I still have a very small handful of people who’ve been there from the start. But our lives have taken us to different places. One guy I’ve known for 20 years. But he does his own thing and we never group. There’s not much more than “Hey Seth” when he logs in, maybe asking him about his kids once a year. Another friend, who’s actually a childhood friend, has sadly become very eccentric. It’s extremely rare that I do anything with him. He’s religiously opposed to group content.
Then of course there’s my wife. Unfortunately she’s not playing right now. But we had a blast in Legion. She played a monk and would usually tank, so we always had a group ready to go. I’ve been trying to get her to come back, but she’s resistant.
I just want a group to roll M+ with. Even with those old friends, it remains sadly elusive.
I also completely forgot that going through the campaign gets me 197 loot. I’m good with taking my time working through that. I imagine 9.1’s Covenant system will increase that.
I absolutely hate the “Covenant upgrade” shit. You upgrade your Covenant and in return the game gives you… more chores to do when you log in. Seriously. They’re chores. Work. Go get the chest from your anima conductor. Do the dailies and bosses from your conductor. Do your mission table. Do your mushroom / travel daily. Check on your conservatory or Covenant crafting thing.
NO.
I fucking hate it. It’s WORK. When I play my alts, the only thing I upgrade is my Anima Conductor to level 1 and when I log in I do the chest. That’s it. Nothing else. It’s so much more fun to just log in and play.
WTF were they thinking?
Oh, but my point being, use your anima to upgrade all your gear to 197. Don’t spend it on your base, because it will just reward you with work.
What is the campaign? I had a couple of 60s and ran Torghast a bunch of times. Is the campaign doing all your covenant quests? So many quests in my Covenant hub seem to be weeklies. I’m confused about what I should do if I resub.
The campaign runs from your entrance to Shadowlands all the way through your choice of a Covenant, then you’ll have an additional Covenant storyline to follow. If you’ve already leveled up a character through the campaign then you have the choice to skip it and just level up from 50 to 60 however you want (Threads of Fate).
Each Covenant will also give you ‘callings’ which are just daily/weekly quests you can do for extra loot, etc. You also have two weekly quests to collect souls in the Maw and 1,000 anima from any source. Those rewarded you with a Renown point each if you started from the beginning. Anima can be used to upgrade one of four special functions of your Covenant, including a transport network, command table, anima conductor (which gives you extra quests/enemies to fight), and a special function only available for that Covenant (Necros can build construct friends, Venthyr throw parties, etc)
Torghast is a separate area that you revisit occasionally as part of the campaign and the Covenant storylines. Main reward is soul ash, which is used to make and upgrade your legendary items (only 1 worn at a time though). The Twisted Corridors is a separate branch of Torghast which only rewards you with cosmetic items and is a HUGE time sink.
The Maw is a god awful area that you can earn stygia in, which is used to buy things from the vendor down there. Can eventually buy sockets for certain item slots and upgrade your lowest conduits. Stygia is a pain in the ass to get - seems like a lot of people ignore the Maw for the most part.
Thanks. So there’s no one quest line that will get me the i197 gear? Is it mostly from climbing the renown ladder? That seemed a bit grindy to me.
I guess you get more soul ash after you have a legendary so you can get more legendaries and swap them around situationally? Some legendaries you can only get from raiding, I believe, which annoys me. I wish all the lengendaries were in Torghast.
I have ~205 ilvl DPS and a ~200 ilvl healer on Alliance.
I also have ~195 ilvl shaman on Horde. She’s enhancement, but I can respec her as Resto.
I’m also PST.
With the arrival of the foxes I have to begrudgingly admit what has probably been true for years now – the horde is the superior faction. More players means you can usually play with warmode on which means more rewards, more players means easier and quicker groups / raids, and for some reason I’ll never understand horde has always been better at PvP so you can gear up / honor up faster there, too. Playing alliance with WM off, even just competition for WQs is annoying because there are so many horde players.
I am on both, My Alliance hunter is still in the 140s, and the Horde hunter still level 54. At some point soon I need to suck up and just pick a faction.
It’s not bad at all I’ve done it several times now. There’s a catch-up mechanic built into the renown system where you’ll get it from the Callings, dungeons, raids, world bosses, and possibly PvP though I haven’t seen it there. You can finish your Covenant questline in a few days of hitting 60. The biggest stumbling block is the Maw. You’ll max your Jailer ire and will still have more stuff to do there. So you’ll have to come back tomorrow.
The covenant quest line will award you with gear as you complete the covenant quests. You can take that covenant gear and upgrade it at an armor upgrade guy in your covenant hideout. It costs anima to do the upgrades. You will know that covenant quests are part of the main quest line if they appear at the top of your quest log.
The main way to increase your covenant renown is by completing the covenant mainline quests and by doing the two week leave: the 1000 anima and the collect souls from the Maw quests.
The covenant main quests are gated by your covenant renown level which as described above. You can advance renown by completing main quests in the current covenant quest line. If you are “behind “in the covenant renown (I.e., you have not been pushing your renown to the max each week) you will be offered “catch up “ renown in that some of the callings will offer a renown increase in addition to the regular ward. It is not explicitly shown but if you are behind in your renown level doing things like dungeons and killing world bosses will also sometimes increase your covenant renown.
We are finally on the last boss in Heroic CN. We were lulled to sleep in normal mode, but heroic has been a challenge. We can now clear to The Generals in one three hour session and depending on our luck, either finish The Generals or spend part of the next day getting them down. The final heroic boss feels like a final heroic boss, so I like this raid a lot.
Our guild is very small, maybe two or three people are on any time during the week. We have two reliable pugs that we’ve known for a decade (they are in Mythic guilds but come with us for fun) and three other pugs that reliably show up every weekend. Our main guild may have 10 raiders show up.
Torghast sucks, but I think it is being changed next major patch. It also sucks that once you assign a memory to a legendary, you have to create a brand new one if you want to try out another memory.
Also - you can upgrade the Covenant quest gear to 197. That was my first raiding set and I am still (sadly) wearing some of those pieces because raiding loot was hard to come by for a while…
I have been enjoying it so far. CN we have done Normal, but I am in the less hardcore raiding group, we have done some of the bosses in Heroic.
One big pet peeve I have had is that gear is HARD to come by. I have completed the whole thing like 3-4 times and still don’t have a lot of pieces, including the vault, which has be disappointing. Still rocking the Raidfinder weapon on my warrior. Frustrating to say the least.
As a guild we’ve been able to get through 3/10 for Heroic. Don’t think we’ll be able to get through to the end though as we’re not terribly cohesive. I’ve been pugging as a rogue and have gotten up to 7/10H, just need to find a group for the last few. I mostly run mythics though, so loot hasn’t been too big of an issue. Up to 216ish ilvl now, thanks to the weekly vault rewards of 216-220. Highly recommend doing at least one higher key a week if you can, just for the vault reward.
9.1 will launch June 29th, bringing to a close the longest content drought in the history of WoW.
It has a new raid (of course), a new mythic-only mega dungeon, and a new zone in the Maw. Flying will be unlocked two weeks after launch by completing Chapter 12 of your covenant campaign.
I’ve been playing more Shadowlands than I think I ever have in the history of WoW. I have leveled ten characters to level 60, including completing their covenant campaigns, reaching renown 40, and even getting most of their conduits to ilvl 200. I primarily run Mythic Plus dungeons and I run those for around seven characters, including making sure I have two vault options on a few of them so that’s around 15 Mythics run a week.
Nevertheless, after six months of 60+ hours a week I am starting to get a bit burned out. Here’s hoping 9.1 is good.
Same. I’ve got 7 at 60 with an 8th hitting this week and upgrading all the Sanctums. Although I’m much more casual so I’m not running any Mythics. I don’t want the stress of pugging it.
