Halfhill Diaries: Working Through the Chains of Domination Questline

I took a HUGE break during Shadowlands (SL). Now I am leisurely enjoying the story, along with dozens of other players I see running around. It seems that time may heal some wounds, as the multiple QoL changes that were made during and after SL have really helped ease the grind.

Today I finished the "An Army of Bone and Steel" chapter and am moving on to "Forging a New Path". I highly recommend doing this at 80 when you can just blast through everything. It really does allow you to focus completely on the story and notice things about the scenery that you didn't before. This was a nice break from grinding the last bit of research I need from Korthia.

Depending on where you are in your Archivists' Codex and Death's Advance grinds, I highly recommend having two items that are relatively easy to get before you intend to spend a lot of time in the Maw or Korthia:

Silver Shardhide Whistle which is a treasure in Korthia that gives you a speed boost every 5 minutes. You just need to go to Korthia, find the Noxious Moth, click it, use it on a shardhide, and ride the shardhide into the tree in the middle that has the nest up in the branches. It will fall down a few seconds later and you can loot it. It is so worth it and I wish I had it back in the day.

Trained Gromit Carrier which will help you find extra treasures or at least alert you when it finds some. Now you may not be able to see some treasures I am thinking because of where you are in the questline (I have been running into this issue in for example the Desmotaeron area.)

I have also acquired the tome Treatise: The Study of Anima and Harnessing Every Drop from Archivist Roh-Suir and this extra anima adds up each week. This requires rank 5 with the Archivists' Codex.

Remember, if you are starting your Shadowlands journey it is prudent to have one character focus on upgrading each feature of a covenant sanctum at the same level, for example 1-1-1-1, 2-2-2-2, 3-3-3-3. Having all features at Rank 1 gives an anima boost, and the same with rank 2, and then rank 3. This is a character-level unlock, but Rank 1 and even 2 are fairly easy to do on alts for a little boost.

We Can Rebuild

Denying the Drought

Sanctum Superior

Additionally, once you have finished the campaign for a covenant and reached renown 80, the campaign appearances open up for all armor types--cloth, leather, plate, mail. All renown vendor armor opens up for purchase for all armor types also. This is a fairly recent change but is AMAZING for QoL.

Thus, the main reason to have an alt dedicated to another covenant is primarily to pursue the special features of that covenant which a lot of the time requires cooldowns/multiple day processes (for example Queen's Conservatory pods take a week to cycle using 5 Wildseed Root Grain, but that's how you get the good stuff like mounts and mogs.)

I have my hunter working through the Kyrian campaign and then she will pursue the Ascension quests. Side note: all of those armor appearances for cloth-leather-plate-mail have been placed onto a vendor too, making it possible to pursue that time-intensive feature on ONE character.

Once you are further along in the journey and looking at either spending a little more time on an alt dedicated to another covenant, there is a way to boost their covenant special feature quickly (for example, my priest is currently a Venthyr with no plans to change. Purchase Traveler's Anima Cache from Au'Dara in Oribos by the flightmaster (second level below).