Dragonflight, Roughly a Month In

 In 5 days, we'll have had a month of Dragonflight, World of Warcraft's 10th iteration (9th expansion).

The first wing of the first raid is now on LFR, and things are settling in as the expansion is now in full swing.

So, what do I like, and what do I think they could do better on?

General Class Mechanics:

The new talent system is great. I think this is true for a couple reasons:

The first is that it brings back the sense of incremental progress to leveling. With level scaling as introduced in Legion, the downside was that levels where you didn't get a new ability or talent actually made you feel less powerful rather than more. Your secondary stat ratings would give you less, and even if your overall numbers went up, the enemies you fought would as well.

Now, that's still kind of true. But now, your class gets more complex, and thus more powerful, as you level. I haven't played any low-level characters yet since the 10.0 patch, but at least in the 60-70 climb, while there's the usual dip in power as the epics you had from the end of Shadowlands become less impressive and are replaced by questing greens, by the time you hit the high 60s, your power level seems to climb back as you get more talents to shore up your power.

Secondly, I love that you can just change them when outside of combat. Not only that, but the fact that you can save different loadouts with their own action bars just like you get with different specs makes it very easy to swap between a build that's ideal for solo content, or for blasting trash in dungeons, or for zeroing in on bosses in raids.

Renown instead of Reputation:

So, here I'm mostly positive, though I have a couple quibbles. What I love is that anything that isn't directly tied to player power is account-wide. I realized I didn't have enough Expedition Resources or whatever they're called to buy the black scale options for the dragon mounts on my main after I hit "True Friend" with Wrathion, but I was able to just hop on my Death Knight and fly over there and buy them on him, despite the DK favoring Sabellian.

The fact that renown opens up new types of world quest and other options - which are all account-wide - makes this change extremely welcome.

Dragonriding:

So, I recommend that one of the first things you do on your main is find all the Dragonriding Glyphs. It took me only an hour or two (without a guide, except maybe in one or two cases) and it has made flying around the Dragon Isles very easy. (Again, this is a wonderful thing to make account-wide - finding them once was fun, having to go through all that on every character would be torture).

The only downsides I see with this system are:

A: that the diversity in mounts used in this expansion has plummeted. I swapped by main from Blacksmithing to Engineering back in 2.3 so I could make the Turbo-Charged Flying Machine, and it remains his main flying mount. While the drake customization options (also account-wide) are fun, it does mean everyone's ultimately riding on one of four mounts this expansion.

B: Flying mounts have often served as a "pause" button for World of Warcraft. If I need to go use the bathroom, letting my character hang in the air for a while is very convenient.

But that aside, I'm so happy to see really for the first time since Cataclysm an environment that is built for flying. From Mists through Shadowlands, flying was a "reward" for "completing the world," and was seen more as a way to skip through content than an opportunity for cool environments. But now, you get a zone like Thaldraszus, which is incredibly vertical in nature.

The Evoker:

My Evoker just hit the item level to run LFR, though I haven't taken him in there yet.

As a class, they certainly came up with something new. I remain a little skeptical of the decision to make all Dracthyr have to be Evokers - while I can understand limiting Evokers to them, I feel like in the long run we should see Dracthyr be able to try out different styles of combat.

I also don't like the fact that almost none of your armor shows up on your Dracthyr unless they're in visage form. I get that they have a very different profile from other WoW races (though I'd argue not so much more profoundly different from a human than the Tauren or Worgen).

Rhythm-wise, I think the Evoker runs into some issues with either lag or just bugs that have not yet been worked out entirely. Often it feels like the game doesn't quite register when I press the button for either of my empowered spells, or it will hold the button down too long. And for some reason, the display of how much Essence I've got to spend doesn't match the pseudo-cooldowns of my abilities the way that they do with Death Knight runes - I'll seem to have three Essence to spend but then be unable to cast Disintegrate for another second or two.

Still, I must commend them on making a class that truly feels different than others. The 25-yard range tends not to be too much of an issue until it's a big one - especially with a lot of enemies that have front cones and tanks who... tend not to face them away from the party (and to be fair, often these cones are not obvious, and so as a tank I've often not know to face them away).

Professions:

Ok, this I have very mixed feelings about.

In general, I think they've made professions a lot more interesting. And I think the crafting order system allowing for Bind-on-pickup reagents to be used by other players to make your gear is a great solution to the problem with powerful gear.

But.

The system is barely tutorialized at all.

First, you can apparently never ever get your invested profession knowledge points refunded to reassign. And so, on my main, picking the path of "funky engineering toys" as his main focus to start with became a huge liability. I had to grind materials and cross my fingers to just barely level to 75 Engineering in order to open the category that allows the crafting of actual useful gear (and the secondary-stat-setting components to make a huge material investment worth it).

Furthermore, I only realized today that the Sparks of Ingenuity served to limit how many crafted pieces you could equip at a time, and that we wouldn't just be getting a new one each week. Nowhere are you warned "hey, make sure you want to invest this thing in your helm and not some other piece you might want to have control over."

Also, I kind of hate having multiple qualities of most ingredients. Even with an extra bag slot and a 32-slot bag, I am scrounging for bag space given that I now have almost every profession thing in triplicate.

There's also this open question of how long it will take us to max out our professions. Getting to 75 was an absolute slog, and given that pretty much the only things that level me up are massively-material-intensive goggles and bracers (which use those limited sparks of ingenuity,) I wonder if the only way I'll ever hit 100 is after hitting the Darkmoon Faire quests every month for the better part of a year (I think they skill you up by 3?)

Professions needed a revamp, and I think the philosophy behind this is mostly sound, but we needed a much better sense of what we were getting into, and honestly, it was probably too much to throw at us in a single patch.

The Dragon Isles:

So... The Dragon Isles are pretty, sure. But maybe this is an unfortunate side effect of our access to fast flying mounts early on, but it feels a bit like the Dragon Isles are kind of small. Thaldraszus in particular feels like just a handful of valleys with just a little going on in each. The Azure Span is massive, but I think perhaps they might have hit it too hard on the expectation of nostalgia for Grizzly Hills. The cold and dark vibe to it practically gives me seasonal affective disorder.

The approach here was clearly to go back to more conventional fantasy settings - less otherworldly than the literally otherworldly Shadowlands, and more like a recognizable world that is just heightened. I'll confess my tastes tend more toward the truly strange and bizarre (while it shows its age, I still think Netherstorm is one of my favorite zones in terms of look and feel). 

Story:

So, I think that we get some good character-focused story here. The draconic politics between Alexstrasza, Wrathion, and Sabellian is juicy, especially if they remain committed to the idea that none of these people are bad guys (it would be pretty easy to Baron Sablemane, a name he seems to have totally dropped at this point, to turn out evil, but I think it'd be far more interesting if his conflict with Wrathion remains more complex and nuanced.)

Where I worry is the Primalists. The dragons, sure, were locked up for millennia, but that only happened because of the efforts of the Primalists themselves. And we have zero idea whatsoever where they came from. You might guess they were the remnants of Twilight's Hammer, but we get a quest in Waking Shore specifically pointing out that Twilight's Hammer is a pale shadow of its former self.

I think it's interesting that the Primalists, while definitely evil, believe that the Titans are the real bad guys. While most evil people (some would argue all) think of themselves as the good guys, these seem to genuinely be confused as to why we're fighting to preserve the legacy of the Titans. But again, who the hell are they?

We don't really have a sense of who is leading the Primalists other than Raszageth (and then the Primal Incarnates in general,) though we know that Kurog Grimtotem released her. Now, the Grimtotem did have some ties to Twilight's Hammer, but their matriarch Magatha was sort of playing her own game.

But still, we somehow have this giant cult of elementalists that emerged out of nowhere and are now a major force threatening the world - or at least the part of the world we're focusing on.

I am very curious to see where the rest of the story goes. It could be relatively straightforward and simply build to a confrontation with Iridikron as the likely final boss.

I've suspected the Incarnates might be a red herring, though I wonder to what extent that's simply based on my relative disinterest in them as characters. We don't really have a sense of why they hated the Titans so much and why they resented the Aspects. What were they up to when Galakrond was causing so much trouble?

Now, I'm obsessed with time travel and that kind of stuff, and so the Bronze Dragonflight has always been by far my favorite, and I find the Infinite Dragonflight to be one of WoW's most fascinating antagonists. But could Dragonflight shift its focus entirely to that plot? Or is Nozdormu/Murozond more of a side story?

Vault of the Incarnates - Wing One

 So, I made a decision - I'm not going to force myself to tank in LFR. My main is a Protection Paladin, and he has been since 2006 (literally since I hit level 10 and had my first talent point to invest). Obviously, dual-spec in Wrath and then the much looser approach to specs in later expansions have allowed him to go as Retribution for soloing, but he's had a very firm Prot identity in basically all instanced content.

To be fair, this isn't the first time I've done this. I think around Tomb of Sargeras I was rocking the Ashbringer. But I found that I've been kind of too stressed out to run LFR for a good long while - I only ever did the last fight of Battle for Dazar'alor on my Horde Shaman because you needed to for the campaign, then I never did anything other than the first wing of Sanctum of Domination (which was more about my weird feelings around Blizzard at the time) and just didn't get around to Sepulcher of the First Ones (which is a shame because it seemed cool).

Tanking in LFR, you have a ton of responsibility. If a dps messes up, usually it's not the end of the world, but tanks can really screw up the fight. And this isn't the patient, guild-run environment where errors are easily forgiven. So, in order to actually enjoy myself I've decided to start running LFR as Ret, at least at first.

Of course, on my main I just got into the last fight (but won the tier gloves! Also, apparently Need/Greed is back for raids?) But I ran the whole wing on my Death Knight (who sadly rolled like garbage for loot - I think his highest was like 16).

Anyway, the first wing (I think it's The Primalist Bulwark) has three fights: Eranog, the Primalist Council, and Dalthea, Ascended.

Eranog (whom you might remember from the Thaldraszus campaign quests) has basically three major mechanics to look out for as DPS. You need to avoid patches of fire (and stay behind the boss, as he has a big cleave). Also, people get debuffs on them that then summon a portal that spawns an add. The adds fixate on a random player, and DPS needs to burn them down. My DK's Abomination Limb ability was fantastic for this. Third, periodically Eranog summons a ring of fire elementals that converge toward the center with a ring of death that contracts on the party - similar to the Sylvanas fight in End Time with the ghouls. The raid needs to focus down one of these elementals and escape through the gap.

The Primal Council (Primalist?) is the most complex in the first wing, but makes sense once you get the hang of it.

There's four members of the council, one for each element. The Earth and Fire ones get tanked (and I believe tank-swapped) while the Air and Water ones are casters - you'll want to interrupt them to get them to reach the tanks. The key to this fight is balancing elements. The air boss puts a debuff on players that deals nature damage to them, but can be dispelled if you just walk up to one of the pillars the earth boss summons. However, this debuff will link to anyone you walk near, so the whole raid really needs to be good about running to the pillars and dumping the debuff together or it will just endlessly spread. Periodically, the water boss will channel a spell that puts a stacking debuff on everyone dealing a ton of damage and slowing them, but if you step into the pools of fire that the fire boss puts down, it'll clear your stacks, so you want to dip a toe in to clear stacks. The bosses do not share a health pool, so you want to take them down at about the same rate.

Finally, Dalthea, Ascended (the RP before the fight implies her brother was on the council, but the name is also Dalthea Stormlash, so I don't really know) is actually the simplest fight. Basically, you want to stay away from people with a debuff, run away from the boss when she tries to suck you in, avoid getting hit by gusts of wind, and then kill adds. When the adds die, they knock everyone back quite far, so you want to pull the adds to the center and get closer to the center so you aren't knocked off the edge (alternatively, just get on the side of the add that faces the center of the platform).

Anyway, big enemies in the raid drop tokens you can turn in for Dragonscale Expedition reputation. We are, of course, in the period where people are taking their mains into the raid, so we'll have to see how smooth the raid continues to be on LFR. My sense, though, is that things are skewed a little easier so far this expansion - whether intentionally or because Blizzard hasn't seen quite how much more powerful the new talent system has made player characters. I'm fine with it - I don't need LFR to be a painful slog.

Waiting for the Lore Shoe to Drop in Dragonflight

 On paper the Primal Incarnates are set up to be the big bads of the expansion, right? We're told Raszageth (and as someone whose name is Hungarian, let me tell you it always hurts a little when fantasy names pronounce "sz" as "z," but oh well) is the youngest of the Incarnates, and we even get, presumably, the name of her oldest and most dangerous sibling, Iridikron, in the expansion-launching cutscene.

And it's totally possible that that's where this expansion is going to go: straightforward, these are the bad guys, we fight them, that's the end of it.

But you don't really believe that, do you?

First off, I think we've got to look at the Primalists' motivations. Yes, they're doing a lot of destructive stuff, causing chaos and attacking characters that we're generally friendly to. Warcraft is an unusual fantasy property in that dragons, generally speaking, are presented as good, and the evil dragons we've faced have tended to be fallen heroes rather than pure monsters.

There are obviously a lot of parallels between this expansion and Cataclysm - both have a focus on Dragons and Elementals, and there's a humanoid cult that is channeling elemental magic to strike against us.

But Twilight's Hammer was apocalyptic and served the Old Gods. The Primalists' stated goal is to remove what they see as the "corruption" of the Titans from Azeroth, which includes the Titan-altered dragons (the dragons we've spent most of our time dealing with).

Essentially, while their methods are not great, it's not really clear that this is done with malicious intent. The Primalists are chaotic in D&D terms, but it's not clear that they are strictly evil.

The thing is, we've generally looked at the Titans as good - certainly the narrative of Sargeras rebelling against the Pantheon painted them, in contrast, as the good guys (obviously, Deathwing's turn is a parallel). But at the same time, we've seen how some Titan-based beings have acted in rather horrific ways. Probably the first example was the Mogu in Pandaria (we did encounter friendly Mogu later on in BFA, but the Mogu were mostly known as tyrants). And then, while we worked for him and on his side in Legion, the more we learn about Odyn, the more he seems to be a real dick - and possibly just plain evil. After all, he basically forced Helya into becoming an undead Val'kyr, while also gaining the knowledge to do so by trading his eye to Mueh'zalla, and through him, to the Jailer.

In the new Uldaman dungeon, you can find a few (I've found 3) lore books, one of which suggests that Odyn decreed a propaganda campaign to paint the history of the Black Empire in black and white terms, lest anyone be tempted by the Void, when, evidently, there were "advancements" the Black Empire made. And the waters of Tyrhold (Titan name: Uldorous) have evidently been conditioning dragons to get on the "order" program of the Titans - it's the reason the Primalists attack the Ruby Life Pools, which they see as "corrupting" dragons with Titanic influence.

Essentially, at this point I think it would be weird for the story to remain being told in such simple terms.

Admittedly, before the expansion, I suspected we'd be getting a lot more mentions of Galakrond, whose corruption and mutation appears to have been the result of failed experiments by Tyr (perhaps to create a singular Dragon Aspect) but so far at least, I haven't seen a lot about him.

And then there's Murozond. Yes, we "killed" him in Cataclysm (in one of my favorite dungeons of all time) but given that he's a time-traveler, that's no reason to think we won't see him pop up. Nozdormu's fate has hung over everything involving the Bronze Dragonflight, and I think there's a decent chance that this expansion is when we're going to see the change take place.

Now, between when I started writing this post and when I'm writing now, the ending cinematic for Vault of the Incarnates has been posted online. I'm going to put a spoiler cut here.

SPOILERS FOR VAULT OF THE INCARNATES ENDING

Dragonflight is Making Me Want to Level Alts for their Professions

 We're now only a few days into Dragonflight, but I'm noticing something remarkable: the thing I'm most excited about in the expansion right now is professions.

When my Junior year roommate in college first introduced me to WoW in 2006, he was playing his Orc Warlock, running around Durotar. He showed me that the linen cloth he was collecting off of enemies could be turned into bolts of linen, and then those could be turned into cloth armor he could wear. It kind of blew my mind - believe it or not, but there was a time when crafting systems were not ubiquitous in video games. It's honestly part of why I picked the game up.

Now, over time, professions got pretty boring - not really because they lost anything, but because they didn't really keep up.

One perennial problem with them is that part of their appeal is that they can be used to craft powerful and useful gear, but old design philosophies have tended to want to limit that, because it creates a scenario where having a bunch of gold equals player power, and people could get amazing gear without ever facing challenging content.

Soulbound items make that a little better - if you need a special component out of a raid in order to make raid-worthy loot and you can't just sell that loot to someone who hasn't done the raid, then you don't have that issue. But this then creates other limits - do I need to be a Blacksmith if I'm a plate-wearing class?

The crafting order system in Dragonflight fixes that to a large extent - you can put in an order with another player using your own components (including, importantly, the Titan Training Matrix items that set item levels and are soulbound) but their profession skill. For example, I ran Heroic Legacy of Tyr on my Paladin the other day and was sad that I didn't get any loot - just a Titan Training Matrix. Then I realized: I had gotten a piece of loot. I went to the crafting orders NPCs, put in an order to make some boots, and came away with a pair of 363 boots with my best stats (thanks to a missive,) which is actually higher item level than the stuff out of heroic dungeons anyway.

The thing is, we've had a lot of systems in previous expansions to get fancy loot: Benthic Gear in Nazjatar, Sandworn Relics in Zereth Mortis, those crystals in Argus. It seems like in Dragonflight, Blizzard has said "hold on, we have a complicated system for acquiring gear already!" and just took professions and made them that new system.

Cleric & Species: Ardlings, Dragonborn, and Goliaths

 One thing that has not yet been commented on in any official videos is that it looks like "Race" has been renamed "Species," which is perhaps not a huge deal or is maybe a big deal.

Just to unpack this: "Species" is a much more specific word that denotes a sort of scientific classification. While "race" is a term that is fraught with (and really born out of) a history of bigotry, "species" is, I think, a pretty neutral term, used scientifically to describe various kinds of life. We humans are Homo Sapiens (or Homo Sapiens Sapiens, though I can't recall if that second "sapiens" is a subspecies... taxonomy is complicated).

While I don't know if it feels very "fantasy," I do think that this choice reflects the specific notion that they're trying to portray in playable options: the biological, physiological elements of your character's genetics, and not culture and history. We saw with some of the redesigns in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything and especially the Character Origins UA a move to shift cultural elements out of what was then called race, but still keeping the sort of physiological distinctions that can be fun in fantasy, like a dragon-person naturally being able to breath fire (or other elements).

With that in mind, let's look at the specifics.

Dragonborn:

First, as the most established species, Dragonborn got tweaked a little. The Character Origins version had a breath weapon that was better than the 2014 version, but many (including myself) were surprised to see that it didn't simply work like the one found in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons. I'm honestly still not sure why they didn't just use those for this, but I'll say that this latest version is actually quite appealing.

Like in Fizban's, your Breath Weapon can now be swapped out for any single attack during your turn - if you have Extra Attack, you can do a breath and then attack with a weapon with the other attack (my tier 3 Fighter really likes this - or would if I'd been able to play him since Fizban's came out).

Indeed, the breath weapon is actually improved over the Fizban's version because you can now choose each time you use it whether you want to do a 15-foot cone or a 30-foot line - an excellent change, if you ask me.

Like in the Character Origins UA, Dragonborn now have Darkvision. They do not, however, inherently learn Draconic. Given the prevalence of Draconic in most D&D worlds, I think they might just consider making it a Standard Language, which can be shared by Dragonborn, Kobolds, Lizardfolk, etc.

The totally new thing, though, is that at level 5, Dragonborn get to sprout elemental wings (of the energy related to your draconic ancestry) as a bonus action and gain a fly speed for 10 minutes (or until you're incapacitated). You get to do this once a day.

This was said to be addressing what they felt was a big oversight - for a species based on dragons, it seems odd they can't do that very iconic dragon thing of, you know, flying.

Ardling:

The reaction to the Ardling was somewhat unenthusiastic. One question was why they would add this race to be the Upper Planar version of the Tiefling when the Aasimar already exists. So, what they're doing instead is leaning into the bestial element of the Ardling, connecting it specifically to the plane of the Beastlands.

You'll choose an Animal Ancestry, from among Climbers, Flyers, Racers, and Swimmers (with multiple examples given for each).

Climbers get a Climb Speed and get to deal extra damage with an unarmed strike once per turn by an amount equal to their proficiency bonus.

Flyers have vestigial wings, and can use a reaction to drift down and avoid fall damage. Additionally, when you jump, you get advantage on the Jump Action's ability check (which is a thing).

Racers, when they take the Dash action, get a bonus to their speed for that action equal to ten times their proficiency bonus (so at level 1, you can run 30 feet and then dash for 50. By level 17, you dash for 90 feet. Monk at that level could run 60 feet, dash 90, and step of the wind dash for another 90, for a total of 240 feet - not quite Tabaxi speeds, but close).

Swimmers get a Sim Speed, can hold their breath for an hour, and have resistance to cold damage.

Furthermore, all Ardlings get Thaumaturgy (and can replace that cantrip with a different Divine cantrip on a long rest). They also all get Keen Senses (proficiency in Perception).

    So, I think this gives the species a clearer identity - the previous version was trying to do a lot, and I think really stepped on the toes of the Aasimar, who feels like it should really be the mirror to the Tiefling. I still think that maybe they should consider putting the Aasimar in the PHB, but this is looking more like a possibility.

That being said, I think this might be somewhat underpowered compared to other options.

One note is that in my homebrew world, I have creatures in the Shadowfell called Taheen, which is a reference to Stephen King's Dark Tower series. The Taheen are, like the Ardlings, basically human-like but with animal heads, though they're far from Upper Planar, and really more representative of banality.

Goliaths:

Goliaths were not in the Character Origins UA, but Jeremy Crawford was saying that one reason they might include them is that they can give an alternate option for players who want the "big burly character" in addition to the Orc.

Furthermore, the Goliath is being expanded (a bit like the Tiefling in Character Origins) to sort of retroactively make the current version just one subspecies of the whole species. Goliaths are now explicitly connected to Giants, being humanoid descendants of the giants, and your Giant Ancestry includes options from the major giant types.

But before we get to that: Goliaths get a 35 foot movement speed - which is sort of surprising, but welcome.

Additionally, all Goliaths get to, at 5th level, use a bonus action to grow to Large size (if there's room) for 10 minutes. During this, you get advantage on Strength checks and your speed increases by 10 feet. And you can do this once per long rest.

Goliaths have Powerful Build as well.

Now, let's talk ancestries.

Each ancestry gives you an ability which you can use PB times per long rest.

Cloud's Jaunt (Cloud Giant) lets you teleport as a bonus action up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space you can see.

Fire's Burn (Fire Giant) lets you add 1d10 fire damage to a target when you hit it with an attack roll.

Frost's Chill (Frost Giant) lets you add 1d6 cold damage to a target when you hit it with an attack roll, and also reduce its speed by 10 feet until the start of your next turn.

Hill's Tumble (Hill Giant) lets you knock a Large or smaller creature prone when you hit it with an attack roll and deal damage to it.

Stone's Endurance (Stone Giant) is the familiar one - when you take damage, you can use a reaction to reduce the damage by an amount equal to 1d12 plus your Constitution modifier.

Storm's Thunder (Storm Giant) lets you use a reaction when you take damage from a creature within 60 feet of you to deal 1d8 Thunder damage to that creature.

    So, I think this is very cool. The most recent version of the Goliath, from Monsters of the Multiverse, does lose a couple things - its Cold resistance (and adaptation to high altitudes - which is actually quite paradoxical given that Stone Giants prefer the Underdark) and the automatic proficiency in Athletics. But the Large Form and the versatility of these options is pretty great.

Fire, Frost, and Hill can all serve very well for any melee character, and having Misty Step for free is basically always good. Basically, none of these are bad options - I think maybe the Storm one could be slightly underpowered.

Pages in the PHB are precious, so I wonder what the ultimate roster is going to wind up being.

One D&D UA 3: Cleric and Species: The Cleric

 The 3rd One D&D playstest document is out. Breaking with the pattern I had assumed we'd get after the Expert Classes UA, the only class getting previewed here is the Cleric, while the other two Priest classes - the Druid and Paladin - will have to come later.

The UA also gave us revisions to the new Dragonborn and Ardling, as well as a broader version of the Goliath that really explicitly ties them to Giants - giving us new varieties of Goliaths and considering the old-school one to be the Stone Giant-affiliated one.

For this post, I want to focus on the Cleric.

The biggest changes to the class come in the early levels. Because the levels at which one gains subclass features, including the first, are being standardized as 3, 6, 10, and 14, Clerics will now actually pick their subclass a bit later. But Clerics will nevertheless get some interesting choices to make at level 2. Let's get into it:

At 1st level, Clerics will get Channel Divinity, which no longer recharges on a short rest, and instead, you get PB uses of it per long rest. Now, while usually this sort of change means ultimately more uses, the 2014 Cleric later gets multiple uses of Channel Divinity per short rest, getting a second use at level 6 and a 3rd at level 18. Assuming a single short rest per adventuring day, this will be nearly even, but the Cleric can more easily burn through these in a particularly tough encounter (or regret having done so later in the day).

Channel Divinity has two baseline options, and I believe each subclass is likely to get their own option at level 3.

The base options are Turn Undead and Divine Spark.

Turn Undead works a little differently. Undead that fail their save are now Dazed - a new condition that limits a creature to only an Action or a Move on their turn, not both, and no bonus actions or reactions. The Dazed undead creatures can only take the Dash action (in other words, they can either Move or they can Move) and if they move, they can only end their turn farther from you. Damage breaks this effect, which otherwise lasts 1 minute (unless you become incapacitated or die).

    The big takeaway is that the Undead are not forced to run from you - they can stand their ground if they really want to, though they won't be able to do anything other than stand there.

We'll also get into what's becoming of the Destroy Undead feature a bit further down.

The other option, Divine Spark, lets you either heal someone or blast them with radiant damage. You target a creature within 30 feet of you and roll d8s equal to your PB. You can heal the creature for that much or force them to make a Constitution saving throw, taking that much radiant damage on a failure or half as much on a success.

    I actually really like Divine Spark, as it's a little extra healing, but if you're insistent on playing a damage cleric, you can use it for a bit of extra damage. Getting 4d8 healing or damage 4 times a day at level 9 is not bad.

Spellcasting uses the entire Divine Spell list (not exactly a surprise - given they share the list only with the Paladin, who else would be using 6-9th level Divine Spells?) Once again, they have you only prepare spells of each level for each spell slot of that level you have, which I still don't love (in other words, a 5th level cleric must have 2 3rd level spells, 3 2nd level spells, and 4 1st level spells prepared - they can't, say, leave out a 2nd level spell to get another 1st level).

Now, at 2nd level, the big change is Holy Order. This takes some minor features out of subclasses and puts them into a secondary choice (not unlike a Warlock's Pact Boon). At 2nd level, you choose between Protector, Scholar, or Thaumaturge.

Protectors get Heavy Armor Training and Martial Weapon Proficiency.

Scholars get proficiency in two of the following: Arcana, History, Nature, Persuasion, and History. They can then add their Wisdom modifier to ability checks made with these skills.

Thaumaturges get an extra Divine Spell cantrip, and they regain one Channel Divinity use when they finish a short rest.

    So, I think these are all pretty interesting. Scholar lets you basically turn these skills into Wisdom-based skills (though if you have a good Intelligence, or Charisma in the case of Persuasion, all the better). Thaumaturge feels like probably the best option overall if you have a good Channel Divinity option. The only downside is that no one is going to be able to start off with heavy armor training, which means that you'll need to wait a level to get that Chain Mail.

At 5th level, Smite Undead is the replacement for Destroy Undead. Rather than automatically killing creatures that fail the save of a certain CR, you now get to add radiant damage to the creatures that fail their saves, with a roll of d8s equal to your PB.

    This, I think, is a nerf. It's also something that could be phrased a little differently - it might be good just in case to clarify that this damage doesn't end the Dazed effect. But still, 3d8 at level 5 is an average of 13.5 - meaning that you're not going to destroy Zombies with that most of the time. On the other hand, this will put a bit of damage even on high-level undead creatures if they fail - if you've got a bunch of vampire spawn, you've now just slammed them all with radiant damage (though unlike Divine Spark, this is a "save for none" trait.)

At level 7, Blessed Strikes has become the default for all Clerics - you add 1d8 radiant damage to one cantrip or weapon attack's damage roll. Notably, this is no longer only on your turn, but rather says "once used, you can't add this damage again until the start of your next turn." That means that this will work on Opportunity Attacks.

    If you preferred Divine Strikes, this is a slight nerf given that you never upgrade to 2d8, but its versatility might make up for it. Also, 1d8 is slightly less than the 5 you can eventually get from Empowered Cantrips, but only slightly.

At 9th level, you get to pick a second Holy Order option - so at mid-to-high levels, you're really choosing which of these you're not taking.

Divine Intervention now comes at level 11. It still works by having you roll at or under your level with percentile dice. The rules now specify that casting any cleric spell (of any level) would be a reasonable representation of Divine Intervention, though it still leaves it up to the DM to interpret it. The "cooldown" on it has also changed from 7 days (after a success) to 2d6 days - meaning if you're lucky, you could get it back in two days. Or 12, if you're not.

With 20th-level capstones moved to 18th level, you now get "Greater Divine Intervention" at 18, which causes it to automatically succeed and also reduces the cooldown period to 2d4 days.

    So, ultimately, I think the intent is to keep the Cleric relatively similar to how it is now. It's still going to get a lot of its power out of its spell list (though we need to talk about one particular staple spell) and, I think, has some more interesting tools at early levels.

We're going to touch on the Life Domain subclass first. Appropriately, Life is kind of the "default" subclass, and is very similar to its 2014 version.

At 3rd level, you get Lesser Restoration, Prayer of Healing (which has gotten some revisions), Mass Healing Word, Revivify, Aura of Life, Death Ward, Greater Restoration, and Mass Cure Wounds as Domain Spells.

    This does see a few swapped out, I think in part owing to some formerly Paladin-only spells now simply being "Divine" spells. Everything here is very on-brand and makes it clear that you're a healer. The other real notable thing here, though, is the lack of any 1st-level Domain Spells. Currently Life gets Bless and Cure Wounds as domain spells. While you do have 2nd level spells when you get this subclass, I don't see why you'd remove those 1st level domain spells.

At 3, you also get Disciple of Life, which is nearly identical, except that it requires you cast the spell with a spell slot to get the benefit. If you, for example, have a free Healing Word thanks to taking Magic Initiate or something (the new Cleric Initiate) it will not apply.

At level 6, you get Channel Divinity: Preserve Life. This works identically to its 2014 version, with the exception being that it does not exclude Undead and Constructs (I hope we'll see that applied to other healing spells and thus open the door to more diverse player race creature types - we do have the Autognome already).

At 10, you get Blessed Healer, which is once again nearly identical, but has the same change as Disciple of Life.

Finally, at 14, you get Supreme Healing, which... again is nearly identical except for the requirement you spend a spell slot.

    So, basically, Life Domain is almost exactly the same subclass it was before. The levels you get these features, of course, have changed, requiring a bit more investment in the class to get most of them, though Supreme Healing comes in 3 levels earlier, which is quite nice.

Now, let's go over some changes to some classic Cleric Spells.

Guidance:

Once again, Guidance has been changed, but rather than the kinda-buff, probably nerf that we got in the Expert Classes version, this is a near pure buff - it's a reaction you use when someone fails an ability check, but unlike the previous UA's version, there's no limit to how many times you can use it on someone. Honestly, I think that this solves the problem I have with the spell as a DM, given that people will only be shouting out Guidance if a check fails. There's now even less of a reason not to pick this up... except that another spell got a similar buff.

Resistance:

While Guidance has been historically easier to use because it's generally used outside of combat, Resistance sees less play. Now, however, it's a perfect reflection of the new Guidance, only for saving throws rather than ability checks. This makes it... actually very good, and very in keeping with a Cleric's role supporting the group. To be clear: it's a reaction spell that you use when someone fails a saving throw, and you add a d4 to their roll, potentially turning the failure into a success.

Prayer of Healing:

This spell now affect creatures equal to your Spellcasting Ability Modifier - which is a nerf, as the old version can get 6. The creatures gain the benefit of a Short Rest and regain 2d8 hit points. The creatures cannot be affected by the spell again until they finish a long rest. Upcasting adds 1d8 hit points of healing per spell level.

    Now, the healing is similar, and the once-per-day thing is clearly a real restriction on it but... hold on, what was that? They get the benefits of a Short Rest? Assuming Warlocks, Monks, and Fighters are still very much Short-Rest-based classes, they will adore you for casting this spell. And let's not forget that that also means players can roll hit dice to heal up if that 2d8 wasn't enough. I think this is probably a buff - how often are you casting this multiple times a day anyway?

Spiritual Weapon:

At first I thought this was a buff, because the spell now adds 1d8 damage to its attacks for every upcast level, rather than every 2 levels. But the huge nerf here is that the spell now requires concentration. The spell is otherwise the same, but I think that fact is going to be a big deal, as one of the classic Cleric set-ups was to pop that out in every fight and feel free to toss up Spirit Guardians or other concentration spells. It also becomes vulnerable to broken concentration if the Cleric takes damage. While Jeremy Crawford cited this as just an intentional nerf to the power of an overpowered spell, I'd sort of thought it was there to intentionally overpower the Cleric and encourage players to play a healer.

    So there you have it. I'll confess I'm a bit sad we didn't get more classes, but at the very least this one seemed easy to roll out, given how limited the changes are. I personally love the 2014 Paladin, so I hope we don't see that changed too much - I wonder if they're going to try to align it more as a potential primary healer - if they do, I hope they still let it be a beast in melee combat, because that, to me, has always been the appeal of the Paladin class (my main in World of Warcraft is a Protection Paladin, and I've never healed on him as Holy in 16 years playing the game).

New One D&D UA Coming Tomorrow (Today): Cleric, Other Things

 While I've been spending the past two and a half days riding around on dragons in Azeroth, another of my great nerd obsessions is going to be dropping their next playtest document for the 2024 revision of 5th Edition D&D (whatever it eventually winds up being called - for now the development name is One D&D).

While most of the information we've gotten in the latest Jeremy Crawford/Todd Kenreck interview video is about the survey for the Character Origins UA that came out months ago (apparently 39,000 people filled the whole thing out, and the core D&D team is only like 20 people,) we did get a preview of what we can expect to see tomorrow:

First off, the Dragonborn and Ardling from the Character Origins document are getting revised. Ardlings will lean more heavily into their "beast-person" identity (I wonder if they might not even be linked to the Upper Planes anymore?) while Dragonborn are getting some tweaks - I wonder if we'll see their breath weapon changed to match the Fizban's version.

We will also be seeing the Cleric class. We got a little bit about class spell lists - Crawford mentioned that in the case of the Cleric and the Wizard (and I have to assume the Druid,) these classes will get full access to the Divine and Arcane (and presumably Primal) lists respectively.

However, it does not look like we'll be getting all three Priest classes tomorrow, part of the intent being to have a smaller document to test (hopefully also meaning more frequent releases).

A few other notes:

Eldritch Blast is still going to be part of the game, and still part of the Warlock's gameplay, even if it's not on any spell list.

Feats like Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter had their bonus damage nerfed because they were just too powerful, and supposedly Warrior classes are going to be able to do interesting things with different weapon types.

There's a move to try to remove "Mother May I" class features, where the player is reliant on the DM to allow something to work - this is the motivation behind removing "Use an Object" as a bonus action for the thief, as this is often left for DMs to adjudicate how that counts. (We'll likely see similar revisions to the Wild Magic Sorcerer and, I'd have to assume, the Illusion Wizard).

Bastions will be a new rules system for a party's home base.

WotC is aware that some of the things they throw out there are tough sells - the Ardling, for example, came out of nowhere. But they're trying to see what people think of the ideas they throw in, and will sometimes throw in conflicting concepts in subsequent UAs to get a sense of how people think about the two possibilities in comparison - the Character Origins D20 Test stuff (like crit success and failure on ability checks) is an example.

When the UA drops tomorrow, I'll do a full review of it.

Dragonriding

 Today, sorting through the vast number of things to do when you hit max level (or, in fact, just finishing the main quest campaign, which I did at level 68) I decided to try getting all the Dragonriding Glyphs. It turns out it's not all that difficult. There are a couple in Azure Span whose locations are not super obvious (Riverfork Crossing is not, as you might imagine, at a place where a river forks).

But I think I've now gotten the hang of dragonflying - especially once you've got the glyphs to invest heavily in it. The key is to maintain momentum - you want the buff that you get when you go very fast, with blue energy around your mount's wings. There are skills that cause you to regenerate Vigor (the resource that you spend on movement abilities) when you have this buff, meaning you don't have to land to regenerate it. What I've realized is that ultimately, you want to build up to this buff early on, and then you'll have enough speed to keep boosting yourself up (and thus get more momentum on your way down) or giving yourself a speed boost.

Now, I can actually climb more or less indefinitely if I'm careful - the bottom tier of the dragonriding skills causes the Thrill of Flight buff (or whatever it's called) to regenerate a vigor every 5 seconds - fast enough that you will be able to stay aloft pretty easily.

Blizzard has thoughtfully made this skill acquisition account-wide. You only have to find these glyphs once, and you get all the skills from the campaign quests (that reward the four mounts, which are also account-wide) on all your characters, so you should be able to take to the skies with aplomb the moment you come ashore.

It's a ton of fun, and I hope we'll see more mount customization over the course of the expansion.

God of War Ragnarok

 So, my Christmas present arrived about a month early - my family collaborated to get me a PS5, bundled with a code for God of War Ragnarok. As it stands, I'm thus inundated with games to play, but I've been trying out the new game (and also checking out how Elden Ring looks on the PS5 - my biggest takeaway is that the lighting is way more impressive, which is more important than you'd think until you see the difference.)

Anyway, I played the original God of War back in 2005/2006, having heard how amazing it was, and was, frankly, a little underwhelmed. However, the Norse revamp of the series, after the original trilogy saw Kratos destroy basically the entire Greek Pantheon, was a fascinating exercise in both changing the look and feel of the game (taking the action to an over-the-shoulder 3rd person rather than a carefully-choreographed camera) and also evolving thematically.

God of War Ragnarok is certainly not once again reinventing the series - it plays very similarly to the un-numbered fourth game (meaning that the two other games in the series I own are both simply named "God of War.") However, at least so far, the game feels more assured. There was a bit of sameiness in the previous entry in terms of creature design and environments, and here, things feel a little more varied.

There are muscle-memory issues to deal with after playing Elden Ring so much (I also got the Demon's Souls remake on sale, but haven't yet played that,) and I think the tighter camera, while great for the look of the game, does sometimes make it easy to get overwhelmed by foes (Kratos turns a tad too slowly).

Once again, menacing gods are showing up at Kratos and Atreus' house, though this time the introductory fight is with Thor - who is mythologically accurate with his giant gut and red hair, and really puts you through your paces (your "victory" against him is just survival - it's not fun getting hit with Mjolnir, even if your Leviathan Axe was made by the same dwarves).

So far I've had an extended journey through Svartalfheim/Nidavelir, and I'm now doing stuff in Alfheim, which of course we saw in the previous game. In fact, I think Alfheim looks a lot better this go around - somehow the design of the dark elves we fought in the previous game felt kind of PS2-era in design, while so far, the experience in Alfheim has felt a lot more modern.

Thematically, we once again return to Kratos' efforts to be a good father to his son, who is growing more rebellious and independent. The Father/Son dynamic is naturally a rich well from which to draw thematic relevance, and how appropriate, then, that the main villain is Odin, the All-Father - played recognizably (the model is based on the actor) by Richard Schiff. Kratos wants his son to be strong, courageous, and better than he was, but he recognizes in Atreus a lot of the careless anger and inability to see the longterm consequences of his actions. Kratos is unable to play a truly sensitive nurturer, but strives toward something that can put his son on the right track.

In the midst of all of this, due to the events of the last game (and spoilers if you know your Norse myth,) the Fimbulwinter has begun. Midgard, where Kratos and Atreus make their home, is blanketed in perpetual snow, but we also see how other realms are affected in their own ways. The realms also give us the opportunity to get some visual variation - while Midgard is in its perpetual winter, Svartalfheim is a land of geothermic pools - and is suffering from frequent earthquakes (not great for a place where the dwarves often work in mines).

Indeed, we revisit a few locations from the previous game, though in general, the conditions have been changed enough to make them feel like very different environments - the temple of Tyr, which serves as a hub in the previous game to go between realms, is now frozen over. Kratos is also no longer hiding the Blades of Chaos under the floorboards of his house. They are now prominently on display, and you get access to them relatively early compared to the last game. There are some skills you can learn that encourage you to swap between the blades and the axe frequently in combat.

And the combat is fun, even if I feel a little spoiled by From Soft's approach. Once again, as you level up, you can gain additional moves, and it can be very satisfying when you get enough of a hit combo that your weapon glows with its given element and you start really carving through foes (also, as always, there are a number of brutal finishing moves you can do after you've stunned a foe, which Atreus can help you do much faster if you remember to use Square to pummel enemies with arrows.

But also, playing this I'm reminded that these have always been puzzle games with combat interstitials. NPCs will often comment on Kratos' seeming attention deficit, though Atreus will defend him by explaining that his father likes to find out-of-the-way loot (Kratos, naturally, would never bother to explain his actions).

Now that I've fully stepped into the PS5 era, I'm looking forward to all the new games (or even 2... or 3? year old games) coming out. I've got the Demon's Souls remake (never played the original) and I'm planning on seeing if I can just upgrade my digital Final Fantasy VII Remake with the "intergrade" DLC.

Holy Crap is Gix Good

 The early days of the Brother's War release I'd been on a bit of a losing streak. A lot of the exciting new decks people were talking about - Azorius Soldiers, an Izzet Prowess deck - were letting me down. While I really enjoy my Mono Red Powerstone deck, I've been thwarted in getting to actually ramp up (usually by hard control decks that counter absolutely everything and those very same prowess decks that never work for me).

But then, I decided to embrace my dark side.

Historically, Black has been my favorite Magic color, ever since I pulled a Royal Assassin out of my very first Revised Edition 60-card starter back in 1994. (Technically my second MTG purchase, as I had also gotten a Fallen Empires booster pack before I understood that I would not be able to do anything with it on its own).

This deck is a race-to-zero deck that is all about burning everything down, yourself included. The best card is Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor, which is a 3/3 for IBB (already pretty decent - remember how getting a creature with power and toughness for its mana value was generally something only green and white got to do? Scathe Zombies was a vanilla 2/2 for 2B). Gix has a triggered ability, which is that when you deal combat damage to a player with a creature, you can pay 1 life to draw a card. The more creatures you swing in with, the more cards you can draw.

Aggro's big challenge is usually running out of steam when you get into the main game, but I just won a game with more cards in hand than an Azorius control deck.

Gix actually has a very expensive activated ability that I don't even remember what it does because that first one is good enough. (Ok, it's 4BBB: Discard X cards and exile the top X cards from your opponent's library, which you can play (lands or spells) without paying their mana costs - really good if you can get it off (maybe using power stones) but we want to kill the opponent before we'd get 7 mana to play with).

Obviously, we use some standard aggressive black creatures - Tenacious Underdog is an obvious inclusion here. Graveyard Tresspasser is always good (and nice to use against graveyard shenanigans decks).

However, on theme with this is Defiler of Flesh. Like all the Defilers, this lets you treat one black mana symbol in any permanent spell as Phyrexian mana, which you can pay with 2 life instead of one black. Also, when you play such a card, you can give one of your creatures +1/+1 and menace until the end of turn.

Now, you combine this with all the cards we're drawing from Gix and then making our creatures better at getting to the opponent, and you get a feedback loop where you can get more things into play than your lands should allow. This thing's a 4/4 body for 4 mana, which is pretty good value. Also, multiple Defilers can convert multiple mana symbols, so, for example, your Tenacious Underdog can come in for 2 mana if you're willing to pay 4 life.

Again, this is a high-risk deck. You want to end things ASAP because you're going to be reducing your life total (ideally) faster than your opponent is. But it does two things that feel great as a magic player - it fills your hand with cards and lets you play those cards when you've drawn them.

Right now I don't have Sheoldred in it, because I'm trying to keep things relatively cheap, but I might swap her in for some others to give this more sustain (indeed, Gix actually winds up netting you positive life if Sheoldred is out). I think I have Henrika Domnathal, who does have her uses (the "sacrifice a creature" option is helpful to deal with a beefy defender).

I also have Ashnod, Flesh Mechanist, though I don't know if she's the right fit. Basically, she's a useful 1-drop with Deathtouch - a good combo with Gix because players will let her deal her 1 damage rather than lose a creature. But I haven't made use of her sacrifice trigger or her graveyard exiling to make minions - we usually have plenty of cards as it is to put creatures in the field, and we don't have the mana to spare for her ability.

Anyway, it's a fun deck and I've been racking up wins with it.

Primal Storms, Uldaman Redux, and Dragonflight's Launch Event

 Dragonflight launches on the 28th, but this Tuesday the pre-launch event proper has begun.

There are three major elements to this event:

Dracthyr Evokers Playable:

This is certainly the biggest one. After the longest gap we've ever gone without getting a new class, the Evoker is here. I'm still skeptical that all Dracthyr need to be Evokers - I think there's plenty of lore to justify other classes, like Warriors - but after we got no new class in BFA or Shadowlands, we're finally getting a new one, making this the fourth new class and third Hero Class. It is also, notably, the very first ranged DPS spec they have added to the game (Survival Hunters were kinda-melee, kinda-ranged early on, before becoming firmly ranged around BC or Wrath, and then firmly melee in Legion).

Evokers start at level 58, with a unique starting experience similar to the Death Knight (well, pre-Mists DK) and Demon Hunter. As the second neutral race, unlike the Pandaren, Dracthyr simply choose their side at character creation.

At least in this level 60 stage, the Evoker seems quite strong, though you need to get used to its unconventional rotation and its unique 25-yard range (as opposed to most ranged characters, who get a 40-yard range). Though this has been the case for Monks and Demon Hunters, once again there's a strong emphasis on mobility - the lower range on their spells is made up for by the excellent "Hover" ability, which gives you a boost forward and also lets you cast some of your spells while moving for a few seconds.

The starting experience is not super-long, and should familiarize you with the base abilities, though you will not get any talents (I sort of wish that it worked the way the Death Knight intro did back in the day, giving you one or two talent points with each quest you completed).

Primal Storms:

This is the big bread-and-butter element of the pre-launch. Ultimately, this is, I think, somewhat mid-tier. It's something to do, but basically you'll be sitting around in the Badlands, Northern Barrens, or Un'goro Crater fighting elementals and various cultists to collect a currency that can be traded for 252 gear or a toy and a (relatively small, but better than nothing) reagent bag, which essentially works like the old profession bags except that it has its own dedicated bag slot.

The invasions come with a random element, which means elementals that have different abilities. The only real annoying thing here is that only the elites appear to be open-tap, meaning you're best off just avoiding hitting anything other than them. There's a daily quest here that will get you more of that currency to buy gear with. Periodically, an extra-powerful elemental will show up that attacks after you kill enough of the other creatures near it. These bosses can drop a shard of their element where, once you collect all four, you can turn them into a new heirloom trinket.

I believe these scale with level, so you can also use this to level up alts.

A bit of a far cry from the excellent Legion invasions, but a good way to practice new rotations.

Uldaman: Legacy of Tyr:

Thankfully, Blizzard now seems to like to do revamp dungeons without getting rid of the old one. You'll be familiar with a lot of the rooms in this updated Uldaman, which has been rebuilt with high-resolution graphics and also streamlined so that it's harder to get lost.

The bosses here drop 278 gear, and you get a quest early on that will award a 278 weapon for completing the dungeon. It's easy enough that most groups will plow through it (obviously when we get to the actual dungeon at level 70, we might want to be more careful and actually learn how the bosses work.)

What was that? Learn how the bosses work? Ok, let's go through them:

The Lost Dwarves are back, and to be fair this fight I have less of a sense of all the little things, but basically they will, at certain health percentages, jump into their flying longboat and bombard the place. I think you're supposed to take them down together to avoid the later bombardment.

Next, in Ironaya's old room, we fight a Trogg chieftain. He summons adds periodically, as well as a big totem. Destroying the totem will stun all the troggs for several seconds.

Third is a sort of Titanforged Sethrak guardian. She will gain a stacking buff, and also puts down these sand traps on random players that will stun anyone who walks into them. The tank can run her through these to cause her to lose her buff stacks.

Fourth is, I want to say "Emberon," which is a stone golem. Several other golems around the room, which are not targetable, will shoot little balls of fire around the arena. Periodically (and with current gear, often he's dead before you hit this phase,) he'll go to the center of the room and create this rotating flame wall that will quickly kill people standing there. There are three golems who can now be attacked, so you want to burn them down quickly while keeping on the move to avoid the flame wall.

Finally, we have an Infinite Dragon who steals the information we went in here to find in the first place. He has a breath attack, so the tank should face him away from the party. The room fills up with weird time-pools, and periodically he "steals your time," so the party needs to run through these pools to get it back (before this phase, you'll take damage from them, I think.)

Anyway, it's relatively quick for now.

That more or less covers the event. We've got a little less than two weeks before the expansion proper launches, but for now, we can get back into the swing of things.

Finally Figuring Out the Evoker (Devastation)

 For I believe over a month now, the "Dragonflight Beta" has been open for everyone to create a level 70 Dracthyr Evoker, though you can't actually do stuff in the Dragon Isles.

Getting dumped into a level 70 class, especially with the new, complex talent system, can be a little difficult. But I've started to figure out how this thing works, at least at its most basic level.

The Devastation spec is the Evoker DPS spec, and thus likely to be the more popular of the two.

While you have mana as a resource, much as most casters (other than Arcane Mages) do these days, you don't really need to worry about it. Instead, you'll track a different resource: Essence. This takes the form of six little spheres below your mana bar, and actually works similarly to a Death Knight's runes (I haven't confirmed if it does the thing where only three can recharge at a time, but I believe it does). Essence regenerates over time, and so the rhythm here is that of alternating powerful spenders with filler spells.

Your bread-and-butter single target filler is Living Flame. This is actually both a damage and healing spell, depending on who you're targeting. It has a relatively short cast time and there are talents that will cause it to sometimes be instant-cast.

For cleave situations, there's Azure Strike, which is instant-cast and hits three targets. I believe there are times when you want to use this even in single target, though that's more of a strategy thing than an explicit design.

Both Living Flame and Azure Strike have talents that are triggered by them called Essence Burst, which make Disintegrate and Pyre free.

Your main single-target Essence spender is Disintegrate, which costs three Essence and channels a beam of destructive energy at the target.

For multiple targets, you can spend Essence on Pyre, which lobs a ball of fire at the target and splashes to hit anyone nearby. Like Azure Strike, this is instant-cast.

Eternity Surge is one of your main Empowered spells - you hold down the button (or hit it quickly once and then again to set it off) to scale it between levels 1 to 4. The levels of empowerment here actually only determine how many targets it hits, so on single targets, there's no reason to charge it up all the way. This does a big burst of arcane damage, and I think picks targets based on proximity. This has a 30-second cooldown, so you'll weave it in when it's up.

Fire Breath is another Empowered spell, and this one works kind of interestingly - it does a burst of fire damage in a cone and then puts a DoT on creatures it hits. However, charging it doesn't simply increase the damage. Instead, the longer you charge it, the more damage it does up front, and the shorter the DoT lasts. Essentially, it does the same amount of damage at any level of empowerment (or possibly slightly more at a lower empowerment) but you can pick between sustained damage or burst. On trash, for instance, you might choose to go for a full empowerment to burst enemies down quickly, but on a boss you might pick instead to do a low empowerment to keep the DoT ticking longer.

Dragonrage is your big 2-minute cooldown ability, and buffs your damage, while also doubling the chance to get the Essence Burst proc, and also shoots off several Pyres to start with.

Deep Breath is another 2-minute cooldown, which both does damage in the area and moves you to the targeted location, in a cool animation that has you do the classic dragon breath-strafe.

There are other abilities, but I think these are the basics you'll be using frequently and want easily accessible on your action bars.

Of note, Evokers don't get the 40-yard range of most ranged characters, instead fighting at 25 yards. This will make movement and positioning that much more important. Thankfully, your AoE abilities are mostly instant-cast, so you'll be able to keep up with the tanks and melee on a fast-moving dungeon run.

The nuances of various talents and passives, and other, more niche abilities are something I'll have to get more experience with the class in order to talk intelligently about it.

Subclass Levels in One D&D

 As someone whose first real class-based RPG was World of Warcraft (actually, I think it's technically Quest for Glory V, though those were always kind of adventure games with RPG elements) the idea of subclasses is pretty natural. In WoW, each class has three "specializations," which will significantly change the way you play (and is used to make some classes capable of performing the tank or healer role).

    (TANGENT: Actually, not every class has three specializations, or "specs." Druids initially had three, but when Mists of Pandaira, the fourth expansion, changed the way that the old talent trees worked, it was no longer feasible to separate the Melee DPS, Cat-form-focused version of the "Feral" tree and the Tank, Bear-form-focused version. So they just gave them a fourth spec, called Guardian, which focused on Bear form. Then, with Legion (expansion 6) they introduced the Demon Hunter, who only has one DPS and one Tank spec. On Tuesday, they'll add the Evoker, who has one DPS and one healing spec. Thus, while the average has been 3 since Legion, the average number of specs in WoW for each class is going below 3 for the first time ever.)

In 5th Edition, each class makes a choice at 1st, 2nd, or 3rd level (most at 3rd) to pick a subclass. While there are other choices to make, like Spells, Fighting Styles, and other nuanced options (Warlocks get a lot of these) this is the big one, which has a big impact both on your mechanics and your flavor.

In the Expert Classes UA, they announced that subclasses will now all get their features at the same levels - you'll pick yours at level 3 and get your first features, then get more at level 6, 10, and 14.

Notably, this was a big deal for the Bard given that previously, they only got subclass features at three levels.

The implications here are pretty big. Let's start with the big ones:

The first pretty huge thing is this means that multiclassing will require a bigger investment to grab subclass features. It's actually pretty easy to pick up some powerful effects with a single level dip in some cases - perhaps the most infamous being the Hexblade Warlock, which gives you weapon proficiencies and armor training, along with the ability to designate a (non-two-handed) weapon to use Charisma for its attacks. Now, getting any such features will require a three-level investment, which is not insignificant.

But, also, from a roleplaying point of view, I think it will be contingent on players and DMs to coordinate for those subclasses that have heavy lore implications. A Warlock, for example, has subclasses based on the patron with whom they formed a pact in the first place to have literally any of their power - at least that's how it's been explained in 5E so far. Rather than choosing a subclass at level 3, it seems like if you want to play it this way, you'll need to have in mind what you're going to play from the get-go if you want to be able to figure out a backstory with your DM.

There are three classes that currently get their subclass right away at level 1: the Warlock, Cleric, and Sorcerer. In each case, the person gets their power from something implied in their subclass. The Warlock, as discussed above, gets it from their patron. The sorcery subclasses, I'd say, tell a story of how you got those inherent magic powers. The Cleric is somewhat more flexible, but at the very least it implies that your powers derive from some deity that embodies the domain your subclass represents (though in my newly-begun Spelljammer campaign I'm running, the Trickster Cleric worships my God of Invention, Science, Knowledge, and the Stars - I'm allowing her to flavor it as trickery being a kind of inventiveness).

Now, I think you can work out a solution here, but it won't work for every backstory. I think the first two levels in each case might be a process of discovering the nature of your power's source. In the Cleric's case, it's easy enough to imagine that there are multiple orders amidst worshippers of your deity, and that you pick your domain by picking a priestly order - this is the easiest to pull off. In the case of the Sorcerer, it might be that the true nature of your powers doesn't really manifest itself until you've managed to unlock something about it. The Warlock... here I think we have the trickiest thing to deal with. It's easy enough to say that you were making a deal with someone whose nature you didn't fully understand, but that sort of forces you into a type of backstory you might not really want. It's a decent choice to make if you want to play a Warlock but don't have a strong sense of what subclass you want, but I think simply playing it as if your powers were always themed around your patron and just don't really manifest specific rules for it until level 3.

Currently, these are the levels at which each class gets its subclass features:

Artificer: 3, 5, 9, 15

Barbarian: 3, 6, 10, 14

Bard: 3, 6, 14

Cleric: 1, 2, 6, 8*, 17

Druid: 2, 6, 10, 14

Fighter: 3, 7, 10, 15, 18

Monk: 3, 6, 11, 17

Paladin: 3, 7, 15, 20

Ranger: 3, 7, 11, 15

Rogue: 3, 9, 13, 17

Sorcerer: 1, 6, 14, 18

Warlock: 1, 6, 10, 14

Wizard: 2, 6, 10, 14

*This is only Potent Spellcasting or Divine Strike, which you could argue is more of a class feature than subclass one.

So, as we can see, the Barbarian won't have to change where its subclass features come at all. The Druid and Wizard will only see their subclass choice bumped back to 3rd level, but the rest come at the same time. Artificers will push their middle two back and the last one up a level (though unless we get an updated Artificer, I don't think we'll need to change them).

But some classes - the Cleric, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, and Sorcerer, will no longer have a subclass feature that doesn't come online until tier 4. The Paladin in particular might need some revisiting, as their final subclass feature is simultaneously their capstone ability for the entire class. These take the form of "ultimates," usually letting the paladin go into some kind of super-mode. It actually makes for one of the better (maybe best, though I think "infinite rages" and "infinite wild shapes" might beat it out for sheer cackling joy) level 20 capstones. Of course, now, the old level 20 abilities come at level 18.

The Artificer (who, again, might not be affected by this) will likely feel not so great about this, given that two of the subclasses get their Extra Attack feature currently at level 5, along with all the martial classes (sans Rogues). Here, they're delayed by one level. To be fair, this is true of Bladesinger Wizards, College of Swords Bards, and College of Valor Bards, who get their second attack at 6. Still, those subclasses are kind of exceptional, whereas Battle Smiths and Armorers make up a full half of all Artificer subclasses, and thus you could argue that it's also a "martial" class.

As stated before, Bards get a new level in which to learn subclass features. Interestingly, none of their existing subclass levels have to shift - they just get something new at 10. Clerics and Fighters get 5 subclass feature levels, though. Now, Clerics always get either Potent Spellcasting or Divine Strike at level 8, so I sometimes argue that this is more of a class feature than a subclass feature. But Fighters do, truly, get subclass features at 5 different levels. Two of these could be shifted by one level, and then you'd just need to drop their 18th-level features.

I've also speculated on a drastic redesign of the Fighter to basically make everyone a Battle Master, and so I could imagine that subclasses would also need to be significantly redesigned with that in mind.

What remains to be seen is what we'll see reprinted and how it'll look. In the Expert Classes UA, we got the College of Lore, the Hunter, and the Thief, with promises that other subclasses for those classes would show up in later UAs. We also know that there will be more subclasses in the One D&D PHB than there were in the 2014 one, but we of course don't know which those will be. I think it's a relatively safe bet that we'll see some familiar ones from later books like Xanathar's and Tasha's, but there could also be some brand-new ones.

Reprinting revised versions of other subclasses would also help make it easier to update existing characters to One D&D - rather than wondering how your, say, Rune Knight is going to work in the new system, you might find it right there in the Player's Handbook and update accordingly.

We are, I hope, due for another UA to drop relatively soon. Tuesday will be the 15th of November, which would put us about a month and a half from the Expert Classes UA, which itself came about a month and a half after the Character Origins UA (it's also when both Brother's War comes out on MTG Arena and the Dracthyr Evoker becomes playable in World of Warcraft, so if we get a UA I'm going to be a very busy nerd indeed). I don't know if that will answer or clarify any of the things we looked at here, but we'll see.

Light Weapons, Bonus Actions, and Who Wins

 One D&D will bring about various rules revisions, some large, some small. The game still basically works the same way - we're not going back to THAC0 or replacing proficiency with skill ranks.

One of the most popular changes is also a rather subtle one.

In the current rules, nothing is stopping anyone with Extra Attacks from fighting with two different weapons - attacking with your Flame Tongue Longsword in one hand with attack number 1 and your Frost Brand Rapier in the other hand with attack 2. But light weapons have a special property, which allows you to make two attacks with your main hand and then get an additional, bonus attack with a weapon in the off hand - allowing those who don't have extra attack to make two attacks and those who do to make three (or, if you're a fighter, possibly 4 or 5, depending on how many extra attacks you get). The only downside is that you don't get to add your Strength (or Dexterity, with a finesse weapon) to the damage roll.

That's not actually changing.

Again, this is a subtle change. What is changing is that, under the current rules, that bonus attack uses your bonus action.

Depending on your class, this might be no problem, or it could be a bit of a hinderance.

However, under the new One D&D rules, the light weapon bonus attack is now just part of the attack action, leaving your bonus action free.

What's the real implication here?

What I want to go through is how this is likely to affect each class that likes to fight with weapons and to see how powerful this can be.

Artificers:

Two of the four Artificer subclasses favor weapons, but the Armorer is rather locked into using their built-in armor weapons, neither of which has the light property. However, the Battle Smith does need to use their bonus action more or less every turn to command their Steel Defender to attack.

Artificers don't get Fighting Styles, but an Artificer can pretty easily get magical weapons. Even if they have a stingy DM who doesn't give them any magic weapons, the Battle Smith could, by level 6, have one light weapon infused with Enhanced Weapon and another infused with Radiant Weapon, giving them at least a +1 bonus on the damage of each weapon.

Still, the ultimate bonus damage here might not be all that exciting. We can do better.

Barbarians:

Ok, now we're talking. The Barbarian, of course, typically starts an encounter by going into a Rage, which takes a bonus action. Barbarians love getting more attacks, because their damage is boosted by Rage in addition to their Strength and any magical bonus the weapon has.

Under the current rules, a dual-wielding Barbarian will suffer a bit of a drop in damage compared to someone using a two-handed weapon in short fights, due to the fact that they miss out on that first bonus attack. But this downside will disappear - partially - with the new rules.

For example, let's imagine a level 9 Barbarian with +5 to Strength, using a Greataxe versus dual-wielding Hand Axes. At this level, they have a +3 damage bonus from Rage.

Under the new rules, every turn, not just turns after Raging, will look like this:

2H: 1d12+8, or 14.5, times 2, which is 29

Dual-Wield: 1d6+8, or 11.5, times 2, so 23, plus 1d6+3, so 29.5.

Notably, until hitting level 9, this does not outpace the two-hander. (I'll also note that if Barbarians get Fighting Styles, as they look likely to, the total damage bonus of taking Two Weapon Fighting will be 5 per turn, while Great Weapon Fighting with a Greataxe will be about 2.67, which should let dual-wielding pull ahead. I believe that Brutal Critical will actually balance out as, while your critical with a short sword will not as impressive, you also have a 50% higher chance to get a critical with an extra attack.)

So, Barbarians, at least by mid levels, will win quite a bit here.

Fighters:

Fighters have always devalued dual-wielding because they already get so many attacks. If you only get two attacks per turn normally, an extra one is 50% more attacks. But if you're attacking 4 times a turn (granted, that's only level 20 Fighters - though we'll see about that given how everyone's getting Epic Boons at 20 now) that's only 25% more. One thing we also have yet to see is how this will interact with Action Surge - I believe the wording still says once per turn, which would seem to have Fighters further devalue light weapons.

Monks:

This all depends on whether a Monk's bonus action Martial Arts unarmed strike remains a bonus action or gets similarly folded into the attack. If one could do both of these, it would allow you to attack four times a turn at level 5, quite a bit more impressive than Fighters having to wait for level 20.

Currently, the Martial Arts attack functions kind of like built-in dual-wielding along with the fighting style. If it's a choice between a Shortsword with no damage bonus (a straight d6) versus even a tier 1 monk's unarmed strike (1d4 plus probably 3) the unarmed strike will do more damage.

We just need to see how things are designed here.

Paladins:

Paladins currently don't have access to two-weapon fighting as a fighting style. But even without it, a dual-wielding paladin build is not crazy, especially at high levels. First of all, dual-wielding lets you fish for critical hits, which you can then drop a Divine Smite on. At level 11, every weapon attack you make does an extra d8 of radiant damage, which durns a potentially dinky 1d6 light weapon into 1d6+1d8, or about 8 extra damage on average (Polearm Master is great on Paladins as well, as the bonus strike may only be a d4, but with the extra d8 and getting to add your strength modifier on top of any magic bonus).

That being said, Paladins don't really struggle for bonus actions in most cases - there are the specialized smite spells, and depending on how liberal you are with such spells, you might feel better about this, but I think you won't see a huge change here.

Ranger:

For opening rounds, this can potentially be a game changer, because Hunter's Mark is now being positioned as a central Ranger mechanic (not that it wasn't before). I can definitely say that my Gloomstalker dual-wielder would sometimes feel frustrated that things were dying each turn, and so he'd only get a turn on something with Hunter's Mark, and not be able to take advantage of doing 2d6 damage with his main hand and off hand.

The point is, Hunter's Mark is the sort of spell that gains value for every attack you make, but is also rather demanding of your bonus action, as you'll often need to use that to move the effect from one target to the next as your foes go down. Freeing up your bonus action is going to make this way less painful.

I'll also note that the Crossbow Expert feat has been updated with this in mind - sort of. The current version lets you make an attack with a hand crossbow (or now, a crossbow with the light property, which is at least currently just those) as a bonus action after you make an attack with a one-handed weapon. Here, the implication is that you can always wield a hand crossbow and get the same benefit of the light weapon, but this lets you add your ability modifier to the damage. This might actually be a nerf, as I don't know that this will allow you to use the same crossbow for the "normal" attacks and the bonus, light weapon attack. (Also, Jeremy Crawford has said that "ignoring the loading property" only allows you to use it with something like Extra Attack, and still expects you to have a hand free to reload). Indeed, this could either be a buff or a nerf, as on one hand it could imply that even if you have, say, a rapier in one hand, you don't need that free to load the hand crossbow. But it also seems to imply that if you have, say, a souped-up +3 Hand Crossbow, you need a second to fire off the off-hand attack.

Rogues:

Rogues might be the big winners here. Dual-wielding as a Rogue is generally a really good idea, because it significantly increases the chance to get sneak attack. The actual damage of the off-hand attack is kind of inconsequential, because you're getting way more out of it when you get a chance to get your sneak attack after missing on the first attack.

Let's imagine a scenario to demonstrate: We have a +5 to hit and are attacking something with an AC of 16, meaning we have to roll an 11 or higher to hit the target (and obviously critting on a 20). We'll say we're level 3, so our sneak attack is 2d6. We're using Daggers because we're being stylish rather than optimized.

So, our "hit array" is:

Miss 1-10 (50%), Hit 11-19 (45%), Crit 20 (5%)

We start by calculating the damage when just attacking once (and we're assuming we've got an ally in 5 ft of the target and don't have advantage).

So, our damage will be 1d4+3+2d6, or 5.5+7, aka 12.5. Crit damage is 2d4+3+4d6, or 22 on average.

So, 45% times 12.5 is 5.625 and 5% times 22 is 1.1, meaning our total average damage per attack (in a single-attack scenario) is 6.725.

But, when we dual-wield, we calculate this differently. Sneak Attack can trigger on either attack, but only once per turn. Thus, if we miss with the first attack, we can potentially get the damage on the second. The way we calculate this is the following: We start by simply calculating the weapon damage for the first attack on its own and subject it to the same Hit/Crit chance coefficients to find our average weapon damage per first attack. We do the same for the second attack (which will be less as we're not adding our Dexterity modifier to the off-hand damage).

However, for the Sneak Attack, we start by applying the same to its 2d6, which will account for the first attack. Because a hit on the first attack means no sneak attack on the second, we need to basically imagine a nested, microcosmic scenario where we miss the first attack and then apply the same thing.

Essentially: Our chance to get sneak attack on the second attack only happens if the first misses, and so we're only working in the 50% of the time that the first attack misses. Within that scenario, we then have the same chance as before, so we take our usual 45% hit chance times hit damage and 5% crit chance times crit damage and then multiply it by 50% to account that this is only ever happening if the first attack misses.

The ultimate upshot of this is that Sneak Attack in this case goes from missing 50% of the time to only 25% of the time, which should increase our potential damage significantly. Let's calculate it out:

Main Hand Weapon Hit: 1d4+3, or 5.5

Main Hand Weapon Crit: 2d4+3, or 8

Damage per first main weapon attack: 45% x 5.5 + 5% x 8, or 2.875.

Off Hand Weapon Hit: 1d4, or 2.5

Off Hand Weapon Crit: 2d4, or 5

Damage per off hand attack: 45% x 2.5 + 5% x 5, or 1.125 + 0.25, or 1.375

Sneak Attack Hit: 2d6, or 7

Sneak Attack Crit: 4d6, or 14

Main Hand Sneak Attack Damage Per Attack: 45% x 7 + 5% x 14, or 3.15 + .7, or 3.85

Off Hand Sneak Attack Damage Per Attack: 50% x that last number, or 1.925

Now, we add them all up and find that our total damage average per round is 10.025.

That's a huge jump from the 6.725 when attacking with just one weapon, and most of that difference is accounted for in the bump to sneak attack.

Now, what does this matter? Rogues can already dual-wield light weapons. The key here I think is that Rogues are also a class that really likes to use bonus actions - there's basically no reason not to use a bonus action on your turn thanks to Cunning Action at 2nd level.

So, now you can get these two attacks in and then potentially hide to get advantage on a subsequent attack or dash or disengage to position yourself more favorably. One popular move is to run up to a foe that is within melee of an ally, attack, and then disengage, forcing them to chase after you (and draw an opportunity attack from your ally) if they want to punish you.

    So, in conclusion, I'd say that our probable biggest beneficiary of this change is the Rogue, though I think that Rangers and Barbarians are going to be very happy about it as well. (I'm curious to see if there's any errata for subclasses printed outside of the PHB - the Soul Knife would probably love to be able to get their extra psychic blade as part of the attack. That does have the Dex bonus built into it, though, so who knows.

Elden Ring, Stage by Stage: Limgrave

 So, I've poured a lot of hours into Elden Ring. I've beaten the game on three characters (though I got help on the final boss on my Dragon incantation Arcane build) and I think I've faced nearly everything in the game.

There is a lot. FromSoft's games have always had out-of-the-way things to find, but the scope of the Lands Between dwarfs Yharnam, Lordran, Dranleic (I assume, never played that one,) and Lothric.

One thing that I think is quite notable, though, is that if you take your time and smell the roses, the game is easier than the others, though I'm also tempted to try re-playing one of the older games and putting a little more focus on leveling up my HP stat and worrying less about my throughput stats and see if the games wind up feeling easier.

However, it can be useful to figure out a gameplan. I think it's always good to have a sense of what sort of character you want to build throughout your playthrough, even though the relative abundance of Larval Tears makes re-speccing relatively easy (after beating the likely second major boss).

Generally speaking, I recommend being as much of a completionist as possible, especially if you're a new player, because you'll get the equipment and the levels you'll need to make the challenging areas and bosses easier. I recommend as well holding off on "world bosses" in certain areas until you're nearly done with everything there.

Also, I might not know where everything is here - while I've picked over the game with a fine-tooth comb, it's also vast.

Stage One: Northern Limgrave (not including Stormhill). We're defining this as the area north of Agheel Lake, but beneath Stormhill.

You start the game in Limgrave, but even this area is kind of divided into expanding regions of relative difficulty. There are three mini-dungeons in this area - a cave north of the road between the church and the gatefront ruins that is very short. There's also the first catacombs dungeon northwest of that along the same cliff walls, and finally a demi-human cave. This last one is actually the subject of one of your earliest NPC quests. There is also one dungeon which is the heroes' grave whose stonesword key-locked door you'll pass when first emerging from the tutorial cave. I recommend saving this for later, as it's pretty tough (this notably has an Arcane-scaling Sacred Seal in it, which will be a must for any dragon-magic build or anyone who wants to mix in some incantations with a bleed or otherwise status-effect-heavy build). Note that if you continue on through the Demi-Human cave, you'll find another exit that takes you to an island (otherwise inaccessible) with a dragon shrine - if you want to learn Dragon Incantations, this will be the place to learn them until you can get to the other one in Caelid.

NPCs and Quests: In this first area, the only real quest is the starting one of Boc, the Seamster. There's a slightly discolored tree near the road south of the gatefront ruins that you can roll into to show Boc, and then pick up a quest from him. If you then go into the Demi-human cave on the coast, you can find him by the site of grace and then give him the sewing needle you get off the boss. He'll follow you around and alter clothes (which basically means removing or adding back on cloaks to chest armor) for free once you do. There's another leg to his quest, but we'll worry about that later.

World Bosses: There are two world bosses in this area. The first should be very obvious - the Tree Sentinel, who rides around right where you emerge from the starting cave and is there as newbie bait (or for hardcore players to try to down before they can even spend those runes on levels). The other is the first of the Night's Cavalry enemies, who appears on the bridge leading further into Limgrave, but only at night. Remember that if you die to these guys, you'll want to rest at a Grace Site and wait until Nightfall to try again - the same is true for all but one of the Deathbirds).

Stage Two: Agheel Lake and Environs

You could argue this is part of that same starting area, but there is a bit of a step up in difficulty here. This is the area around Agheel Lake.

There are a couple of mini-dungeons to search out. There is the mine in the north of the lake (with a red-rimmed hole marked on the map) that will get you some smithing stones to upgrade your first weapon. Following the river northeast out of the lake, you can find both a small cave with some bandits and Patches as the "boss," though I recommend talking to Bloody Finger Hunter Yura before you approach, as there's your first NPC invader outside. Further up that river is another catacomb dungeon. East of the road down toward the Weeping Peninsula to the south, there's a ruins with a big Miranda Flower in it. There's a way down into the basement where you can fight a Pumpkinhead as a boss (summon some spirits to get him to turn his back and let you get some decent attacks in) and it's here where you'll find Sellen, a Sorcery teacher (you can make her your primary sorcery teacher if you want, and give your scrolls to her, but I recommend saving all your spell scrolls and prayerbooks for Miriel up in Liurnia so you can do one-stop-shopping.)

A word of caution: the ruins on the south part of the lake have two treasure chests. One holds the Twinblade, a fun weapon for dex-heavy builds (especially if you put a bleeding infusion on it) while the other is a trap that puts you in a dungeon you are almost certainly not high enough level for in Caelid, and you'll be stuck there until you can get back to the entrance of the dungeon. It's not impossible to escape, but it will be a real challenge and pain especially for new players.

NPCS and Quests: Bloody Finger Hunter Yura can be found under a curved ruin (making a kind of arch) south of the lake. He'll basically tell you to be careful, but will help you with the NPC invader near Patches' cave. Afterward, you can speak with him further up that river. Patches himself will surrender when you do enough damage to him, and you can meet him at various other places (and, as always, get pushed off a cliff by him). Of note is that, after you return to him following this peace agreement, he'll sell an (expensive) item that can stun Margit the Fell for a couple seconds once per fight attempt (and you can fight Margit up to three times in the game). Sellen also has a quest line that you can do if you have high intelligence, though this starts a while later.

Also, not a dungeon, but some ruins on the cliffs in the southeast here have a scroll that allows Sellen or other sorcery trainers to teach you other sorceries.

World Bosses: Agheel is your first dragon world boss, and killing them lets you get the Agheel's Flame incantation at a shrine. Again, you should be patient and avoid this guy until you feel you've done most of the other stuff.

Evergaol: There is an Evergaol in the south, but it's also part of Blaidd's quest (see below,) so you can talk to him first and summon him as an NPC ally, making the fight here much easier (like, you can practically just let him do it).

Stage Three: Mistwood

The truth is that there isn't a ton in Mistwood, so I'm going to count the region to the north as part of it. In the wood itself, Fort Haight is kinda-sorta a mini dungeon (though much smaller than most). You can find Kenneth Haight on top of a fallen bit of architecture north of the woods and he'll ask you to re-take the fort. In terms of actual mini-dungeons, the only one I can think of right now is an easily-missed cave up in the north near the coast (you'll need to use those Torrent stream things to jump up the cliffs).

In the ruins with the first Tibia Mariner (see below) there's also a really great Talisman, the Green Turtle Talisman, which is worth picking up.

NPCS: As mentioned, there's Kenneth Haight, who is really kind of a supporting character in Nepheli Loux's quests. Also, when you first pass by the ruins in the western part of the wood (with a deadly sleeping Runebear within) you'll hear some howling. You can then go to the merchant in the Church of Elleh, who will teach you the "snap" emote that will then let you call down the howling wolf-man, Blaidd, who will give you another little quest, and becomes a major NPC in Ranni's quest chain. Up in the ruins atop the cliffs on the road to Caelid is D, Hunter of the Dead, who will task you with (or simply congratulate you if you've already done it) defeating the Tibia Mariner in the ruins. If you do so, he'll show you where the teleporter to go to the Bestial Sanctum is, where you can turn in Deathroot to Gurranq to get Bestial incantations and other goodies.

Stage Four: Weeping Peninsula

At this point, you're probably fine to go north to Stormhill, but there's a lot you can do down in the Weeping Peninsula, so you might as well. All the way to the south is Castle Morne, one of the game's sort of "major mini-dungeons" or "not-quite legacy dungeons." Before we go there, though, we have several things we can do first. Up on the eastern cliffs in the northeast is a catacomb dungeon (beware that it has a tough boss for lower levels). Traveling into the western part of the region, there's an out-of-the-way cave dungeon on the shore facing the rest of Limgrave, with a Rune Bear as its boss. Between the hill with the village full of frenzied flame people and the hill with the minor erdtree is a mine dungeon - always good to do those for smithing stones. There's another catacomb dungeon kind of underneath that minor erdtree that is fairly easy to find if you simply ride south from the church north of the tree. Finally, there is a hard-to-find cave dungeon underneath one of the churches (accessible via an entrance in the cliffs below) that has a Miranda Flower as a boss in perhaps the tiniest boss room in the game.

NPCs and Quests: Upon crossing the bridge into the peninsula (is it not technically an island?) you can meet Irina, who asks you to take a letter to her father in Castle Morne. Irina, or rather, whoever it is that inhabits her body, becomes an important NPC in Liurnia and part of the Frenzied Flame story, but I think you can technically skip this and still do that - but no reason you should. Her father can be found a bit out-of-the-way once you get to the top of the castle, and will basically say "cool, I'm going to chill here until you beat the boss."

World Bosses: There are two night-only world bosses here. One is a second Night's Cavalry, who you can find very near the site of grace with a merchant north of the outer walls of Castle Morne. The other is a Deathbird, who can be found not far from there, underneath the same walls to the west. There's also a wandering mausoleum, which you can use to duplicate remembrances in case you want both of a boss' items. Also, there's the Demihuman Queen in a big ruin in the lowlands to the north (near the Runebear cave dungeon). Additionally, there's an Erdtree Avatar near the minor erdtree.

Evergaol: This evergaol requires a Stonesword key, and has an Ancient Hero of Zamor in it.

Stage Five: Stormhill

We're getting there - now we go up from the gatefront ruins (or west from the village with the Tibia Mariner) to Stormhill. There's only one mini-dungeon here, I believe, which is a catacombs in the cliffs east of Stormveil Castle (not the first cliffs, but near the bridge to that village). Stormveil Castle is, of course, the first major dungeon of the game, and what we're building toward here.

NPCs and Quests: In terms of quest-quests, you'll want to talk to Roderika in the shack after you enter, but I doubt many would miss her. You can also meet Recusant Bernahl, who will continue popping up for quite a long time. However, the best NPC you can meet here (though weirdly he didn't show up there on my latest playthrough - thankfully, if you miss him, you don't lose out on his quests) is Warrior Jar Alexander, the very best thing in any FromSoft game.

World Bosses: There are two night-only world bosses. One is the Bell-Bearing Hunter found at the Warmaster's Shack (where you can find Bernahl during the day). The other is another Deathbird a bit southeast of there.

Evergaol: There's another Evergaol here with a Crucible Knight in it. Good luck, you'll need it.

Stage Six: Stormveil Castle

I'm not going to go super in-depth here, but you'll start with a fight against Margit the Fell Omen, and ultimately face Godrick the Grafted as you first major boss. There's also an ulcerated tree spirit down in the lower levels, but I recommend coming back to this after you've leveled up a bit and are ready to progress Fia's quests.

NPCs and Quests: You'll meet Rogier here (and can summon him to fight Margit) and Nepehli Loux (whom you can summon for Godrick). Note also that Gatekeeper Gastoc will steal a bit of your runes every time you die - you might not notice, but you'll see that the amount you collect after doing a corpse run isn't the full amount you dropped. I believe you can find him in various places and confront him about it, but I don't know that that ends until you've beaten Godrick.

Ok, so that - I think - covers Limgrave. There are obviously some important items you might find out in the world, but I think this will more or less give you a sense of how to feel you really haven't left any major stones unturned.