Chains of Domination Week 2

I didn't think I'd have another post about 9.1 in me (especially not this soon), but it turns out it's kind of neat to actually be able to chip in about current content for a change, so I wanted to share some more of what the husband and I have been in up to in the second week of the patch.

First off (though in reality this was the last thing we did), we unlocked flying in the Shadowlands (minus Oribos and the Maw) and got a snazzy new mount! I was really quite pleased with this as I was just thinking that I didn't really own a flying mount that matched my covenant attire, but then this free owl-gryphon-robot-thing Aquilon came to the rescue!

I also remembered to take a good screenshot for illustration purposes this time.

In the Maw we did the Kyrian and Maldraxxus-themed assaults. The Kyrian one was a bit dull, like the Kyrian themselves (I love how good and noble they are, but let's not kid ourselves about that being fun at parties), though I did like the Venthyr's quest with the teapot (I can never remember the guy's name but keep thinking of him as "the Mad Hatter guy"). Also, the final boss fight of the Kyrian assault was the easiest thing ever; the NPCs basically did most of the work for us and it was over in a flash.

The Maldraxxus assault looked like it was going to be fun based on the quests but was bogged down by being released in a buggy state. Oh, the many cries of: "Eat, Kevin! Eat!" Eventually I googled "wow kevin eat" and someone had posted a workaround for the buggy quest on the forums, but it still ended up taking much longer than it should have and soured us on the experience somewhat (though I really enjoyed riding Kevin afterwards). I was also confused by Mikanikos giving us this Centurion with some very specific abilities but no quest for it? I tried using the ability to destroy thingamabobs anyway, but it didn't seem to work either? Slightly baffling.

Not much news from Korthia other than that we did two more rounds of dailies and completed the weekly quest for Renown to unlock the next bit of story. Again, there was some bugginess here when the husband and I were watching the NPCs do some stuff but for some reason no dialogue was coming up for me; they were just moving around the room. I had to ask whether they were talking and whether I was missing anything important.

The grand finale (spoilers incoming!) featured the reveal of the Shadowlands' worst kept secret, that the Runecarver is the Primus, and us naturally making a mess by inadvertently playing into the Jailer's hands again (what else is new). By the way, I may joke about the thing with the Primus, but in the interest of full disclosure, I had not realised the obvious connection myself until the husband pointed it out to me a little while back.

Finally, we did a round of Torghast since we'd been given a quest to go there and we had a calling that required us to do a run as well, so we decided "why not". I've previously posted about how the husband and I had decent fun in Torghast, playing in our casual way and visiting it once a week at most, and I was slightly apprehensive about the changes I'd heard were coming to it with 9.1. The removal of the death counter was fine of course, but the addition of these new "torment" debuffs and a timer/scoring system did not sound fun to me at all.

The reality was... okay I guess. The shortening to five floors actually felt slightly odd because it ruined the symmetry of having a broker on the third and sixth floor. Torments were indeed annoying - we got one that caused elite enemies to spawn spinny balls of death while in combat, which forced us to run around like headless chickens and made killing things as a tank/healer combo even slower than it had been before. But the whole timer/scoring thing wasn't that bad because we were basically able to ignore it. When the empowerment button lit up, we used it, but other than that we didn't care. In the end the game awarded us three out of five stars gems for a perfect run in terms of thoroughness (having killed and looted everything), which just tells me that the timer requirements to get five gems must be way out of our league if we basically lost two for being slow. But I guess we can keep coming back to try and unlock the new layers and fill out the new tower knowledge talent tree a bit.