One of the most common complaints about World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth was that it was extremely unfriendly to alts. Having more than one character wasn’t an impossible task by any means, but the process of gearing was arduous enough to discourage it.
Primarily, this was because of the Corruption mechanics, which were extremely difficult to catch up on. The questline to acquire Ashjra’kamas, Shroud of Resolve, was not only monotonous and long but also absolutely mandatory to access corruption resistance.
Once accessed, players still had to grind out malefic cores and ranks to upgrade the cloak to where it was of any actual use. All in all, it was one of the largest problems in a slue of issues that made having alts incredibly difficult and, at times, downright annoying.
This is far from something unique to Battle for Azeroth, but it seems like Blizzard is trying to make it stop there. Rather than make it so that World of Warcraft: Shadowlands players need to repeatedly complete their Covenant Introduction questline on multiple characters, it seems they’ll be letting players skip it.
There are some caveats, though – namely, players will have to have already finished it on one character. Second, it’s unknown if it has to be the same Covenant, or whether completing one Covenant’s introduction questline will make all future questlines of that nature skippable.
[embed]https://twitter.com/Wowhead/status/1313971326068158465?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw[/embed]Wowhead lists ten steps towards a Covenant’s introduction questline. First, you’ll have to pick what Covenant you want to join, and head to their sanctum to begin. From there, you’ll need to learn your Covenant Abilities.
Next, you’ll head out to complete three World Quests of the appropriate zone, then learn how to deposit Anima in the Reservoir. Afterwards, learn how to start an upgrade, head to the Maw, complete some tasks for Ve’nari within, return to the Sanctum, and learn your first Soulbinding.
Sounds like it’d be pretty obnoxious to do on your tenth character when you just want to get started. Tutorials are all well and good, but once you’ve done it once, you’ve done it! Thankfully, Blizzard seems to have implemented a way to skip.
Once you’ve completed a Covenant introduction questline on one character, future alts will be able to skip away after the third step. Learning your Covenant Abilities is the last thing you’ll need to do before being prompted to skip – though you’re still welcome to complete it, if so tempted.
This is a fantastic change to help make it so that players can be more in charge of their path and not be railroaded into walking around their Sanctums and completing the same tasks as last time. If changes along this path continue, Shadowlands will be much more alt friendly than Battle for Azeroth ever got close to being.