Even though I purchased Legion at launch IRL got in the way of playing the expansion and so I have had a long hiatus from WoW. Upon resubscribing and logging in to my character the last content I played was patch 6.1 on my orc Death Knight on Barthilas (armory link) and I had started leveling my Shaman but only got as far as level 93 with the thought ‘OMG this is going to be boring doing the Draenor content again’. My character since launch has been a dwarf Priest called Sarbie but heading in to Warlords of Draenor I decided to join some old guildies that were playing on Barthilas as horde so I thought I would play through Warlords on that character but for Legion I want to go back to my old faithful dorf Priest who is still level 90.

From YouTube tutorials it looks very quick to get through from level 90 to 100, only a few hours but you need one thing…. Draenor Pathfinder aka flying and there is an achievement in patch 6.2 to allow this so I figured I would churn through 6.2 content on my Death Knight and grab the achievement so I could power my level 90 characters through Warlords and get them in to Legion.

Patch 6.2 introduced the Tanaan zone and from a story perspective I feel it flowed very well. We get to see how Hellfire Citadel has been transformed in to a fel fortress and how the Horde and Alliance are attempting to stop the Iron Horde with fortifications in the form of a shipyard and fleet. The shipyard is an extension on the garrison mechanism and shows how well Blizzard plan content ahead of time as our garrison is conveniently located on a shoreline to build our shipyard at. You can quickly progress from a level 1 to a level 2 shipyard but the grind of 25 treasure missions takes time to get to level 3, especially when you work out the hard way you can loose ships if you fail the mission 🙁
I didn’t mind the garrison part of Warlords but you can tire from it, and the shipyard is a gentle reminder of how tedious it can be. Unfortunately I didn’t take advantage of the easy to acquire salvage available in early Warlords which was patched in 6.1 to make it more difficult to obtain the necessary salvage bags/crate and the level 2 to level 3 upgrade of the salvage yard is a real test as you have to send followers on countless missions to acquire the needed 100 salvage bags/crates to unlock the level 3 blueprint. I’m still not there and I’m sending out about 15-20 missions a day and only getting 3-4 bags/crates back. That and the shipyard is all I need to have a fully upgraded garrison and both are very grindy.

It took me 17 days to unlock the Draenor Pathfinder achievement as I missed a few days here and there, it was luck that I had my Death Knight at a stage to do this achievement with, from what I have read it’s a lot easier for a plate wearer than a cloth one as the elite level 100’s hit hard and I managed to get to ilevel 672 from the baleful token drops and quested gear upgrades as well as obtaining 100,000 apexis crystals, so I’m a two thirds to Reins of the Corrupted Dreadwing. I’ll keep doing the dailies etc. till I get this mount as it does look very cool and maybe also unlock follower Solar Priest Vayx. Overall it wasn’t too bad and was a good way to get back in to WoW but as I said I definitely felt lucky having a Death Knight and not having 1,000 players running around Tanaan killing you and have a lot of lootable mobs etc. on hand. 

Time to burst my other toons through Warlords 🙂

-Wastey