A New Deal - Best Honor Farming Method Removed in Shadowlands Season 4

[Lumy]

A New Deal - Best Honor Farming Method Removed in Shadowlands Season 4
Today we'll have a closer look at the quest A New Deal, a weekly PvP quest which is being removed in Shadowlands Season 4, and see how much it impacts different parts of the game.

August 2nd Update: It looks like the quest has been hotfixed back into the game in Shadowlands Season 4!


How does the quest work now in Season 3?
For the first five weeks of completing the quest, the rewards include 500 Honor and one of the following trinkets:

• Cosmic Gladiator's Devouring Malediction
• Cosmic Gladiator's Eternal Aegis
• Cosmic Gladiator's Resonator
• Cosmic Gladiator's Echoing Resolve
• Cosmic Gladiator's Fastidious Resolve

After unlocking all five trinkets, completing the quest rewards a total of 3000 Honor.

Solo Shuffle vs A New Deal
While Solo Shuffle has been advertised as the most efficient way to earn Honor in Patch 9.2, this has not been the case for players with multiple characters that are after the Prestigious Bloodforged Courser mount, the reward for reaching Honor Level 500.

Solo Shuffle
Solo Shuffle takes 10-15 minutes to complete (if we ignore the queue time) and rewards around 1000-1400 Honor per Brawl.

A New Deal
A New Deal takes 10-15 minutes to complete (by looting treasures and defeating rare creatures) and rewards 3000 Honor.

Even though A New Deal rewards a lower amount of honor for the first five weeks, the quest is clearly the winner since the time investment is minimal. Veteran players with multiple characters will definitely miss this quest in Season 4 and onwards, after all... nothing compares to getting 1 Honor Level in just 30-45 minutes.


How to get the PvP trinkets in Season 4?
If nothing changes from the Public Test Realms to Live and the quest is indeed removed, you might ask yourself: How will players get the Season 4 PvP trinkets?

Well, in Shadowlands Season 4 the trinkets will be added to the vendor and will be available for purchase with Conquest. This seems to match Blizzard's Rewards Experiments in Season 4 as Conquest will have a higher weekly cap than previous seasons, and then get uncapped after a few weeks into the season.

Farming Paragon Rewards
Another consequence of the quest being removed is that players will no longer easily get 35% progress on the Zereth Mortis weekly quest (Patterns Within Patterns).

The Enlightened reputation is already one of the grindiest and timegated reputations in the game, and the change above further delays the weekly quest reward of 1,250 reputation. On top of that, two paragon rewards that have a low drop chance are also covenant or profession locked, which makes them even harder to obtain from the Enlightened Broker Supplies.

• Ray Soul - Has a low chance to drop, and can only drop for characters in the Night Fae covenant.
• Enlightened Portal Research - Has a low chance to drop, and can only drop for characters that have learned Engineering.

If you have been collecting Night Fae soulshapes on a different character since the start of Shadowlands, that character will most likely not be exalted with The Enlightened. Starting from zero might feel like a waste of time since you effectively miss out on 4 paragon caches (3,000 to Friendly + 6,000 to Honored + 12,000 to Revered + 21,000 to Exalted = 42,000 total reputation). While this can be fixed by making all soulshapes account-wide, there hasn't been any update on what's going to happen with soulshapes once Dragonflight goes live.

The same goes for the Engineering item, as collectors will definitely not want to switch a profession and lose all recipes just for one small upgrade on the Wormhole Generator: Shadowlands. The on-use effect of the Enlightened Portal Research is already account-wide (Reading), so a fix to make the item drop on non-engineer characters would make sense.


Best Honor Farming Method in Season 4
With the removal of the quest A New Deal, players with multiple accounts and characters might feel incentivised to go back to afking in epic battlegrounds to grind honor for the Prestigious Bloodforged Courser mount. Note that this method has never been recommended, and actions against players accounts are much more common now due to the new report options that have been added in Patch 9.2.5.

The best honor farming method in Season 4 will probably be Solo Shuffle, which rewards an average of 1200 Honor for a 10-15 minute game. Getting the first win of the day in 2v2, 3v3 and Arena Skirmish on multiple characters is also a good idea. If you want to be even more time efficient then you might want to do Arenas only during the Arena Skirmishes Bonus Event - which happens to be up this week!

Sharpen your swords and reinforce your boards, because you’re called to the PvP Arena for the hectic mayhem of Skirmishes.

This Week: Arena Skirmishes

All week, from anywhere in Azeroth, open the Group Finder (default hotkey: i), select the Player vs. Player tab on the bottom of the window, and then under Casual, choose Arena Skirmish and JOIN BATTLE. You’ll be matched up with teammates and provided with opponents to kill in the Arena. You can also queue for a Premade group or create your own group within the Premade tab.

Look for the following all week long:

• A quest in Oribos awaits you, or if you forget to pick it up there, you can start it from within the Adventure Journal.
  
  • Quest requirement: Win 10 Arena PvP Skirmishes
    
• Passive buff: +50% honor gains from Skirmishes

If you’ve been looking to make some Honor gains, this is the week to do it!

[Unlimited Power]

I did consider leveling all my alts to 60 just to abuse A New Deal to farm honor levels, but the sheer drag of leveling characters from 50-60 kept me from it. With this now being removed with the start of season 4 anyway, I can't help but feel vindicated in my decision.

[RobertMugabe]

I kinda feel stupid now for not knowing that A New Deal was this good after you did it for a couple of weeks.

[Porkrind]

I can't imagine wanting to go back to ZM in 10.0 ever again if you hit exalted with it already, so I don't see why you'd care about the eng reward at all.

Once I hit exalted I reset my hearth to Org and I have zero desire to do the zone again. No alts, no thanks. Way too much of a grind that isn't that much fun and is overly repetitive. Hopefully they have some new ideas for end of patch content in 10.0 because this one is creatively bankrupt and we're essentially just re-doing Timeless Isle but change it up a bit so it doesn't look the same.

[Athorha]

When I play my MM hunter I go for head shots on the obvious honor boosters who have no place at such a level of honor.

[DechCJC]

Big sad. I’m just glad I’ve geared and hit exalted already.

[Echeyakee]

To be fair, this only matters to people farming honour levels, not people farming actual honour to use for upgrades/purchases. I would bet they won't even notice that quest being gone.

[Meebo]

After the nerfing of the towers in Legion, I gave up farming the honour levels. If I had known this was available earlier I would of done it.
Why report this NOW MMOChampion, this should of been news months ago.
Thanks for nothing.

[Tiwack]

Dunno why they're removing this quest entirely when they could just reduce honor-gains or progress-awarded on weekly quest, if they deem it too much/efficient for leveling honor over time... or change it to require actual pvp rather than players just farming npcs/chests and getting it done in 10mins.
Fail to see any point in spending much time in Zereth Mortis now. Feels like a big middlefinger to anyone who found out about this quest and bothered to repeat it week over week on their alts to get to the real reward burried in it.

Ignoring queue times is asinine when calculating efficiency, I guess it's back to afk'ing in random epic bgs for honor farmers now. Wouldn't want players to actually play the game when they can just appease the shareholder MAU-numbers with a login without caring what players do ingame.
This quest was awesome and something similar was sorely needed in this game for a long time, real sad to see it go and have to contend with so many afks in most big bgs once again.

- - - Updated - - -

I did consider leveling all my alts to 60 just to abuse A New Deal to farm honor levels, but the sheer drag of leveling characters from 50-60 kept me from it. With this now being removed with the start of season 4 anyway, I can't help but feel vindicated in my decision.

Considering the time investment, wouldn't this quests availability have been a suitable reward to those bothering and caring about honor levels?

- - - Updated - - -

To be fair, this only matters to people farming honour levels, not people farming actual honour to use for upgrades/purchases. I would bet they won't even notice that quest being gone.

Unless they reduce prices, I wouldn't be so sure, it was already rough to get into pvp on fresh 60s this late in the expansion, removing this quest only makes it harder to catch-up.

[Lumy]

After the nerfing of the towers in Legion, I gave up farming the honour levels. If I had known this was available earlier I would of done it.
Why report this NOW MMOChampion, this should of been news months ago.
Thanks for nothing.

That's a joke, right? The quest has been added to the game one week after Patch 9.2 went live, check the patch hotfixes for March 1, 2022.

Player versus Player

• A new weekly quest, "A New Deal" is now available from Zo'sorg in Oribos. Complete activities in Zereth Mortis with War Mode on to earn a selection of new PvP trinkets. Once all trinkets have been collected, additional Honor will be rewarded.

Even if you don't do PvP, I find it really hard that someone might miss the vendor with a quest mark on top of it. The item upgrades vendor is right next to it, as well as the npc that gives weekly quests for bonus honor and conquest. Either way, someone interested in farming honor levels should always stay up to date on what's new to PvP in every season. The quest was also spotlighted on reddit and talked about in several discord servers.

[Loveliest]

I never thought about it. This would've been useful to know when they added the quest, not now when it's going away.

- - - Updated - - -

That's a joke, right? The quest has been added to the game one week after Patch 9.2 went live, check the patch hotfixes for March 1, 2022.

Player versus Player

• A new weekly quest, "A New Deal" is now available from Zo'sorg in Oribos. Complete activities in Zereth Mortis with War Mode on to earn a selection of new PvP trinkets. Once all trinkets have been collected, additional Honor will be rewarded.

Even if you don't do PvP, I find it really hard that someone might miss the vendor with a quest mark on top of it. The item upgrades vendor is also right next to it, as well as the npc that gives weekly quests for bonus honor and conquest. Either way, someone interested in farming honor levels should always stay up to date on what's new to PvP in every season. The quest was also spotlighted on reddit and talked about in several discord servers.

There was no highlight, that's the point. They give it a highlight now and not before? Also, we're talking about THIS site, not wherever else, because THIS site is doing a going away highlight. Personally, I only read this and don't do reddit. I did the quests for trinkets and that's it, didn't think the honour would add to the levels, because not all honour gained does.
I mean I would rather not know about what I missed, what is the point. Say it when it's there or don't say it at all.

[TomBrokovski]

Always baffles me why Blizzard removes any kind of content that players are utilizing and enjoying. It's like they enjoy making bad decisions at this point.

[nvaelz]

Since farming honor level is now so BORING I'll have an opposite goal for anti farming honor level while pvping as much as possible. I'm so thankful that skirmish rewards 80 honor per win. Can't play this week tho the amazing 40 extra honor gained per win is too much for me.

I love how the game is designed for all the people that love WoW and can only play it 10 minutes a week. Finally between my overtime and extra overtime I can come home after performing intense brain surgery on multiple children at my hospital. Finally there's 10 minutes for me to be able to fully gear my character with the base ilvl honor gear in 5 minutes killing bugs, yey.

I'm totally farming almost 1k honor level yey, can't wait to kill bugs on my 15 alts every week to suppliment my need for honor. Solo Shuffle is too much fun for me, I love queueing healing in Solo Shuffle and winning 5 rounds and then the other healer rage quits every time.

I love this game and how it's designed to be so much fun.

[Lucetia]

After the nerfing of the towers in Legion, I gave up farming the honour levels. If I had known this was available earlier I would of done it.
Why report this NOW MMOChampion, this should of been news months ago.
Thanks for nothing.

Yeah, it's like back in Legion had we known they were going to revamp the Honor levels like they did a lot of us would've done the towers more frequently. Then again when the honor levels came out I remember people figured out a way to grind honor super quick. Can't remember if they reverted them back or not though.

Fail to see any point in spending much time in Zereth Mortis now. Feels like a big middlefinger to anyone who found out about this quest and bothered to repeat it week over week on their alts to get to the real reward burried in it.

The paragon itself feels like a middle finger. I think when I last counted there were 7 or 8 transmogs and something else you can get. The transmogs are at least BoE so you can sell them on AH, but not many will probably be farming them. I thought the Army of Light was bad with it's 3 mounts, but at least that grind wasn't bad plus we had rep tokens.

Even if you don't do PvP, I find it really hard that someone might miss the vendor with a quest mark on top of it. The item upgrades vendor is right next to it, as well as the npc that gives weekly quests for bonus honor and conquest. Either way, someone interested in farming honor levels should always stay up to date on what's new to PvP in every season. The quest was also spotlighted on reddit and talked about in several discord servers.

1) A lot of people don't visit reddit and/or discords. 2) The quest itself isn't easy to spot unless you actually head over to that specific area. It doesn't pop up on the map like some do and two you would assume the quest is just for pvp stuff only like the other guy next to him has been. The only people I can see actively going to that area to spot it and notice something different would be PvP'ers and people who swap covenants frequently. Otherwise a lot of Oribos is just useless and people would be more inclined to stay up top where flight masters and Maw/Korthia/ZM portals are.

Since farming honor level is now so BORING I'll have an opposite goal for anti farming honor level while pvping as much as possible. I'm so thankful that skirmish rewards 80 honor per win. Can't play this week tho the amazing 40 extra honor gained per win is too much for me.

I wish they would readjust the amount of honor needed per level. The 8800 was back when they were combining all PvP levels and didn't want people to get too high immediately. Just alter it down to like 3-5k and have us stay the same rank. So say if you were Honor Level 50 then when they adjust the amount needed you just stay 50 and progress from there.

[Piogo]

To be fair, this only matters to people farming honour levels, not people farming actual honour to use for upgrades/purchases. I would bet they won't even notice that quest being gone.

It was a good way to farm Mark of Honor at industrial levels. 3k honor per week, doing it with several alts and buying the Mark of Honor chest with everyone.

(I did the daily with 20 characters)

[Uniqed]

Such a weird decision not to wait until 10.0 to remove this. Season 4 brings no new outdoor content so ZM and "Patterns Within Patterns" will still very much be current content for the next months.

Atleast wait until Zereth Mortis is outdated and we left it before you start remove things from it?

[Lumy]

1) A lot of people don't visit reddit and/or discords. 2) The quest itself isn't easy to spot unless you actually head over to that specific area. It doesn't pop up on the map like some do and two you would assume the quest is just for pvp stuff only like the other guy next to him has been.

Most collectors use external resources and read the patch notes. If they don't do research to make their honor grind more efficient, then that's on them. If someone interested in farming honor takes the weekly pvp quests for arenas/battlegrounds/solo shuffle, and then ignores the npc 5 yards away that gives a quest for honor... then that's on them again.

The only people I can see actively going to that area to spot it and notice something different would be PvP'ers and people who swap covenants frequently. Otherwise a lot of Oribos is just useless and people would be more inclined to stay up top where flight masters and Maw/Korthia/ZM portals are.

I agree with that, although Mythic+ players also visit the area to upgrade their gear.

[Lucetia]

Most collectors use external resources and read the patch notes. If they don't do research to make their honor grind more efficient, then that's on them. If someone interested in farming honor takes the weekly pvp quests for arenas/battlegrounds/solo shuffle, and then ignores the npc 5 yards away that gives a quest for honor... then that's on them again.

Not necessarily. I know tons of collectors who don't use either of those resources or do the quests since it's usually rated stuff. Solo shuffle I know you can grab from the Adventure Guide.

I agree with that, although Mythic+ players also visit the area to upgrade their gear.

Don't even need that for M+. You can do it in your covenant or Korthia as well. Anywhere that offers the upgrade system in Shadowlands pretty much (not sure if old areas work too).

[Bats]

What is this "Reward: A PvP loot box"? What's in it anyone know?

[Lumy]

What is this "Reward: A PvP loot box"? What's in it anyone know?

The official post hasn't been updated in years. The rewards are 500 Anima, 500 Honor and 175 Conquest.