So, I’m finally getting around to doing Shadowlands after basically ignoring it when it was current. I’m sure that a lot of the content has been tweaked since it was first released, so I’m looking for advice from SL veterans.
How far do I have to go through the questline before I reach the expansion’s “hub” location that allows me to come and go to SL content as I please? I don’t want to hearth out to Stormwind and then find I can’t get back to SL easily.
Are you still required to choose one of four factions and basically be locked into that unless you want to start all over again with another faction? Which one is the best one to start off with in your experience?
Knowing what you know now, what other tips/tricks regarding tackling SL content would you have? In particular, I don’t want to accidentally sabotage myself by missing certain things or outleveling stuff that has a level cap enforced. I hope to complete all of the PVE content and collect all of the things eventually.
After going through the Maw, you go to Oribos, which is like an airport terminal with portals you have to open to make them work. You can come and go between Oribos and Stormwind. But you have to open the portals in order to use the flightmaster, and do the campaign quests before you can move on to the next zone.
You choose a covenant after finishing all 4 zones. How you pick your covenant depends on what you are planning on doing there. Do some research about rewards. You have to finish a covenant campaign to open up Korthia and Zereth Mortis.
Just do the campaign quests unless you really want to do the side quests first. You can always do them later.
There is a very early quest that has two NPCs (one Horde, one Alliance) who go outside and activate portals to their respective faction capitals. Once that has been done your portal in your capital is activated and you can come and go through that. So just follow the opening main questline and you will get to it in time.
To a degree you are locked in. The Covenant system was patched in 9.2 to allow you to change a Covenant, however you needed to be Renown 80 with your original one before you could change to another. I have not heard that being changed so I assume its still in place.
It shows it had an update in November last year so it should still be pretty accurate. If you treat it as current, as the expansion you are working on now, that guide should still be a decent path to plan around.
One question, you say you ignored it when it was current. Did you do any of it?
I ask because I thought I could start it up on an alt to check out some stuff and when I spoke to Darion there was an option available to skip the Maw and go straight to Oribos - but thats because I had done it on my account previously. Although the original untroductory questline gives quite a bit of experience, it is long.
Once you finish the 3rd opening quest, you get a SW portal. But, to progress, you need to run just the campaign quests in all 4 zones before picking a Covenant. Unless you somehow got the “skip” option, they you are gucci.
Once you have done it on one character, there is a way to hit lvl 60 renown on all 4 covenants and switch at will. But you will need to have one who has at least done the complete campaign to unlock the alt catchup vendor near the FP in Oribos.
I haven’t done any of it, not even the initial breadcrumb quest that you get in Stormwind which all of my characters seem to have. When the expansion came out, I kept playing BFA content instead because the locked factions and whole Sylvanas/after-death theme wasn’t interesting to me. I’m now curious to see what all I missed and could collect there.
Oh, I guess I did do the pre-expansion event in Icecrown, but that probably doesn’t count.
OK, then Im presuming you wouldn’t have the skp available. Just go to Chromie, take Shadowlands, go down to talk to Darion and see if has a skip. If not, just start the intro questline. If you’ve not done it before it wont be as annoying as if, like many of us at the time, we had to do it repeatedly until the skip was put in.
Some might say, why do it, but everyone has reasons for doing any content in this game. I go back now and then to try and build up the resources to make the pets and mounts that are only available there. Same way as I use the garrison (which I hated at the time) to get other stuff nowadays.
If you have any questions, you can always check on Wowhead or come back here and ask Of course, people will doubtless do the whole “yuck, why do it” thing but that is the way of GD.
The biggest reason not to do it is that quests are broken and you may not be able to do anything besides the Maw intro. Maybe that’s functional on players who never touched SL but for most it’s a dead end with no connecting quests.
