The Queue: Maldraxxus is very much my thing
@CoryjTaylor
Maldraxxus is a very gross zone full of gross things — and I love it very much. I love every gloopy puddle of ooze, every disgustingly pockmarked hill, the slimes, the skeletons, the things that are both slime *and* skeleton, the cute little blood-sucking beasty that hatched from this hairy egg I found, just everything about it. I especially love the ultra-gross skinning nodes, giant warts. Whoever thought those up is a genius and they probably aren’t being paid enough.
I didn’t think I’d like it that much just hearing about it and poking around on the beta, but it’s grown on me — maybe even literally in some cases. It wasn’t enough to tempt me away from my friends the Venthyr, but it was close! Much closer than I would’ve thought. There hasn’t been a zone this polarizing in a long time, or at least one that I can remember. Just reading a lot of the comments from Friday there are a lot of people who don’t share my love of the gross stuff.
While I go play with the oozes, it’s time for — the Queue.
Q4tQ: What are the chances we’d get the main races in the Covenants as neutral Allied Races?
It’d be pretty cool if we did!
I feel like we would’ve heard something about the possibilities of that by now though. I also don’t know if there’s something from Maldraxxus that fits the right body size/shape for a player character. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have the option of being a big hulking brute, but we haven’t gotten Vrykul as an Allied race yet, and I feel like they are something more people would want.
Maybe they’ve got a way to make regular sized Maldraxxians possible though. After all, if they made Kyrians, Sylvar, and Venthyr playable but nothing from the Necrolords they’d have a few upset people on their hands.
They could also be setting up a whole new potential Allied race for one of the patches down the line. Mechagnomes weren’t added until 8.2 and didn’t become playable until 8.3, so it’s possible that we could be introduced to even more amazing options soon.
Q4tQ: did you know that Choofa, the squirrel spirit from Ardenweald, can ride on your head again?
I didn’t, but now I know what I’m going to do every time I visit Ardenweald. I wonder if he’ll show up in Bear form…
Q4tQ: Leveling seemed pretty easy. All of the mops died without to much effort and my health seldom dropped by very much (unless I pulled to many of them at once). But at 60 the mops and rares while doing world quests seem much more challenging and you can get killed quickly if your not careful. At first the leveling felt underwhelming. But with the way they seem to have world quests I like the overall design. How was you experience before level 60 and after?
I’ve spent my whole time in the Shadowlands so far as a tank, so the leveling was great! I was super geared from Ny’alotha and just wound up being able to grab six things and Thrash them into tiny pieces. I was doing everything I could as I leveled and wound up hitting 60 about 2/3rds of the way through Ardenweald.
I was actually so well geared from Ny’alotha that I didn’t replace anything while leveling. Which was a surprise. I was expecting to replace everything but the cloak and the Heart of Azeroth. Maybe I just needed to be luckier with epic upgrades from quest rewards.
After I hit 60 I was still mostly invincible, but I had to make my pulls smaller unless my cooldowns were up. The rares though had a very noticeable jump in their health pool, and started taking me at least three minutes to kill if I was by myself.
I really enjoyed the zone storylines, even though if you want conclusions to any of them you have to join their Covenant. Uther just shows up during Bastion leveling and then we don’t get to see him again! Which I guess is part of the allure of the different Covenants, and part of the way Blizzard is trying to get you to play each of them.
At least the dungeons have all been pretty fun!
I like how I can tell my owlkin steward can give someone a “You’re awesome!” buff. That’s just fun.
I’ve been finding even more things to love about the Stewards now that we’ve gotten to play with them. There’s the Steward of the Day program where you have to give the special Steward a tasty Ripe Purian because they’re awesome, and you get to open a fancy box in return. Or Stewart the Steward, who is in charge of the Stew Ward. Or the way that they sometimes say Toodle-who when you walk away. I really hope that we get more Steward content as the expansion goes along.
So the Runecaver keeps telling me I am hunted. Is there something specific I should be wary of?
When the Runecarver tells you that you’re being hunted it means that a pack of assassins is somewhere on that floor of Torghast. They’ll pop out at you at random and try to kill you. I only really noticed it when I was running in a group of three, and there were three assassins, so maybe there’s only one for a solo player. They weren’t elite so hopefully aside from the surprise of bloodthirsty assassins popping out of the shadows they shouldn’t give you too much trouble.
Today’s Anna Earworm™: In Hell I’ll be in Good Company
That’s it for me folks! I hope you enjoy your time in the second week of Shadowlands and leave Anna a bunch of great questions for tomorrow!
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