Aldenweald – The Climb #643

Thursday 26^th November 2020

I’m now just short of hitting max level. It’s likely I’ll hit it within the first couple of quests within Revendreth.

Ordinarily this would not be a problem. I’ve had plenty of expansions where the final zone isn’t explored until months after launch. Shadowlands is a little different though. You need to complete the main quests in each zone before you can unlock a lot of the end game stuff.

For someone taking their time and doing all the side quests, this isn’t too much of a problem, but already I can feel the pull of that endgame gameplay. I reckon I’m really going to enjoy Torghast and I am feeling the urge to speed level through Revendreth so I can access it; especially as friends who weren’t so diligent with reading quest text are now already there and giving me FOMO.

For it’s part Aldenweald has proved a great zone. I still don’t think it’s as gorgeous as some other WoW zones but it’s definitely up there.

It’s also caused me a bit of a quandry as well.

You see, I solo a lot of stuff as my DK, and as such I spec myself for survivability. That means that whilst I am a tank class, I will take any DPS enhancement I can get. The Maldraxxus covenant has a very nice tanking ability, but it’s an ability I’ll never use. However, The Night Fae ability is something I use all the time, and as such I’m tempted to go Night Fae when it comes to choosing my covenant.

I still have one zone to go, and it’s the zone I originally had as my favourite but I am wondering if I’m going to change my mind.

Aldenweald has a bunch of toys and mounts to collect and I can’t wait to come back here so I can farm them. Like Bastion and Maldraxxus, there’s plenty of the map I’ve yet to uncover.

I quite liked the story but I had been expecting some side quest regarding the trolls. It’s possible that I missed it but I’ve been quite diligent on ensuring I pick every side quest up and complete it before moving on.

With one exception.

There was a quest here that involved running around and clicking on various things. Some would give you a buff, and other items needed to be clicked when you had the buff. And because I’m leveling slow, everyone else was here and made the quest infuriating.

Blizzard has got better at it in recent years but it used to be the case that you had to wait for one person to interact with an item and then wait for it to respawn before the next could click it. Heck, in Mists of Pandaria I remember queues! It’s for that reason I used to level quickly so I was ahead of the rabble and the possible jams.

And to be fair, it’s not that I’m not able to do this quest, it’s just that everyone else going for the same items and a limited time buff, it became a little frustrating, very quickly.

This is my one and only skip, but I have kept the quest. I’ll come back here in the future and finish it off, but for now, with the rest of Aldenweald complete, it’s time for Revendreth and level 60.