Pig & Whistle Tales - A World of Warcraft Podcast

Patch 11.1.5 and Season of Discovery Phase 8: Everything You Need to Know

• Gabriel • Season 4 • Episode 100

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The Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth podcast dives deep into the upcoming World of Warcraft Patch 11.1.5 and Season of Discovery Phase 8, breaking down all the new content, changes, and rewards players can expect.

• Patch 11.1.5 releases April 22nd with content spread throughout until July 15th
• Nightfall Scenarios let players defend Arathi with the Flames Radiance faction for cosmetic rewards
• New UI improvements allow tracking class ability cooldowns without needing addons
• Horrific Visions return May 20th with a companion option for solo players and new masks
• Dastardly Duos event starting June 3rd features boss fights with scoring system and weekly rewards
• Season of Discovery Phase 8 introduces New Avalon, where players can infiltrate in disguise
• The new 8-boss Scarlet Enclave raid opens April 10th, designed to be challenging for Naxx-geared groups
• A legendary quest line begins in the raid, likely leading to the Ashbringer for hunters, warriors, and paladins
• Several quality-of-life improvements include reduced tier set costs and mysterious new secrets added
• Speculation continues about what happens after Phase 8 - possible reset or continuation

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Speaker 1:

Thank you, hello and welcome to the Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth. As always here at the Pig and Whistle in Stormwind, I go for a variety of subjects with regards to world of warcraft. Pick up a bottle or a pint, sit back and enjoy this midweek episode. We will be going over a few bits and bobs. We're going to be going over patch 11.1.5 as well as phase 8 for season of discovery. These are the two main pieces that we're going to be looking over and going into exactly what they entail, what's in them, etc. So, without further ado, we will start with 11.1.5 because, um well, it's the shorter of the two. I would say, um, this doesn't mean that it doesn't have a lot of content, but there is a lot to get through. So, on april 22nd, which is the release date of this patch, which is really early, actually, it's a very quick 0.5 patch release, which is good, by the way, I'm not gonna um question it. I think that it's very good that it's a early patch release. This means that we're technically halfway through the patch when this releases, which is amazing, um, but what we have coming to this content is nightfall, uh, cooldown managers, uh, winds of mysterious fortune, horrific visions and dastardly duos. These are the five main sort of features that you're going to be seeing throughout this patch. So with they all happen at different times. So nightfall and cooldown manager is going to happen on the release day. From the release day to May 20th you're going to have Winds of Mysterious Fortune, and from the May 20th you're going to have Horrific Visions, and then June 3rd to July 15th you're going to have Dastardly Duos. Now July 15th is the the end of this patch, you would think, because this is when, uh, the last thing will run out. So we're looking at the patch ending mid july, um, which is really good because we actually get a good sort of idea of when this patch will run to, and I like that. They have spread out the content over the course of the patch. They haven't just front loaded it and then a lot of people speed run it and inevitably just say, oh, my god, blizz, where is the content. So I'm glad that they are spreading out this content.

Speaker 1:

So we'll start with nightfall and cooldown management. So the cooldown one is very simple. It's you can track class ability cooldowns on the main ui hub, which is really really good. Now this main ui hub um is going to slowly be improved throughout patches, and what I always think it is going to do is eventually take over from uh, what is it? Add-ons within the game, because I use add-ons to track ability cooldowns right now. I think if I am able to do this on the base ui, I will be doing so. It's that simple. Therefore, I will need to take one less add-on when I like, load up the game essentially, which means that it's just running more smoothly. Um, so this is really good and they will be constantly doing these UI improvements. Um, so yeah, it's going to just get better and better from here on out with the UI improvements.

Speaker 1:

But the nightfall scenarios now you defend the Arathi in Nightfall Scenarios is what it says here. So Thais will take up arms beside a new faction, flames Radiance, to defend the Arathi against the Suraki forces Following the defeat of Queen Ansarac. This faction consists of volunteer militia-led veterans Thade Pyremaker and Milton Wildbrun. Milton does not sound like a militia leader, just saying as you rise through the ranks, you will earn up to 10 levels of renown and unlock new rewards. Alongside the Flame's Radiance, players will be split between Task Force within the Nightfall public scenario to clear the battlefield and push back the Surakai. You'll also be able to strike back against the Surakai forces throughout Hallowfall and Ashkahet to continue to earn renown and rewards with additional quests and activities available between scenarios. So, firstly, there is a little bit more, but I want to say what I want to say. I think this is really good.

Speaker 1:

This looks promising because when the patch, when an expansion, drops, you obviously have your zones, your main zones, and these zones are good for the start of the patch, but we usually leave them um as we progress the expansion and we never really make use of them throughout the expansion. Um. A good example of this is battle for azeroth, where we had mechagon, we had nazjatar, all of these different places that we went to and spent patches there, but they could have done a lot more with you know zandalar or cultiris or you know these sort of places, um. So I'm glad that they are putting these events in zones that are the original four zones like for the expansion, because these expansion like or these expansion zones are very good, hello fall being one of the best ones, in particular, from recent memory. So I'm glad that they are doing this.

Speaker 1:

Players can expect a variety of rewards for taking part in the scenario and quests, including new armor sets, a tabard that will update visually as you progress through the ranks. That's cool of the flame irradiance weapons, a new color variation of the Delvers at Dirigible, and more as your rank increases. You can also expect to earn buffs, which will help you become stronger while in Hallowfall and Ashkehet. Okay, I'm a little bit worried about the buffs because if people do this and then go into war mode, they're going to be significantly stronger potentially, but it's one of them things. It's not really going to make or break the game.

Speaker 1:

Um, I like that. They always just put cosmetics behind these things because it allows people to if they want to do it. If they don't want to, they don't have to at all. I will probably do it once or twice and test it out, but again, it's not going to be my sort of thing doing these things. Um, I'll do it every now and again. If it offers a bit of gold or something, you know, a bit of fun, sure I'll do it.

Speaker 1:

But you know this is very pve orientated, these sort of patches, in my opinion. Um, I think this is going to be a really cool scenario. I think that it's going to be one to look out for alongside the horrific visions again, but this is very much open world pve solo content for those that want to do this and, like I said, with the cooldown management, this is going to be added alongside it at the very start so you can toggle the view option cooldown and buffs in separate HUD elements. If that selected, specialization, cooldown abilities will show up automatically in the center of our screen and include a visual countdown of when your ability is ready to use again. So this is your abilities currently To customize the cooldown management. Open the game menu, select edit mode and then access the HUD edit mode and select advanced options. You can select it from there. Access the HUD edit mode and select advanced options. You can select it from there. Again, you can adjust all of these different things cooldown options, bar essential cooldowns, bar tracked buffs, bar tracked bars by clicking on them and adjusting the visual elements to your preference. So this is really good. They've made it really customizable and basically a very staple point element of the UI, something that is going to improve it drastically, which is good.

Speaker 1:

Now, 20th of May, is when we are revisiting Horrific Visions. Now I don't know why we are. Horrific Visions was something that was brought into BFA, and you went through Stormwind or Orgrimmar in a horrific vision of it being taken over by an old god. I'm very curious to see what it will look like, because it's going to be based on Zalatath. Now, from my understanding, or my guess anyway, I've not seen many versions of this. So let's see Return to N'Zoth's corrupted visions of Stormwind and Orgrimmar, complete objectives and take on challenges with him.

Speaker 1:

As you make your way through these encounters, you'll need to maintain your Turn to N'Zoth's corruptive visions of Stormwind and Orgrimmar, complete objectives and take on challenges within. As you make your way through these encounters, you'll need to maintain your sanity or ultimately fail. You will be able to go alone or create a party of allies to join you. Those who want to experience horrific visions alone or need an additional helping hand in their party will also be able to invite a construct of her soradormi companion to join them. This follower will be able to tank dps and heal and will not be infected by sanity. So this is your brand bronze beard for horrific visions.

Speaker 1:

I'm glad that they've added this, because some people find it a bit more difficult to navigate these um um sort of horrific visions, and some people do need the help with playing the game and that's not me shitting on them saying that you know they're worse at the game, that is like just honestly. Some people do need more help when playing the game, whether it be due to a skill issue. Some people might just play it very casually and might not have enough time to play, which is fair enough. Some people might not be able to because they might be limited in how they can play. Maybe they have trouble seeing or literally can't play like for long periods of time, or, you know, there's many different factors that can come into this. So I'm really glad that they are putting a follower in these horrific visions for more casual, friendly people. I think that it's really good and I don't see a downside to it. I really don't. I think it's such a good addition for players looking for a bigger challenge.

Speaker 1:

You'll be able to activate higher difficulties to play for. Additional gear up to heroic difficulty items. Horrific vision masks are also returning, including Mask of Pain, mask of Dark Imagination, mask of Long Night, burned Bridge and Daredevil I'm not going to say Mask of five times. Three additional new masks Vengeance, multitudes and Nemesis will also be available to discover and conquer. So, for those of you that don't know, you can collect these masks and you can activate these masks however many you want before you go into this horrific vision, and each mask will have a different effect, appliance application, it will have a different use when you use it and it will change the horrific visions for better or worse usually for worse, from what I remember, um, but it means that you get more rewards at the end, etc. Etc. Um, a new currency to collect becomes available to spend at a vendor for new and previous rewards.

Speaker 1:

Despite displacedplaced to corrupted mementos, players will be able to earn the new and returning rewards in Horrific Visions, such as mounts, toys, transmogs, weapon enchants and more, whether you're playing it to new max-level alternate character or experience it from the first time. You can experience this content shortly after the launch of the patch, which is really good. Now, horrific visions weren't the worst thing, but they weren't the best. You were forced to do them, which, when you're forced to do something in world of warcraft, it is never enjoyable, and that's the problem, um, so I don't think you're going to be forced to do this at all. I think that the trinkets that they give, these corrupted trinkets and these corrupted pieces are going to proc, but I think that they are heavily nerfed, okay, so it's not going to be like you need this. It's going to be more like oh, I got a corrupted piece, this will help my damage by 0.5 percent. You know something like that. They are very cool visual effects, by the way, the corrupted gear that's the reason you want them, because they look so cool. The way that they bring down beams from the sky or spikes from the ground, stuff like this it's really cool. Um, but yeah, as of the week of june 3rd, you have something called dastardly duos. Now, dastardly duos I've gone over before, but, um, you'll be able to experience a new six-week event providing a variety of cosmetics, toys and even some dungeon items based on your bosses, uh, that you encounter.

Speaker 1:

Vinnie sweets, showrunner and announcer, is promoting dastardly duos, where players can step up and take on animatronic versions of past bosses. Game power-ups must strive for higher and higher scores for bragging rights. You and your party will fight two or more bosses at a time to rack up your highest score. There will be three hubs for dastardly duos that can be visited One in Stormwind, one in Orgrimmar and one in Dornagul While Vinny Sweet is running the show. You'll need to speak with Ziggy Maru To queue for the fight. In the dastardly dome, a visit with Wadden, the troll servant vendor. You will also get access over the weeks Of some additional power ups or items that can be used to help you in fights. In one week there will be four bosses available to fight and each week thereafter additional bosses will be added to keep a total of 10 bosses to face.

Speaker 1:

Earning specific achievements will also provide additional game effects for them within Dastardly Duos. Earn points for kills, damage done and more. Rack up a high score with your party for bragging rights and see how far you can go. We look forward to sharing the adventures. Yeah, so this is essentially you jump into a kind of arena setting with your friend or with a random and you're basically going to be um, doing damage, killing bosses as fast and as effective as you can, and this will give you a certain score, and this score will eventually equate to a currency or something to give uh, cosmetics or you know multiple bits and bobs from it, and you can. I would imagine they're going to put a leaderboard in this, from what I can see with bragging rights, so we just have to see. With that, I'm pretty sure it would be quite cool if there is a leaderboard, but it seems like that's what they're going with at the start anyway. So if you really are someone who wants to push it to the sort of very limits and to try and get the biggest score that you can, this is probably something that you and a friend can join in and hop into, which is really cool. Now, that is it for patch 1.1.5 or 11.1.5. That is releasing on the 22nd of April and this content will be spread out until the 15th of July. So 15th of July is when we're looking at patch 11.2, which will be really, really cool. As for Phase 8, phase 8 dropped today if you're EU, yesterday if you're NA, as of listening to this podcast, and here is what this entails.

Speaker 1:

So you have a new area called new avalon, so you can go behind enemy lines in disguise as you infiltrate the town of new avalon within the scarlet enclave prior to the events that transpire within the raid. This is a small, crafting focused town with access to a few common city services, such as a bank, a neutral auction house and an alchemy lab. To navigate new avalon in relative safety. All armor crafting professions will have access to eight new recipes for their retrospective armor types. Most of the new recipes drop from Crusaders local to the area, while a few can only be acquired from Scarlet Enclave Raid itself. These recipes and items they create can be bought, sold and traded. Once you have access and a complete gathering intelligence from a Scarlet Inquisitor Calderan at the scarlet base camp west of tears hand, you'll gain access to the quest new avalon and receive a scarlet insignia which can be used alongside four of the crafted items to blend in with the townsfolk of new avalon while disguised. Most of the residents are friendly to you and a few among them even have new quests for you to get, such as profession recipes, such as bigger bags, cooking feasts and more. This is really cool. Be aware when mingling with citizens, however, scarlet bloodhounds will not be fooled by your disguise and crusaders are determined to ensure that intruders do not live to see.

Speaker 1:

Tomorrow, brian steel blade, the scarlet quartermaster, will offer a weekly quest to either craft or donate equipment in exchange for a scarlet junk box. No idea what's in these junk boxes? Oh, these boxes contain tarnished, undermined reels and a variety of useful crafting materials. Additionally, they contain jostled chalice fragments which, upon collecting enough, can be reformed into a crusader's chalice to be traded with pieces of crafted disguise gear for class tier set pieces. This is really cool. Inside the town of new avalon, there is a armistice buff in place that will prevent players from engaging in pvp combat. This makes sense because if you're in disguise, you obviously get hit. Uh, the disguise will fall off. So you don't want that. It's just a way of griefing. It's one of them things.

Speaker 1:

Now, new avalon is going to be located in tears hand, so you go to the back of, or you go to, eastern plaguelands. You go to the bottom right of eastern plaguelands and there is something called tears hand. You go to the very back of tears hand, there's a giant cathedral. You go to the bottom right of Eastern Plaguelands and there is something called Tear's Hand. You go to the very back of Tear's Hand, there's a giant cathedral. You go to the left of this cathedral and this is the entrance to New Avalon. They've actually opened it up. This is basically where the Wrath of the Lich King you know DK's quest zone starts. They've opened that up and they've put that into the game for classic, which is really cool, by the way, I love it that you have to. You can get disguises. I love that you can get new recipes. Um, I love that. You just have to kill these npcs as well to get recipes as well as talk to them, do quests and such. I think that this is really cool and something that is now unique to Season of Discovery.

Speaker 1:

Alongside Karazhan Crypts, which is really, really cool, there is a new raid dungeon, the Scarlet Enclave. This raid will be opened on Thursday, april 10th, so tomorrow, and it will be available for all players to enter. So to enter this raid, the entrance can be found near the Scarlet Base Camp west of Tears Hand. This is just. There's a river just south or just west of Tears Hand, it's just south of there. There is no attunement or prerequisite quest needed to enter the raid, but they do recommend progressing. The quest line started by Bartholomew the Revered at Light's Hope Chapel prior to entering the Scarlet Enclave has 8 bosses and is designed for 20 people. The raid instance accepts up to 40 people, which is very good. This is sticking with how they've done it in the past.

Speaker 1:

The Scarlet Enclave raid has a single difficulty mode and is tuned to be a significant for organized groups in naxramas level gear. So I really hope that it is actually quite challenging for people. I really really do, because that's all I want from season of discovery, where it's like, oh fuck, that's actually quite difficult. Um, so a developer note here as the first all new raid in original WoW setting, we felt it was appropriate for the Scarlet Enclave to present a challenge for those who have progressed significantly in previous raid tiers. This is a slight departure from the previous approach to raid content, but we hope for this content to have a significant progression arc for most raid groups. We will watch progress closely and will make adjustments as needed if there are any significant outliers in terms of difficulty, and we have built a mechanism to allow us to reduce the difficulty progressively, similar to the toggleable raid buffs presented in ice crown citadel in wrath of the lich king. We have no plans to turn this on right now, but we may elect to enable it in the future. That's really good. I'm really glad to hear that. So if people can't catch up with gear, this is the best way to do it. You can just yeah, we'll give them a little bit of a damage buff to compensate for the bad gear that this new character is bringing kind of deal, which is fair enough.

Speaker 1:

Now, new legendary quest line the ray groups, progressive through the scarlet enclave, may encounter a ruined light forge blade a legendary quest item as a drop from a certain boss encounter. This item is a quest starter for legendary weapon quest lines. Now you, this quest line is basically for hunters, warriors and paladins. Very simple, now this is just the Ashbringer. It is the Ashbringer. It's obviously the Ashbringer. There's no doubt about it. We know that. There's been so many data mine stuff about it. I'll be very curious to see just how this quest line is done. I think it will be so cool to see the actual ashbringer in game in classic world of warcraft. I think that's going to be a highlight for a lot of people, as well as a few other changes to uh the system or classic wow as a whole or sod.

Speaker 1:

The contents of the supply crates that you can get from the tarnished reels have changed. There are several of the less desirable materials out of this cache and more desirable materials replacing them. You can now get blackwing lair weapons, like class specific weapons, from tarnished, undermined reels. This is 150 of them. Uh, karazhan crypts no longer requires the introductory quest line to complete. To enter the karazhan curios still requires the crypts quest line to be completed in order to be handed in for the rewards. The number of tarnished reels that you can get in karazhan and demonfall canyons has been increased. You you have Uncaraj and Naxx tier sets have been reduced by 50% roughly. The cost of Naxxramas tier rings has been reduced by 3 or 7 Arcane Crystals it is 3 now and it was 10.

Speaker 1:

World buffs can't be used in Battlegrounds as well as world buff consumables can no longer be used used in battlegrounds as well as world buff consumables can no longer be used while inside battlegrounds. A new graveyard has been added to new avalon in the eastern plaguelands. Any players that die in tears hand or new avalon should resurrect there and be able to utilize the drained blood debuff from the blood moon slash blackrock eruptions event to quickly recover their corpse. That's kind of cool. Mysterious new secrets have been added to the game. World happy hunting. That one's curious. I love that. I love that they add these like little secrets that are in the game. It's so cool.

Speaker 1:

Um, and then a couple small changes that aren't really too crazy, but I'm really glad that they are constantly looking at balance changes and just updating season of discovery a lot. We do not know what is happening after season or phase eight, though, and that's what worries a lot of people who play season of discovery. Will it just not get updates? Will it just die out? Will it merge with Classic? Who knows what can happen, I imagine. I think that it's a great product and I would say that they go to Phase 10, because 10 is a nice round number and then they say great, I'm so glad that everyone loved it, we'll restart again. Yeah, because, let's face it, that's what classic players like. Some people might not like that, but they can restart it and they can fully do a full season of discovery. They don't do molten core, they don't do blackwing, lair or nax or aq. They do a full fledged season of discovery.

Speaker 1:

Like everything, new raid wise, end game content wise. So karazhan crypts, demonfall canyon can stay, because they are new content. You can have the scarlet enclave as your first raid and then you can have like from there. You can do a second raid, a third raid. You know you can do a giant stratholme raid. Instead, you can do a high gel raid. You can oh god, we've done a high gel raid. You can do high gel there. You know you can do whatever.

Speaker 1:

Um, you can revamp azhara and make that an entire raid instance. You know there's multiple things that you can do with Season of Discovery, but we'll see. Because in Azshara there's a giant furbow gate. Do people know about this? There is a giant gate in the north of Azshara that not many people know about and you can have that as a raid entrance and do that as a sort of giant cave system or like a labyrinth raid. There's multiple things that you can do with it. Um, but I think that's where season of discovery will go. I think that it will reset at one point that more people can get into it. That's my honest opinion. Um, it really is. But that is where I will end it for this episode today.

Speaker 1:

Thank you all very much for watching. Do check out all of the socials down below. Constant stuff happening as well as the etsy got multiple things that going up there constantly and I will be late live later today on youtube. There will be links down below, so do check it out. I'm going to be competing in awc um later on. That is, uh, I believe six uh, gmt or CT. I forget the um, it's, it's BST, I think. I think we're in summertime, so six BST, seven CET, um, cest for Europeans. Um, do come check it out. We will be live. We'll just be having fun kicking, kicking the shit, having fun, um. But yeah, thank you all very much once again, and go aval, a friend, goodbye all, thank you.