“When you are dealing with an invisible enemy,
use most resources as shield, and a bit as a bait.”
Toba Beta
The Shadowlands Prep
I saw a picture of a bunch of TSA guys lined up at some airport with their white gowns, masks and face shields. They sure did remind me of the anonymous storm troopers in Star Wars. Just saying.
I agree with Misdirections in The Road to Shadowlands. The difference between four months to the next expansion and eight months is huge. If Blizz would even give us a “best guess” with a long line of qualifiers, it would be helpful.
Several of my friends in WoW told me that they plan on having four characters in Shadowlands. They want to experience each Covenant, like we did in Legion with the class halls. It is good idea and if Shadowlands is really “alt friendly” then why not my hunter profession team? I guess that I’ll keep an eye on the Beta, which isn’t really my thing.
The team is herb/engineering, mining/engineering, inscription/alchemy, skinning/leatherworking. I have a wild-card druid who is herbing/mining too, often a late-comer to the expansions.
My current list of new 120s is short. I had one in 138 gear who had never been to Legion or Boralus. The big deal for me is deciding if I want to do the cloak run. How Blizzard will replace our neck and cloak in the pre-expansion patch would be a good thing to know. In the mean time, my UI really wants me to visit the forge to upgrade the neck but I don’t have a second essence.
The AP part was easy. Farming the Echoes (500) is a drag and, again, I have to decide how far to take these alts in preparation for Shadowlands. Especially if they are not playing much in BfA.
And there is what to do with my time now in the lull. I could go into running up some gold. The Project Longboi shows that you can earn five million in three months by running old raids. He even lists which raids are the most profitable. I’m guessing Gnomecore with his massive tmog goals is loaded with gold!
Edit: Project Longboi earned 1.7 million gold in three months.
Some things are ticked off of the list:
And I still have to do the pet battle dungeons, which I have not touched! I’m glad that I saved them for more peaceful times.
Coffee Cakes and Crits 
I just wanted to correct that I didn’t earn 5 million in 3 months, only 1,5 million. I already had 3,5 million before 😅
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Gotcha, thanks for the clarification.
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Still, 1.5 million is good amount of vendor mounts 😅 this is encouragement to run old raid more to get at least few of Legion and BFA mounts.
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Go Go Hunter Professions Team! And Druids are just too much fun to leave them behind. 😀
Aiyiyi Essences…
Kamalia has four Essences — Rank 4 Crucible of Flame, Rank 3 Nazjatar, Rank 2 Memory of Lucid Dreams, and Rank 2 Mechagon
Kaylynda has three Essences — Crucible of Flame, Nazjatar, and Memory of Lucid Dreams (which she has because she’s actually finished the Nazjatar campaign)
My other level 120s — Karaelia, Kerisa, and Kaelinda, with Kalaneia up-and-coming — only have two Essences — Crucible of Flame and Rank 3 Nazjatar
I’ve purchased the Rank 3 Nazjatar Essence with Echoes of Ny’alotha, but I haven’t gone to any effort to farm said Echoes to get that second Essence quickly — I just watch how many Echoes the character has, and when they get over 500, I go get the Essence
I still haven’t done anything with the Patch 8.3 stuff beyond talking to Valeera and then doing the turn-in at Magni. I suppose eventually I’ll get each character who will be going to Shadowlands at least the Rank 1 Sanity Cloak for its ilevel. Only one character will push it to Rank 5, though, so as to unlock the appearance upgrade for everyone else to Mog to. It would definitely be nice to have some sort of idea what to expect for the retirement of the Heart of Azeroth and how soon the Sanity Cloak will be replaced by something of higher ilevel in early Shadowlands leveling.
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Wowzers and well played. How many of your characters will make the jump to Shadowlands: all of them?
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I’m currently planning on bringing 5 characters to Shadowlands: 3 Mages, 1 Warlock, and 1 Druid — 1 cloth-wearer for each Covenant, plus a Druid because how can I not bring a Druid to Ardenweald? I’ll probably have 4 or 5 Mages and 2 or 3 Druids leveled to 120 by the end of BfA, because I haven’t quite decided yet exactly which characters of those classes will get to be the ones to go to Shadowlands. When we get into the end of Shadowlands lull, I might bring my primary Shaman and my primary Paladin to Shadowlands, too.
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Kamalia, if you have any guildies that have completed rank 15 cloak. They can carry you for the upgrades to your cloak. If they’re nice enough to 5 zone it for you (while you wait in the easy area), you’ll get the 445 loot from boss chest (assuming you tag the final boss), or 430 loot if they just 3 zone it.
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Ah, I’ve been a solo guild for years and years now, and BTH doesn’t play anymore — he does still play D&D every week over Discord with his former WoW guildies, but I think it’d be a stretch to ask them to carry me through Horrific Visions!
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[ Sorry for wall of text crit… didn’t think I’d be this wordy. Might polish this up for a post. /shrug ]
I know most people will roll their eyes at the mere mention of PVP, but please hear me out. This a great way to both gear up and get additional echos each week for your alts. Patch 8.3 has really made alts viable again. Especially if you put yourself in the position to risk a little bit of PVP.
Start a group in group finder for PVP islands. I typically just call these “CP farming” in the description. Win or lose, you’ll get anywhere between 1 to 50 conquest points (CP), depending on how much you fill your island bar. If you fill it 30%, you get 15 CP. If you fill it 60% you’ll get 30 CP. Find a geared tank in your guild who can pull the whole island and nuke it down for max profit. Hands-down, this has the highest reward/time-spent ratio for earning CP. In battlegrounds you only get good amounts of CP for the first win of the day. Subsequent battleground wins each day suck for CP. Losses in battlegrounds equals 0 CP.
You’ll also earn a ton of doubloons for crates and you’re guaranteed to fill your island table azerite bar each week. You do not have to be good at PVP. You do not have to enable War Mode either. If you luck into a good team, BOOM! 50 CP and 18,000 azerite for your table, and some azerite for your neck. If luck is not on your side, you’ll still get some percentage of that 50 CP and some percentage of that 18,000 azerite. Also, you’ll wind up earning/leveling the Worldvein essence. The folks who joined a “CP Farming” group are likely to stick around for several runs if you weren’t horrifically crushed by the other faction. Even if they leave, as leader, you’ll be able to keep finding folks wanting PVP islands in group finder.
Turn on War Mode when doing faction assaults and you’ll get 60 CP for doing all 5 WQs (15 CP each for the 2 elite WQs and 10 CP each for the 3 normal WQs). Very little PVP actually happens in assaults anymore. If you do it with a group, you’re likely to win if you run into anyone of the other faction that messes with you. Most folks there just want the free CP and leave you alone (in my experience). Not all, but most.
Fill your conquest bar (500 CP) with islands and assaults, then visit your PVP hub. You’ll get a piece of gear for filling your bar. If you haven’t been keeping up with filling your conquest bar this season, you’re able to fill that bar up repeatedly until you are caught up and get loot for each fill-up, just make sure you visit your PVP hub every time the bar is filled. I think we’re somewhere around week 13 or 14, so you can fill your bar a couple times a week for a several weeks if you want. Or, you can no-life it and spam islands and assaults until you’re caught up in a week or two. You’ll also get 175 Echos and a piece of random gear in your PVP chest after the weekly reset.
Initial item from filling your CP bar is a 440 weapon, followed by 445 gear (non-weapons) for the next several bar fills, then a 460 weapon, then 460 gear for quite a while. This wowhead comment has the rewards listed…
https://www.wowhead.com/guides/season-4-pvp-rewards-battle-for-azeroth#comments:id=3190655
It’s a great way to gear up a toon, along with guild mythic dungeons… but this is something you can do whenever you want regardless of whether you have guildies on or not.
If you add in getting your cloak, the short-ish essence quest lines (because this will level your neck quite a bit), and do a few emissaries during the week; you’ll have the following come reset day…
1. Rank 1 or 2 Worldvein Essence (I believe you can get to 2 in the first week)
2. Rank 1 Conflict and Strife Essence (from PVP chest on Tuesday, assuming you filled the CP bar at least once)
3. Rank 1 Breath of the Dying (wish they gave you the 3 pieces for rank 2 on your alts in week 1)
4. Rank 3 or 4 Crucible Essence
5. Enough Echos to buy an essence from MOTHER (possibly 2)
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Thanks for a pingback!
True: gold was earned, mechagon mount and pterrordax/gryphon mounts were purchased.
Also true: due to purchases I’m totally broke, barely 10k allowance per toon.
Also true: classic-tbc-wrath mog collections require attention, focus and time, and aren’t exactly gold mines 🙂
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Storywise you need 4 toons, mogwise you need 16) I’m all covered.
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! ! ! !
Wowzers.
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I just wanted to say re: the chamber of heart calling to you… A lot of my alts were in the same position and you can (as far as I recall) still power up the heart and you’ll get the stamina buffs even without the essences… I think… Don’t quote me on it.
Secondly… on getting other essences… if you scroll over them it tells you where you can get them and one of the easiest second essences is the into nazjatar one… You can do it in two sittings if you work either side of the daily reset, otherwise it’s two days… getting an ally up to level 3 takes two days of ally dailies. It’s not a massive boost by any means but that’s my two pence worth =)
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Thanks!
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