S4 will be a thng untill 10.0 pre-patch… still months away…
Was there any specification how long it would be available? I would assume right up until the actually release date.
when you offer to help OP through low m+ but they never respond ./cry
No.
Oh sorry I’m not actually trying to get Slime Cat myself, I was just wondering if it was possible for returning players to get. But thank you for the offer 
, I hope someone else who needs it maybe takes you up on it.
coppied from the blue post for time line
that last part where after september 6th the rotation ends an they all for fated at once…id assume pre patch will be some time after that date…next xpac should be in closed/open beta by then… or long before then…who knows
Yes, normal raids are not very difficult at all. Also, later in the season many players do carries and PUG community Discord runs to help people out. All you need is some gumption, good attitude and willingness to learn. Normal modes are very watered down and only slightly more challenging than LFR.
Omg that is galaxy brain.
Thank you! 
Just go get geared.
Okay the fact that there is this much confusion about how long S4 will last and how you can get geared up to do Normal seems like proof of an oversight of lack of information regarding it on Blizzard’s part.
If Blizzard doesn’t put out some kind of guide on how to get geared and caught up to do Normal raids, I’m really hoping maybe WoWhead or someone else does because yeah, it’s kinda confusing and awful right now if you’re a returning player.
I didn’t even know the creation catalyst was a thing you could do to convert gear into tier gear and I did all of the ZM quests already. But it’s only a S4 thing? But I didn’t see anything about it in the S4 blog post Blizzard put out.
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They sent the mail to everybody, including players that had not purchased Shadowlands at all, and undoubtedly new players on starter accounts. Sounds like the opposite of targeted marketing to me. Maybe a touch of desperation.
This is how they always do things. If you’re a player with lots of experience playing the ropes, you know what sites to do your daily research on, and which friends to ask who are always in the know about little things you missed.
If you are on the learning curve, the game is full of booby traps to trick you into making mistakes that will be hard to recover from, or will cap your skill at some level where you have no idea what you are doing wrong.
Sorry for the confusion.
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You don’t need any more than the unity belt really. It’s not in a set piece slot and almost all of the actually power from the legendary is in the effect, not the handful of bonus stats you would get by improving it. Upgrading it is more of a luxury.
But don’t you need to get revered for that? According to Icy Veins, you’re looking at roughly 32 days to get revered with the Enlightened. Unless that’s changed at this point?
It’s possible if said person is competent in the game … not possible for someone who is like me, a mostly casual person.
Get into a guild and make friends this isnt a one person game its an MMO you are going to have to play in a team even if you pug it.
Okay. I’m going to share some top secret gearing information. The fastest way to gear undergeared characters is by doing a m0 dungeon for a +2 key. Then you take it into group finder and join groups that are farming valor points and want the score gain bonus (that’s where you come in). You can find people of the same gear type and they will actually just feed you loot because odds are none of them need it due to the ilvl being low for them. You can then take the tier slot pieces and catalyst them into 4pc and upgrade them all the way to 298 with the appropriate score & valor. You just keep dropping the key level back to +2 and people will just run it for you and you get a geared pretty fast. I did this for several alts in season 3. If you run out of dungeons on +2 you simply just start doing +3/4/5 they are all pretty trivial, just up the key level by 1 each time so you don’t cut yourself off of score gains for repeat dungeons. This should be highly effective especially now since there’s going to be a lot of higher end players looking to farm out valor to upgrade their gear from 15s and valor being uncapped at the start of the season.
Hopefully this helps in your journey to obtain the slime cat. 
For the clarity challenged, as these threads are wont to do.
A returning player should strive to get into ZM as soon as practical. But since we don’t know from WHEN they’re returning, this can be challenging.
Most of the bonuses and catchup mechanics are for ALTS, not MAINs. If you already have a toon that was fairly current through Korthia, then, you can just go right into ZM.
However, the one mechanic that gives you a head start is buying the 226 gear in Haven for ANIMA. You need about 6000-7000 Anima to buy out a full kit (you can only buy one ring and one trinket, but you CAN buy two 1-H weapons if you DW).
If you don’t have the anima, then you need to do WQs and WBs and what not to get your anima up. If you’re a brand new fresh 60 as a main, it’s still going to be a bit of a grind to even get that.
Korthia has a lot of anima, but a fresh 60 would struggle there. I don’t remember if there’s a “buy a catch up set” for Korthia. Korthia will also be a bit of a struggle as it will likely be quite empty (meaning the rares will be a tough road).
Anyway, once you have your 226 set, dive headlong into ZM. The goal being two fold. 1) get flying, 2) get Sandworn Relics. Sandworn Relics are a bit of a haul, gathered from the World Boss, the weekly, bosses near the Endless Sands zone, and the daily Sandworn Chest (also in the Endless Sands zone, requires a key made from 5 pieces dropped by elites in the ES zone).
The grind in ZM is for Cypher Research and Rep. As you do dailies, and what not, you’ll get research, which you use at the console. As you spend it, it will bump the iLevel of gear drops and quest rewards up to 252 for gear. That’s I think just under 4000 Cypher Research to max out. Also, with Cypher Research some of the research take a DAY (maybe more? I forget) to research the first time, so “research early, research often”.
I know people that have farmed the research in a day. Hours and hours of flying around opening chests and what not that spawn. It can be done, I don’t have the patience for it myself. But it can be done. The research is important mostly for the gear iLevel, but you still need to do the dailies and kill things to get the gear.
And the Sandworn relics are a time gated grind, you can only get so many per day, and truthfully, you get almost 1/2 of the weekly total just from the ZM weekly and the WB. They are, indeed, a long road. You need…about 1000 of those to get the 4 piece.
Why do you want the Sandworn Relics?
Sandworn Relics will let you buy 246 gear. Why would you want 246 when you can get 252 by farming dailies? You want Sandworn 246 gear because they can be converted in to tier. And 246 Tier is much better than 252 non-tier.
Also, this is all SOLO work.
There’s no reason a 226-ish toon (i.e. one geared out with the green ZM 226 anima gear) can not get into an M0, specifically there’s no reason a 226-ish toon can not START an M0. No one will let you in? Make your own.
Run the M0, and you’ll get an M+2. With an M+2 key, you’re on your way. This will be faster than grind ZM but it’s group content. While higher M+ will give you potentially better chest drops, you won’t get a better Vault piece until +5, so no reason to push the key. Just stay and flail at +2.
The M+ gear can be upgraded to tier as well, but you will still need to run ZM content to get Cosmic Flux, as that’s the conversion currnecy. If you’re doing ZM content, it flow pretty freely. I never had to “grind” for it, I always had enough.
But if you don’t want to group, ZM is your goal. The “full boat” farmed ZM toon has 255 (I think) weapons, and 252 gear in all slots save for the 4 246 gear pieces with Tier+4 bonus. And note, when buying the Sandworn Relics for Tier, RESEARCH IN ADVANCE WHAT PIECES YOU CAN CONVERT. They’re only 4 than will upgrade to tier, but they sell more pieces. No reason (outside of transmog) to buy the pieces that can not be upgraded to tier, so don’t waste the currency on them.
It should also be noted that the Sandworn Relics (along with anima, and cosmic flux, but NOT cyphers) are BOA. So, if you want to accelerate one toon, run several toons through ZM and ships all the currencies into one (whee!!).
And the first run through ZM is a grind. You’re gated by dailies and once-a-day rares for rep and such, but you can “endlessly” farm chests for Cyphers.
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I’m going to stop you there and tell you that u can buy like an entire set of 233 gear from the AH for a couple thousand gold. Much more realistic than having a bunch of anima and also just better gear. The only anima gear i’d purchase from ZM is the weapon and trinkets. A lot of what you are suggesting is going to take significantly longer to achieve than what I had stated previously.
Absolutely true, but it can be expensive. You could likely farm the gold for it faster than the Anima, but the better news is a friend could give you the gold.
Yes.
Next question?