Before the delays, we were all supposed to already be playing Shadowlands. Since then, it has been on an indefinite delay until now! Before you could kind of meander around in Prepatch since we didn’t know when it would end, but now there are a few things to be knocked out along the way and two major events to be aware of along the way!
Shadowlands officially releases on November 23rd. You’ll need a solid plan between now and then to make sure you don’t miss anything that’ll be leaving or too time-consuming to juggle alongside the launch of Shadowlands. Contrary to earlier rumors, Nathria and the rest of season 1 will be launching the usual two weeks after the expansion launches, so you’ll need to keep yourself ready for the usual expansion start speed.
Learn about Shadowlands
It may sound simple, but the most important thing you can do to be ready in the intervening month until the release is learn. Previews for Shadowlands will be available throughout the month, like our recent introduction to the Covenant system. There are plenty of in-game things you can and should do in the meantime, but knowing what level of spoilers you’re comfortable with and seeking them out will save you time compared to puzzling through a new mechanic when you first reach it. Use this to keep apace with leveling and get yourself ready for gearing and the endgame!
Most notably, knowing the new mechanics and class changes will be a huge boon before the endgame. You won’t need a leveling route for the first time in a while as we’re back in a linear zone progression with a connected story for the initial leveling. This way, the routing is baked in, at least for your first character.
Clear out Collectibles Leaving the Game
While some left with the launch of the pre-patch itself, there are a few straggling Battle For Azeroth collectibles you can get your hands on in this last month before they leave or become much lower drop rate with the proper launch of the expansion. The biggest is the Uncorrupted Voidwing; a quest reward for turning in a guaranteed drop from Heroic N’zoth. If you’re capable, it’s wholesale leaving the game once Shadowlands releases. If you’re not, many groups offer free raffles for the dragon mount as part of streams benefitting charity, and will likely continue these runs through each week in the run-up. The other mounts aren’t leaving, technically, so this should be the top of your list to knock out for cosmetics.
The aforementioned other mounts come from Mythic Jaina, who is quite an ilvl step-down, even if her mechanics are Mythic level, and Mythic N’zoth, who is naturally quite a lot harder than Heroic. Currently, these mounts, the Glacial Tidestorm and Ny’alotha Allseer, have a 100% drop rate. After Shadowlands releases this will drop to 1%, so while they aren’t leaving, per se, the grind to get them will take far longer. Usually previous expansion Mythic content isn’t reasonably soloable either, so you’d need to find a group for outdated content until it is; the difficulty of that is such that you could consider these mounts ‘soft removed’. You probably won’t be able to get them until gear improves significantly. If you can manage, you should work to get them now rather than later.
WoW Shadowlands In-Game Calendar
With only a little over three weeks left now, the schedule actually looks pretty packed! You’ve got one week for general activities; whatever you like among the things above or some leveling with the Darkmoon Faire at the end if you have last-minute rep needs. Then you’ve got week one of the Death Rising catch-up event starting on the 10th, and you’ll need to run your characters through that for the sweet leveling gear on offer. Depending on your alt stable, this might take up a lot of your WoW time. The week following is the second half of Death Rising and the immediate prologue to the Shadowlands main story it also features the 16th Anniversary event, which as of yet we don’t know much about. If it’s like previous years, it should feature a lot of neat rewards but not take too much time. Only time will tell.
Finally, we have the 23rd with the launch day just before the normal weekly reset. Assuming that weekly events don’t reset this will be a world quest bonus week. If that’s the case, the first week of Shadowlands will be extremely nice, as reputation is at its most valuable early on in an expansion and the World Quest bonus increases those rep gains by 50%. Until then, work away at those last-minute preparations, and if all else fails you can always level some more alts while the Death Rising gear is available.