An Alt in the Shadowlands

 Having blazed through leveling up and now running heroic dungeons and waiting for daily callings and world quests to let me progress other systems, I decided it was time to bring in my first alt - by tradition, it's my Death Knight (who has been, since Wrath, my sort of "Vice Main," even outgearing the tankadin in Mists of Pandaria.) I think my Demon Hunter will come next, and then I'll probably let one of my Horde characters come (though faction divide seems like it will be immensely less significant than it was last time - indeed, I think I might have leveled my Shaman prior to the DK in BFA just so I could see Zandalar).

While it looks like every character must go through the introductory quests in the Maw (which gets you most of the way to 51, actually) when you arrive in Oribos on a character after the first has hit 60 and chosen a covenant (I assume that's the criterion) time actually freezes while a special NPC shows up to let you choose - do you play through the main story again or go into a free-form mode?

Now, actually, for all of my characters, the Death Knight makes the most sense to play in this free-mode (which I'll detail below) given that I leveled him up to 60 in the beta, and thus have actually gotten to try out all the covenant abilities. You can actually switch over from story mode to this free-form mode later if you want to skip ahead, but you cannot go the other way.

While I'm tempted to try that on him, I'm also sort of hesitant to do so, given the vast number of quests I'd be missing out on - though there's obviously some content (lots of bonus objectives, I believe) that open up. The key advantage to the free-form is that you get to do the zones in any order, and can choose your covenant at 50, getting to start work on stuff like renown from the get-go.

But given that I've only played through the leveling story once on beta and once on live, I'm not exactly sick of it yet. A conundrum. Of course, every other class I play I'll probably want to get a chance to use the four covenant abilities outside of some training dummies in that room in Oribos, which the linear questing experience really gives you tons of opportunity to do.

For the DK, I think I want to go Venthyr, which is seen, I think, as a kinda ok option for Frost, though it's also seen as pretty good for Blood, so I think I'll probably be ok with that.

I do want to be able to play all four covenant campaigns, but at the same time, the min-maxer in me wants to make sure that I get my characters the best stuff, so... hm. And as it happens, it looks like I'm going to have a ton of Venthyr characters among my most-played ones (I might elevate my Frost Mage a bit early so I have someone to go Night Fae.)

Also, I'll be honest, I kind of hate Fleshcrafting, the universal Necrolord ability. If the channel time were half as long, I might like it a whole lot more.

Anyway, the DK is sitting in Oribos, having gotten his professions upgraded to Shadowlands level and chilling for the time being. I'll probably return to the paladin main tomorrow and get daily content done. (Naturally, his worst piece of gear is his weapon - haven't had much luck with drops. But heroics don't seem to be a massive difficulty jump, so I'll just give it time.)