I quite enjoy Delves as both content and a gearing method, and some thoughts come to me as I’m chugging through them on alts and the like.
Delves have a lot of potential as solo content, and as group content, and they’re surprisingly modular and adaptable in contrast to Dungeons, which tend to be rather linear these days.
What if ‘Delves’ in the future became small, bite-sized content that can be used to explore small-scale scenes in WoW, to flesh out the world both in the current expansion, as methods to keep older story-threads fresh and active enough so that they can be threaded into the modern narrative, and as mini lore-dumps for folks to go “Oh, so that’s why?”
I could see three versions of Delves that could run consecutively for these purposes.
- Timeways Turbulence
The Bronzes and the Infinites might be trying to work together, but they’re not uncontested. Rogue Infinites who refuse to accept Murozond is not coming back this time, Old Gods trying to reshape the future for their own benefit, the Titans being incredibly unhappy we destroyed their Sacred Timeline, the Legion trying to find ways to reverse the loss of their Dark Titan, Mages dabbling with temporal magic and screwing things up, the list is nearly endless.
So have the players step into the Timeways with either Chromie or Eternus as their ‘Delve Companion’, with Chromie being designed for more combat-orientated ‘runs’ and able to help players with the Delve in more active methods, such as calling in Bronze Dragons for strafing runs, able to use her station to ask Bronze agents to let the players into safe rooms to rest and recover and access relics that might be able to apply temporal magic to the players, increasing their movement speed and haste, summon additional temporal copies of the players, or even just recruit Timewalkers to assist the Players as additional DPS, including several members of this group we met in Dragonflight.
Eternus, on the other hand, is more about secrets-orientated ‘runs’, and helps more passively, allowing Players to find Lore-relevant caches that not only provide insight into the specific points in time, but clues on how to unlock ‘secret’ Rares in these Timeways Delves to gain access to unique drops, including mounts, pets, transmog and vendors that are not accessible when playing with Chromie. While Chromie helps clear a Timeways Delve more efficiently, Eternus adds a level of challenge to the Delve because the Bronze agents aren’t as eager to aid her, truce or no truce, and she opens up new challenges for Players to tackle that, as an agent of Unbound Time, Bronze Dragons like Chromie might not be able to easily detect or find.
Also she might open the door for a version of Morchie to come back as an ally.
God dang it, Blizzard, you can't just throw an evil goth short-stack at us like that!
I am not okay, how could you do this to us?
GIVE HER BACK!
Ahem, sorry, got a little heated there for a second. But yes, please give us Morchie back. And not as a killable mob. My heart can’t take it a second time.
Potential Timeways Delve ‘Missions’.
- Hearthglen Headaches:
While we’re off fighting in the Shadowlands, uncontrolled Scourge armies sweep the land, and Hearthglen itself comes under attack by a particularly dangerous trio of Scourge Warlords who have made a tenuous alliance to topple the region to cripple the Argent Crusade’s attempts to cleanse the Plaguelands.
Players can tackle any of the Warlords and their agents in any order they like, but each Warlord slain empowers the other two, and even as Players are pounding their way to victory, the Undead are swarming the defenders, meaning players either have to be really quick, or run back periodically to assist the Defenders.
Players can find and return knots of Argent Defenders, including Knights (tanks), Priests (healers) and Scouts (ranged dps) and order them to go back to one of three Defensive Points. Each Defensive Point is linked to a certain Scourge Warlord, meaning if players are tackling Warlord One, sending those freed units to Defensive Points linked to Warlord Two or Three gives players a bit more time to fight onwards without the defenders being overwhelmed and the Scourge forces able to march unopposed on the civilians of Hearthglen.
Chromie can summon Timewalkers, disguised as Argent Crusaders, to help bolster the defenders while you charge on ahead, or summon a friendly Bronze who will periodically do a strafing run over a specific defender’s point, trapping Scourge units in a temporary stasis field and giving the Argent Crusaders time for their own healers to fortify the defenders and mend their wounds, as well as increasing the player(s) movement speed out of combat.
Eternus can help you find Argent Relics that can be used to empower Argent Crusade forces with Holy weaponry, making them temporarily more effective against the Scourge, Vendors who can sell you Scourge, Naxxramas and Argent Dawn-themed transmog, mounts and pets, including modern-graphics Argent Avenger, a secret 4th Scourge Warlord, a Bronze Dracolich who is manipulating the other 3 Scourge Warlords and can only be defeated so long as one of the original 3 still remains, else they flee the fight to save themselves.
- Troll Time:
Go back in time and see the final days of the Twin Empires of the Trolls. Help Troll civilians escape the rampaging Kaldorei armies, stop reckless Troll Priests from summoning Hakkar, Mueh’zala and other, more dangerous entities to fight off the Kaldorei, and claim dangerous Titanic relics before either Troll or Elf can lay hands on them and potentially derail history.
Chromie comes in clutch, providing ‘morphic temporal cowls’ which make us appear as either Trolls or Kaldorei, depending upon who we attacked last, so that we can move unmolested through certain sections of the Timeways Delves on your way to recover those Titanic relics, or at least not be attacked by everybody. Once disguised as either a Troll or an Elf, players must click the Cowl buff off to be able to attack an otherwise neutral NPC to gain neutral standing with the other side of the fight. While under the effect of the Morphic Temporal Cowl, players can speak to Elves or Trolls they are neutral with and order them to perform certain actions.
Withdraw causes these NPCs to withdraw from the area for 2 minutes, allowing players access to certain items or NPCs to unlock or turn on specific devices or access a boss without additional mobs aggroing.
Assist causes an NPC to spawn to assist a player for 2 minutes, although they will not attack their own faction and will turn hostile if the player(s) disable their Cowl buff.
Selecting {stay awhile and listen} causes the NPC to give their version of events to the player(s), both the Troll and Elf versions of why the Twin Empires are in their current predicament.
Eternus, on the other hand, activates a stealth field around her and leads the players through the enemy combatants, towards powerful Titanic Relics. Players can attack as they please and Eternus will assist as best she can, depending on what she is specced for, but without Chromie’s Cowl Buff, both Trolls and Elves will attack you on sight, assuming you are a mercenary, traitor or argent working for the other side. During this time, Eternus will also reveal to you Faceless Saboteurs who are trying to ensure the eradication of specific Trolls and Kaldorei because their descendants will thwart the Old Gods in the future, and defeating these Saboteurs will grant player access to Void-scarred tablet fragments that can be turned in to an Eternus-only Vendor at the end of the Delve who can be traded either fragments or whole tablets for access to Primordial Raptor or Sabre mounts, Troll-themed Glaives and similar weapons, Ancient Kaldorei transmog and similar things.
- Another Brick in the Wall
Players are disguised as Pandaren, Jinyu, Hozen or Yaungol and take part in the Slave Rebellion of Pandaria against the Mogu, and are tasked with reinforcing key figures in the rebellion in the fight across the Golden Vale and the Serpent Wall. In the process, they must also make sure camps of injured slaves remain protected and unmolested, either by killing off the nearby Mogu camps or enlisting the aid of nearby allies, who may need compensation for their efforts …
Chromie can summon Timewalkers to aid and assist in specific areas, either arriving to aid against particularly tough Elites and Rares, or being assigned as guards to the camps of injured slaves. These camps, if left unmolested for long enough, will spawn ‘Battered Fighters’ who will randomly charge through the map and engage with hostile Mogu forces, potentially weakening enemies or coming in clutch if the players are in the middle of an unfortunate pull. She can also call on Bronze Drakes to strafe the battlefield, trapping Mogu and their stony servants in stasis fields so you can either bypass them, or take apart a particularly thick knot of enemies one at a time with some breathing room before they escape and start to mob you again.
Eternus, by contrast, helps you uncover a traitor amongst the slaves who is sabotaging the effort, and while you are chasing down Slave Revolt leaders to assist them in fighting Elite Mogu Champions, retaking key areas in the Golden Vale and on the Serpent Wall itself, this traitor will send Saurok Assassins and Mogu Slave-Scourgers at you in a game of cat-and-mouse. Kill these Elites, target Rares that only appear when Eternus is with you which can drop unique Pandaren, Hozen, Mogu and Yaungol-themed transmog and mounts, disable sabotaged supplies so the rebellion won’t be crippled or poisoned, and chase down the traitor to the very steppes of the Mogu’shan Palace itself to finish the job.
There are more moments in time to exploit for such Delves, but I want to talk about potential ‘Additional Threats’ players could face on a rotating roster.
- Rogue Chrono-Mage:
The rogue Chrono-Mage is a Mortal Spellcaster who has started trying to meddle in the Timelines to gain something, be it power, access to magical relics, to increase their own standing in their time, or just because they’re experimenting and don’t care about the consequences.
The Rogue Chrono-Mage causes Arcane and Temporal Familiars to spawn at random, either replacing or augmenting certain groups of NPCs and harassing the players with effects that slow their progress or vastly increase the speed of enemy NPCs.
Occasionally, players will be targeted with a AoE called “TEMPORAL BEEEEEEEEEAM!”, which tracks them for several seconds before locking onto an area. This AoE will hurt both allied and enemy NPCs, so moving it away from allies and leading it into enemy NPCs can provide a new mechanic for players to avoid, or abuse, as they see fit.
Finally, the Rogue Chrono-Mage might appear, replacing the boss of the Delve and ranting at the players about their motives, and how it isn’t fair that the Players get to meddle with time and never get called out, or about how the Player will cause some sort of calamity in the future and everyone is blind to it by the Rogue Chrono-Mage. The Rogue Chrono-Mage is relatively fragile, but summons Mirror Images and lays out Cones and AoEs of temporal magic, slowing the player, summoning ‘echoes’ of foes the Player has defeated in the Delves as weak enemies to distract and whittle away at the player(s) health, and eventually, the Rogue Chrono-Mage teleports away, leaving behind a Pile of ‘Borrowed’ Sands of Time, which can hold transmog, mounts, pets or additional Undercoin.
- Old God Agent:
The Old Gods are ageless, eternal … and just the slightest bit annoyed at us for continually piddling in their corn-flakes. So they send an Agent to mess with us in turn.
The Old God Agent sends out Flesh Beasts, Old God Cultists, Faceless Ones and can even sometimes replace the Final Boss with a C’Thrax, and generally causes mayhem with randomly-placed Void Eyes that, if the player faces them for too long, will drive you temporarily mad, either attacking your allies or performing some other action, like fleeing madly, stripping and running in circles, knocking yourself out running into a wall, etc.
Defeating the C’thrax or the Old God-themed Rares potentially adds Old God-themed transmog, mounts and gear to the chests at the end of the Delves, and the Old God Agent themselves can be fought for a chance to loot more Void-Scarred Tablets that point to some great convergence of the Old Gods into a singular threat …
- Titanic Tantrum
To say Amun’thul took the desecration of his beloved Sacred Timeline well is like saying fire doesn’t burn. He’s very mad, and like we saw with the Earthen of Dornogal, he also took steps to ensure deviation would be rewarded with destruction.
The Minion of Amun’Thul is a Titanic Watcher who tells us we have strayed from the Titans’ protocols and must be corrected, and sends out Amun’thullic Agents to do so. Metal Vrykul and Rune-Bound Earthen, mechanical threats and those glowing, star-like Titanic constructs all either replace or augment the threats in the Delves, and defeating them uncovers Corroded Titan Discs that can be re-assembled to uncover the truth of Odyn’s cover-ups and what truly led to Loken’s betrayal of the Titan Keepers all those years ago in Northrend, as well as what the former Prime Designate has planned for his erstwhile kin in Ulduar … and spoilers, it is not good.
The Minion of Amun’Thul teleports away just before we reach the Delve treasures, warning us we are straying from the edicts and are threatening the very purity of the World Soul, that if it does not awaken as a Titan, the whole universe could be at risk of corruption and chaos, leaving us the potential of looting Titanic-themed Gear, transmog and mounts from the chests.
- Nathrezim Negligence
Not content with how things played out, the Dreadlords have decided things are going to get personal now, and have invaded our Delves to harass us and try to take us out, or worse yet, replace us.
A Dreadlord will appear and threaten us with doom, holding an NPC hostage to ensure we don’t just bail out of the Delve to come back with more allies. They will summon in Demons from the Legion to harass us, either augmenting or replacing knots of enemies in the Delve and empower Rares and Elites with Entropic Flames, causing the NPCs to lose health gradually when they are aggroed, but also causing them to do additional Chaos damage with their attacks, making them far more lethal. They will also occasionally appear, disguised as friendly NPCs or hostile ones, and engage us briefly before disappearing into a swarm of locusts or bats and leaving behind Fel Relics, which can be collected and turned in to a Demon Hunter NPC in our capitals who is very interested in how Dreadlords can somehow evade the spectral sight of their order.
Never content to just let things be, the Dreadlord will possess the Final Boss of the Delves, granting it Entropic Flames and Vampiric Swarm, with Entropic Flames acting as normal, but Vampiric Swarm being a front-cone AoE that saps a lot of player health and returns it to the Final Boss, making this a deadly game of attrition. The Chests at the end of the Delves where the Dreadlord appeared have the chance to contain Legion-themed Weapons, Armor, Transmog and Pets.
- A Pirates Life for Me
Players are drafted back into the Thousand Isles, this time not to recover Azerite, but to find relics and treasure, and a nice place for Flynn to drag Shaw to for a quiet, relaxing weekend of fun, sun and rum where the Alliance can’t interrupt Flynn’s romantic plans (if you’re Alliance), or for Valtrois to do the same with Stellagosa, but with leylines, arc wine and some privacy because apparently, Oculeth is an old busy-body and keeps intruding with his portals at precisely the wrong moment.
Players work with Flynn or Valtrois to clear the island of threats, recover key relics, plunder some treasure and set up a cosy, romantic little get-away and hurl SI:7 agents/Occuleth’s apprentices through Portals before they can interrupt the plan again.
At the end of the Delves, when players are looting, Shaw or Stellagosa will show up and express their surprise at the romantic location, and you get a chance to {stay awhile and listen} (not like that!), or interact with both NPCs.
You can tell Flynn/Valtrois they got this, tell them you’ll handle the Mega-Faction, or don’t waste this chance.
You can tell Shaw/Stellagosa, who might be wondering if they have the time for such a personal extravagance, that they also deserve to be happy, that you can handle the Mega-Faction for a few days, or that they’re really going to walk away from their partner, a tropical paradise, and copious opportunities to apply sunscreen to said partner?
Shaw will /smirk and point out he knew Flynn was planning this days ago, but since his ‘favourite scallyway’ went to so much trouble, he can take a few days off, while Stellagosa will /cough and point out that’s a fascinating concept, she’ll explore it once we leave, and if we hang around too long after looting the chests, she’ll teleport us out herself.
Loot from the ‘Delve’ Treasure Chests is Pirate themed and tacky island resort-themed, with a ton of aquatic-themed mounts, pets, toys and transmog.
- Elemental, Hellimental:
We’ve still got issues to deal with, especially since the Elemental Lord of Fire was killed, by our own hands no less, and that has left the Elemental Planes in something of a tizzy. Rogue Elementals of Magma, Fire, Steam and Smoke all vie for the title, and even the established Elemental Lords are now dealing with rebellious underlings who see the pact the Lords made with us during the Legion pact as proof they cannot survive a challenge without being ‘propped up’ by Mortals.
Four Delves, one for each of the Elements, where Players must clear the Delves, and the Font of Pure Elemental Power within, of all challengers. The Air Delves is found in Uldum, the Fire Delve is found in the foothills of Teldrassil near the Elemental Breach, the Earth Delves is found at the Maelstrom and the Water Delves is found in Vashj’ir.
The Air Delve takes the players jumping between cloud-supported platforms where Elementals of Air, Lightning, Rain and Sandstorm vie for access to the Font therein to empower themselves to challenge Thunderaan for leadership of the Elementals of Air. Four Elites must be toppled to gain access to the Font, wherein a random Elemental chosen from the four types will be waiting, partially empowered and ready to hurl the players off the edge to fall forever in the Elemental Plane of Air.
The Fire Delves takes place in a portion of the Elemental Plane of Fire, where Elementals of Fire, Smoke, Steam and Magma fight viciously for dominance, while the Cult of Ragnaros seeks to steal the Font there for themselves and to resurrect their dark master at all costs. Again, four Elites must be toppled, but a Cultist of Ragnaros has beaten us to the Font, having transformed themselves into a Living Flame, and we must destroy them before they turn that power into a conduit to attempt to revive their Lord of Flames.
The Earth Delve takes us into a network of crystal-filled caves where Elementals of Earth, Magma, Sandstorm and Mud brawl with earth-shaking force for access to the Font. Twilight Hammer Cultists also lurk here, and the final Boss is a random chance of a Cultist seeking to become an Elemental themselves, a Stone Dragon seeking power to prove their worth to Aeosera, Broodmother of the Stone Dragons of the Elemental Plane of Earth, either as a mate or a rival, or a bizarre crystal worm that has grown monstrously huge from consuming so much pure Elemental energy.
The final Delve into the Elemental Plane of Water takes us deep into the crushing depths of the Endless Ocean, where phorescent coral and friendly angler-fish are our only assistance in the darkness. While we fight mutually-aggressive knots of Water, Mud, Steam and Mist Elementals, the true threat is a malevolent Kraken that stalks us through the darkness. While the angler-fish will help us, they will flee at the first hint of the Kraken’s approach, and once we are in darkness, the Kraken’s desire to attack us only grows. We must seek out a patch of glowing coral quickly, as the coral will not only give us light to see, but the sharp edges are also enough to lacerate the Kraken’s tendrils as it reaches out to grab us. If we are grabbed away from the Coral, it is game over, but if we are grabbed near the Coral, the Kraken immediately releases us and gains a stack of “Laceration”, and a swarm of mutated Deep Sea Murlocs will attack us, drawn by the spilled blood of the Kraken into a deranged feeding frenzy.
Eventually we reach the Elemental Font, a massive glowing pillar of water, coral and power, and the Kraken makes one last-ditch attempt to attack us and claim the Font for itself. The Kraken will have attacked several times, and will have gained anywhere from 4-8 stacks of “Laceration” in the process. For each stack, the Kraken gains a stacking amount of damage and attack speed, but will also have lost a small amount of health in the process. Furthermore, friendly sharks will appear and if the Kraken’s tendrils can be convinced to attack a player near a patch of glowing Coral, the tendril will be stuck for a brief period of time, allowing both Player(s) and the sharks to attack the limb, and severing four limbs is enough to send the Kraken fleeing back into the darkness, pursued by the now Frenzied sharks, leaving the player to claim and seal the Font.
The theme of the loot from these Elemental Delves is, of course, Elemental and Twilight Hammer themed, as well as Mounts, Pets and Transmog items suited to each Elemental Delve.
What are your thoughts?
