Well folks, here we are. We are on the eve of Dragonflight, Blizzard’s 10th World of Warcraft expansion. I have moved all my toons out of Oribos and back to their respective capital city. As we return from saving the afterlife and begin our adventures in the Dragon Isles, let’s do an expansion character recap.
Being the nerd that I am, I have a spreadsheet in Google sheets to track my goals all through the Shadowlands. I began this spreadsheet during Battle for Azeroth but kicked it up a notch during this expansion. Many have already told me that there are addons that will do a lot of this for me. I appreciate the suggestions but I enjoy doing it my way instead. I am going to use that spreadsheet to discuss my Shadowlands progress. You’ve been warned that this post will be a little data-heavy.
Shadowlands By the Numbers
During this expansion (and for all future expansions), I am keeping track of the average item level, gold accrued over the expansion, and progress on various tasks (i.e. leveling, professions, etc). In this expansion, I leveled all 15 of my main characters and I added 3 new ones (including the new Dracthyr class introduced during the phase 2 pre-patch).
All my toons, but three, reached the max level on their professions, which is about 80%. Hopefully next expansion I can get that up to 100% as long as I’m not lazy again during the week of the Darkmoon Faire.
This expansion introduced covenants. Each toon chooses one to join which grants them special abilities. The options are Kyrian, Necrolords, Night Fae, and Venthyr.
The graphic on the right shows the breakdown of the 15 main characters I leveled during the expansion and their chosen covenants. Venthyr is the covenant I chose the most (at 5 toons) with Kyrian and Night Fae tied at 4. Also, every toon reached renown 80, which allowed me to receive approximately 1600 gold, on each toon, for completing the Replenish the Reservoir weekly quest.
Gold and Gear
Speaking of gold, I made a decent profit between two servers and 15 toons. Had I known some of the tricks to earn gold sooner I probably would have had a larger profit.
I started the expansion with 3.4 million gold on my main server and approximately 348k gold on my old server. Therefore I started with a total of 3.8 million gold. At the end of the expansion, I have 4.9 million on my main server and 582k on the other for a grand total of 5.4 million gold. That is a 1.6 million gold profit across all toons and both realms.
Finally the gear. Obviously, my main character will have the highest gear score because that is the toon I raid on. That being said, the highest gear score is 281.44, and the average is approximately 251 with the lowest being 247. The pre-patch event catch-up mechanic really helps get the alts prepared for leveling in a new expansion.
Final Preparations
We are only a few hours away from the launch of the 10th expansion. Therefore it’s time for some final preparations. Each of the toons that I will be leveling will do the following:
- Return to Stormwind/Orgrimmar (bye Oribos!)
- Reset all transmog (since gear will change frequently while leveling)
- Clear out all bags and bank
- Clear out the quest log
- Set talent points for a leveling build (Wowhead guides can help)
I will also decide what, if any, new things to track. Since I am an avid mount collector I think I will track how many new mounts I collect during the expansion. However, I don’t think I’m going to track reputation progress anymore. I will always reach exalted on my main toon but I never find the motivation to do it 14+ more times.
What are some of your pre-launch rituals you do to prepare for a new expansion?
If zombies attack the world, everyone will run and hide. Except for us gamers, of course. We’ve been waiting for this all our lives!