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WoW Gold Free Strategics: Never Buy WOW Gold Before Comparing Prices and Services Carefully... World of Warcraft So you've picked up your copy of WoW and you're wondering where to start? Here's some tips on how to get started. A lot of these tips you may not find easily (or at all) in other places. If you are looking for more facts about quests and drops, go to those other places, like Allakhazam, etc. The two sites I use regularly to check for info is wow.allakhazam.com and www.worldofwar.net. Both places are comprehensive enough to give you some hints. I recommend not using these sites as too much of a crutch though. Much of the fun of this game is figuring things out. Don't forget Blizzard's site has a good amount of information - www.worldofwarcraft.com. The story so far... The greater scheme of the game boils down to two major factions: Alliance vs. Horde. This isn't necessarily a "good vs. evil" thing, but the way the game depicts them it does seem to sway a bit that way, especially since the Undead race is part of the Horde (though they are actually not on the most friendly faction with their fellow Horde races - no one trusts the Undead!) Keep in mind that if you are playing this game with your friends that you cannot interact with players of the opposite faction, except for built-in emotes. So it's in your best interest to create your players in the same faction. The most interesting part of playing characters from each faction is the background information you receive while playing the game on your race's struggles in the world, and you get a better idea of the big picture in terms of that race. Of course each race has their skewed views of what is really happening so keep that in mind as well :) Picking a Realm Realm = Server. Well this is entirely up to you, but if you are not trying to find friends on a particular server, I would suggest that you choose a server with a low-medium server population. When WoW was first released they had servers sorted by time zone - unfortunately, this is no longer the case. Also unfortunately, game time on the server matches real time, so the time zones still seem to apply here. I'm going to build a resource list of servers and their time zones when I get around to it ;) Also when picking a server, there are 3 types: Normal, PVP (player-vs-player), and RP (role-playing). The "Normal" option is just that, normal. However, it also gives the occasional opportunity to PVP. I'll talk about that more a little later. Class/Race choice You really can't go wrong with any class/race combination, though there are definite bonuses to certain ones. Make sure you read the right side of the screen with information about your class and race. However don't let it limit your choices - the bonuses are not large. They may be more noticeable in the early game, but later on it won't matter nearly as much. Creating your character can be all about cosmetics if you want :) You will notice that certain races can only be certain classes, obviously. The only classes that are faction-specific are paladins for Alliance, and shamans for Horde. The UI and How to Find Things I've heard of many people already customizing their UIs. Frankly, I think the default one is perfectly fine. Since I don't use any in particular I'm not going to use this article to endorse any of them, but you can easily do a search on the Web for it, or maybe you might find suggestions on Blizzard's forums. The basic UI has the following components: Upper left: Your character name, level, HP and Mana/Energy/Rage bar (more specific numbers show up if you have your character screen open) Upper right: Mini-map, zoom in/out and location name, tracking/find icon (e.g. "Find Minerals", "Track Beasts"), mail icon (if you have unread mail). Also on the mini-map if you are tracking anything, they will show up as dots (tradeskill items are gold dots, MOBs are red with a gold outline usually). If you hover over the dots it will tell you what it is. Lower left: chat windows: General and Combat Log. These are 2 windows that are pre-set for you. You can modify the filters by right-clicking the tab. You can also separate windows by clicking and dragging the tab, or drag the edges to increase window size. The General window however doesn't move or re-size so you're stuck with it. I like to just keep mine the way they are. Bottom: Spell hotkeys, general command bar, Bag hotkeys. The UI is pretty well laid out, and when you mouse over anything on the UI a popup window will tell you what it is for. It'll be pretty daunting to try to find everything in the major cities, so these cities have plenty of guards that act as an Information Booth. Just talk to them to ask for where specific people are for class training, tradeskill training, etc. When you target a player and right-click on their picture, you will find a few options there. You can inspect their gear, invite them to your group, trade with them, etc. Beginning quests All right you've made your character and you may watch the opening cinematic if you want. The neat thing is that all the views are in real-time, meaning the images you are seeing in the opening "movie" are actually coming from in-game. Eventually the camera will zoom into where you are standing in your starting town, and you will notice NPCs around you, some may have a yellow exclamation point ("!") over their heads. These are NPCs that have quests for you to perform. Probably the most annoying thing about the game is waiting for the quests to "write themselves," and once they are done you may either "Accept" or "Decline." Quests give you experience and/or cash, and it is what drives the development of your character as well as some storyline background. So more than likely you will be accepting all the quests you can get. Sometimes you will see a grey "!" above an NPC. That means that you won't be able to get that quest for a few levels. It's primarily there to let you know there will be a quest there for you soon. A good rule of thumb is to talk to everyone to see what they have to say. Quests have color codes that have to do with difficulty. The higher the level of the MOBs of the quest, the more difficult it is. In the quest window, they are also sorted by area. The scale is as follows: Gray - easiest If a quest is listed as "Elite" that means there are Elite-level MOBs that are involved in completing the quest. See below for more info about MOBs. IMPORTANT: PAY ATTENTION to the quest text as it is being written out! Many people just want to move on with the game and as far as I can tell there's no way to make that text go any faster, but I cannot stress enough how IMPORTANT it is to actually read that text to know where to go and what to do! Often times if you are being sent to another town or another part of the town to talk to another NPC, the mini-map will mark your map with a gold dot and show you where that NPC is (hover over the dot and it will show you what it is, to distinguish from say, an herb or a mine on your mini-map). There's so many damn times I am sitting in Stormwind and I hear people ask, "Where is Osric Strang?" Again: READ your quest text! Most likely the text in your quest log will tell you exactly where to go. So go to the specified location, and most of the time you will find your mini-map will light up the gold dot where Osric Strang is standing. It only takes a little bit of effort to figure things out. If you REALLY have trouble and have exhausted all possibilities, you can politely ask in the channel but make sure you give the impression that you actually tried to figure it out first. No one likes people who expect things to be handed to them on a silver platter! The last resort is to use a site like Allakhazam to look up the location of the NPC. Allakhazam in particular has maps and dots to indicate where an NPC has been found, which generally are spread out in an area. This is especially nice for finding wandering NPCs. Durability and death Much like in Diablo (another fine Blizzard game), your gear suffers damage as damage is taken from MOBs beating on you. Much of your gear has a durability number, which goes down over time. At some point if you get your gear beat up enough, you will see a body diagram with a body part highlighted in red to signify the gear that is damaged to the point where it is affecting your armor class. So, you'll need to get your armor repaired from time to time. I recommend doing it whenever you get the opportunity. You can get gear repaired from weapon or armor vendors. You'll know you can repair when there is an icon with a hammer, and an icon with a hammer plus a "+" sign (Repair one item, or repair all items). So you're fighting and taking on more than you can chew… oh no you're DEAD! What happens is that you get a prompt to "release spirit" which will take you to your ghostly self at the nearest graveyard. You have a couple choices as a ghost - run back to your corpse and resurrect (there is generally a radius around your corpse so you can try to find a safe spot to reappear), or talk to the Spirit Healer floating in the graveyard. However by agreeing to resurrect via the Spirit Healer, all your gear gets a 25% damage to durability, meaning you'll have to repair. But wait, it also affects any gear you are CARRYING in your inventory. On top of that, you will get Resurrection sickness, which will decrease all your stats by 75% for 10 minutes. Ack! So keep that in mind that the best thing to do is just run back to where you died. Class and tradeskill training Each class has a trainer to train new skills or spells. Not all cities or towns have all class trainers. The best way to find a class trainer is to ask a guard who will mark the location on your map. All spells/skills cost money to learn, so spend wisely! Tradeskills are classified as primary or secondary (Cooking, First Aid, Fishing). You are allowed to have 2 primary tradeskills. The most efficient pairings are ones that complement each other, like herbalism and alchemy (since you need herbs to make potions). However, you will find as you go on that there will be a few ingredients thrown in from other tradeskills. These are few and far between so I wouldn't worry about it so much. So, either you can buy the additional materials on the auction house, or you can have an alternate character with a different tradeskill pairing. Again to find the appropriate trainer, talk to a guard in a city. Sometimes you will find trainers in one of the smaller towns. Talents Starting at level 10, you will gain 1 talent point per level. You'll now see an icon on the bottom bar of the UI that you click on to bring up your talent "trees." These trees are basically ways to customize your character and make him/her unique from others in the same class. Each class will have 3 different trees, you can mix and match as much as you want. Keep in mind that the more points you train in a particular tree, the stronger the abilities you can learn later on because they require a certain number of points, or certain other abilities in that tree to be learned first. You can always change your mind later, but it costs gold, and more gold the more times you change. So spend your points wisely! There is a very good talent tree planner here (scroll down the page for classes). Travel and Discovery There are the small towns and outposts, and then there are the big cities of your faction. Alliance cities are: Stormwind, Ironforge, and Darnassus. Horde cities are: Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, and the Undercity. These cities you will notice have special maps of just the city and not surrounding terrain. Also when you are outside the city, you will see on the map that it has this grand banner representing it. The smaller towns or keeps will generally be in capital letters, and often you will see a few city guards hanging around as well. Most small towns will have a subset of the necessary buildings for you, such as an inn, forge, stable, and some tradeskill trainers (but not always the full set). You will notice your map is pretty blank once you enter the world, so you have to do some exploring to find out where things are. Once you discover a new area, that part will permanently show up on your map. It's generally a good idea to stay on the road in general to stay safe, but you won't always be able to discover new areas if you stay strictly on the road. Quests will generally give you directions to where you need to go, and generally those areas will take you to new locations for discovery. You also earn a little experience for discovery. I generally think of a "zone" as the area covered by the current map screen. While there is no intermediate "zoning" screen, you will see in big letters the zone you are entering, and notice your chat channels change, plus your map will change when you pull it up again. In smaller letters are the "areas" which can be towns or just notable parts of the map. Cities are shown in bright green letters, and their respective areas are in smaller green letters (though you won't get experience for the discovery). Also notice when you pull up your map that you can mouse over areas and it will tell you the name of that area, just in case you forget where you need to go. Other than running around on foot, other methods of travel are by boat or air (gryphon/hippogryph or windrider/giant bat, depending on faction). In many towns (and EVERY city) there is a air travel "Master" that when you first see them will have a green "!" over their heads. When you right-click on them, you will get a message that a new flight path was discovered. Right-click on them again and you will see where you can fly (or get a message saying there are no flight paths connected to this one). It costs a nominal fee each time you fly.
There is also a tram that connects Ironforge and Stormwind for free, called the Deeprun Tram. The entrances are from the Dwarven District in Stormwind, or the Tinker Town in Ironforge. It's a special zone that is pretty much only used for transport between the two towns. There are 2 tracks for the tram, both operate on equal timing, i.e. when one tram arrives at Stormwind, the other has arrived at Ironforge. If you are waiting for a tram the best thing to do is run around to the middle area between the two tracks. The trams only wait for a few seconds, so don't snooze while waiting! Mounts I'll talk about mounts here even though you won't be getting them until you're at least level 40. But just to warn you, unless you are a paladin, mounts are quite pricey even at level 40. There's generally 2 types of mounts, one being a lot faster than the other (the base mount is 60% faster than normal running speed, so it's still worth it). The first level is 90 gold total if you have good faction (18 gold to train, 72 gold for the mount itself). You'll most likely see a riding trainer in one of the starting towns for your particular race, so just remember where they are and come back later when you have enough gold. 90 gold takes a LONG time to accumulate if you are not careful with spending :) Instanced Zones These are zones that are created just for your party with no other players around. These are probably the best opportunity to get gear, and many good quests are in instanced zones. The instanced zone entrance looks kind of like there are swishing particles around the entrance. When you enter, you will get a "zoning screen." The nice thing about WoW is that if you drop connection not from logging out, you will still remain in the group. So when you reconnect, you come back in to the group. So there is no danger of losing the zone instance unless you leave the group, or log out of the game manually. If this happens, you generally have 30 seconds to rejoin the group or be removed from the instance. If you die in the instance, you have to return to the instance to resurrect yourself. However, it's not as nice as non-instance areas because you are resurrected at the beginning of the instance. So it's usually best to have a class that can resurrect stay alive so they can resurrect you back to the group, otherwise you may have to fight through re-spawns. Some of the instanced zones you might hear about (in order by general level range that I would recommend trying these): A = Alliance, H = Horde, B = both factions
Types of NPCs, MOBs Killing MOBs to get experience is a huge part of the game obviously, as well as doing quests (and are the goal of many quests). You will notice that the first few quests require you to kill certain MOBs, but they are non-aggressive - meaning, they don't attack you on sight. You will notice they have a color label of yellow. Green labels mean they are friendly targets and you couldn't attack them even if you tried. Red labels are the ones that will jump you when they see you. The higher level the target, the larger the radius of instigation. The following is the color code chart based on the level of the MOB, not its aggression level. So the actual number representing their level will be one of the following colors: Gray - easiest (5+ levels below your
character's level. NO EXPERIENCE GAINED WHEN KILLING!) ** Note that there are "boss" MOBs in the game that may have a skull picture when targeted, but this breaks the rule in that you just don't necessarily know what level they are. It's kind of there just to scare you ;) If you are on a quest and this shows up, most likely you are meant to be able to fight them, you just don't get to know how easy they will be in advance :) Keep in mind that orange and red MOBs will resist your spells AND dodge melee hits more often. And sure you might get more experience for killing them, but more likely you won't be able to kill them as fast and will have to rest more in between fights. That is why I label the yellow-level MOBs as most efficient experience gain. Elite MOBs: If you target a MOB and its picture has a gold dragon wrapped around it, that means it is "Elite" which basically means it's a LOT harder to kill than your typical MOB at that level. Generally that means they have a lot more HP and may hit harder. However, the nice thing is that your abilities and spells will resist at the same amount as if it were non-elite. Typically if you are doing a quest that involves Elite MOBs, you will be more successful doing them with groups rather than solo. "Unique" MOBs: This is my own name for the MOBs that have a grayish dragon wrapped around the picture. These seem to spawn randomly and may drop nice gear more often than the regular variety. Types of loot and group loot rules Probably one of the more confusing things to learn in the game are what is all this crap you are looting. Obviously you will see gear, tradeskill items, but then you might see something classified as "vendor trash." The color of the item gives you a good indicator of what is useful and what is not. Gray: "vendor trash" - sell
this for some money to the vendor. Let's look at gear specifically: you can definitely tell when good gear drops. Gray: "vendor trash" - sell
these unless you are a newbie and you don't have anything else equipped in
that slot. When it comes to gear, you will need to keep in mind the
following attributes: "Soulbound" - it's bound
to you, so you can't trade it or sell it on the Auction House. You can
only sell it for cash to the vendor. These are important attributes to notice when in a group. There are several ways you can set up group looting rules. I'm still not entirely sure how this works but will find out more when I can. "Group loot" (default) - group
members take turns being able to loot. However overriding these group loot rules are the rules for the rarity of gear. You can set the loot rules to roll for any gear from uncommon or better, which means the group members will roll for the item if it drops with a nice auto-rolling tool which gives you plenty of time to look at the item and figure out if you want to roll on it. The exception to this is the "Need vs. Greed" rule, where it seems that only members who can actually use the item will be able to roll on it. Of course this is not a popular rule to use, since it doesn't really take into account whether the stats or effects are good for that class. **NOTE: most groups just roll on everything, except when it's a "Bind when picked up" item. MAKE SURE you know if it is a "Bind when picked up" item vs. a "Bind when equipped" item. People get kind of mad if you roll on something you can't use, and I don't blame them. Mistakes do happen though, so forgive once and move on, of course until the next time they do it ;) Pretty soon a patch will update this so that there is a confirmation box asking you if you are sure that you want to roll on that item, so this problem shouldn't be as prevalent. Bank Each of the 6 big cities has a bank, as well as some neutral cities that you will find later in your adventures. Use the bank to store your crap that you don't need with you right away. The slots that you see in the last row that is red are "bag slots" that you purchase where you can put an additional bag. The additional space you have is the amount of slots you have in the bag you put there. It gets exponentially more expensive to have more bag slots, so rather than buying new bag slots, wait until you get a bigger bag to put into the bag slot. Auction Hall There is one auction hall per faction, as well as a neutral auction hall you will discover later on. Ironforge and Orgrimmar are the two cities with auction halls. This is basically the place where you can put up items you don't need for sale to other players, or browse items to buy for yourself. It is done as a bidding system, where a player can bid on items up to the buyout price, or buy the item outright by bidding the buyout price. It also costs a small amount of money to put an item up for auction. When you drag an item into the slot where you can assign it a starting price, the game will give you a suggested starting price, plus will tell you the price to put it up for auction, so the net gain would be the difference. Keep in mind that the game will ALWAYS suggest a slightly higher price than you would get at the vendor. However this poses the decision, do you think it will sell on the auction? Think about what classes can use the piece, based on the stats and type. Now all classes can wear cloth, but why would they unless they had to? So definitely keep that in mind. Here's a breakdown of the classes and the best material they can wear: Cloth - Mage, Warlock, Priest A good example of making sure you are selling to a wider audience is finding a piece of Mail gear that has +Intelligence and an effect that improves Nature damage. Well the only classes that do any significant nature damage are druids and shamans. Druids can't wear Mail, and Shamans only can after level 40. Plus, Shamans are a Horde-only class. So chances are if you are an Alliance race you won't be selling that piece in Ironforge, so unless you want to make the trip to the neutral auction hall, there's not much of a chance you will be able to sell it to anyone, so you might as well sell it to the vendor. I would also really recommend to anyone that you don't need to ever use the auction hall for anything. Gear drops very often, and tradeskill items can be collected at a good pace as you level up. However there are many who are really into the instant gratification, so that is why the Auction House is there. Also, keep in mind that you may every now and then see tradeskill-up components or gear on vendors. DO NOT BUY GEAR OR TRADESKILL-UP ITEMS FROM VENDORS! The ONLY exception is things like alchemy vials and thread that you cannot get as drops from MOBs. Also, I would make a small exception for cooking recipes, since they are generally inexpensive. Buying gear from vendors is just totally unnecessary, as they are totally overpriced and you will only recoup a small fraction from selling back to the vendor. Mail is used for messaging as well as trading items and/or money. There's a few things to watch out for, however. The biggest thing is the C.O.D. mail. This is used generally when you are having someone pay you for an item. You can mail it to them and if they take the item, they have to pay for it (as well as the postage cost of 30 copper, I believe). I have heard of people trying to scam people by doing this. Of course it is frowned upon by Blizzard, so most likely you won't see so much of it anymore especially if these people have been banned from the game. Any new mail you receive can be left in your Inbox for up to 30 days before it is deleted. However, if you open the mail, that time is cut to 3 days. A nice trick is that if a friend of yours (or an alt character) is sending you a piece of gear you won't use for a few levels, have them write in the subject line the level you can use the gear so you don't open it right away. What is also helpful is if you are sending tradeskill materials, that you write how many is in the stack you are sending (it won't say until you actually open the piece of mail). Keep in mind that any mail you send has an hour delay, EXCEPT for money. Money transfer is immediate. Chat The default chat channels are: 1) General chat, 2) Trade chat, 3) Local Defense, 4) Looking For Group (pretty self-explanatory there). General chat is just that, chatter. People saying whatever they want. If you want to turn your "bad words" filter off, press the ESC key and go to "Interface Options" (there are a lot of other useful options there as well) and uncheck the filter. The Trade chat channel is the only place you can link items. The Local Defense channel will notify you if an area in your zone is under attack. Chatting with other players directly is done with the /whisper command. However, due to many players used to using /tell from other games, /tell also works. Also, /w works so you don't have to type out "whisper." Group tells use the /party command, or /p. The /g command is for guildchat, and /r replies to the last whisper received. PVP I don't have as much experience playing on a PVP server, but even if you are not on a PVP server there are still opportunities to go PVP. Characters can get "flagged" PVP under the following conditions:
#3 is important to remember especially if you do NOT want to be PVP flagged. But keep in mind that it does wear off in a few minutes if you don't continue to do any of the above actions. ALSO keep in mind that if you are PVP flagged, anyone who is PVP flagged of the opposite faction can attack you.
Also, the rules about resistances and melee hits do not apply here as far as the disparity in levels. Even if a player is a lot higher level than you are, you will be able to land stuff, but obviously since they will have more hit points and better stats, they won't feel it as much. But of course if you have 20 level 5 players beating up on one level 20 player, that level 20 player will definitely go down, rather than be able to resist and dodge everything. Don't despair if your town gets attacked by the opposing faction and all your quest NPCs have died at their hands. They will respawn pretty quickly, in a matter of a few minutes. Yes it's slightly annoying and there are players on the server that will drum up support to defend their cities. But if you do not want to participate, you don't have to be affected at all. NOTE: This is NOT the same as dueling another player. Dueling can be done against anyone in any faction. When you choose to duel someone, they get a prompt saying you have challenged them to a duel, and a flag flies in out of nowhere and plants itself between you and your opponent. There are no penalties or experience gained from dueling. Don't feel that you have to duel someone either. If someone continues to challenge you and harasses you by doing so, don't hesitate to contact a GM. In a previous patch there is now a system for gaining Honor points based on successful PVP kills against the opposite faction. If you are big into PVP you can gain points and have access to nice items, plus you will have a rank as a title in front of your name. However, keep in mind in order to keep your rank you need to PVP regularly. I'm not a big fan of this update - it really kind of makes me wonder why on a non-PVP server this is necessary. Also with the Battlegrounds update, there are more options for PvP play. See Blizzard's site for more info: www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/battlegrounds/. Buggy things As with many MMORPGs, there are still some bugs in the game to watch out for. Here are a few I encounter quite a bit. The best thing you can do is report it to a GM. They may not always get to it, but at least you tried. 1) "Broken" mines and herbs. Every now and then you will try to mine or pick an herb, and you will get an error message saying it is already being used, and you will appear to be frozen in place though you can move around while frozen in the picking position. There are couple ways out of this: find another mine or herb and pick it, or log out and log back into the game. Logging out is usually my choice especially if in a field of MOBs (you won't be able to do anything to them). Also, don't re-attempt to mine or pick the herb, it will get you stuck again. Just report it to a GM as a bug. 2) "Stuck" MOBs. Sometimes you will come across a MOB that when you attack it, doesn't appear to leave its spot or hit you, yet you will still have an attack icon. Generally you can run away far enough to clear its memory, but especially in instanced zones this may not happen. Since you can't log out manually if the game thinks you are in battle, in an instanced zone you will have to force yourself to quit by going to the task manager and terminating the program. That is the equivalent of going link-dead. However it does take some time for the server to realize you're not there so it's not the best idea if you are being barraged with attacks. However if you're in a pretty safe area you can do this, and you won't lose your group either. 3) Locking up in highly populated areas. Ironforge is notorious for creating a lot of lag once you enter the zone. You might be frozen up, but just be patient for about a minute and it will unfreeze. However if your mouse pointer is also locked up, you may have a full system lockdown and you'll have to reboot your computer, or attempt to terminate the program via your task manager (though this doesn't always work that well.)
Never Buy WOW Gold Before Comparing Prices and Services Carefully...
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