WoW Shadowlands: Changing Your Covenant BACK
Back in December, I flipped the switch on my mage, changing him from a frost Venthyr mage to a fire Night Fae mage. Changing Covenant certainly came with a number of impacts to deter people from making the switch willy-nilly but at the time I was happy with my choice. After a period of adaptation to the play style, I became quite enamored with it. Enough so that I maxed out two separate legendaries.
But… It wasn’t frost. And frost was what I came into this expansion wanting to be. As a few patches along the way increased frost damage and as my gear got a point where I could be competitive with the rest of the raid — even while testing it out still as Night Fae — the urge to go back Venthyr grew stronger.
I wondered what would await me upon my return.
Would rejoining my previous covenant mean restarting from scratch all over again? Zero renown, no upgrades?
I knew I had two weeklies to work through, but that wasn’t the part I was worried about. Well- except for the timing. If going back DID reset everything, at what point in the conversion process would I lose access to what I had under Night Fae? My guild raids Wednesday nights, with reset on Tuesdays. That could be a really bad mix.
Fortunately for you, if you’re in the same boat — I have answers.
Returning to an Old Covenant: What Happens?
So first things first: When do you lose access to your current covenant?
Not until you completely switch! You can run through both weekly quests without losing anything you currently hold from the covenant you’re leaving. You can continue to use their covenant gear / transmog, you can use the war table, you can use, most critically, your conduits.
It isn’t until you hand in the second weekly and accept the transfer back to your old Covenant that the ‘switch’ happens.
This meant that I could complete the first weekly at my leisure. I got it done in one reset quickly and easily just by queuing for and blasting through normal dungeons in Revendreth (since I was going back to Venthyr, your area will of course need to adjust for other covenants). A couple of runs while doing a few WQ’s between queues and it was done.
I handed that in, then the wait begins for the weekly reset. After which, you can pick this up too. I completed it on reset before my raid, but I didn’t hand it in until after. Mostly because I didn’t yet know what would happen when I did hand it in.
But here’s the answer for you: You will be returned to the state you left that covenant in.
Your:
- Renown Level
- Upgrades
- Anima Storage
- Campaign Progress
- Wartable Companions*
Will all be where you left them. For me this gave me a starting renown level of 14 or so, and a 5k anima storage which was actually healthier than the one I left behind. ;)
I add the asterisk to Wartable Companions as any non-faction specific ones will travel with you again, and be whatever level you got them to. Your old faction specific companions will just be whatever level you left them. Also though, if you’ve been doing Torghast runs and unlocking faction specific companions for your (now ex-)covenant, then you’ll potentially have a bunch of companions waiting for collection in Torghast for you — depending on course on whether or not you collected ’em all in the first place.
So all-in-all, switching back was a lot less painful than I was expecting!
Your experience will of course be better or worse depending at what point you switched and how far you took the covenant you want to return to vs. the one you’d be leaving — but the catch-up mechanics are all in full force and doing essentially anything will earn you renown in pretty quick order.
I did my emissary dailies (for the first time in yonks), went into LFR (also for the first time in yonks) and then topped it off with a little running of Mythics until I caught up enough to get my soulbind back up to the second potency conduit slot and then called it a day.
The rest I’ve earned relatively passively, just by doing what I would anyway to finish up.
Hopefully this information helps anyone else considering a return covenant switch, let me know if any questions still remain! :)
