WoW The War Within: How to unlock Ecological Succession

Not everything in WoW The War Within revolves around killing things, and that leads me to Ecological Succession. Once you’ve completed most of the story, this optional storyline will unlock. It purpose is to help bring some animals back to the shattered world of K’aresh. It’s not a complicated or difficult storyline, but it will take some time. Each week, players will undergo a trial for Ve’nari, and bring either experts, or animals to The Oasis.

The rewards include a variety of achievements, and perhaps most importantly, a shot at one of the new mounts introduced in patch 11.2. If you’re looking to unlock this new gameplay mode, here’s what you need to know.

How to unlock Ecological Succession in WoW The War Within

WoW’s Ecological Succession storyline unlocks in The War Within once you’ve completed Chapter 4 of the Season 3 storyline. This is also likely where the Story Mode raid will unlock, so it’s something to keep in mind. Once you’ve completed Shadows En Garde, you can head over to the Tazavesh Inn and pick up the quest The Oasis from Om’talad, found near the inn itself. In total, you’re going to complete quite a few quests to unlock the repeatable/weekly quests:

If you're going to do this quest in one sitting, block out an hour or so. It's gonna take awhile (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

Don’t Bee Crazy
Sticky Fingers
Bee in the Bonnet
Such a Sleebee-head
An Un-Bee-Lievable Solution
Beehemian Rhapsody
To K’aresh
A Bee Test
Bee Strong
Photagra-Bee
Primus Buzzness
Tranquila-Bee
Botany, Finally
Let There Bee Love
Oh Honey Honey
Waggle Dance
Hiving a Hard Day
Bee Roll
The Royal Procession

This will send you on a few more quests, to get introduced to your new labors. Custodian Duties is incredibly short, but very funny, and then you’ll work on Day One Orientation and Ongoing Activities. These will have you meeting a few of the animals in the area, and performing a few very minor activities in The Oasis.

These won’t take long. Completing them will unlock Junk Mail, which will send you back to Tazavesh. Fly through the glowing rings in the air and dump fliers for The Oasis down onto the populace for the next part of WoW’s Ecological Succession.

Upon completing this, you’ll pick up To Stormsong, for your first mission. Ve’nari will even give you a portal to take to get there. Now, you begin the lengthy quest chain to bring bees back to K’aresh. The first two quests, Don’t Bee Crazy and Sticky Fingers will have you gathering honey, and killing Maulers.

The Maulers and Globs of Honey are about the only fighting you really do in this quest chain until the dailies (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

After that, the Ecological Succession intro quest chain continues in WoW with Bee In the Bonnet and Such a Sleebee-head. Pick up the Tranquilizing Darts, and either kill/tranq the nearby Hive Guardians. You will also need to investigate a trio of Bee Hives. None of this is too far away, nor is it too challenging, in terms of combat.

The most frustrating part of Such a Sleebee-Head is if someone tranquilizes a Hive Guardian, nobody else can get credit until the tranquilizing dart wears off. If you see green Z’s above the bee’s head, someone else already got to it. Complete these when you’ve wrapped up the objectives to get An Un-Bee-Lievable Solution and Beehemian Rhapsody. Sorry, the bee puns aren’t going anywhere.

These quests are also pretty easy: Vacuum up some honey bees, and put a honey pot out to attract a queen bee. After you speak to the Ve’nari Communicator and get your Bee Vacuum, look for the glowing bees, and activate your quest item to suck them up. You might get lucky if you check (71.23, 67.98) and find a huge chunk of bees just hanging out.

When these are done, pick up To K’aresh and head back through the portal for the next step of WoW’s Ecological Succession quest chain. You’ll next pick up A Bee Test, which will send you to Eco-Dome Primus and speak to Botanist Alaenra.

This is the best-case scenario: lots of bees together at once for an easy photo (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

Ecological Succession in WoW isn’t just farming animals. We also need experts to take care of them, so this quest introduces that part of the gameplay. Next up is Bee Strong and Photogra-Bee, where you’ll photograph some bees, gather some honey, and feed the Queen Bee you took with you.

The photos are admittedly pretty annoying to get. When you’re near a bee, click the photo icon, and move until you see a light shining down over the bee. Then you can take your photograph; otherwise you have to do it again. Try to find groups of them together, to make this faster. Then, just go gather honey and feed the queen! That part’s simple. The honey is right next to the quest giver.

The next Ecological Succession quest objective in WoW is Primus Buzzness. You’ll meet the quest giver a bit deeper into the Eco-Dome, and complete this to pick up the Tranquila-Bee and Botany, Finally quests.

It's not too hard to tranq and tag the bees, honestly (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

You just need to throw some darts at bees and tag them (interact with them), and cut some flora; just look for the glowing plants and bees to make this an easy pair of quests to complete. The range on the throw is very generous. Just click on the bee to throw the dart, and then click on them again to put the tag on.

The plants you need to cut are found next to trees in this area, making them also pretty easy to spot. Next up is Let There Bee Love. Now we’re heading back to The Oasis for the next part of this WoW quest, and upon arrival, you’ll pick up Oh Honey Honey.

You can choose to stay awhile and listen to Botanist Alaenra, or you can just go grab the honeycombs, and pet the Queen Bee; I chose to stay, but you don’t have to. The honeycombs are to the north nearby, and glow so they’re easy to spot. When you’ve done that, head to (76.33, 29.69) in The Oasis to pet the Queen Bee.

Dance, Magic Dance! (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

Waggle Dance is the next quest, and will have you follow some patterns on the ground, to learn a trio of Bee Dances? That’s what it sounds like to me, anyway. Run along the circles on the ground until they’ve all been covered, and you can move on. Hiving a Hard Day is the next quest, and you need to find 10 Overworked Bees and pick them up. The bees are glowing and laying on the ground resting, making them pretty easy to find. They’re all over The Oasis, too.

Then head to where the Queen Bee is and look for a glowing spot on the ground (it’s incredibly hard to see). You’ll find it at (76.21, 29.72). Are you tired of photographing bees yet in WoW? No? Well, good! The next quest, Bee Roll has you doing that again. You’ll likely find several bees closer to the Queen Bee, like I did. Take your photos, but if they aren’t working, log out and back in. If you don’t see spotlights on the bees, the photos won’t take, and you won’t get credit.

The Royal Procession is next and it requires you to find a new home for the Queen Bee. Head to its location and interact with it. This quest is infuriating. You’ll need to head to specific locations, and when the icon shows up to check the location, click on it. I’ll provide the coordinates below.

This might be the most tedious quest in the entire WoW 11.2 patch (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

You’ll need to do this three times to find the final hive location for this Ecological Succession quest in WoW. The game does give you a hint: there will be a brown cloud you can follow to the general location of a hive. However, the coordinates are below, to make things easier:

/way 76.31, 29.69 Bee Location
/way 76.02, 32.09 Hive 1 Location
/way 72.19, 31.63 Hive 2 Location
/way 72.98, 36.72 Final Hive Location

Make sure you use the Check Location icon at all three Hive Locations to complete this quest. Once you’ve done all of these quests, you finally unlock the repeatable quest for this area. In this case, it was Shake your Bee-hind, where you need to dance for some bees.

It’s the same thing as Waggle Dance, so just go to the areas, and walk the patterns. This will also unlock some other daily/weekly quests you can complete in this area, to gain Valorstones, Crests, and Renown with The K’areshi Trust.

With these daily/repeatable quests, you've done the bulk of the work to unlock this mode. Get ready for more next week! (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

Each week, there will be more additions to this, bringing other animals and animal experts to The Oasis. This will also unlock your weekly quest, Ecological Succession.

You need to fill the bar on your screen by completing these repeatable quests, and returning anima from a devourer assault (which periodically happens at the Eco-Domes). When that bar is full, you’ll get a Wriggling Pinnacle Cache once per week, that has a chance to drop great gear, and even the Curious Slateback mount.

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About the author

Jason is an Esports and Gaming journalist at Sportskeeda holding an amazing 11 years of experience under his belt. Having put out 4000-plus articles and amassing over 12 million reads for Sportskeeda, he is among the company’s most experienced writers. Jason holds a Bachelor's degree in English from UNC Pembroke and was inspired to become a gaming journalist very early on in life after reading Nintendo Power.

Jason is a jack of all trades when it comes to gaming journalism. He’s a key writer in Sportskeeda's MMO department, but he also likes to help out in other categories, like streamers, RPG, card games, and whatever else is needed. A solo gamer at heart, Jason's favorite titles include Earthbound and Dragon Warrior.

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Edited by Jason Parker