World of Warcraftplayers anxiously awaiting the next expansion were disappointed to hear thatShadowlandsis being delayedpast its original October 27th release date. However, the community also found out that theShadowlandspre-patch is arriving soon on October 13th. With less than 2 weeks, there is limited time to prepare for sweeping changes that will transform Azeroth forever.
Although the much anticipated Scourge invasion event won’t be available initially, the first part of the pre-patch introduces most of the framework thatShadowlandswill run on. Along withWoW’sfirst level squish, all classes are getting old abilities back while every race is getting new customization options. While players can work on earning some achievements and cosmetic rewards going away soon, there are other ways to get ready for the pre-patch’s imminent arrival.
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Create Death Knights and Demon Hunters
The Death Knight and Demon Hunter hero classes previously started out at level 55 and level 98 respectively, but ones made after the pre-patch will be squished down to level 8 upon creation. However, any olderDeath Knights or Demon Hunters will stay at level 25 or 39saving a few hours compared to starting from scratch. Note that each character must be logged into at least once after being created to avoid the level 8 squish.
Relics of the Past
With item levels being squished as well, there’s a new way to gear up in the pre-patch. Five different ‘Relic of the Past’ items can be made by several professions which increase the required level and stats of a crafted piece of gear. The reagents needed to make the relics and crafted gear all come from previous expansions so players should get started on farming the materials such as throughminingClassicore. Be aware that applying a relic also increases the vendor price for the item, so it can be a great way to make some gold in the short term.
Run Older Raids for Transmog and Gold Now
Ever since Blizzard applied a damage bonus against legacy content, players have done older raids every week to collect new appearances and vendor whatever drops for consistent gold. But since the pre-patch’s universal squish will scale down all past expansions, the vendor value of raid items has heavily decreased too. Some shorter raids will still give decent returns, but running the longest ones may no longer be efficient for goldmaking.
On the other hand,LegionandBattle for Azerothinstances will get slightly harder in pre-patch with the initial squish tuning and loss of corruption.Legionraids are in a particularly weird situation since they will be level 40 after max level characters are squished to level 50 meaning the legacy bonus still doesn’t apply. WhileWorld of Warcraftgame director Ion Hazzikostas stated anything that can be soloed now can still be done after the pre-patch, it’s better for players to get their last transmog and gold farming done now to avoid any weird interactions next week.
Battle for Azeroth Content
After 2 years of current content, the number of players doing island expeditions, warfronts, andN’Zoth assaultswill decline over the next few weeks. Considering there won’t be many groups looking to doBfAcontent next expansion, now is the time to find other like-minded individuals especially since everyone will be adjusting to their class changes and some loss of power once theShadowlandspre-patch arrives.
