TL;DR:
-You can swap to a different Covenant at any time, without any cost. It’s instant and can be done by simply talking to a certain NPC.
-Swapping BACK to a covenant you specced out of is the hard part.
If you switched covenants and wish to return to your original one, then you’ll need to do some time-gated busywork.
You are given a ‘fill the bar’ quest. You need to fill that bar by doing covenant specific WQ’s, dungeons and whatnot.
This is weekly, so can be done at any time in a given reset
The next week you’ll receive another ‘fill the bar’ quest. So do it all over again.
The next next week you’ll presumably be allowed to return to your original Covenant.
Renown is kept track of and is covenant specific.
Switching to a different Covenant will put your Renown at 0.
Swapping back to your original one will keep any Renown you earned with them.
Conclusion: Blizzard does not really want you to swap Covenants and swapping them HEAVILY is going to result in having to do time gated content. You can’t swap them around QUICKLY, you can’t pre-stock stuff in your bank like swapping Scryers - Aldor - Scryers back.
But if you made a bad choice in the beginning and want to rectify this choice - it’s not a big deal. All you’re going to lose is some Renown and that will likely have a catch up system in place.
that’s true, but more efficient way is to simply have 4 characters. There will be more Covenant specific story in patched content and grinding this on 1 character is going to be difficult and full of hurdles.
Shadowlands does not have any stupid alt hostile mechanics in place. Only thing holding back your alt is gear - as it always have been. No lengthy questlines, no corruptions, no cloak leveling, no essence gridning, no echoes grinding. Forget all this crap, it doesn’t exist in 9.0. Blizzard actually expects people to have 4 characters by the end of Shadowlands this time.
@Plamcia - Renown is basically rep with a covenant. Think of it as guild reputation. If you leave your guild and join a new one you’re put back on Neutral with it.
No consequences from swapping aside from being put at 0 Renown. And ofc losing your previous Covenant abilities.
Mount and transmog - that’s unknown. Presumably if you unlock it you’ll keep it in the wardrobe but there might be restrictions on actually using it. Similar to Artifact Weapons in Legion which were spec specific.
I really don’t know how I feel about this. At this point, the community has decided they are going to be swapping covenants. It takes at least 3 days to swap a covenant and you can plan it around weekly resets. It’s important to note that you keep your current covenant until the swap is complete. You can also do the progress part of your current covenant even while swapping.
Important to note that if you try out all the covenants you will hit a point where swapping to any covenant will require the week-long quest.
It seems you can totally swap covenants every week and keep all of them up all the time on one character, but that will be absolutely degenerate way of playing, not fun at all.
The main problem for me still remains the soft requirement to have 4 characters of the same class and play all of them.
Shadowlands AP. However, unlike BFA and Legion AP, renown is finite, has a weekly cap which can be reached easily. Catch up is enabled from the start, so if you switch to a new covenant in 2 months, you’ll be able to get your renown with it to where it should be fairly quick.
You lose access to your old covenant abilities and soulbinds, and you start with your new covenant from where you left it off. This could be starting from scratch. Again, there’s catch up enabled from the start, but it will require extra effort to catch up your current covenant.
However, you don’t lose any progress with your old covenant. It is saved.
Not sure, but Blizz has said they don’t want you wearing the tmog of a covenant you’re not a member of.
Then this expansion will be rated 0. My class still bugged and not fun to play. Cosmetic restricted and leather like always have worst design. Only good thing is that in next 3 years there is chance for better expassion.
cosmetics are relative to one’s preference.
I like leather sets the most in this game. Would love to xmog hunter into them, they fit hunters much more than this bulky mail armor.
But then, mail sets have been nearly universally panned by all players. Good looking mail sets are few and really far between.
Go to pandaria and look on monk sets, all are garbage. This same with WoD sets, monk class hall set is worst, all other class have really good sets, but monk gets pope hat…
Restrictions for transmogs are stupid.
I cannot use 30% of leather gear because I’m monk.
This same we have unuasable cosmetics.
I guess you’ll have to be a member of a certain covenant if you want to use cosmetics and mounts. I assume that when you swap between different covenants you’ll see a notification in the mount/transmog tab wich will tell you that you gotta be a part of an X covenant to use it (just like with the Horde mounts on the Alliance character)
I see it as the most logical thing
Lost no, but they may require you to go back to that covenant to actually use them (so locked rather than lost)
No real confirmation tho, that’s just speculation based on how they presented the covenants
You only have access to the 3 soulbinds and 2 abilities of your current covenant. You also have to get renown for the new covenant altho
Pretty much some kind of reputation bar. It has 40 ranks, and each rank reward something such as pets, a mount, toys, increased ilvl from WQ, new soulbinds and in particular additional rows in your soulbinds.
At rank 1/40 you only have access to one soulbind and a few nodes, but slightly before 40/40 all 3 soulbinds are completely unlocked. (8 rows in each soulbind)
So there’s player power involved in renown, only that unlike the previous systems it has solid catch-up from day one and the cap is timegated to+ 2 per week iirc (so you only need to catch-up then do th bare minimum to be optimal).
More importantly it’s very easy to farm (one weekly torghast run and a “gather currency” weekly quest which is also pretty fast. Completing one of these quests give you one full rank, no diminishing returns or exponential cost
The questlines also reward some renown but that’s a one time thing. Overall very alt friendly, far better than AP in legion or BFA.
This is simply not true.
If you are part of the 0.1% of players who need every little powergain they can get to achieve something, yes this will be something they will do.
But any other given player can just pick a covenant and enjoy the ride.
There is no soft requirement made up except by yourself.
If you want to experience all covenants and their stories / rewards, you will want to get 4 characters to do so.
But nobody is making up a requirement of playing 4 of the same classes on different covenants.
So please stop spreading this nonsense. Thank you.
