The Queue: Shadow Step and Dance With Me

My biggest criticism of Diablo 4 so far: the audio for the Rogue skill Shadow Step is the same as loot dropping. Every time I use it I instinctively look to see if I got a Legendary when all I did was move between targets. Not only that, the overhead icon is the same for an evading enemy — did I tag them or are they just resetting? You’d think having gotten through the campaign twice I’d be used to this, but no. Reusing assets is bad, mmkay!

Anyway while I consider switching to Dash to avoid the issue let’s answer some questions!

The World of Warcraft-Diablo 4 crossover is actually two events: A Greedy Emissary and Welcome to Sanctuary. The former completes at end of day on Wednesday the 14th in NA, although whether that’s midnight your time, midnight server time, or midnight Blizzard time I can’t say — best be sure to do everything you need to do earlier on Wednesday.

Welcome to Sanctuary with its big rep and xp buffs start on Thursday, possibly at server reset (I never know for sure what the in-game calendar is telling me). There’s bound to be a displayed buff for the event, so keep an eye out for that before you start consuming rep items hoping for 50% bonuses. This event ends on July 11.

Normally I would expect Fractured Peaks or potentially even Scosglen to be my top pick because I’m all about the frozen mountain or highlander biomes. Instead, it shockingly ends up being your least favorite: Hawezar.

My reasoning for the swamp zone is that the story there — aka Act 5 — is by far my favorite of the game; not only that, the story and zone are intertwined in ways that the other zones aren’t able to accomplish. Fractured Peaks probably comes closest with the intro that almost kills you and the pilgrimage that kills others, but the rest feel like interchangeable backdrops. The questing in Hawezar on the other hand doesn’t work elsewhere in my opinion.

Full rankings are: Hawezar > Fractured Peaks > Scosglen > Dry Steppes > Kehjistan.

Sadly it doesn’t appear so. Rolling alts and checking out the weapons in the wardrobe showed no class-specific items, and I know I’ve salvaged many of them. I did start saving major quest weapons solely for the pertinent class to unlock the transmog for, and it appears any class that can use it can salvage the appearance right at level one regardless of any level requirements to equip it — although to be honest I didn’t want to test it on items I’ve saved!

My current top choice for pizza topping is Pepperoni & Bacon, although to be honest I won’t say no to any meat no matter how much my waistline begs me to do so. I even enjoy toppings such as anchovies or crawfish, and yes, I have no objection to pineapple on pizza although it’s not one I tend to go out of my way to get.

In general I avoid vegetables except mushrooms, but for the most part I can tolerate them. The one vegetable I can’t stand on pizza though is bell pepper. I dunno what it is about it, but I never want to see it on my pizza — and it’s odd, I’m ok with peppers in stir fry and such, it’s just on pizza that it becomes bad to me. Olives I usually skip too.

There’s an Untitled World of Warcraft novel entry on online booksellers that’s due for release on October 31. While that date may not be firm an October release seems likely which means it’s coming out before BlizzCon ’23 — and any new expansion announcement that would be occurring then. That sorta limits the potential content to Dragonflight or earlier, especially with the Dragonflight Codex not arriving until November 21.

I also tend to think that it won’t spoil patch 10.2 (since they’re announcing the book months before 10.2 hits the PTR). My guess is that we’re going to get an Arthas- or Sylvanas-style first person narrative novel told by one of the Dragon Aspects taking us through the dragons’ history.

If the goal is to directly tie in to upcoming content — and with Murozond potentially imminent — Nozdormu actually makes the most sense. The problem is that I’m not sure how good of a narrator he would be compared to say Kalecgos who would be able to discuss things from a remove that the others couldn’t.

If the goal is to make Shadowlands still feel relevant (and remember, this book would’ve been started last year to publish this October) then Ysera is a good choice.

Of course I’ll probably end up being wrong and the whole thing will be for Exploring Azeroth: Pandaria to tie into all the Pandaria-specific activities in this month’s trading post.

I could write up a whole discussion topic about this — and I did! If it wasn’t already published this morning look for it later this week!

For those who only read the Queue, a TL, DR:

Prince of Persia: Lost Crown

Dungeons of Hinterburg

Persona 5 Tactica

Metaphor: ReFantazio

South of Midnight

Fable

En Garde

While the Iron’s Hot

Highland Song

And a bonus game that’s already out: Wylde Flowers

While I can’t guarantee I’ll get all these games, I’ll probably be playing most of them at some point in the next year.

That’s all the time we have for questions today — I wanted to answer more, but the queue got mad at me so I had to cut a couple out– but as always tomorrow is another day! Mitch is on deck so be sure to ask him plenty of questions!