The “Recruit Sturdy” gear is soulbound, cannot be bought with Residual Memories, class specific, only drops from levels 10-69, has a different appearance from the level 70 “Dalaran Defender” gear and a total RNG nightmare.
The 8 armor slot pieces share an item model with exile’s reach but not the cape, the cape is from the shadowlands prepatch event but unlike the armor piece doesn’t have an alternative acquisition, you can only get them as part of this event.
Same with the recruit sturdy shield.
I have looted the plate bracers 4 times, the plate gloves 3 times, the chest twice. I am able to move on to my 4th alt since once you hit level 70 you are no longer eligible for the recruit gear to drop, it only drops for level 10-69.
I’m not convinced Blizzard has done this on purpose as a transmog farm. It’s highly likely they just grabbed the generic Exiles Reach gear models and then found some generic looking models to use for the slots that you don’t get as part of the Exiles Reach sets.
The fact that the unique models are literally just the cloaks (Exiles Reach has a trash cloak, but not one that matches the set) and the Shield / Horde Offhand (Exiles Reach does not provide a Shield or Offhand) really leans that way, to me.
But regardless of the initial intent, it introduced a problem, and that problem needs to be addressed, ideally with this upcoming patch. RNG Grinds for one-time events are not okay.
For reference, I kept the blues along the way once I started actively farming for the Shield. I did have a handful of drops on other low levels that were incidental and some on this character before I was going for the shield, I didn’t track those:
This was a pain in the butt. And I’m sure there are others that are having even worse luck. And I didn’t even go for the Cloaks, I don’t mog that slot often enough to subject myself to that particular grind - but note that I didn’t get a single one during my Shield farm, and I believe there are multiple unique cloak models, not just the 1.
I have leveled 4 characters to 70 through this event and it took me forever to get all the leather, cloth and plate pieces. I locked my warrior alt at 59 for about 2 days. In that whole time leveling my characters only my warrior got the drop, I managed to get one single cloak, the blue and golden one. I have not seen another one drop at all. It was pure luck that I got one. I have seen one shaman with the solid blue one so I’m not sure if they are class specific or not but they have the exact same name as eachother ‘recruit’s sturdy cloak’. If you don’t want to keep leveling alts make sure you go see behsten in stormwind keep and lock your xp or find the horde equivalent.
Locking your XP puts you in a different version of the game where you can only do the event with other people who have also turned off XP, so bosses and mini bosses take longer to kill to the point where it can be impossible to kill them.
It did not do that for me when I did it. I checked people for the xp lock buff and nobody else had it on, there were lots of people of all level ranges and lots of 70’s in all my shards. I wouldn’t have been able to do it otherwise as I needed the higher level people to kill it all for me as I was a weak protection warrior. It was fine.
There are 5 different capes, 4 of them double up, loot one has as Horde you also get the Alliance version, with one model not doing that but can be looted by both factions.
The capes are not class or armor type specific event though they do match one of the armor types to make a full set.
On my shaman I looted a cape that actually matches the leather set. The capes are totally random.
I wasnt in chromie time the last time I tried it, maybe I just had bad luck with sharding. The few times it tried the event with locked XP hardly anyone was there, not an issue when I didnt have XP locked.
Though that’s not really fixing the underlying issue of the RNG on the capes coupled with it being a limited time event.
That’s fair. It’s definitely a problem and I’d like to see it addressed.
If they feel it’s too late to throw the capes + shield + offhand on the vendor, then they need to be added to a chest or two in Exiles Reach so we can go get them that way.
I wouldn’t be opposed that that, would give me a reason to run Exile’s reach again.
Been a while since I’ve run that thing but I think 1 or 2 of the items that are upgrades for characters doing that content aren’t quest rewards and just random drops (boots maybe?)
Just give us a less headache inducing source of acquisition.
Noooo we have to preserve the integrity and prestige and difficulty for everyone who got them in the SL prepatch. It’s very important for some reason to FOMO every conceivable cosmetic in existence.
jk, like with Remix weapons, this was done on purpose to milk player activity metrics. A big fat F U to players who aren’t interested in spending second-job numbers of hours on a throwaway event. Some beancounter is taking the lazy way out at every turn to make their engagement numbers look good.
I have a feeling that they add these items somehow to TWW. Either way, it is very poor communication.
Firstly, if they wanted it to be a time-sink then they would have promoted that you can get these items somehow. Instead they let wowhead datamine it.
That makes me think that (hopefully) these very-difficult-to-get-but-ugly cloak mogs will be available at some point later.
Second, if they didn’t mean for it to be a time-sink, they should have communicated that they will be available from another source later, or after the event.
I have spent time trying to farm these cloaks that I would have otherwise probably spent playing the game in a manner that I actually enjoyed. But it didn’t really work either, because I’ve been playing other games still, and this won’t somehow coerce me into playing more WoW.
Ironically the games I’ve been playing have no time-gated stuff. Blizzard would retain a lot more people if they focused on fun, and stopped trying to manipulate people into playing more.
