The following lines are direct quotes from the 10.1.5 Patch Notes, and after testing each one multiple times, these changes appear to be not working at all or are severely bugged:
- “The maximum level in Chromie Time is now 61 (was level 60).”
- “Dragonflight, Shadowlands, and Battle for Azeroth dungeon quests are now also available inside their respective dungeons.”
From what I can tell, the only change actual change they’ve made to Chromie Time level scaling involves the World Map. If you hover over zones within Chromie Time, the level range will indicate that it scales up to 61, but this isn’t actually the case. The moment you hit level 60 within Chromie Time the experience stops scaling and reverts to the non-Chromie Time values, making it impossible to continue leveling.
As for the second change, I believe Blizzard TRIED to implement this, but forgot a crucial step that ends up making the entire change redundant. (I also have only tested this for Dragonflight, since Shadowlands/BfA dungeons aren’t exactly relevant for leveling at the moment).
If you enter certain Dragonflight dungeons such as Neltharus or Halls of Infusion, you’ll encounter an NPC which correctly grants you the associated dungeon quest. Uldaman also automatically gives you a quest when you enter the dungeon, but this has always been the case even pre-10.1.5. For all of the 5 other Dragonflight dungeons, this is not the case, and when you enter them on a leveling character you won’t find a single NPC offering a quest. However, when entering the dungeons on max level characters that had already completed the entire campaign, I was able to see the NPCs and pick up the dungeon quests.
What I believe is happening here is that while Blizzard did correctly add the NPCs/quests to the dungeons as stated in their patch notes, they forgot to actually remove the prerequisites associated with each dungeon quest. Since Neltharus/Halls of Infusion never had any prereqs, those quests are now working correctly, but every other dungeon (minus Uldaman) still requires the player to complete certain parts of the campaign before the dungeon quests become available.
Technically speaking this behavior doesn’t contradict the wording in the patch notes, since it only specifies that the quests are “available” within the dungeons, and says nothing about removing the prereqs. However, I believe this is likely unintended since not removing any of the prerequisites effectively defeats the entire purpose of making this change. If you complete the prerequisite quests within campaign/side quests out in the open world of Dragonflight, you’re almost immediately granted the dungeon quest anyways, so it no longer matters if it’s being offered within the dungeon or not. I was under the impression that this change was intended to give players more routing freedom when completing quests, and to help out players who preferred to only level through dungeons. As it stands, this change benefits absolutely nobody.
Lastly, I want to also touch upon a different change that is technically working as intended but also appears to be poorly thought out:
- “Garrison Hearthstone and Dalaran Hearthstone are now toys.”
This change does obviously work correctly, as you’re now able to add both hearthstones to your toy box and save two bag spaces. However, in order to actually use these toys on a new character, you’re still required to finish the WoD/Legion introductions and complete the associated quests which reward the hearthstone item. This isn’t a huge deal, as each questline only takes a few minutes to complete, but removing the prereq quests here would be a small QoL change that I’m sure many players would appreciate. I only bring this up because it seems like a similar problem to the aforementioned dungeon quests, so I think it would be nice if this could also get changed.
To wrap things up, I want to say that I know many of these changes are super minor, and the vast majority of the leveling changes Blizzard made in 10.1.5 were actually implemented correctly. Unfortunately these specific problems have existed ever since the first build of the PTR, and I’ve reported them multiple times to no avail. At this point the patch has been live for over a week and Blizzard doesn’t seem to have noticed the issues yet, so this is the only idea I have left on how to get their attention.
