It’s the night before Pre-patch. I’ve just been through all my alts, making sure that those that were close to completing the weekly anima quest or Patterns within Patterns finished them off and got the gold. I’ve looked and seen conflicting reports about whether the Command Table gets nerfed tomorrow or not.
Shadowlands was very much my pandemic activity. It’s announcement brought me back into the game after spending much of BFA doing very little other than leveling my main. I was determined to be ready for an expansion for a chang, and when Covid hit, I spent a lot of time working on Alts, using them to run on raid content to get raw gold.
I had aims for Shadowlands. This was the expansion where I got my professions done – not like Legion or BFA where I got half way through and then gave up because it was hard. No, my plan was to have one of every profession leveled to max by 9.1
I might not have done it had 9.1 come out when we all expected, but the extra time ensured that not only were my core characters all 70 but they were all maxed on professions. Maybe I should have done a little more work to remain current with the content because by the time most had gone through the cost of levelling legendaries, selling as they went, I’d still not started.
I did make gold though. My original plan was to use the Garrison together with raid runs. That plan was put to bed before the expansion even came out. And maybe I was a little late cottoning on to the command table, but by Zereth Mortis I was actively trying to get all the followers.
I also ran 18 alts through that content, getting enough Cosmic Flux to buy the 278 conduits.
Shadowlands also saw me return to raiding. Chatting to one of my old raid buddies from what back in WOTLK, I managed to get a raid spot on a new server. I kinda hated having 1 alliance character on their own when I had a horde alt army with Doomie who I really wanetd to raid with, but I loved raiding again and making the progress to heroic. I also learnt to play another class well.
We did Heroic Castle Nathria and were running Sanctum when everything just exploded. Everyone seemed to quit the game and even I took a break over the summer. When I came back, everyone had seemed to go to Final Fantasy but I couldn;t get into the game, despite trying a few times.
So I was back to solo playing until very recently. The opening up of cross faction play has meant Doomcow has been able to raid again, and I’m super happy about that, even if I’m super rusty at Unholy and I forget to interrupt.
And so into Dragonflight and my new plan. I now have something like 30 alts ready for the new content (with a couple more on the way before the full launch). As with Shadowlands I intend to play once slowly on my main, and then speed-level alts. I found I engaged with the story more and feel less guilty about speedrunning everything else.
With the professions being so tied into progress and my learnings from Shadowlands, I know I have to stay current to make money… but the real question is… how many characters can I sensibly do this on. Sure the professions are the new weeklies, but I really don;t know how much of a time sink it will be to do all of them.
My other new passion is All The Things. My rating is pretty shit. It’s hovered around 30% since I discovered the add-on during Shadowlands. Every time I seem to make progress, a new patch comes along and resets the eprcentage back down. So in Dragonflight I really want to work on this. In Shadowlands I missed out some of the side stuff such as the Ember Court, but until 10.1 (possibly 10.2) I want to focus on getting every achievement and item from the new content. As things slack off, so I’ll focus on older content.
I’d like to end Dragonflight with more than 30% of the game complete, and whilst I don’t expect to get to 100%, I’d like to get closer.
Tomorrow will start a new era, and unlike a lot of people, I’ll look back at Shadowlands fondly. The game was my escape from Covid. It was the first time I didn’t feel I was always way behind. I can certainly do better and I think I will. This expansion taught me (sometimes harshly) that I can’t sit around and wait.
Tomorrow I will be setting up my UI and thinning down my add-ons. I have talents to sort out, and there may even be a raid. So lots to do. And if the Winds of Wisdom buff is still around, I still have 2 alliance characters to level to 60. A bit too late for the command table, but I’d like to get the transport network up to 3. I forsee a lots of laps of Zereth Mortis in the next 3 weeks.
And tomorrow, I’ll do my first clear down of the new era.
My aim for this blog is to track it all, to do a weekly clear down where I look at my progress and gold gains for the week, as well as track my progress in the game. If Shadowlands got me to have a Warcraft spreadsheet, then Dragonflight gets me creating content off of it.
Blizzard keep saying it’s a new era for WoW. With this blog, it’s a new era for me as well. I’ll hope you follow along.
