Noblegarden 2024 brought a new mount to the game. When the event started, you had one chance at the mount per day per character, and the drop rate was supposedly 1%. A few days into the event, Blizzard hotfixed the game so the first chance per day per account would drop at an increased rate. No idea why they didn’t do it from the start, but it didn’t matter for me anyways; I got it on day two!
Here’s Bulleto and I as ducks using the new toy introduced this year.
The toy, Duck Disguiser, allows you to select one of the colors of the disguise that you have. Unfortunately, you can unlock one color per year, and it’s per character – no choosing a different color on each character to unlock all of them within a year. Luckily in five years, we’ll have all of them. I’m definitely not a fan of this system. If they had just released a different color each year, I think I’d like that more.
Another toy introduced this year allows your dragonriding mount to carry a basket of eggs in its mouth!
Season 3 is about to finish, and I never posted about the season 2 transmog I earned. I know it’s not the most exciting aspect of the game, but I spend a significant amount of time chasing these sets. Let’s take a look
Class sets
Shaman – Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible
I love the red heroic tint. I could use the mythic tint too. The normal is okay, and I don’t think I’d ever use the LFR tint.
Warrior – Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible
None of the four Aberrus tints are bad for warriors. I doubt I’d use the LFR or normal ones after unlocking the heroic and mythic ones, but they’re all cool.
Mage – Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible
These are all fantastic. I like the pink LFR tint a ton! I don’t think I’d use normal much, but I like the peach vibes from heroic too.
Priest – Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible
I don’t like the LFR tint, but I do like the normal and heroic priest tints. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’d ever use them. I just have other sets I like more. If I was going shadow, maybe I’d use heroic!
Hunter – Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible
I got the LFR, normal, and heroic tints of the hunter class set. I think they all look great!
Evoker – Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible
I got the LFR, normal, and heroic tints of the evoker class set. It’s all terrible. That’s all I have to say.
Druid – Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible
These are the LFR and normal tints for the druid set. I think they both look really cool, but surprisingly, I like the LFR best.
Paladin – Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible
Just the LFR tint for the paladin.
Death Knight – Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible
Just the LFR tint for DK as well.
Rogue – Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible
Just LFR on this alt.
Demon Hunter – Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible
And just LFR for Demon Hunter.
Warlock – Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible
Just LFR!
Monk – Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible?
Nothing! I didn’t have a monk at max level in season 2. Hm, maybe in the season 3 post…
Mail gear
These sets are for all mail-wearing classes.
Time Rifts (mail)
These are the two mail sets from the time rift vendors. I’m not sure I’d ever use them.
Cavern Delver’s Gear (mail)
I collected four the Cavern Delver’s Gear tints – time rifts & Dawn of the Infinites (bronze), world quests and world drops, campaign, and Suffusion Camps and PVP. I like the red tint from Suffusion Camps.
Plate gear
These sets are for all plate-wearers.
Season 2 PVP Aspirant (plate)
The aspirant set for plate-wearers is cool.
Time Rifts (plate)
These are the two sets from Time Rifts vendors available to all plate classes.
Cavern Delver’s Gear (plate)
Like the mail versions of this set, I like the red tint from Suffusion Camps best. Unlike mail classes, I didn’t unlock the campaign version of the plate sets.
Leather gear
These sets are for all leather-wearers.
Time Rifts (leather)
I think these are cooler than the other armor types’ Time Rifts gear.
Cavern Delver’s Gear (leather)
Three tints of this leather, and like the previous ones, I prefer the red tint.
Cloth gear
These sets are for all cloth-wearing classes.
Time Rifts (cloth)
Ugly!
Cavern Delver’s Gear (cloth)
This looks much worse than the other ones. Maybe it’s not the cloth but that it doesn’t look good on a troll.
All classes
These sets are useable on all classes.
Racing Cup
These are the Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms Cups transmog on the left and the Outland Cup transmog on the right. I really like these a lot.
Draconic Mortals Attire
I don’t even remember where these are obtained, but I got three tints.
Patch 10.1.5 brought Time Rifts and 10.1.7 brought Dreamsurges to Dragonflight. I meant to talk about them a little so here we are, a season late.
Time Rifts
Time Rifts gave us some interesting lore tidbits around what if scenarios without really delving into time travel shenanigans. I thought it was fun addition and recommend seeing each of the different time rifts.
These are the timelines you visit:
Azmourne – the Scourge rule Azeroth
A.Z.E.R.O.T.H. – King Mechagon has taken over Azeroth and defeated organic life
Azmerloth – everyone is Murlocs
Azewrath – the Burning Legion won the War of the Ancients
Azq’roth – the Black Empire rules Azeroth
Warlands – the Horde and Alliance never worked together and continue to fight
Ulderoth – the Titans rule Azeroth
Azmerloth might be favorite! During the time rift, you visit Mrrglblight (Dragonblight) during what was the Dragon Soul raid in our universe. Varian Wryngrrlgulgll and Thrallgrulgulgul lead their forces against Deathwingurlugull. If you keep doing the time rift quests, you’ll even meet Alulgultasza de Urgl-Blalul <Queen of the… Murloc… Dragons?>
Here’s the Gill’dan battle pet. Even Gul’dan was a murloc in this timeline!
Poor Bolvar.
In Azmourne, you might come across the Scourge version of yourself.
In the Warlands, the Horde and Alliance continue fighting aerial battles.
This is the Gold-Toed Albatross, one of the mounts you can earn. I farmed the time rifts until I could purchase everything – a variety of mounts, pets, transmog sets, weapons, etc. It was also a useful source of items to put through the catalyst for LFR gear; I like to use world content to collect LFR appearances on classes I don’t play seriously.
Dreamsurges
Dreamsurges were a lot more boring in my opinion with a lot less rewards, but I still did them to buy all the rewards.
This is the Duskwing Ohuna mount.
This mount is actually pretty cool looking – the Renewed Magmammoth. I enjoy all the mammoths this expansion!
Barter Boulders
Lastly, I thought I’d mention that I finished the Barter Boulder grind with the Loamm Niffen!
The final item I needed was the nifty Ponzo’s Scheming Topper. Will I use it much? Probably not. But I have it!
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.
While my main goals each season are related to pushing content, I do spend too much time collecting transmog sets. Here’s what I got from Dragonflight Season 1.
Tauren shaman
First, let’s look at the transmog on my main, a tauren shaman.
Vault of the Incarnates
The only set I completed from Vault of the Incarnates was the mythic set. Earning the raid/m+ tier on lower color variations is kind of difficult because I want to use my catalyst charges on whatever helps with progression, not whatever helps with transmog. I was one piece away, wrists, from completing heroic and normal. If I had one more week with the catalyst, I would have completed it. Luckily the wrist piece isn’t visible really anyways. You can also see me using the mythic Vault of the Incarnates set in the screenshot at the top.
The mythic appearance goes well with the Raszageth mount!
Primal Elements
I earned the Primal Storms and The Forbidden Reach colors for the Primal Elements set. This was all from farming rares in the Forbidden Reach.
I had some bad RNG with the last piece, but I got it eventually.
This tint goes well with the Elusive Emerald Hawkstrider from the end of last expansion.
Valdrakken Civilian Clothing
I earned the bronze and blue colors of the Valdrakken Civilian Clothing. I chose bronze on my shaman and blue on my warrior. I haven’t bought any additional tints yet.
Centaur Regalia
I like the dungeons variant of the Centaur Regalia, the Centaur Dungeon Harness, a lot. I also earned the aspirant tint from honor gear and the world and world quest tint.
Dracthyr Battlegear
I only earned the one from this set, Crimson Dracthyr Battlegear.
Expedition Gear
Four variations earned on this character, and they’re all ugly.
Trading Post
Can’t forget the Darkmoon Harlequin’s Bells!
Other
I put this one together once I got the treasure chest back from the trading post. I like the gold!
Mag’har orc warrior
Now let’s look at the transmog for my warrior.
Vault of the Incarnates
I couldn’t quite complete a single set of the raid set. I was missing the boots from the mythic set and the head from both the heroic and normal set. If only I had a little more time!
Here’s the mythic set on me in the world. The boots don’t technically match. I’ve saved the set in my transmog as “LIES.”
Primal Elements
I also earned the Primal Storms and Forbidden Reach tints of the Primal Elements set, both from the Forbidden Reach. It was a nice, mindless task to farm these from rares.
This goes well with these swords!
Valdrakken Civilian Clothing
Here are the bronze and blue tints.
Djaradin Battlegear
I just got this one tint of the Djaradin Battlegear. I will never use this.
Expedition Gear
The World Drops tint is bad, but the Primal Storms tint is kind of cool. I don’t think I’m likely to use it, but it could be cool to transmog a simple look.
Trading Post
While I liked this on my tauren shaman, I don’t care for it on my warrior as much!
Other
This is my usual transmog for the warrior. It has nothing to do with Dragonflight, as it came from Castle Nathria last expansion, but I wanted to include it. The weapons are from Sanctum of Domination I think, and I like that they look like shoulder armor when on my back.
It goes well with last expansion’s Fallen Charger, too.
Zandalari druid
Finally, let’s look at my druid. I didn’t play him as much, so he doesn’t have as many sets collected.
Vault of the Incarnates
I earned the heroic and normal tints from the raid set easily using the Forbidden Reach gear. Since I wasn’t doing any real PVE content, I didn’t have any good gear to use with my catalyst charges.
Primal Elements
Just like with the other two characters, I got the two tints of the Primal Elements set from the Forbidden Reach.
I like using the blue set.
Valdrakken Civilian Clothing
Here’s my druid with the bronze and blue tints. The bronze looks much better on him due to the blue skin tone.
Expedition Gear
I only earned this one tint from the Expedition Gear set.
Trading Post
Again, this just doesn’t do it for me like it does on a tauren!
Now that season 2 has started, I wanted to look at how I did in season 1. I got Keystone Hero (2500+ rating) on my shaman and Keystone Master (2000+ rating) on my warrior. I got Ahead of the Curve and finished Vault of the Incarnates on both my shaman and warrior. While I’ve played alts a little in the past, this is the first season I’ve earned KSM and AotC on two characters. Awesome! It was one of my goals this season, so I’m glad I succeeded. I also played my druid a tiny bit. While I PVP’d a little, I decided to focus my time elsewhere.
Last night we earned Dragonflight Keystone Master: Season One! It’s just in time for the catalyst tomorrow. It feels weird that we can get KSM while still waiting for the Inspiration Catalyst. Right now, only one of us has four piece. That’ll change soon!
I wanted to share some fun Winterveil screenshot from last months! I’m always excited to put on my holiday transmog and celebrate, even if Bulleto here has that silly grin on his face!
Going for a sled ride through Orgrimmar.
Slow down, Bulleto!
Winterveil in the Ohn’ahran Plains.
Look at all our friends!
Who needs reindeer when you have a friendly bakar?
Taivan is a good, good boy. I loved his storyline. Skip to the next paragraph to avoid spoilers. Taivan doesn’t appear good at anything, but eventually we discover he’s a rescue bakar!
Sled ride!
Weee!
Making a furbolg friend.
I don’t remember what this world quest was exactly, but I liked all the mage tables!
Taking a break for a Winterveil picnic.
Winterveil in the Court of Stars.
I have a lot of holiday spirit!
Raszageth might want to fight the aspects, but she still celebrates Winterveil.
She’s wearing her Winterveil hat and holding a candy cane and wreath.
Dragonflight’s pre-patch event provided a nice way to level alts. I had 6 max level characters when the pre-patch released, and on the day of Dragonflight’s release, I had 18 level 60 character! And yet I still don’t have a level 50+ highmountain tauren to unlock their heritage armor.
Please note that I’ll be discussing quests in this post without regards to spoilers.
The expansion release was a mess for me at first. Apparently things were okay the first half hour or so, but by the time I tried to play, Orgrimmar and Durotar were empty, and I kept getting “instance transfer aborted” error messages. On the plus side, I got to ride my rocket indoors!
Eventually I was able to see everyone. Like most people, the zeppelin did not want to show up for me. Eventually I saw a reddit post suggesting you could summon people to a dungeon in the Dragon Isles, and it worked! Thank you to my guildmates for summoning me to the Isles!
The Waking Shores
Once we reach the Dragon Isles, we have to backtrack across the zone from the dungeon to where we should have arrived. Cool zeppelin!
Alexstrasza’s new model is detailed and looks great. I’m looking forward to helping the aspects more!
Bulleto and I are little whelps!
The lava mammoths are amazing enemies. I need to level a hunter because I want one, and I can’t wait to get a mount.
This was from a later zone, but I thought I’d include it here. These were just a temporary buff, but it was fun to ride them!
I don’t know what to think about Sabellian vs Wrathion, and I could write a lot more about them. Wrathion acts like he’s always acting in our best interest, but he’s made a lot of stupid decisions and then didn’t even show up in Legion. Are we supposed to remember that, or was that bad writing? On the other hand, Sabellian hasn’t even been around in years. Who should I hope becomes the new aspect?
Hanging out with Bulleto!
Did… did Bulleto transform into a whelp and take a little lava bath in that cauldron of lava? I think so!
I didn’t think I’d like dragonriding much because my friend and I use two person mounts a lot while questing.
I was quite surprised to see you can enable the ability to let someone ride your dragon with you. They even get to turn into a little whelp! Of course, we now know dragonriding is super awesome and amazingly fast!
Ohn’ahran Plains
I never really cared about the centaur previously, and I still wouldn’t say they’re one of my favorite races. However, their inclusion in Dragonflight just makes the world seem so much more grounded. I like seeing races that were present in classic. And I love the architecture and world around these Maruuk centaur!
Especially cool is Sansok Khan, the tall centaur on the right in this screenshot. She’s the leader of her clan, and she’s deaf. Okir, the centaur next to Sansok Khan, speaks on her behalf, translating Sansok Khan’s sign language. Sansok Khan’s quest text starts with As Sansok Khan signs, Okir vocalizes. The dog next to Sansok Khan is Basran. It appears you can pet him as you can other dogs in World of Warcraft, but when you click him, you get this: You extend a hand to offer Basran pets, but he stays stoically next to his khan. Basran is currently working and you should not pat service dogs on duty. How amazing is that? I really like the representation, and she’s a cool character in general.
This was one of the longest quests I’ve ever experienced – or at least it felt that way. You escort the caravan and listen to the centaurs tell their history. It was a little hard for me to focus, but I still like to soak up all the lore.
I love how green and beautiful the zone is.
Yay, we get to ride him!
I thought the green dragons’ area was pretty too.
The Azure Span
Who knew a powerful mage could control their mirror images independently? Kalecgos knows, apparently.
Seeing Sindragosa, or at least a simulacrum of her, is an amazing moment. We don’t really know how sentient this is, but she sure feels like a character in her own. I hope we interact with her more!
Finally, we get to the tuskarr! This is the best and cutest race in the game, and you better believe I would be a tuskarr if they ever made them an allied race. I can’t believe Blizzard said there are no plans for allied races in Dragonflight, but I’m still hoping.
I really thought the tuskarr for which we were searching was dead, but his feign death tricked me. Bulleto is so upset that he feigns death.
Relaxing with Kalecgos and our new tuskarr friends.
During a quest with some tuskarr and Kalecgos in which we’re battling the decay, the tuskarr Kaqiata dies. Her dying words are “Please, tell my son Rowie in Iskaara that I love him. And I’m sorry.”
We meet her son Rowie later and help him “defeat” this yeti. This was a such a cute quest!
We also helped the tuskarr say good bye to Chieftain Ponoliak and learn about their funeral ceremonies. It’s another sad yet touching quest.
The tuskarr children are just super adorable!
And so is this frog!
Some tuskarr children want to help this abandoned baby gnoll they named Scraps. I thought it was cute, and I’m looking forward to this being referenced again later I’m sure.
This quests tasks us with helping Elder Poa with her stories. Elder Nappa suggests we get Elder Poa a new story – even if we have to make it up! Elder Poa takes the quest answers and spins a story from it.
You can also read it here.
This one is Bulleto’s!
The zone ended with the blue dragonflight coming together to help Kalecgos. It was to be expected from the major story beats of the zone but was exciting nonetheless!
Thaldraszus
Eventually we reached Thaldraszus, the final zone and home of the dragon city Valdrakken. You’d think a city made for dragons would have chairs spaced a little further apart.
Due to some time shenanigans with the bronze and infinite flights, I met my future self here. Why does his armor look worse?
When I get sent back in time, I’m not expecting this. Camp Narache?! (Of course, when my character lived this, it was vanilla and not Cataclysm.)
A timeline where the Horde and Alliance are murlocs has to be one of the coolest things in the game.
Even the map is modified!
Here I am with Bulleto, Varian Wryngrrlgulgll, and Thrallgrulgulgul. Deathwingurlugull is in the background!
Who are those murloc heroes with us? Why, they’re Bulleto and Sotiros the murlocs of course!
We even found Baine Blrrgfin!
Here’s a clip of this awesome quest.
We’re sent even further back in time to before the titans ever came to Azeroth and the Black Empire ruled. Don’t worry, we make it home.
Bulleto and I fit better at this table even if Sumo hogs the camera while Chompsky stands nicely in the back!
Need a break from adventuring? Maybe you could get some cheese from Gorgonzormu.
It would go perfect with some wine from Zinfandormu!
Well, maybe I’m off to have some cheese and wine in Valdrakken. See you on the Dragon Isles!
I earned Shadowlands Keystone Master: Season Four about three weeks ago and earned this purple beauty – the Restoration Deathwalker! (And I’m glad they recolored it, because this one is much better.) I enjoyed mixing in the old dungeons to keep things fresh, and I think it was a good test run of how mythic+ dungeon pools will work in Dragonflight. It’ll be a little weird not to be experiencing all the new dungeons in the first Dragonflight season, but I do think it’ll help keep the second season feeling new and exciting. From left to right in the screenshot is Delillidan (Elias), Carmela (Marc), Sotiros (me), Mushkin (Matt), and Mooglegem (gem)!
earthwormgem
Peter (Devee)
Kor'kron 501st 