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!
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.
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!
Hertz Locker is a Feat of Strength achievement that can be earned by completing Mechagon with all hard modes and without anyone dying.
We only tried three different nights and ended up earning it last night – the last night before it became unobtainable when the Shadowlands pre-patch hit. We had a few hiccups because for some reason, despite being able to do 15s no problem, we still learned of new mechanics that would cause a death – on trash! I’m looking at you shrink ability that can cause someone to get trampled by their friends.
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!
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!
Sleepypaw, my Alliance monk, hit 120 on Thursday!I’ve been leveling him a lot during the double XP event. Now that he’s hit 120, I have a max level character of every class. I owed a lot to Korrak’s Revenge during the anniversary event, which I talked about in Leveling in Korrak’s Revenge.
I dinged 120 in Warsong Gulch by returning the Alliance flag. Woo!
People have been loving his transmog. I’ve received messages in dungeons and battlegrounds, but more importantly, Marc really liked my transmog!
I particularly enjoy Anduin bringing his lumberjack / baker with him to assault Lordaeron, and what does this pandaren do but drink on the job.
It’s weird to have a max level character of every class. I’m glad I have a lot of options moving forward, and I can check out different Order Halls easily now. Or… I could start working on more races. Hmmm.
Time for an update on horrific visions! Last week I did a full clear of the Horrific Vision of Orgrimmar for the first time. I’ve been sitting on a lot of Coalescing Visions recently but just hadn’t had the time to keep running Horrific Visions. Also, I took Matt’s advice and switched to shadow when running these with gem (frost mage). It went much, much faster as shadow!
We also earned Mail Muncher mounts from the mailboxes in horrific visions!
I’m disappointed that there isn’t mail stuck to him or something, but oh well – still cool!
I befriended the Friendly Alpaca in January but never posted this video! I’ve been very excited about alpacas being in WoW, and I now have two of the three.
For this alpaca, you have find the Friendly Alpaca in Uldum and feed it Gersahl Greens for the Alpaca It Up quest. This can be done once per day, and once it’s done 7 times, you get the quest Alpaca It In. This one rewards the Reins of the Springfur Alpaca so you can bring this friendly alpaca with you on your adventures!
The best part of patch 8.3 releasing last week is the availability of three alpaca mounts! I obtained my first last night, the Elusive Quickhoof alpaca. Look how cute it is when it does its /mountspecial animation, bouncing in a little a circle. I’m pretty happy with it! Now I’m still farming the second one :)
I hope everyone had a happy Feast of Winter Veil! This is me as Tyyrse on the left and gem as Diko on the right getting festive in Korrak’s Revenge.
We also visited the snow globe in Orgrimmar. This was me as Faiella and gem as Melantho but under transformations anyways.
The sleigh was a nice addition to the holiday this year, but the Horde version stopped early. It wasn’t spawning at all on the last night even though the on another server where I play Alliance was spawning in Ironforge still. This was the best picture I have riding it – me on Tyyrse and gem on Diko.
Here’s me as Kavax and gem as Xanau (and my awesome bear, Albert) meeting Greatfather Winter in Ironforge.
A couple months ago, my main focus in WoW had been questing through the Alliance perspective. I created a new 110-boosted Worgen hunter to see the other side – I’ve mentioned him in a couple previous posts. Here is with his bear pet, Albert, and a lost alpaca from a quest. I just wanted to share a couple screenshots in this post.
My pet, Albert, is on the very left. Next to him is Rupert the… dog. At least, this quest giver and Rupert’s owner thinks he’s a dog. So cute!
Albert is a master of stealth!
Xanau looks to be enjoying that little toy rocking seahorse.
I didn’t even get one Kul’Tiran zone finished, because I focused on the War Campaign.
On my way to Orgrimmar to attempt to take out Sylvanas!
Here’s me and Xanau with some of the Alliance and Horde leadership. I love how Shaw leans against the building!
I’ve finished the War Campaign on both sides now. After the 15th anniversary event, I think my focus will be back to doing the Kul’Tiran zones on my hunter!
I completed Unfathomable, the achievement for completing the Nazjatar story, two months ago. I really enjoyed doing Nazjatar. The mix of dailies, one-time quests, and increasing the ranks with your bodyguards felt fun to me. However, once I completed Unfathomable and switched to working on Mechagon, Nazjatar felt worse. My primary goal is usually to finish main story beats, so going for extra things in Nazjatar wasn’t a high goal. After experiencing Mechagon, maneuvering through Nazjatar felt like such a chore.
Last month, I completed Battle for Azeroth Pathfinder, Part Two, unlocking BfA flying. This is the first time I’ve been able to fly in current content since Mists of Pandaria, and wow is it nice. I do really like the pathfinder system despite not flying in WoD or Legion. I do think it should be relaxed once a new expansion is released though.
You can see me on my Wonderwing 2.0 mount and Mooglegem on hers in the above screenshot. That’s the mount that’s given as a reward. And all of a sudden, Nazjatar is no longer a headache! It’s a much more beautiful zone when I can fly through it!
As a bonus, I love this dialog between Urt the Bridgeholder and Urd the Heavy.
Urt the Bridgeholder: Too heavy!
Urd the Heavy: Who say that? Bridge can talk now?
I don’t have anything terribly insightful to say, but I wanted to share some screenshots of Zandalar. I love that we can jump on these big boys to ride around the zone. I’m on the far side, and Mooglegem is closer to the camera.
These direhorn are just so cute!
This shows the citizens of Dazar’alor at Rastakhan’s funeral.
Brewfest, along with Hallow’s End, is one of my two favorite in-game holidays in WoW. I enjoy doing some of the activities even without consideration of rewards. Although I admit I miss the colored steins we used to get.
I purchased the new rewards available this year – the Bottomless Brewfest Stein, Tabard of Brew, Brewfest Reveler’s Hearthstone, and the Garland of Grain as well as a dress I missed last year. I didn’t play my alts as much previously and probably didn’t care about a dress with my main being a male.
This is my paladin, Illuminnae, with the dress, the Garland of Grain that looks like a pretzel on her head, and the new stein.
I also really loved the new Brewfest Chowdown minigame – a sausage eating contest! Plus, the trophy you get for winning five times, which can be seen above, makes everyone near it drunk!
I hope Hallow’s End gets something new this year too!
I accidentally changed some graphics settings in WoW recently that resulted in the game looking like an old SCUMM adventure game – or rather a modern game inspired by those old graphics. I suggest you click the image to get a bigger view. Doesn’t this remind you of The Secret of Monkey Island? How perfect that I’m even on a ship! It makes me a bit nostalgic for the time in my life when I was first playing those point and click adventure games.
Maybe I need to try that leaked Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, eh?
Back in 2017, my friend gem (usually referred to as Mooglegem on this blog) took me to an animal sanctuary called Lions Tigers & Bears for my birthday where I fed Albert peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I love bears, and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.
Albert passed away this week. In honor of Albert, I tamed a bear on my hunter and named him Albert. The real Albert was so patient and gentle as I fed him. According to Lions Tigers & Bears, he loved to swim and splash in the water. I’ve been pretty sad, but it’s good to know that Albert had a happy life at the sanctuary. RIP Albert.
I finally got around to unlocking the Nightborne recently after the long trek through the Suramar questing. The experience in Suramar was great and yet at the same time, it really seemed to drag on too long. I enjoyed that it had a cohesive story and that the zone changed with the progress, but I think it would have been better if it was shorter.
As for the unlock scenario, I really enjoyed seeing more story surrounding the blood elves. I realize the scenario was arguably about the Nightborne, but I was too distracted by the Sunwell, Lor’themar, and Lady Liadrin. And Alleria. Come to think of it, was this scenario even about the Nightborne?
I loved Dolly and Dot the alpacas so much that I had to share this later quest starring them. (If you haven’t heard the song, please see this post.) This is from the quest Knowledge of the Past in Vol’dun. There might be minor spoilers if you’re avoiding those!
No alpacas were harmed in the recording of this video. (They’re okay.)
The Trial of Style was last week, and I participated for the first time. It was a lot of fun! You can see my first place “Fun & Flirty” outfit above along with gem’s third place entry.
Here’s a better look at my “Fun & Flirty,” haha. I just went with lots of pink and some booty shorts!
This is my second place “Winter” outfit.
Here’s one of gem’s second place outfits.
This is gem’s first place “Tabard” outfit.
My first place “Zen” outfit was pretty unoriginal.
My first place “Tabard” outfit was based on the tabard we got a few years ago during the Olympics.
I had a lot of fun with the Trial of Style, and it wasn’t hard to earn all the rewards. I’ll definitely be participating next time!
World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth is definitely the best expansion, and it’s easy to see why – alpacas! Check out the cute song in this quest. Adorable! It’s from the quest On the Move in Vol’dun.
Here’s another quest about alpacas – Alpacas Gone Wild. It’s not nearly as cute, but I thought I’d include it too.
Rum ham! Treasure!
earthwormgem
Peter (Devee)
Kor'kron 501st 