My main character in Legion is my fury warrior, who just got his "Battlelord" title from finishing his class campaign. He is doing some world quests every day, but not all of them. I got 4 out of 5 pillars of creation already, with the 5th not being patched in yet. And I'm not a huge fan of grinding reputation, or doing dungeons and raids. Which means that my main doesn't occupy me 100% of my time any more. So what to play next?

I couldn't find really good data which classes and specs are really good for Legion leveling. A Google search revealed some opinion pieces, but of course they all disagree. And while playing Draenor a lot resulted in me coming into the expansion with 6 level 100 characters, that doesn't cover all possible classes, and I don't want to level yet another toon to 100. I have a paladin, warlock, mage, priest, druid, and a freshly minted demon hunter. My guess, after my experience with the warrior, would be that the pally would be quite good for solo leveling, but then I might want to change style. So after some indecision I decided to try my frost mage again.

I had tried to play the frost mage right at the start of Legion, but had gone with bad advice on talent choices and pretty much gimped him into a glass cannon that died at the first sign of trouble. Now I have chosen talents with a focus on survivability instead of on raid dps, the mage was already working much better. And then I decided to use my piles of gold to buy something else than just WoW tokens and spent 100k on BoE epics (which weren't commonly available in the AH at the start of Legion). With those instead of the pre-patch invasion gear the frost mage now pretty much rocks. He doesn't even have to kite all the time, being able to withstand being hit for a while. The ice block self-healing is great, and most of the time the mobs don't even manage to kill my water elemental while I'm regaining health. The damage output is better than that of my warrior, so I'm killing mobs faster. And as the mage has both teleports and access to the mobility toys my warrior earned (Emerald Winds, Skyhorn Kite), traveling is also very fast. So right now I'm quite happy with my choice. I assume that some of the advantage of epic gear will diminish with level, but right now I'm confident I can get the mage to the world quests stage.

The mage also gives me the opportunity to play around with different professions. I'm not happy with the way Blizzard handles professions: In every expansion different professions become useful, while previously useful ones become useless. While I had the good idea to retrain mining up with my warrior before Legion hit, I'm not really happy with the blacksmithing profession that goes with that. Between world quests and class armor I already have quite good armor, and the best freshly crafted armor is worse than that. I would need to craft tons of armor, use the bugged Obliterum Forge to turn it into obliterum, and then use quite a lot of obliterum just to make one piece of crafted armor better than what world quests give me. On the mage I had tailoring and inscription. I already dropped tailoring in favor of herbalism, because herb prices are so high that I don't want to fuel my inscription with bought herbs. But the more I look at it, the more I start to wonder if I shouldn't ditch inscription in favor of alchemy. With Legion having eliminated glyphs that actually do something not cosmetical, I'm not sure inscription is still of any use.

In the previous session the constables of the Royal Homeland Constabulary of Risur managed to save a witness and the evidence from overwhelming forces trying to destroy them. That earned them level 4, which we handled between sessions. I prefer level-ups to just happen, not to play time needed for training, because that frequently clashes with the story timing. So in this session the group interviewed the witness, Dr. Wolfgang von Recklinghausen, and examined the evidence that the dying Nilasa had given him (stolen from the Danoran consulate).

It quickly became clear that the doctor wasn't really involved in what was going on, other than having tried to aid the dying Nilasa and having been passed the evidence she stole. But he had later encountered the shadow man that had given the group some trouble at several occasions, and wounded him with his rapier. That had left a trace of a black oil on his weapon, which he knew to be witchoil. Witchoil is an evil substance able to capture souls of the dying, and when loaded with such souls can be used to fuel dark magic. The constables decided to let the doctor go.

The documents from the Danoran consulate were reports from the Danoran head of security, Julian LeBrix. He had been investigating items disappearing and being smuggled out from factories in Flint which were Danoran-owned. The items were frequently large, for example thick steel plates, and taken together suggested some large construction project, like a battleship. During that investigation Julian also discovered flasks of witchoil hidden in some factories (where industrial accidents produced lots of soul for it to capture). But after reporting that to his superiors, his investigation was shut down. Using the ritual to detect planar energy the constables visited the factories in the report, talked their way in, and found flasks of hidden witchoil.

On their way to the RHC headquarters the constables had already overheard people talking about the skyseer Nevard Sechim planning a public announcement on Dawn Square the next day in the afternoon, telling the population of Flint of the visions he had when he visited Cauldron Hill (with the help of the constables). The next morning, at their status meeting with their boss they didn't mention that they had encountered Gale, the eco-terrorist they were supposed to hunt, but reported on finding the doctor and his evidence. Their boss, Stover Delft also had gotten word of the skyseer's announcement, and asked the group to provide security.

So the group visited Dawn Square the morning before the event, still using their ritual of detect planar energy. That made them find a warehouse with a strong source of energy from the Shadowfell. The source turned out to be a witchoil-powered golem, who attacked the group while a group of technicians in the back of the warehouse was trying to destroy evidence of their activities there. Some group members went and killed the technicians to save some of the evidence, while the others battled the golem. The golem hit hard, but not very precise; but he did spray some witchoil on the people battling him in close combat, which gave a nasty aura that damaged the person touched as well as the people around him. With a group full of close combat specialists that was quite nasty, although they managed to counter it in part with a wall of light from Eldion, the invoker.

After the fight the group discovered that the technicians apparently had modified jaguars (the cats, not the cars) by replacing their hearts with withoil tanks protected by steel plates. But the jaguars were gone already. And in the floor of the warehouse was an iron ring which they could identify as being usable in a ritual to move to the Shadowfell plane. The technicians in the warehouse had been half in the Shadowplane and half in the prime material plane, so one by one they just faded into the Shadowfell. Even the one they had kept alive was gone, so they couldn't interrogate him. With that we ended this session.

As I wasn't playing every day, it took me until this weekend to hit the new level cap, 110, in World of Warcraft Legion. Now normally an expansion has about half a dozen zones, and getting to the level cap only takes the quest of about half of them. I basically finished Azsuna and Highmountain, doing all story-line quests there. Which normally would be great to then play an alt through the other half of the zones. But not so in Legion: To unlock world quests you need to be friendly in all zones, and that means playing the story line quests in all zones. Every alt you want to play and use for world quests will then also have to play all story line quests in all zones again. Uggggghhhhh!

As I mentioned previously, you can't use alts to just run missions, as you only get the resources for missions from playing. And without playing a lot, you can't even use your alt for crafting, because the crafting recipes are unlocked by leveling up and doing quests. There is no such thing as an "alt" in Legion, you just can have several main characters if you have endless amounts of time and don't mind the repetition.

I can certainly see why Blizzard would design the game like that. It forces people to play more if they want to use other characters, and more play means more subscription. But it kind of puts a damper on my usual "trade alts" strategy. Anyway, the way auction house prices are now I might be better off with gathering alts than with trade alts. Especially mining, which many people gave up due to it becoming obsolete with a Warlords of Draenor garrison mine, is now a huge money-maker. Felslate sells for 75+ gold on my server. I haven't really found good crafting recipes that make a lot of money, with the materials being so expensive.

This week I got at least part of an answer. I am traveling, no PC, just an iPad. And so I'm using the Legion companion app to send my followers out for missions. But those cost resources, and I'm not earning any. I'll probably run out before I get home again. Still not sure if the resource economy is planned that way, but at least there is some balance between earning and spending order resources.

In the previous session the constables of the Royal Homeland Constabulary had paid a local crime lord, Lorcan Kell, to hand over an important witness to their case, Dr. Wolfgang von Recklinghausen. As promised, Kell's men led them to the abandoned cave church in which the doctor was hiding, got their friends out who were guarding him, and even kindly disabled the traps in the place. So the group went in, advancing slowly and carefully, until they found the doctor. With some diplomacy they persuaded the doctor that they were real police, because he was afraid of "the monster" coming after him. By his description the monster clearly was the same shadowy man that had caused the group some trouble already, and who had killed Nilasa. The doctor then gave them the documents that the dying Nilasa had entrusted him with, mostly reports of the Danoran security chief Justin Brix about strange things going on in Danoran-owned factories in Flint. The accounts of materials going missing fit with Gale's information from the previous session which had told them that somebody was smuggling material into the parallel shadow realm Bleak Gate and was building something large there, presumably some sort of war machine or ship.

The paladin, who had stayed near the tunnel which was the only obvious way into the church, then noticed that a mage had appeared outside and through magic barred the entrance with steel bars. But a group of people then ran right through those steel bars into the church. They were trapped, and under attack. Well, or they would have been. The player of Aria the sorceress is famous in the group for always being the first one who wants to flee, always looking how to stay behind cover even if that cover is his group mates. So the fight hadn't even started yet when Aria was already climbing up the chimney of the kitchen, looking for a way out. While the others started fighting, Aria got out, tied a rope to a tree upstairs and came back down, their escape route secured.

The people attacking were two rogues, two mages, and the shadow man himself. As the shadow man was insubstantial, he only took half damage from everything. And he had abilities to go into stealth mode in combat, running around not just invisible but completely undetectable. So he got a few good hits in, and so did the rogues. For some reason I was rolling a lot of 20s (and a lot of misses), so the mobs did some serious damage. But then Eldion hit the shadow man with radiant damage, which stopped him from being insubstantial. It also dissolved his shadow skin, revealing raw muscles and flesh of a human without skin. Some hits later the shadow man was bloodied, which triggered an escape ability with teleport he had, and he ran away. The group quickly killed the rogues and intimidated the two wounded mages into surrendering.

Merian then went in the tunnel towards the barred entrance. But outside there were over a dozen more enemies, with the rogues shooting him with their pistols through the bars. So the way through the chimney that Aria had already secured was the obvious way to disappear. They climbed out there and didn't turn back when somebody called into the tunnel for them to negotiate. We ended that session there.

So I didn't get to do the negotiation, where the group would have had the opportunity to trade their lives by handing over the doctor and the documents. Sometimes having an escape artist in the group can save them from having to make difficult decisions.

I'm playing World of Warcraft on my iPad. Well, not the whole game. But the Legion class hall, like the Warlords of Draenor garrison it replaces, has a mini-game in which you send out followers to do missions. As these missions take several hours of real time to complete, that mini-game resembles similar gameplay of some mobile games. And it is best played on a mobile device, because many people due to work and school can't play World of Warcraft every 4 hours for 5 minutes, while on a mobile device that is much more feasible. So Blizzard this week launched the Legion companion app, which allows you to do just that, on Android or iOS devices. The app also allows you to do research in you class hall, hire troops, and apparently there is some world quest feature available at character level 110.

Blizzard apparently has a new approach of adapting World of Warcraft to modern gaming habits. During Warlords of Draenor people asked for an app like that, but only ever got an app where you could manually set timers to remind you when your missions were done. The Legion companion app allows you to actually send followers on missions, complete missions, and the next time you log into the main game the rewards will be in your inventory. Also this week Blizzard introduced a new feature where you can stream your gameplay live onto social networks. Not something I'm personally going to use, but I can see that there is demand for such a feature.

The new app encouraged me to try to at least level my frost mage to level 101 to get access to those missions. Unfortunately that proves to be a rather tedious slog. With polymorph not working on many mobs, and freeze effects breaking immediately, the frost mage is quickly overwhelmed when fighting more than one mob at a time. And in Legion single mobs have become a rarity, most monsters now come in groups and added involuntary pulls are very common. Sometimes I just have to try to kill one mob of a group, blink away and leave combat using invisibility to then come back and deal with the now smaller group before respawn. I was wondering if switching to another spec would improve things, but I already chose the frost artifact and it'll be several levels before I get the next one. I hear people complaining that ranged dps are better than melee dps in Legion group content, but for leveling my fury warrior is far, far better than my mage.

However much I might have enjoyed dungeons and raids in the past, these days I play World of Warcraft as a casual solo player, mostly questing and crafting. And from that point of view I must say that Legion is a very good expansion: The storytelling is much improved, the questing is completely non-linear, and the crafting is better integrated in the leveling gameplay.