Warcraft Wednesday: Icecrown Edition – The Climb #635

Wednesday 18^th November 2020

So I’ve spent close to a year preparing and the time is almost here. Shadowlands launches next week, and I’m beyond excited. I’m already planning to change my sleep schedule so I can play through the night upon launch.

My plans for Shadowlands are simple. I want to take a couple of mains through the entire experience so I can play new end-level content and get ready for raiding. But I also want to have all the professions and for that reason, I want to take a whole ‘nother batch of characters through The Maw so they can pick up the new profession ranks and start making gold.

To do that I have to get them through the intro quests in the next expansion. I’ll be busy with my mains so I want that to be a relatively easy task. Which means they not only need to be the new level max of 50, but they have to be geared up as well.

I waited until pre-patch last month to level up a batch of characters. It’s easier to level to the new squished max level of 50 than the old max level of 120. The plan was to then use the pre-patch event to gear them.

With elite bosses only spawning every 20 mins, I’ve had to do a dance whereby I do a daily on one, before swapping to another to best match their equipment needs with the upcoming boss’s loot table. In doing so, I’ve not only got loot characters needed but I’ve also gathered currency to buy the bits I’m missing.

This week the elite spawns upped to every 10 minutes. It’s made it a bit easier but I’ve followed the same pattern. I’ve finally got enough currency on 17 characters to start gearing them up.

My target is ilevel 90-100 (Ilevel is gear and shouldn’t be confused with the level of the actual character). I had a problem that most of my newly dinged 50 characters only had an ilevel close to their actual level. This would mean they were weak, take a long time to kill enemies and die a lot.

I’ve now got them all to level 80 – 100. It’s allowed me to put some focus on the weaker ones and try a few different things to level their gear up.

But it means I’m pretty much ready for Shadowlands… on 17 characters! And I still have a few left to do.

I’ve been sat at my desk with an audiobook on and my phone on Pokemon Go (getting balls for this weekend’s event). I’ve been using my laptop at friend’s. I’ve put in the work.

Other than a quick bag and mailbox cleardown I feel ready for this expansion. If only I’d been this organised for the bronto. If this carries forward into Shadowlands I suspect I’ll have a couple leveled and most through The Maw before I burn out a little.

Warcraft has eaten a lot of my time as of late but it’s been my escape during lockdown that’s kept me relatively sane and happy while events in the real world go crazy.