How exactly do island expeditions work?

General Discussion
Im mostly a pvp player and have preferred not to dabble in the island stuff but recently ive used it to gain some levels on alts but now i see that theres some cool mounts and xmogs I can get from them also. Im a little confused though about some things, like what exactly are the invasions and are they something that needs to be triggered? How come everyone in them just skips past nodes and runs straight to mobs is it a time thing like they'd rather just clear mobs instead of mining & what do the quests give?

I try to ask sometimes when im in them but noone ever speaks for some reason. Ive only done them on normal and heroic so far
Blizzard wants all of that to be a mystery that you're supposed to magically figure out on your own. No idea how anyone thought that was reasonable. Especially since getting loot means trying to avoid winning for as long as possible.

What seems to have been learned so far is that you don't get rewards for winning. The rewards come from either killing rares or collecting caches that are guarded by invasion mobs. Doing so supposedly adds a related loot table to the overall loot table for the run. Though even then the drop rate is fairly low and who gets what from which loot table is pretty random. Invasions and other events are triggered by the amount of azerite collected, and then a timer. Since invasions come when there's very little azerite left to collect, it's very easy to hit the goal before they get triggered by the timer.
Everything on the island is just azerite taking a different form with the sole exception of rare named NPCs. Those occasionally drop unique loot. It may be why you see people skipping nodes. Idk about the invasions, I feel like those always happen, but I don't play islands very often at all.

As far as I know the quests just give more azerite. People don't speak because islands are very repetitive and mind numbing.
Thanks for the replies guys. I’d appreciate any more insight from more people as well if anyone has more to add
11/14/2018 12:55 PMPosted by Yatogami

It's faster and you get more loot by skipping loot and killing the elites/named bosses.
it works by giving you only a small fraction of what you collect and making azerite collection even more pointless and painful to do. Collect 9k a match get 250. Collect all 40k a week and get about 3.2k of that. its pointless and even worse that they make you stand at a table to queue instead of being able to go out and do other things.

Rares have a chance to reward you with something special at the end.
Types of trash you kill also.
Overall, poorly.

In theory, your chances at loot goes up if you kill specific mobs with a small boost if you kill the opposite faction (no clue about PVP and that though). I've also heard if you go through a portal (if you get one) you get a higher chance if you kill the guy inside. You also do not have to be 120 or win to get a drop (my hunter got a parrot mount at 114 after losing).

From what I've seen though they have nerfed the drop rate after people figured this out and were only targeting specific mobs. I haven't gotten a drop in the last 15-20 runs. It's really frustrating.

(puts out a lovely little tray of cookies for all to enjoy)

Join the Conversation

Return to Forum