I know it's not technically pre-Dragonflight since the game launched last evening, but I don't plan to start playing it until tomorrow, so we're still in a pre-Dragonflight realm. Before getting into what I've done to prepare in World of Warcraft, I thought I'd provide a quick update on where things stand on the other games that I play.
ESO
After noticing that there was new Firesong / High Isle content, I managed to run through that and complete the entire Firesong storyline. Like most things with ESO, the story was pretty well done, and I enjoyed the experience.
With that complete, I returned to working on my third faction for Caldwell's Gold. For me, this is the Ebonhart Pact. I'm working on finishing up the next-to-last zone for that particular alliance. With Dragonflight essentially out and a new Final Fantasy patch expected in early January, I probably won't finish that until late in the first quarter of next year.
FFXIV
I've started to work on the Omicron tribe quests. I had not finished leveling Fishing to 90, so that's the job I'm using to work through those. Which so far has been progressing well. I've also continued to work through both my Warrior and my Ninja. I'm leveling the Ninja along with Warrior because I don't have enough confidence as a tank to queue for the regular leveling roulette. I'm okay with most dungeons before level 50, but I'm not comfortable with some of the higher-level ones to queue as either a tank or healer. Hence, while I'm leveling one of those jobs, I always keep a DPS spec running through the daily leveling roulette.
The Warrior and the Ninja just hit level 60, so I have a long way to go on both. I will probably try to keep both of these moving along even while starting to level my various toons in Dragonflight for World of Warcraft.
World of Warcraft
I'll provide an update with my initial thoughts on Dragonflight sometime next week after I've had the chance to play for a bit. I'm going to be taking it relatively easy as I'm not really in a rush to get to anywhere in particular, as I no longer raid or do anything like that.
I went through my usual routine of preparing each of the characters I planned to level to get ready for the expansion. I plan to only level a relatively limited number of characters to max level compared to previous expansions, with probably only 8 that I'll really work on, which are the only ones I bothered to get to max in Shadowlands. That compares to 43 or 44 that I had at max level going into Shadowlands.
So here is the basic routine:
- Clear out bags and vendor, sell or discard most things. Clean out bank while in the process of depositing anything you just can't live without.
- Clear out quest log
- Spend any remaining currencies from the previous expansion for either gear for alts or items to sell or disenchant.
- Update all addons and find other options for ones that don't appear to be supported for the new expansion. Scan sources for new add-ons or extensions that might be helpful.
- Note current /played time for all characters. So this one is unique to me. Being a giant dork and a previously huge altoholic, I track my leveling time for each character, and I have for every expansion since Cataclysm. I'm always curious about the speed for the first character out of the gate and later characters. It might be a decent blog post to share some of that data.
- Log in to each character in a rested XP zone.
- For all the main server profession characters (basically the 8 that I reference previously), get them all far enough in the new content to unlock professions for the new xpac so you can start earning points immediately with the next Darkmoon Faire.
