Well, officially the new patch notes are out, but the only thing they indicate for changes is:
New Calendar feature: Players will be able to access the new Calendar feature by clicking on the new icon located in the top right corner of their mini map. The calendar will track in game events, allow raid scheduling, and more. New Vanity Pet and Mount changes: Players will now be able to access their non-combat pets and mounts by clicking on the pets tab in the Character Info panel. These pets and mounts will be now learnable much like spells or abilities. Once a vanity pet or mount is learned, the icon will disappear from within a player’s inventory and reappear in the appropriate tab under the pet tab under Character Info. Say goodbye to your vanity pets and mounts taking up bag and bank slots!
But just a little bit of play time shows there are other differences. For one thing, I verified the change to runic power decay that I mentioned in my post yesterday. After going into combat and maxing out the runic power to 100/100, I sat around and waited to see what would happen. As suspected, it just sat there at full. If this is an intentional change, it’s certainly welcome!
The other major changes focus on Ebon Hold, the Death Knight starting area. The area has been revised significantly, including a new flight path in and out of the city. The flight path uses the new skeletal gryphon mount (shown below), which is also new Death Knight only mount at level 70 (The Winged Steed of the Ebon Blade).
The new skeletal gryphon mount leaves Ebon Hold
Also related to my previous post about Death Knight starting gear, I wanted to create a new Death Knight to get a screenshot of the first set of gear you start with.
A brand new Tauren with the Lich King
And another screenshot of pwnshop after completing the first set of quests to leave Ebon Hold and start my adventures in Outland.
Pwnshop posing in quest gear
The last bit of info I caught today was that Blizzard has immortalized some of the early Death Knight players by adding their names and stories to a book in Ebon Hold. The book is only visible when playing as a brand new Death Knight, and supposedly its contents change as you advance in your initial quest line, so it’s something I’ll have to explore in a future post.
Unfortunately for me, the server was going down for a restart right when I finished up with these screenshots, so it looks like two nights in a row of logging in for about 10 minutes to experiment before being logged out again for the night. With any luck I’ll get another good test session in soon, and get this little Death Knight into the 60s.
Until next time…
Tags: Death Knight, death knight mount, Ebon Hold, gear, mount, patch, set, skeletal gryphon, wotlk, wow
