Better use and placement of catch-up mechanics and NPCs

Community WoW Community Council
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The Problem

When I look at Shadowlands we have a whole lot of retroactively added catch-up mechanics. From the top of my head, so I will probably have missed a lot:

  • Legendary crafting materials to be sent to alts: Korthia hub
  • Legendary Unity Crafting: Zereth Mortis rep vendor
  • Legendary drop catch-up: Korthia NPC in the cave
  • Legendary drop catch-up: Anima vendor in Covenant Sanctum
  • Maybe there’s another one?
  • Vault tokens: next to the vault
  • Valor crafting mats: next to the vault
  • Valor upgrade: any upgrade NPC, but I always go to the PvP zone, would make sense next add next to the vault tbh
  • Anima crafting mats: next to the vault
  • Anima Covenant mogs: covenant hall
  • Anima Rep stuff: either Oribos or Covenant Sanctum
  • Sending anima to alts/other covenants: next to Oribos flight NPC
  • Increasing companions to level 30: next to Oribos flight NPC (I think?)
  • Conduit catch-up to something like 213? I think this was next to the Oribos Flight NPC as well?

Then there are a dozen of other catch-up systems in place:

  • I heard there was a cyphers drop rate increase item, but I haven’t found it yet
  • I know there are some conduit catch-up items in Zereth Mortis if I recall correctly, including the one for 278 sold by the rep vendor
  • Creation Catalyst for tier sets, which I think will be in the southern Zereth Mortis zone?
  • There’s probably a few more that I missed

I think you can see where I’m going with this. Catch-up mechanics/vendors are all over the place. It’s hard to keep track of them, or find out they exist at all. I try to stay up to date with as much information through Wowhead in regards of catch-up, and right now I have stopped bothering, it’s too much.

How it was done nicely

In Battle for Azeroth at some point we got a vendor that sold corruptions for Echoes of Ny’alotha. You’d receive these from all kinds of activities, and then spent them on an NPC in the Chamber of Heart in Silithus. This way of offering a catch-up mechanic was really nice as you’d have to go to that zone for pretty much all corruption related stuff, so the NPC fit in really nicely here.

How to solve it

While I understand that retroactively added systems are not going to be easy to coordinate and direct, I think NPC placement and naming should be obvious. One solution would be to create a “Red Goo Club” (Ketchup, Catch-up, you catch me?). This club could be composed of either expansion agnostic NPCs, expansion specific NPCs (such as Shadowlands Brokers, Dalaran mages, comic relief type factions etc), or a mix of both.

The idea is that they “settle” in locations where you’d expect a catch-up to be in place, and/or have a stationary place where all expansion catch-up related stuff is located. An example of being on location could be an NPC standing next to the new (and better) location of the box in Torghast that provides you with buffs. This NPC could sell the items that would help you with your legendaries and sell all the items related.

Catch-up NPCs would be recognized by the catch-up faction/guild name, in my example <Red Goo Club>. In addition this NPC would be found in the catch-up hub wherever it’s decided to house this. Catch-up NPCs that deal with conduits could be placed in the Covenant Sanctum and Zereth Mortis next to the Soulbind “thing”, etc.

I love how Ta’hsup is a broker dealing with our keystones, and he’s placed at locations where you’d expect keystone related business (except in De other Side :eyes:). With the addition of Motion Sick Peons (Grimrail Depot and Motion Sickness - #3 by Bornakk) who help with the issue at location, I think it’s a great addition to keep this trend going. Obviously this can reach beyond just catch-up NPCs.

6 Likes
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It is a problem in SL but I hope that we won’t need a “system” for catching up in the future. I would rather them solve the root of the problem–that there are too many currencies and systems in SL to catch-up in the first place. I think a lot of the vendors you mentioned are band-aids to keep the active player base moving through this expansion, and I think a greater catch-up system is another larger band-aid. I should not have to send 40 boxes of Soul Ash to an alt in 9.2 to make a legendary, no matter where I buy it from.

7 Likes
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I think this is a great idea. There are a slew of players that have no idea that the R40 catch up item is even in the game along with a host of other things as you mentioned. It’s even relevant when going back years later farming a missed xpack or just doing old content to find all these things in one place rather than scouring wowhead for hours trying to figure out how it all works. The catch up faction idea is a cool and fun one. A lost and found in each expansion’s major city run by some group of comic relief gnomes lol

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You can get all of the catchup from these sources in Haven in Zereth Mortis as well. Rendle sells memories, and the Enlightened quartermaster sells legendary crafting material catchup, and they’re both right next to each other as well :>

There are two sources for conduit catchup (technically more): the vendor next to the flight master gives you ilevel 200 conduits, and the Enlightened Quartermaster gives ilevel 213 at friendly, and 239 at honored respectively. You can also count the conduit upgrade items that drop can take you up to ilevel 226 dropping from Korthia rares, and the upgrade items from Korthia and the Adamant Vaults that goes all the way up to 252.

This is from a vendor called Olea Manu and has to be unlocked by completing one of the questlines from the Cypher, after which the vendor is found near the flight master leading to the Cypher location.

I think this is the one we unlock through the campaign, in the Catalyst Gardens, where all the plant creatures are.

I think the vast majority of catchup vendors are where you would expect them to be, I think the problem is that they aren’t very visible and can be hard to find. You’re often led to having to search for them because they’re not labelled as ‘catchup NPCs’, or the catchup item they’re selling is just one of many items in their inventories. Olea Manu, for example, isn’t standing in the most obvious place for where you’d expect to find a vendor to spend cyphers on, wouldn’t it be better if Olea Manu was standing next to the cypher console?

The one catchup vendor I think is woefully misplaced is the one standing next to the flight master, and it is probably one of the more important ones, as it gives you your first ilevel 200 conduits and renown 40 - plus some other goodies like the anima transfer item. These should have been located next to the place where you select your covenants in Oribos, and also within each of the covenant sanctums, and there should have been a quest leading to them.

I fully agree with this, catchup vendors and all the other things aren’t a solution to the actual problem, it’s just something that alleviates the pain points very slightly, and adds more complexity and confusion on top of it all.

1 Like
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That item is soulbound and needs to use the Korthia vendor items to move them between alts.

There is also a 272 conduit upgrade on the covenant rep vendors, so they are spread all over the place… Things like this would be nice to put all in one place where players who aren’t PTR addicts like me will know where to find them. The fact that everyone who posts about this even in the CC forum can’t keep it all straight illustrates the point.

Yet another vendor for catch up items … Can’t we have just one?

When I originally unlocked this I figured the vendor might show up in the cave next to where the last quests were picked up but nope, had to go to wowhead to find where it was. And that was only because I knew already that there was even supposed to be one. As you mentioned some sort of central expected location would be great.

Unfortunately this has been the case with every recent expansion. Fixing broken systems on the fly is what leads to this kind of thing so commonly. Agree that there is a much larger problem. I’m not sure if it’s reasonable to assume that a problem of that size is going to get fixed any time soon. It is unfortunately probably more realistic to expect more of the same. Putting it all in one place where regular players (most of which never even log into the forums or know what wowhead is) can find them.

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True, the currency transfer items are only found in Korthia, but you won’t need the currency transfer with the new items from Zereth Mortis giving you all those currencies you need in the first place.

This one isn’t really a catchup item, you can only get it if you have gotten one of the required achievements through endgame play - and I’m not sure if it is even account wide. But yes, it is weird that it’s part of the reputation vendors and not elsewhere.

Edit: I checked, and it requires you to unlock those achievements “on this character”, therefore they are indeed not catchup items.

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Unless you want to make a legendary for an alt that doesn’t have the rep to buy the item from the enlightened vendor and/or doesn’t have the flux.

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It does require honored, which is weird, it should be available without requiring the rep. But ultimately, my point is that the Korthia items aren’t really intended to be the primary source of catchup for 9.2.

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As Hallite pointed out, Rendle sells these in Zereth Mortis. :slight_smile: He sells them for all applicable costs - Grateful Offerings, Soul Cinders, or Cosmic Flux.

I think Lina was referring to the Soul Ash and Soul Cinder caches, which are only in Korthia, AFAIK.

They really should be added to Rendle though. And they really need to get rid of this “Send it at a loss” - or at the very least, but the 3000 Flux Item BoA.

The fact the Korthia catchup goes higher than the Zereth Mortis catchup still massively bothers me.

Especially since I used god knows how many of the “Up to 252” shards to get conduits to 236 in 9.1 only to find out now I should have saved them until I got the 239 catchup in ZM :confused:

It’s not entirely a catch up item, as it’s also useful for the toon that unlocks it. Though yes, it would be helpful if they moved the Jiro into Firim’s cave or even to Haven.