazy that the game is still going and I’m still playing! Here’s my current main, Sotiros, with the anniversary event world boss, Doomwalker. I’m also using the Akama’s Edge weapon transmog that was introduced for the event!
I took a screenshot of my first character, Petros, for this post. He’s level 14 now after the Shadowlands level squish but was 32 previously. I don’t think I broke level 20 with him before I switched mains. In this screenshot, my warrior is wearing mail boots (because I didn’t have anything else), no helm, and no belt!
This is the earliest screenshot I can find of Petros, night elf warrior and my first main, on 11/25/2004. This is only two days after the game was released.
By 12/12/2004, I had switched to Dimitri, a tauren hunter.
At some point soon after that, I made a hunter on a different server. I wanted to switch from a PVE to a PVP server. This is Petros, orc hunter, on 5/15/2005.
I can tell by my screenshots that on 3/18/2007, I hit 20 on Petros, my warrior. I’m not sure if he was back to being my main or if I was bouncing between a few.
By 10/16/2007, I was playing Sotiros, my shaman, as my main. He was level 24 in this screenshot. Crazy that he’s back to being my main today! He’s the same character shown in the screenshot at the top.
When gem started playing, I switched to a priest to help her level until she caught up with my main. I loved playing him so much that I decided to keep him as my main. Here’s the earliest screenshot I can easily find of Devee from 3/25/2008. gem’s character, Mooglegem, is in the background. Devee was my main until the most recent major patch, 9.1, on 6/29/2021. He was my main for over 13 years!
Here’s a good screenshot of Devee with Mooglegem. It’s one of the earliest I can find of the two of us where you can see us both clearly. This is from 4/4/2008!
As an added bonus, here’s a screenshot of Mooglegem with Sylvanas on 4/11/2008. This is during Sylvanas singing Lament of the Highborne upon turn-in of the quest Journey to Undercity. Things sure have changed!
Happy Halloween! Enjoy these photos of my New World-inspired costume as I harvest a plant and log some wood. It’s still a work-in-progress with a few small things to add soon!
Here’s a spooky look at my New World character, too!
Let’s not forget Hallow’s End fun in WoW! Mooglegem and I took our friend who is new to WoW to kill the Headless Horseman!
Today is my dad’s birthday, so I thought I’d share this screenshot. Ever since I was a kid, I primarily used “Petros” as a character name for melee characters and “Sotiros” for casters. This started long before WoW existed. My current main is named Sotiros, a tauren shaman. “Sotiros” is Greek for “Steven,” which is my dad’s name, and I’m Greek-American. In World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, there is a zone called Bastion that’s heavily influenced by Greek mythology. Bastion has a summonable boss named Eliminator Sotiros. To celebrate my dad’s birthday, I wanted to share this screenshot of my Sotiros with Eliminator Sotiros. I took this so I could show him when I take him out to dinner!
This week we got our second Sylvanas kill, which got most of our group Ahead of the Curve, including Moogle! And this time, unlike my first kill, we actually got a group screenshot!
We also did mythic Tarragrue, Eye of the Jailer, and the Nine. These mythic bosses are so much easier than heroic Sylvanas. Is it always like that? I doubt we’re going to push mythic much more, but it was fun to get a little mythic progress. Now that I have tier of shaman healing under my belt, I can say that I definitely enjoy it. I plan on sticking with resto shaman over disc priest next tier as well.
On top of New World launching this week, I also earned Ahead of the Curve: Sylvanas Windrunner. Heroic Sylvanas seemed tuned pretty difficult compared to the previous bosses, and we’ve been struggling for a couple weeks. This week we used a smaller raid group, and it so much easier. The fight is very positional, and it’s much better with a small group. Over the next few weeks, we’ll get AOTC for the whole raid group.
Somehow I forgot to take a screenshot – not that there’s much to screenshot. But I had this clip saved!
We recently got Keystone Master for another guildmate! Congratulations to Mike! This screenshot shows from left to right, Elias, gem, me, Mike, and Matt. He was missing a fortified Necrotic Wake for a couple weeks now, but now that’s behind him!
Tuesday night was achievement night for my raid group. This was my last Tuesday raid for a while because the group is moving on to mythic, and I’m not on their server. We still have a couple Saturday raid nights left though, which is good because I wasn’t there for the Sylvanas kill to get Ahead of the Curve.
The Glory of the Dominant Raider meta achievement was easier than I expected. I didn’t really think they were easy enough to finish in one night, but my raid group didn’t question it so maybe they always do it like this. Some achievements made me nervous; Tormentor’s Tango requires you to /taunt Garrosh, which gives you a slow debuff, and then not get hit by any Torments. And if anyone messes it up in the raid, no one gets the achievement. I thought for sure it would be hard, but we did it in one attempt.
The Kel’thuzad fight has one of the cutest achievements – Together Forever. As a reminder, Kel’thuzad had a pet cat back in Naxxramas, Mr. Bigglesworth. If you killed it, he would yell and curse you. I think it’s cute that he had a pet he loved even as a lich. Well, it turns out Mr. Bigglesworth also ended up in the Shadowlands. For this achievement, someone in the raid has to find and pet Mr. Bigglesworth, now a slime-ghost-cat, near the Tarragrue’s platform and then again near Painsmith. This will cause him to spawn in Kel’thuzad,s room, where a player can click him once more. Mr. Bigglesworth will hop on that player’s head. During the Kel’thuzad fight, that player must enter Kel’thuzad’s phylactery and deliver the cat, thawing Kel’thuzad’s head (and causing him to take increased damage). How cute is that?
Here I had some nice tea with Keridwen and Mooglegem while we waited for others to find Mr. Bigglesworth. It was our Finer Things Club.
Look, there he is riding on someone’s head!
I Used to Bullseye Deeprun Rats Back Home was an interesting achievement. There’s a vertical hoop on a stick next to Remnant of Ner’zhul’s platform (like a quidditch goal) with a second hoop swinging. Three “goals” must be scored by throwing the bomb off the platform and through the hoops. None of us had ever noticed the goal posts before.
Whack-A-Soul seemed like one of the most appropriate achievements. On top of everything else Painsmith throws at you, there are Burning Gibbets that appear on the sides. More continue to spawn throughout the fight, and they case a raid-wide four second fear. Basically, you just have to keep killing and interrupting them. This would have likely been very hard earlier when we were less geared.
This World is a Prism, on Sylvanas, was another neat achievement. One prism from each covenant spawns in phase two. Four players must each pick up a prism. In the last phase, each platform has a sigil corresponding to a covenant. The players with the prisms must stand on the sigils to channel on to Anduin. Lore-wise that does… something? But every good WoW fight needs to beams or magic lasers.
And after a little over two hours of raiding, we finished Glory of the Dominant Raider. Now we can all ride our Hand of Hrestimorak mounts! I’m not in love with the hand recolor, but it is a cool model. I have the Hand of Bahmethra from Tormentors of Torghast already. I still need the Hand of Salaranga from Breaking the Chains as well as Hand of Nilganihmaht, the gold hand and one I want the most!
I ran a Plaguefall 14 on tyrannical back on 8/23 expecting to improve my score; it ended up giving me Keystone Master! Because some people switched characters during our runs, it took another week or so for all five of our main m+ group to get KSM. I wanted to wait to post about it until I had a screenshot of the five of us on our mounts (the Soultwisted Deathwalker) but then forgot about posting until now.
I believe the five characters in the screenshot (it’s hard to identify alts) are Delarm (Elias), Kanora (Marc), me, Mooglegem (gem), and Kuuna (Matt).
Season two certainly went quicker. It was the first time I ran m+ in two consecutive seasons within a single expansion, so maybe it’s always like this. I liked the seasonal affix, but it seemed much easier than Prideful; whether that’s good or bad is up for debate I suppose. Now let’s see how high we can push!
We got our revenge on Tazasvesh, and I was so excited that I rocked out in Myza’s Oasis on the drums!
We first tried Tazavesh the week it was released, but we hit a wall on the last boss. This week, we returned to the megadungeon and tried it on hard mode.
This guy looked shady, but we made a deal with him anyways.
At our gear level now, there were some mechanics we didn’t even see because we killed the target so quickly. It was not a big deal.
I really enjoyed it, and I think megadungeons are a cool concept that Blizzard could use a bit more. It’s definitely a different style of gameplay. I think the biggest issue, if they were done more frequently, would be balancing rewards. Right now, it’s mostly just about having fun. The gear reward barely mattered since we decided to gear through m+ and come back to wreck it later.
Not that I expect it, but maybe we can get another megadungeon in 9.2!
The Grungy Containment Pack was such a cool transmog item that I had to build an entire set around it. Now I’m glowing green as much as I can!
I’m also using the Worn Turtle Shell Shield from way back in Wailing Caverns! It’s rare that I find a good transmog use for such an old item, and I have happy memories of killing Kresh for it.
Look at that glorious Mimiron’s Head! My mage, Mooglepete, was the character that finally got the mount to drop. Coincidentally, he was also the one that got Mollie, the alpaca, to drop! I guess he has good luck at mount farming. Bulleto, gem’s hunter, has been holding an Ulduar lockout cleared up to Yogg-Saron for months now. I think he’s happy to end his post in the icy wastes of Northrend.
I wasn’t sure what I was seeing was real for a second. I started nervously laughing when I noticed what dropped. I know I ran this a few times over the years, but likely only 10 or so maybe before I started farming it regularly. Since I started farming, I’ve run it 282 times. At first, I was running it with all 12 of my characters that were over level 50, but it became annoying to move characters I’m actively playing to Ulduar. For the past couple months, I’ve been running it 8 times per week; those 8 characters have just stayed parked in front of Ulduar. It’s nice to be finished!
We decided to clear normal Sanctum of Domination before heading into heroic. We defeated normal Sylvanas on our fourth raid night, which was in the second week of the raid. In heroic, we’re now three bosses into the raid with The Nine falling this week. As mentioned in the title, there will be some spoilers in this post.
I got the Sanctum Gloomcharger’s Reins on my second defeat of The Nine, which was actually in LFR. I’m not sure of the drop rate, but it doesn’t seem too high. It’s a pretty cool mount!
We’re struggling against Soulrender Dormazain in heroic for now, but at least we’re making progress and getting better. This is a pretty cool fight, and I really enjoy seeing Garrosh again.
Here’s the cutscene at the end of the fight courtesy of wowhead. I think this is a pretty good end to Garrosh’s arc. No redemption. He is who he is, and he does feel remorse for his actions. He goes out fighting and even screaming “for the Horde!”
And then I guess he becomes a pile of ash. Oh well.
And this is how I feel after wiping repeatedly to Soulrender Dormazain in heroic! Okay, actually things have been going well, but I thought I’d end the post there. Happy raiding!
Mythic+ season 2 is off to a fun start! This is the first time I’ve done two seasons back-to-back in a single expansion, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. To be honest, I just assumed that we’d be starting with +3 or +4 keys, but that wasn’t the case.
For now, our main goal is to get the best loot from the weekly vault rather than time lower keys. To that end, we’ve been mostly doing +15s over time, which ensures we get 252 loot each week. Soon we’ll need to start timing keys!
I’ve been enjoying the Servants of the Jailer, the minibosses from the new affix. I enjoy the flexibility they give – yeah, I know that they’re in set locations while Manifestations of Pride could pop up wherever you want, it also meant than in season one, a mistake with trash can drastically change the whole run. Plus, these minibosses seem much easier to me.
Devee, my discipline priest, has been my main since BC. In fact, 8.3 was the first time I played max-level alts. This patch, I’ve swapped to Sotiros, my ele/resto shaman as my main. Most likely I’ll be elemental in our main runs, but I’m healing dungeons too and raid as resto. It’s weird but fun to be playing a different toon as my main. Discipline feels like significantly more work and burns mana extremely fast. When things are hectic and player health is low, I feel like I had to lean away from atonement, which tore through my mana. Shaman doesn’t have that issue, but I’ll admit I certainly miss Pain Suppression, and Desperate Prayer. I miss some other CDs too, but those are the two big ones that I find myself wishing I had the most. However, the shaman has a lot of other strengths.
My elemental DPS has come a long way, but it’s still hurting in single target fights, and I’d be replacing the position held last patch by an unholy DK that could really bring the DPS. Hopefully I can get it to keep climbing and I can learn to be better on ST fights. If so, that unholy player will be healing on his holy paladin. This is my first patch ever DPSing in my main role rather than healing. Although so far, I think I’ve healed more than I’ve DPS’d across all my toons this patch. It helps that three of my four characters have healing specs!
I hope everyone has been enjoying Chains of Domination!
My troll likes watching the fireworks in Orgrimmar! I’m glad Mooglegem reminded me to go check them out this year.
I brought the Inky Black Potions, which I think made it looked cooler. Honestly, those potions make most places look better! I hope everyone in the US had a great Fourth of July!
We earned our Glory of the Shadowlands Hero achievement this weekend! It’s been a long time since I’ve gone for a Glory achievement to be honest. This was pretty fun and not very fun honestly, although you definitely wouldn’t stumble into all of them without trying. For example, there’s Kaal-ed Shot, requiring you to pick up a Filled Anima Container in Sanguine Depths to get the Shadow Ball buff, carry it through the gauntlet, get knocked off the boss platform toward a lantern, click the lantern to dunk the ball, and then kill General Kaal. What a weird achievement.
The Voracious Gorger is a pretty cool mount. I like the devourers and the little bit of lore about them originating from the in-between. This isn’t one of my favorite mounts necessarily, but I like it. In the screenshot above from left to right is Mooglegem, Delillidan, me, Mushkin, and Kanora – with two of them naked because that’s how they earned the final achievement!
The last achievement we earned for the meta was I Can See My House From Here – another that you’d be unlikely to do without really going for it. The biggest things we learned are 1) perspective can mess with you and 2) trust your friends and don’t tell them what to do haha. We kept correcting each other, which just caused more problems.
I went necrolords with my shaman to round out my covenant quartet. Was he picking flowers here? I don’t remember the details of this screenshot, but it looks nice.
Maldraxxus is a surprisingly fun zone despite having a theme that I thought would be boring. I still feel like my nature-loving shaman likely would have preferred to join the night fae, but the quest series in which Mograine wonders why he wasn’t sent to Bastion instead of Maldraxxus puts some of that in perspective.
There are lots of fun references in this zone, like Tapani Nightwish, the innkeeper. I also enjoyed the quest names “Build-A-Bomination” and “Dude, Where’s My Necropolis?”
Since this was the fourth and final covenant campaign I completed, I enjoyed seeing the moments in which it intersected with the kyrian and venthyr campaigns. I also really like learning about how the covenants interact. There are some quests that show what other covenants think of the necrolords, which is really cool. It’s kind of odd that three of the four covenants deal with a bit of a civil war within their zones, but they’re all entertaining despite the similarities. I’m looking forward to making more abominations and eventually dealing with Kel’thuzad!
The night fae campaign, which I finished back in May, was entertaining but a bit disjointed. However, I really enjoyed it and the feel of the covenant sanctum. I went night fae with my druid, who I play as balance and resto. In my mind, I thought of my Zandalari as a tough guy – brutish, angry, quick to fight. After joining the night fae and really loving the Queen’s Conservatory, now I think of him much more as someone who cares about others.
While I didn’t absolutely love the story of going after Tyrande, I did enjoy learning about the previous Night Warriors. Thiernax, a previous Night Warrior, and his husband Qadarin were cool characters, and I like the lore about splitting the power of the Night Warrior.
I also liked meeting Huln Highmountain!
Saving the night elf souls from the Maw is a pretty cool story beat. Right now it seems like not enough, but I’m sure the Night Warrior plot will continue and should hopefully bring more closure to that part of the story.
The best part of the campaign was obviously dealing with Bwonsamdi again! He was one of the best parts of BfA, and I’m glad they worked him into this campaign. I hope he pops up more in the future.
And Bwonsamdi leads into Vol’jin! Vol’jin’s story threads from Legion and BfA were so intriguing, and I’m glad we got to see more of him. Now there are more questions. Why was his spirit still so strongly tethered to Azeroth? Is he now the Loa of Kings? Will he become Loa of the Horde? Or will his story be something different? By far, seeing Vol’jin was the greatest callback yet in this expansion.
Compared to all of that in the covenant campaign, the plot with the Drust and Gorak Zhar was underwhelming. I couldn’t even remember Gorak Zhar’s name to write this post, and while playing I had her confused Gorak Tul. I guess the Drust just didn’t captivate me. That’s unfortunate because I like their art style, and I suspect we’ll see more of them.
Just because I haven’t posted recently doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy in WoW. Lately Mooglegem and I have been joining PUG rated battleground groups in an effort to earn the Vicious War Spider. Those groups come in two flavors – YOLO groups that fill quickly and are not very good and organized groups that fill slowly, use voice chat, and actually coordinate. Sometimes I might have “played” for over an hour just searching for a decent group, and once I joined one, I’d hope to stay for a couple hours.
Eventually I found steady group that welcomed Mooglegem and me to join them consistently. In addition to their RBG groups, we began to raid with them. Thanks to that group, I earned Ahead of the Curve: Sire Denathrius and Heroic: Castle Nathria! I was way over-geared for heroic already thanks to m+ and had a done a few of the bosses, but trying to find PUGs was always such a hassle that I never got around to finishing before this. It’s been fun raiding again, seeing how the fights are supposed to be done, and getting to know new friends.
The PVP grind took longer, but with a good group, I was at least making consistent progress. And about a week ago, I earned by Vicious War Spider! I’m continuing to do RBGs though because I’m having just too much fun. I used to PVP much more before it took a backseat to raiding and then m+, and it’s been so much fun focusing on it again. Playing with a coordinated group certainly helps! Now I’m looking forward to gaining rating (hopefully) and maybe earning another mount! In the screenshot at the top, I’m enjoying my mount while Moogle is on her IMPOSTER Vicious War Spider! Actually she’s about 10% off, and the rest of the group isn’t too far behind. Soon!
Last week I got Shadowlands Keystone Master: Season One! Here’s the five of us on our Sintouched Deathwalkers in Oribos. From left to right: gem (Mooglegem), me (Devee), Matt (Mushkin), Marc (Kanora) and his minions, and Elias (Delillidan). Was the other character in the screenshot the guy who made fun of us? Possibly.
This season felt a lot faster to me. We have one dungeon left, Mists of Tirna Scithe, for a sixth guildmate!
It’s a good thing I have 12 characters and do the boss that drops Mollie, because my 12th run this week gave me the mount! This is probably only the 3rd time I ran all my characters through the boss this expansion (plus whatever I did last expansion when it was current), so not bad really. Look at Mollie! She’s so cute!
I finished Castle Nathria normal last week by pugging it. I’m overgeared at this point thanks to m+ but wanted to get a handle on the mechanics before starting to pug heroic groups. The raid’s pretty fun, and I think Sludgefist, Stone Legion Generals, and Sire Denathrius are particularly good fights. Stone Legion Generals can seem overwhelming but it’s not bad if people follow a plan. There are spoilers for the outcome of the raid after this.
The Sire Denathrius fight was fun with some interesting mechanics – unburdening our sins, using the mirrors, dodging Remornia. Sire Denathrius was a really cool character with superb voice-acting. I think he has a lot more personality than Prince Renethal, which is too bad. I’m kind of disappointed we defeated Denathrius so soon after his introduction.
After he is defeated, Remornia absorbs him into herself. In an effort to bind him in the blade so he can’t escape, we bring Remornia to Prince Renethal and Z’rali (the naaru from Sanguine Depths) where Z’rali uses the Light to bind and torture Denathrius. Prince Renethal remarks that after “time the likes of which your kind have yet to measure” Denathrius may be released, changed, “his true purpose once again affirmed.” Obviously Blizzard could bring him back if they wanted, but I’m doubtful we’d see it any time soon. Too bad. What a fun character!
I finished the Venthyr Campaign last week. As you could guess, spoilers in this post.
The first part of the campaign involves trying to get the Harvesters to join Prince Renathal. We’re also trying to retrieve all the Medallions of the Harvesters. Mikanikos in Bastion crafts a Crown of the Harvester to house the medallions so that the Prince can harness all their power.
When I first saw Kael’thas chained in Sinfall, I was excited and hopeful that he’d play a part in the campaign. Obviously I ended up being right. I wasn’t sure at first, but this takes place the Sun King’s Salvation encounter in Castle Nathria. Through the Venthyr Campaign, we try to help him atone for his sins and we cleanse him of the sins piled upon him that were not his own.
Is that a dead version of the Swift White Hawkstrider? How cool!
Look at all that anima!
Remember to walk your Sun King twice a day.
While helping Kael’thas atone, we discover the the Tithelord in Revendreth has been siphoning anima to allies in Maldraxxus. We discover that he’s working with Kel’Thuzad, which doesn’t go over well with Kael’thas. (Arthas resurrected Kel’Thuzad using the Sunwell after invading Quel’Thalas during the Third War.) Kel’Thuzad even has the Medallion of Dominion, the final medallion.
Working with Baroness Draka and the necrolords, we defeat him and retrieve his medallion. That’s all the medallions besides the Medallion of Wrath, which belongs to the Stonewright, the Harvester of Wrath. She remains neutral between Prince Renathal’s rebellion and Sire Denathrius.
In the end, Prince Renathal decides that Revendreth will be lead by a court and not a Sire or Master. I wonder what this means, because he certainly seems like the leader – and it’s not like there wasn’t a Court of Harvesters under Sire Denathrius.
The Venthyr Campaign got me a lot more excited than the Kyrian Campaign, although I still enjoyed both. I’m looking forward to finding out more about Revendreth’s future. I suppose it’s no surprise that there’s a lot of action here given that the raid revolves around Revendreth as well. Also, I love those glasses on my DK!
Let’s talk about the kyrian covenant campaign! Spoilers, of course. I finished it the week that the end was unlocked and enjoyed it. While I didn’t have a problem with any of it, it really started to pick up part way through.
So, a brief summary. After helping Kleia with her final trial, she becomes Ascended. During her ascension, Uther leads the Forsworn in an attack on Elysian Hold and damages the Crest of Ascension. We defeat Devos, the Forsworn leader, in the Spires of Ascension, leaving Lysonia in charge. Mikanikos rebuilds the Crest of Ascension and we empower it with three items.
Alexandros Mograine of Maldraxxus requests kyrian aid in defeating Margrave Gharmal. The kyrian travel to Maldraxxus and kill the fleshshaper. Xandria cuts out his heart, and we use this to empower the Crest of Ascension.
We travel to Revendreth and talk to the Curator about finding something to empower the Crest of Ascension. She tells us about the Seal of Contrition. We eventually track it to Duke Vielle, who we kill so we can acquire the Seal.
Finally, we talk to the Winter Queen in Ardenweald, who tells us that she can give us power but it needs to be contained. Willowblossom volunteers to help. We save a worm, Grubby, from spriggan at Willowblossom’s request and then acquire items for a ritual. During the ritual, we learn the Willowblossom herself must become the vessel to contain her power. She gives her life so we can empower the Crest of Ascension.
We track down Lysonia to the Temple of Humility where the Forsworn are fighting the kyrian. On the verge of being defeated, Lysonia and Uther escape to the Maw using a portal opened by Helya. After going to the Maw, we witness Lysonia going through a ritual with Helya to create a manifestation of her pride, which we defeat.
Uther is disgusted at the lengths to which Lysonia would go. He seems to agree with some of the Forsworn’s ideals but not their methods. We escort Uther out of the Maw. This really isn’t that big of a surprise. I totally understand Uther’s thinking. The Archon’s way seems pretty brutal, but aligning with Helya and the Jailer is obviously terrible too. And as a player, I didn’t think Blizzard would keep Uther an antagonist.
Glad you could make it, Uther… to Oribos.
We lead a big final push against the Forsworn at the Temple of Loyalty. It was at this point that I knew Uther was going to step in sometime soon. He had to save the day, right? The fight goes in our favor until Lysonia reveals that it was a ploy to leave the Archon undefended. The kyrian forces return to Elysian Hold where Lysonia is using her new powers.
And then Uther shows up to defend the Archon and fight Lysonia. Because of course. Even though it wasn’t a surprise, I’m a simple man who likes simple, cliche stories.
Right after this screenshot, Uther flies away with Thenios to the Temple of Wisdom to find out what’s wrong with his soul.
I’m hoping that later in the expansion this involves more information about Arthas and Frostmourne. How could we not? While a bit less likely, I’d like to see some change within the kyrian. Is it really okay that they give up all their memories? With so many Ascended joining the Forsworn, perhaps the Archon needs to rethink her ways. I’m sure we’ll see continuations of all the covenant campaigns in future patches!
Two zones down now that I finished the story quests in Maldraxxus! Spoilers in this post by the way. (I posted previously about Bastion.)
I was expecting just Naxxramas as a zone and a lot of evil and undead… and I guess it kind of was, but at the same time, it was more than that. It had such a cool, desert wasteland vibe to it. The houses were not all pure evil even if they were quite brutal.
The area around the House of Plagues was a bit different even if still distinctly necromantic. Here I am with Mooglegem and our slimes! My transmog is quite different than what it normally is. During Death Rising, I changed to heroic sanctified tier 10 since it felt proper to be back in ICC gear. It matched Bastion so well that I decided to put something on that fit Maldraxxus.
There were some cool characters in the zone. We knew Draka would be here from the video, but I especially enjoyed meeting her and her declaring that she was once part of the Frostwolf clan. It contrasted well with the Kyrians in Bastion being forced to forget who they were. It did feel weird that we didn’t have a conversation with Draka about the mortal world. “Hey, you know that baby you had, Go’el? Well he became Warchief of the Horde and leads the orcs. And by the way, he might be stuck in the Maw.”
Running into Lady Baroness Vashj was also neat. I didn’t actually kill her in Serpentshrine Cavern until Wrath and didn’t play WC3, so there wasn’t much nostalgia for me in that sense. However, I still enjoyed her being present.
Ooo my runeblade!
Finding that the missing Baron was Alexandros Mograine was definitely awesome. His story regarding life, death, and family is pretty interesting. In addition, I think he has a cool role in the history of the game thanks to the Corrupted Ashbringer and the various retcons. I’m looking forward to his interactions with Darion in the future.
The dungeon, Plaguefall, was challenging to heal. It might be a real “fun” time for mythic+. I had to drink quite a bit, and it’s hard to keep up with dispels. We had a couple wipes.
I didn’t think I’d like the Necrolords of Maldraxxus much at all, but I could see a few of my characters fitting here – at least RP-wise. I’ll figure out who goes here later. For now, it’s off to Ardenweald!
Death Rising, the Shadowlands pre-patch, had some interesting story points, lots of gear for catching up alts and unlocking transmog, and a small but fun plague event. I enjoyed the bits of story and character development, and I farmed rares like crazy.
Calia Menethil is in the screenshot above; she’s an interesting character given her important bloodline and rather unique status of Light-infused undead. Plus, her character model! That outfit is sick!
Watching Taelia find out about her father, the former Lich King, Bolvar, was pretty cool too. It’s no surprise she wasn’t happy to have been kept in the dark, and I look forward to seeing what Blizzard does with her and Bolvar. I suspect I’ll find out relatively soon, but I’m not sure since I’m staying in the dark about Shadowlands.
The rare farming for drops was kind of crazy, especially around Bronjahm, the Godfather of Souls and holder of bags! I managed to get one Papa’s Mint Condition Bag for Devee, my main. (Edit: I also just got one on Sotiros!) And I may have helped gem get some… including 1 duplicate by mistake. Oops. But 7 of her characters ended up with the bag, which is insane.
I also loved how for some reason, tons of people transforming into Gamon became a thing for Bronjahm! Apparently I didn’t take a screenshot, but I did take a photo of my phone once when I was the one to kick it off.
I also managed to get two Accursed Keepsakes!
I killed as many rares as I could. All 12 of my max-level toons managed to purchase all possible upgrades from the Argent Crusade and get everything for transmog. I also swapped characters per rare depending on what dropped and got a lot of drops even if I know a few ilvl doesn’t make a big difference.
I guess I got obsessive, but it was a bit of fun! It’s the little moments, like lining up on the Headless Horseman’s mount.
I posted about Nathanos previously, but he was a fun world boss that hit hard!
I think a lot of people underestimated him… look at all those skeletons!
The zombie event wasn’t very disruptive at all. In fact, I kind of wish it was more disruptive. It was hard to get infected and find battles between the living and dead. gem and I spent time claiming the Stormwind portal room for the Scourge!
Here’s a clip of me infecting and killing gem in Stormwind!
I think the weirdest thing about the event was the random dailies. I kept track of which ones I did and compared to lists online, and there were two dailies that I never saw pop up at all. Oh well, but I like to do everything I can.
All in all, it was nice little event. It gave the community something new to come together and do, helped gear up alts, and had some pretty cool little moments.
Thanks to a shaman with Glyph of the Spectral Raptor and a Reflecting Prism, my tedious Crucible of Storms LFR (hunting transmog) became a lot more fun. We were a raid full of spectral raptors!
So we finally get to go fight Nathanos! You know, I didn’t like him much during Battle for Azeroth, but this fight made him grow on me immensely. I think the arrogant attitude seems cooler when I get to fight him. I enjoyed the little callbacks to vanilla. And I especially enjoyed how he doesn’t hide from us. I should have seen it coming, but why would he care if he knows he’ll just get killed and be sent straight to the Shadowlands?
And Tyrande! I’m looking forward to her character. She certainly kicked ass in the cutscene. Did you see that little smirk as she killed him? It was amazing. I usually avoid story spoilers, so I don’t know if she has more character progression in the next expansion. I hope so.
My friend gave me Lost Mail recently so I could do the mail quest series and earn the Postmaster title. It excited me when I learned about it during Legion, but I never sought it during that expansion. Now I’ve finally had the chance to finish it, and it was pretty great!
During the quests, you learn how mail gets delivered throughout Azeroth and even find out how lost items that get mailed to you actually find their way to you. You get to interact with Johnny Awesome, the NPC that spoofs a twinked out alt, which is always fun. And you get to sort mail! It’s more fun than it sounds, and it’s a minigame that you can access at any time in Dalaran.
As weird as it is to say this, I’m a big fan of the postal system in general. I think it’s great how effectively it works internationally, and I enjoy trading postcards with new locations. And now I know how it works in Azeroth too! I’m proud to be Postmaster Devee!
I wrote previously about earning Battle for Azeroth Keystone Master: Season Four for doing all +15s, but I wanted to recap a little more about m+ this season. I ran a few m+ in season 3 but didn’t seriously start until this last season. I know I was late to the party, but I think mythic+ is a fantastic addition to the game. It’s great getting challenging content that can be done in small chunks of time as well as with smaller groups of people than raids.
I mainly played disc priest, but I also used shadow a little. As for other classes, I did m+ on demo lock, holy and ret pali, resto and ele shaman, and a little bit of guardian druid and frost mage. This was my first expansion playing multiple classes as end game, and I had such a blast. Yes, it was stressful dealing with a weekly chest, assaults, and horrific visions on a bunch of toons, but actually playing them was so much fun.
I’m not sure which one to even talk about. The lock was by secondary most of the expansion, but I really enjoyed learning to heal dungeons on shaman and paladin. Holy paladin felt quite different since it’s played in melee. The most challenging past of holy paladin was hunting for glimmer on Azerite pieces. I think resto shaman was awesome, and I enjoyed using elemental when doing solo content. I really enjoyed the feeling of saying “you know, I think I’d prefer to heal this on my resto shaman rather than disc priest.” I had never tanked end game before, so trying my hand at guardian druid was exciting and nerve-racking. I couldn’t have done it with guildmates guiding me, but I might try tanking more in Shadowlands. I think if I do it from the beginning, I’d actually learn routes myself. Setting the pace and routes seems like the biggest hurdle to tanking. While my mage never got super geared, it was fun really learning frost. Even at low gear levels, it became so apparent how powerful Glacial Spike was. Mages can certainly bring the DPS, but they’re also definitely glass cannons!
In the end, here’s the raider.io scores I reached:
Priest: 2017.3 (bestkeystone.com put me above 90% of m+ players that season)
Warlock: 1329.7
Paladin: 1199.4
Shaman: 937.7
Druid: 491.3
Mage: 250.8
You can see how I tapered off. The priest was strongly my main, and then I played the next three for most of the patch. The final two classes were late additions.
Now if only I could figure out which ones I want to play in Shadowlands!
I might be emotionally scarred from the amount of Horrific Visions and accompanying assaults I did in 8.3. They were neat content, and I really enjoyed the challenge of pushing myself to play better on multiple classes, but I also felt completely burned out by the end of the patch.
By completing both the Horrific Vision of Orgrimmar and Horrific Vision of Stormwind solo while all five masks are activated (the hardest version), you earn the Mad World feat of strength, which rewards the title, The Faceless One. I found that it was significantly harder to do this on cloth characters than any others. I really pushed myself to master my mage and warlock, while it felt like the other classes came easier. In the end, I earned Mad World as a discipline priest, demonology warlock, retribution paladin, elemental shaman, and balance druid. Five classes down!
I also managed to save up the 100,000 corrupted mementos from Horrific Visions to purchase the Wicked Swarmer, shown at the top. It’s a really great mount I think. The color looks good, it’s a cool model, and it’s small enough that it isn’t annoying when using it. I decided to save up for it on my warlock so that my priest, my main, could spend the corrupted mementos on sockets.
The Glacial Tidestorm is guaranteed to drop twice off mythic Jaina in Battle for Dazar’alor, which is fairly easy to do with people who follow some simple directions. Mooglegem got the drop on her first try when I showed her the strat. Here she is with her Glacial Tidestorm, Squishy (her water elemental), and Aborius, the elemental fury in Nagrand!
It took me a lot more runs, but I got mine too! I got on my frost mage for the screenshot so we could have maximum water elementals!
We had to visit alternate Draenor as well of course!
Two Sides to Every Tale (the achievement for doing all the 8.1 quests on both sides basically) gives a horse to the Horde and a wolf to the Alliance, which seemed strange at first until I paid attention. The reward for the achievement is, in lore, a stolen mount.
Alliance get the Ironclad Frostclaw: “Captured in the snows of Alterac Valley, this bloodthirsty hunter now roars for the Alliance.”
Horde get the Bloodflank Charger: “Stolen from the Arathi Basin stables, this fire-hearted charger now steeds for the Horde.”
This is an achievement for completing Zandalar Forever!, A Nation United, and both Tides of Vengeance achievements. So basically, do the Horde zones and their culminating storyline, do the Alliance zones and their culminating storyline, and finish both sides of the 8.1 war campaign. I did one Alliance zone before completing the A Nation United part, so I’m not sure if they changed in a later patch or just made it easier to for alts. (I’m still working on Drustvar and will do Stormsong Valley last.)
While I liked the wolf, I thought the horse was a bit of letdown until I realized it was stolen. Now I like it!
Before talking about the raid, check out that skybox in Ny’alotha! It’s really gorgeous!
The five of us who have been actively pushing m+ were geared and had our Ahead of the Curve already but wanted to be sure the rest of the guild could get it too. Carpe Flux Capacitor has a lot of people who have been in and out this expansion (some fairly geared from pushing through +10s) as well as one friend of mine who just recently came back to WoW and was a hard carry. Plus even the five of us had some bosses we still needed. I had never done Vexiona (besides LFR) even.
We did it over the course of three nights. The first night, we cleared the first few bosses without much issue. Unsurprisingly, Dark Inquisitor Xanesh and Vexiona gave us the most trouble. We eventually pushed through Xanesh, which I thought would be the hardest boss, but then we hit a brick wall with Vexiona.
Night two we descended into that pit to defeat Shad’har the Insatiable, Drest’agath, and Il’gynoth. Again, not too much trouble. And we managed to get Vexiona down as well!
On the third night we tackled Carapace of N’zoth and N’zoth himself. It was a lot of fun to be coordinated again in a group. While I’m enjoying m+ and prefer it to raiding now, raiding is a different beast and scratches an itch I’ve had for a while. Everyone did really well, and even my friend who was a carry in regards to his gear had execution down.
Here I am on my Uncorrupted Voidgwing, which now most of the active guild members have too! As fun as it was, getting the group together also reminds me of the most stressful part of raiding – organizing 10+ people.
Hopefully we can follow a similar path next expansion: pushing m+ primarily but then looping back to try the raid before the end of the patch. This patch has been a blast!
Last week my mythic+ group finished our last +15. This was for the Battle for Azeroth Keystone Master: Season Four achievement, which awards the Awakened Mindborer mount.
Here’s our mythic group! It makes me feel gross! Matt had already finished the achievement before the rest of us but was still helping the group push. It seemed like last week was our best shot because the affixes got harder this week, and we were running out of time.
The hardest part was getting the key we needed. Our final key was Siege of Boralus. We actually had a 16 of it. Besides little issues here and there with our run, our tank disconnected for a bit. We were fairly confident though, because even if we fail on +16, we’d be able to try again on +15. We were just about done with the boss, and the timer was close. We pushed hard and accidentally went just a couple seconds over – and that’s when we realized that by finishing it overtime, our key would change. We meant to walk out and reset. There goes our SoB key.
From that point, our group split up into PUGs. Sometimes a few of us went together, but usually we were pugging alone. Matt continued to try to run his own keys in an attempt to generate the SoB key, which was unlikely. It took forever trying to get into good PUGs, but eventually we all did it! While the end was stressful, m+ was a blast and felt very rewarding!
Last week I finally finished the war campaign as a Sylvanas loyalist. Since my warlock, Voidgazer, is Forsaken and keeps the Gift of N’zoth, he felt like the perfect candidate to be a Sylvanas loyalist. I know it doesn’t offer much that’s different from the war campaign when siding when Saurfang, but it was still fun to see.
I stitched together the campaign in the above video. The cutscene at the end is the most interesting part with some dialogue between Sylvanas and Nathanos. It’s easy to look it up on YouTube, but it couldn’t hurt to record myself as well!
After completing the war campaign while siding with Saurfang, completing it on an Alliance character, and completing the loyalist war campaign, I can say that I don’t think I’ll play through the war campaign ever again!
Trolling aside, I got Invincible last week! It took 68 attempts according to Rarity, which means like a few more than that but not many. Pretty lucky honestly. While trying for the mount, I’ve also been collecting tier sets from ICC. I almost have all of them, so I’ll likely finish them up. It’ll be easier now that I don’t have to even bother finishing the raid during my transmog runs!
After performing a solo 5-mask run in the Horrific Vision of Stormwind last week on both my shadow priest and demonology warlock, I did a solo 5-mask run in Horrific Vision of Orgrimmar this week. This was a big goal for me, and while I’ve been working toward it for a while, I’m also kind of surprised that I managed to do it. Now I have my Mad World achievement and “the Faceless One” title! Later in the week I’ll give it a go on my lock!
Last week I managed to solo a 5-mask Horrific Vision of Stormwind for the first time! There was something about the madnesses that week that made me think that was the week to do it. It did take my shadow priest a few attempts (maybe 4 or so), but I managed to do it. There wasn’t really any magic trick or breakthrough, although I did use Potions of Unbridled Fury and drums for lust. My priest was ilvl 466 in shadow when I managed to do it.
Next I set my sights on my warlock. My demonology warlock is only ilvl 460, and I don’t play it as well as my priest. This took a lot more attempts and a lot more breakthroughs. I think I ended up trying 8 times last week. Like with my shadow priest, I used pots and drums. This isn’t really some big innovation, but I didn’t use those when I wasn’t seriously thinking I’d be able to solo 5-mask.
I also really struggled with Umbric. My first time on Umbric, I use an orb on pull, so not only was I at max sanity, but I stayed at max sanity for the first few seconds of the fight while in the orb. I still lost all my sanity during the fight. I get polymorphed and then wander in circles, leaving void zones on the ground and walking through them. My felguard’s stun wasn’t so helpful. I also tried using the felhunter for silences. What I found worked best was using my imp. It removes harmful magic effects on a very short CD, so it can break me out of polymorph. That was the ticket to defeating Umbric!
And then I went back to felguard for Alleria and lost to the same problem. On my successful run, I had to use my imp on both Umbric and Alleria, and I had to be sure to have my self-resurrect for Alleria. You can see it activate near the end of the fight with Alleria in the above video. Glad I had it!
These were challenging, and I’m not super confident that I’ll be able to do it this week in Horrific Vision of Orgrimmar. I’ll give it my best shot though!
This weekend I hit 20,000 achievements points on my account! Thanks to mythic Hellfire Citadel for pushing me over that threshold. And thanks to Mooglegem for tagging along to the run. There’s still many more to earn!
earthwormgem
Peter (Devee)
Kor'kron 501st 