What abilities from the later expansions are critical today?

Some things introduced in later expansions are no longer especially relevant toward having at least minimal gear at 120 (let us ignore the latest expansion for now). And a reasonably capable character. Some things are still important to learn and have. Ascension? Imbuing? Others?

Thus, starting at level 1, I can surely use collections and agnostics to speed past some areas if I want but some things would be unwise to bypass. Which of the additional crafting options other than the basic crafts (meaning sage, carpenter, armorer etc.) are important today?

More importantly what things added to character development after the basic AA system are critical and when do they become available? Ascension surely - what else? If I want a quick high level by playing the game not using a level-boost - with other characters coming along slowly to enjoy the content - should I speed-level to 60 or 70 or 80 or 90 or 100 and then slow down and hit things I will *really* need at 120?

Ascensions will still matter. There is not supposed to be a level increase for Ascensions, they still go to 20. Once you hit level 100/110, the panda quests will give you tokens to increase one Ascension to level 15, one Ascension to level 10, and I think one to level 5.

If you are 110, the "Bold Crusade" gear from the panda is better than Chaos Descending Academic Mastercrafted armor by a slight amount. I don't know yet if Tishan's Lockbox will be making an appearance in BoL, or how the Bold Crusade gear will stack up vs. any hypothetical new gear. Also the "Daring" white adorns are (thus far) worthwhile.

I'm going to be really surprised if they ditch infusing. I heard rumor from Beta that there would be no more weapon-leveling (yay), but I dunno if we'll still want/need to infuse armor or not with plat/loyalty and/or crafted infusers.

Maybe, maybe not. Perusing the collection items in my guild depot box, the level on the various collections has been sharply dropped for most old content, and I bet it gives a lot less XP. And I know for certain that if you are not level 110, you can't add level 110 collectibles to your collections.

Also, for the last handful of expansions, they've made the (wrong, IMHO) decision to put one darn NO-TRADE shiny in each collection, meaning that you HAVE To run the instance(s) in which that thing drops to finish the collection. My kid sister LITERALLY just got the very last shiny she needed to finish all the CD collections last night. I'm still missing a dozen on my main, who actually has been running those zones. I guess when I'm level 150, I can go back, mentor down, and hunt the shinies. /sigh

Otherwise, if you are starting at level 1, I always recommend learning every possible language, and if you are questing along, max your faction with any group you can, because somewhere later in the game you will need 40K or 50K faction with that group for something else.

Both Tinkering and Adorning are quite useful. It's easier to level these now. The tradeskill headquarters in your home city has a fellow named Londiar Inygad who gives daily tinkering, transmuting, and adorning quests, and this is the easiest, cheapest way to level. Of course, you can also grind tinkered/adorn whatnots by the hundred to level.

If you're trying to level adorning fast, you can purchase the Distillations and Dilutions books for your level, then buy one or two mana for that tier on the broker, then distill it to infusions, fragments, and powders. Then you can recombine those back all the way to the mana. This is tedious but doable. This won't work for level 110 adorning materials, since there isn't a Dilutions or Distillations recipe set (unless one is released with BoL).

You need Ascension. So far as I know, BoL is not adding more AA, but some of the AA has been changed, so everyone will need to carefully read each of the AA abilities and see if you ought to re-work your AA selections. Some spells that you might never cast may now have AA that makes them debuff combat mitigation, for example.

I think you will want to do Epic Repercussions (for which you must speak the giants' language, Krombral, and Draconic) and the Chaos Descending adventure signature quest line, just to get your Epic 1.0 and Epic 2.0 spells.

Sages in particular (and other scholars in a more limited way) can craft Ascension spell upgrades. I don't know if BoL will change this, but as of last night, you'd want to go harvest to get a bunch of Planar Energy strands, Casiun Root, and Celestial Spellshards or Foundations, then get a crafter to make as high a level spell upgrades as possible, then start researching in order of importance to get Ancients, then do the CD Celestial quest monthly after that (it will be interesting to see if we have to keep doing the CD content going forward to get Celestial spells or if BoL will introduce a new mechanism).

To get a higher spell quality for an Ascension spell, you have to scribe every level of spell, Journeyman, then Adept, then Expert, then Master, then Grandmaster, then Ancient, and only then can you use the Celestial spell scroll.

In addition to common CD harvests, you will need for each spell:

• Journeyman requires one Planar Energy
• Adept requires an Illegible Scroll (Adept) page for that Ascension spell and one Planar Energy
• Expert requires a Casiun Root and one Planar Energy
• Master requires an Illegible Scroll (Master) page for that Ascension spell and one Planar Energy
• Grandmaster requires either a Celestial Spellshard or a Celestial Foundation and one Planar Energy
• Ancient requires an Illegible Scroll (Ancient) page for that Ascension spell and two Planar Energy
• Celestial requires an Illegible Scroll (Celestial) page for that Ascension spell and four Planar Energy

You can often purchase the Adept Illegible Scroll pages cheap on the broker (these can drop in CD solos and Heroics). Master Illegible Scroll pages are also somewhat common on the broker, but are often way expensive (these drop in CD Heroics). Ancient and Celestial Illegible Scroll pages come from KA, PoP, and CD raids, and I dunno if they can even go on the broker, but I'd expect the cost to be VERY high indeed.

OH, and if you were at 110 yesterday, TODAY remember to reset your XP/AA slider!!

Great answer - thanks a lot,

Since people are still, quite naturally, asking questions that were answered in detail here I am giving it a bump.
I note that today one can get epic 2.0 abilities in Luclin from status vendors - for free - without having to do any older content.
I also note that at least some level 120 collections can be completed at any level even level 1.

I would also replace everything in the gear section. There's a Tishan's lockbox for BoL available as soon as you zone into the Blinding on the left side. Strangely, it comes with Orange adorns... which will only be useful until you start replacing those pieces with sig line / solo armor drops, or with pieces gained from overseer missions (i.e., red adorn slots).

Yes, you'll need to infuse and yes, weapon leveling still works - can't speak to how much a difference it makes as I've only gotten mine to level 1. The empyral essences from smashing BoL primary/secondary items provides significantly more weapon exp than the planar ones from CD.

Weapon leveling is worse than ever, requiring 1000 essences now to reach level 10 (instead of 500), and now that mastercrafted gear is not so cheap to make and break (IMO) the process is even worse. I can't even think of leveling a weapon that I think I might upgrade anytime soon (in the next 2-3 months). At this point I have one 195r weapon that I went ahead and leveled, but the rest are 165r and I just can't see wasting time or resources leveling them (nor do I have the essences currently).

Ditto! What Dorotea said.

Thank you for bumping this Dorotea. There is tons of great information, some I didn't even know I needed. Thank you very much to ALL the contributors for sharing their information.