Getting Started GuideFollow

I was half-hoping somebody else would step up and do this, but I'm sure everyone else was just waiting for me to, so here goes:

This is the highly unofficial "how to start playing World of Warcraft" guide. It is assumed when you read this that you know the general concepts of the game. You know that this is a game played on-line with other people, actively on servers, etc., and you know some of the specifics that set this game apart from others in its genre. Refer to the stickied FAQ thread if you don't know these things - consider that the FAQ for the non-player. This is the FAQ for the beginning player.

I'm writing this completely stream-of-consciousness, and will likely not append it much. If you're reading this on November 9th, also be aware that I might still be in the process of writing it and throwing up replies as I finish subjects.

The first five minutes

If you're reading this for information, I will assume you haven't actually started playing yet, so refer to this screenshot for a basic layout of the user interface.

The first thing you will witness is a brief introduction to your race, purely for storytelling purposes. The quests you do will often relate back to what is mentioned in it.

When you first look at the screen and all the shtuff on it, you might be a little bewildered. Let's talk about what's on the screen right now, and get into the menus a bit later.

In the upper-left corner is your character portrait, along with your health and mana bar. (or rage or energy, but I will continue to say mana.) If you were in a group, your groupmates' display would appear below your's, slightly smaller.

Next to your health is your target's health. You will need to click on someone or something to get a target, but in the screenshot, the mage is fighting a Young Goretusk. The yellow namebar indicates that this is a neutral target - able to be attacked, but not agressive. Red indicates agressive, while green is a friendly target that you cannot attack. Player names are in blue. "Tapped" targets, which we'll discuss later, are in gray.

In the upper-right is the minimap. It displays the name of your region (Westfall), clock - the sun gives an exact time if you mouse over it, an overhead view of the area with zoom in and zoom out buttons, and arrows along the edges indicating the direction of points of interest or distant groupmates. Groupmates and other things you are tracking appear as dots on the minimap. For example, there is a dot to the west that is the location of an herb. This is an old picture, but if someone is actively tracking herbs, ore, undead, treasure, etc., it will appear in a small circle by the minimap.

Just to the left of the minimap are active enchantments. The mage here has Arcane Intellect and Frost Armor both cast on herself. Negative effects get their own row beneath the positive ones.

Above the bottom bar are the two chat windows. The right one is for combat messages and the left one is for all other messages, such as communication with players. This is no longer the default setting, and you will probably not see the combat window by default, although it is easy to switch to by putting your mouse over the chat box and picking the other tab. (The current set up is refered to as "simple chat" in the interface options.)

Along the bottom, the left side of the bar indicates abilities that can be used at the push of a button, or you can click on them. You get six bars to work with, and there is no limit to memorized spells or anything like that. The only limitation is what you can fit on the screen, and some custom user interfaces create more bars of hotkeys.

The center region of the bar is the different menus you can bring up. The right side is your bags - you will start with just the backpack at the right end, and a quiver if you are a hunter. You need to acquire bags to begin with, and this is one of your first challenges in the game. The green bar between the options and bags is a lag-report, that gives you your ping if you mouse over it.

The long narrow bar divided up into 20 blocks above the toolbar is your experience meter. You can read all about experience elsewhere, but at low levels, it will fill very quickly. If you are considered "rested", meaning your player is fresh from inactivity, you may find a notch in the experience bar. Until you reach that point, you gain experience at a higher rate.




The arrows or WASD keys will move you. Somewhere near you should be a person with a big yellow exclamation point over their head (!) If you are undead, you will need to leave the tomb you start in first.

If you move near that person and right-click them, they will begin to give you a quest. That quest will either be to kill some of the basic creatures nearby, or talk to someone nearby who will tell you to do that. Be sure to keep an eye out for other questgivers. While you have an active quest with an NPC, they will have a silver question mark over their head, and it will turn yellow when you have finished. (A silver exclamation point means that person has a quest you are too low in level for.)

You might have noted when you put your mouse over the questgiver to talk to them that your cursor changed to a talk bubble. Any time your cursor changes, there is something special you can do by right-clicking. Talking to people, looting corpses, mining ore, opening chests, and attacking monsters are all different examples.

Find a nearby creature, and walk up to them. You'll notice that the game tells you what level they are. Expect a tough fight if it isn't level 1 or 2. Target it and attack by either right-clicking the creature, clicking on the attack hotkey at the left end of your ability bar, or by pressing one to activate that hotkey. (You can also press T to do this.) Your character will attack automatically until the fight ends. Your skill with your weapon will probably go up some, and when the creature dies, you can then loot its corpse.

Find another creature, but this time, try using one of your abilities to start combat. If you are a melee character, such as a rogue, it will turn on auto-attack by itself. If you cast a spell or fire an arrow with autoshoot, you will need to turn on attack on your own when the creature gets near. You can also use your skills during combat, of course - a warrior will have to since he starts a fight with no rage and has to attack normally at the beginning (for now.)



After you've picked up some stuff, click on your backpack to open it, or press B. You might have picked up something you want to equip. You'll also have a few things you started with - some food and drink, your hearthstone, and a note from your class trainer. Food and drink restore your health and mana out-of-combat, and the hearthstone will teleport you to the last place you bound it to, (usually an inn,) with a one hour re-use timer. Right-click on the note (it might not be a piece of paper) and it will start a quest simply to find your trainer.

Press C now to open the character window. (This is the button with your face on it at the menu bar.) Here you will find the items you are wearing and the mostly empty slots you can equip for. You'll also see your basic stats and some notes about your weapon damage.

Go to your backpack and pick up an item you want to try equipping. One of the boxes in the menu should turn blue. Click on that box and your character will equip that item. (If the armor type is in red, such as mail for a priest, nothing will happen because you can't wear it.) If you replaced an old item, like your shoes, it will go where the new shoes were in your backpack. You can also right-click to quickly equip items. If you were lucky enough to get a bag of some sort, *drag* it to one of the other inventory slots in the bottom right.

There are two other tabs at the bottom of the character menu, reputation and skills. Ignore reputation. Skills will tell you the things you are capable of (weapon proficiencies, for example,) and how skilled you are at them out of your potential. Your potential will increase each level.

Press escape to close the windows you have open, and press M for map. This will bring up a map of the nearby area you are in. Not much of it is showing since not much of it is explored, but at least this should help you a little bit from getting lost. If you right-click on the map, it will zoom out to show the whole continent, and you can look at any other map you have explored.



Kill a few more creatures, and then go back into town (or whatever settlement you have) and find a merchant - any merchant. If you put your mouse over an NPC, it will say their name and their profession. Generally anyone that isn't a guard or a class trainer in the starting area will sell things. (If a person has a big name floating over their head before you target them, that is another player.)

Right-clicking on a vendor will open up a sell window. There might be things you want to buy, but hold off for now. Find a couple items in your backpack that you can't use at all, such as random body parts of creatures you killed, and left-click them to highlight and then left click in the list of goods to sell it. You can also right-click to sell quickly.

When you've sold everything you can't use, close the window and look around for your class trainer. They should appear as a yellow dot on your minimap when you draw near, but some might be a little tricky to find. (Night Elf druids and hunters: there is a ramp around the left side of the tree by the guard that leads up to where your trainers are.) Assuming you haven't already, you will finish your first quest by talking to your trainer. Right-click on them and pick complete quest. Voila, a couple free exp. (Next to none, but other quests will give far more.) When completing other quests, you will often get a choice of rewards at this screen.

In any event, talk to your trainer again, and tell them that you wish to train. There will be a very short list of abilities showing that you can train from them. (Your skills up to level 6, to be specific.) One of them will be green, meaning you can learn it now. Click on it and click train. Congratulations, you just got a new ability.

Now you will want to open your spellbook to make a hotkey for it so you can use it. Click on the book at the bottom of the screen or press P. The spellbook has 4 tabs - one for basic general stuff like attack and tradeskills you might have, and three for different class skills. One tab should be glowing. Click on it, find your new skill, and drag it to the toolbar.

Look around town for any other questgivers there might be. You should find at least two besides the very first one and your trainer. If you aren't sure how many quests you have or if you've completed one, you can look at your quest log by pressing L, or clicking on the chalice button in the menu bar. This will give you a list of all your quests, and give you the text of the one you have highlighted with your progress at the top. It also tells you who to report to when you finish.

Any quest you have finished will have its line ending in "(completed)". When you get higher level quests, they will appear in orange or red, rather than yellow, to indicate their difficulty, or if you let a quest grow old (by outgrowing it in levels,) it will turn green and eventually gray.

That should just about do it for your first five minutes, or more likely a tad bit longer than that.

Interacting with other players

You might have seen players walking by and not known how to communicate with them. You might have also seen lines of text whizzing by in the general chat channel for your starting area. In general, any action you want to take that isn't done with the mouse is a "slash-command", meaning it starts with a front-slash.

Type /wave, and press enter, for example. Your character will wave at the open air, and a message will say so. This is called an emote. It is one of but many kinds of slash commands.


So how do you talk to that person next to you? Type "/say" and before you hit enter, follow it up with a message. /say hi. (The /say will probably disappear after you press space, for reasons that will become clear later.)

/say is the command for talking to people immediately next to, but perhaps you want to talk privately to someone. In this case, you can use "/tell" followed by the person's name, and the chatbar will instantly change to purple, indicating that you will send a private message to that person. Now whatever you type next will simply go to that person. As an alternative to "tell", you can use "whisper", or abbreviate to just a 't' or a 'w'.
/tell azuarc hi
/whisper azuarc hi
/t azuarc hi
/w azuarc hi
...are all the same thing.

OK, so most of you probably already know this stuff from playing other games. I'll cut to the chase. There are a bunch of other slash commands that you can put in your text bar by clicking on the speech bubble button by your chat window, and selecting them. The emote and voice commands bring up sub-menus that don't actually talk, but play around with them if you like.


What about that brownish text [1. General - Dun Morogh] that keeps floating by? That's simple. "/1 whatever". Anything you type in the /1 channel will go out to everyone that is in it, which will be basically everyone in your starting zone. Don't be a **** and spam everyone with useless crap.

If somebody else is irritating you and you want to leave that channel, you can type /leave 1. I recommend you do this for the two defense channels, numbers 3 and 4. If you leave general and want to come back, type /join general.


If you want to know if a particular person is on-line to send a tell to them, there are two things you can do. You can try to send the message anyway, and get an error message if they don't exist. Or you can check if they are logged in first by using the /who command.

Typing '/who allakhazam' would do a search to see if there was anyone on with allakhazam as their name. Partials also work, so you could also find Al by typing '/who alla'.

The who command also works for classes, level ranges, races, guild names, and a bunch of other stuff. There is a chance if you try it on something more general, like /who warrior, it will bring up the social menu.

The social menu is the button with the ! in a balloon that can be brought up with the O key. Under the who tab, you can do the exact same things as with the /who command. Longer lists will go to this window though.


Also in the social menu is the friend and ignore tabs. In these submenus, you can make lists of people that you want to regard as friends or whom you want to block all message from. In general, don't put people on ignore unless they REALLY tick you off, and take them off later. If you want to add someone to your friend's list, it will tell you in this menu if they are on-line, where they are if they're logged in, and you will also get log-on and log-off messages in your chat window for them.

There are two other possible tabs in the social menu which you might not have, guild and raid. If you are in a guild, the guild tab will tell you who is on-line from your guild. Guild members also give log-on messages, although you can turn that off. The raid tab is simply a listing of the people and groups in your raid. (A raid is two or more groups linked together.)



Since we've mentioned all the other menus, we may as well talk about the last two buttons on the menu bar. The computer button is the options menu. It gives you a choice of video options, sound, interface, macro, or the choice to log off or exit the program. The question mark button is the help window. You can make a bug report or petition a game master from there. They're pretty self-explanatory.



One last thing about working with other players. If you want to get into a party with someone, target them, right-click their portrait, and pick invite. This will give them a pop-up window asking them if they want to join your group.

You can have up to five people in a group, and while grouped, you split experience and potentially the items that drop. Quests that aren't "collect" quests are usually easier in a group, so if someone is doing the same quest, invite them!

In a group, '/party' or '/p' will talk to your teammates.

The group leader will have a crown next to his or her portrait. If you are the group leader, and you right-click your own portrait, you can set the loot mode for the group. "Group loot" means that everyone takes turns, but you will get a pop-up to roll for higher quality items. Round Robin is the same without the rolling. Free-for-all is no restrictions. The other options aren't as significant.

If you are in a group and a corpse is your's to loot, it will sparkle yellow. You're probably used to that by now. If it is not your's to loot, though, you will not get sparkles. Money is automatically split in a group, so under group loot, if there is money on the body, anyone can loot that and so you will get a sparkling corpse for that. Many players dislike group loot for this reason and will switch to round robin.

If you want to leave a group, right-click your portrait and select 'leave party.'

Keep it up Azuarc and we will move it all over to the guides section so it can't scroll off.

The rest of your starting zone, or basic concepts

Every starting area begins with a simple kill quest, has a quest to collect groundspawns, at least two distinct themes of quests, and eventually sends you twice into a nearby cave. When you've finished all this stuff, you'll be given a quest of great importance to the next town over, which will serve as the focal point for the rest of your time in your first zone. (Press M to look at your map, and you'll see you haven't even scratched the surface of it.)

After two hours or so, and getting to level 5 or 6, it's probably time to move on. If you are a troll or orc, there might seem to be two choices, but use Razor Hill. For everyone else, it's as simple as traipsing down the road, albeit that road is mildly dangerous for dwarves and gnomes.



There are several things you will want to do when you reach the main town for the zone:

Search for questgivers - there will be several new quests to get in the town and in the nearby areas. (If there is a nearby questgiver, there will usually be a mini-quest that sends you there, such as to Denalan, Sen'Jin Village, or Steelgrill's Depot.)

Re-set your hearthstone with the innkeeper - you probably haven't had incentive to use it yet, but your hearthstone is a valuable resource. You should try to keep it set to an area nearby to facilitate quick returns to town. Its intended purpose is to allow you to leave the game suddenly if you need to.

Consider getting started on tradeskills - you will need to train (for free) the basics of a tradeskill in order to begin learning it. Not all tradeskills are going to be available to learn in the second town, and you may need to go to your race's capital, also located in the zone. If you talk to a guard in town, they can usually tell you if there is indeed a skinning trainer. Since there is no ore anywhere on Teldrassil, a Night Elf will have to wait a bit to start on mining, blacksmithing, and engineering, but in any other case, you should consider getting started right away.

Read below for more information on tradeskills.

If you want to train a weapon skill you don't have, first check (on the site) to make sure it is a legal choice for your race - no priests with guns or warriors with magic wands - and then go to your capital city to look for a trainer. Ask a guard for directions to find the weapon trainer. It may be that the weapon you want to train isn't offered in your starting city and you have to travel to another. This can be a nuisance, you may want to bear with it for now, but refer to transportation in a later section to get to the other cities.





Now that you're moving on with the rest of your adventures, a few concepts to be aware of.

Experience is gained from killing creatures or completing quests. Both are effective means of gaining experience, but there is a balance to be struck between the two.

Quest experience is intended to be a bonus to balance the fact that you had to perform a specific task rather than killing any random ol' creature. Quest experience alone will not gain you levels, so getting advanced help to finish every quest in your log quickly will often leave you below the level you would expect to be from finishing an area. If you finish all the quests in your starting area and you aren't level 10 yet, you either missed some or arguably you grouped too much and will need to go "grind" some or find another zone for that level range.

Experience from creatures, aka grinding, is a fixed amount per creature, divided by the number of people in your group, and modified a little by your level compared to the target. (At level 40, you will gain no experience for a level 10 creature. At level 8, you would get a slight bonus.) If there is someone significantly higher in level, this amount will be reduced. Also, you will only gain experience equal to the amount of damage you and your groupmates do the creature. If you are struggling against a monster, and get it to half before some helpful person comes up and rescues you by killing it quickly, you will only get half the experience. Your loot will be unaffected.

Only the person who attacks a creature first will get any experience or looted. When the first damage is dealt, that creature is considered "tapped". Where you have it targeted, the color of its name will turn from red or yellow to gray. If your target has a gray name, someone snuck in a hit before you. Perhaps you didn't even see them - this happens often with hunters. Don't be disappointed when you get nothing for killing it, although you may still have to defend yourself from it!

Be considerate of other players, though. It's very rude to quickly run past a mage charging a spell just to smack the creature with your sword before the spell can finish. The number one rule to playing an MMORPG is to remember that reputation matters. People remember who you are, and you can't avoid them forever like you might on battle.net by joining another game or changing your handle.



At some point you will get sent to your race's capital for a quest. If you get lost, read the quest carefully for a section of the city. If you look at your map in the main city, it will change to a local map that will help you navigate. For other points of interest, such as the bank, class and weapon trainers, or transportation centers, ask any normal guard for directions.

Every capital has a bank in it. These are nearly the only places there are banks, but they all share the same bank account - items you store in Orgrimmar will be in Thunder Bluff waiting for you. You cannot store money, but there is no need or incentive to. You don't lose money when you die, and nobody can loot your stuff in PvP.



To that effect, you've probably died once by now and have already seen this, but when you die, you will get an option to "release spirit" and become a ghost. You are given this option in case someone wants to resurrect you, or your group is in the middle of a boss kill you want credit for even though you are dead. After you release, you will appear at the nearest graveyard, and you have three options:

1) Run back. When you get near your corpse, you can restore yourself to life.
2) Be resurrected. Priests, paladins, shamans and druids can bring you back to life. You will return with resurrection sickness that lowers your stats for a few minutes, but you won't have to run back.
3) In the graveyard is a being known as the spirit healer, that is only visible when you are dead. If you talk to the spirit healer, she can resurrect you in the graveyard, for a price. This used to be an experience penalty, but was recently changed to be a 100% durability loss to your items. All deaths incur a 10% durability loss regardless of how you resurrect.



Which leads to the next topic of durability. You might have had a diagram of a set or armor with one item in yellow or maybe red. This indicates that item has low durability. When the item reaches zero, the item is broken and will not work. It can be repaired and be fully functional again.

You can restore items to max durability by going to a vendor who sells some sort of weapons or armor, and selecting the repair option. At lower levels, this is a trivial cost, but it scales up with your equipment. However, if you use the spirit healer, which completely breaks all your equipment, including those in your bag, this cost might be more than you can afford.


Eventually you will finish all the quests in your newbie zone and have to say goodbye. *sniff* Refer to the section after the information on tradeskilling about transportation.




Regarding tradeskills...

You are entitled to two "professions." No more. However a few skills are not considered professions. Fishing, Cooking, and First Aid are all considered "secondary skills" and don't count as your two. The actual professions can be divided into two groups: gathering and production. Almost every production skill has a gathering skill necessary to do it...you don't *have* to be an herbalist to do alchemy, but you're going to be buying a lot of herbs from other people if you don't.



A few notes on the individual tradeskills, both professions and not...

Herbalism collects herbs from flowers, bushes and roots that spawn in the zone. When you take herbalism as a profession, you will get an ability that lets you detect herbs on your minimap. You will find that in the basic tab of your spellbook. Gathering herbs from a plant is as simple as right-clicking on it, but make sure it's safe nearby! You will get 1-3 of whatever herb comes from the plant you are picking.

Mining is like herbalism, except that you gather ore, stone, and gems from ore veins. Again, you get an ore detection skill. However, you must buy a mining pick to gather any resources from an ore node. Those can be bought from any basic trade supplies vendor. You do not need to equip it. If you are a Night Elf, be aware that there are ZERO ore deposits in Teldrassil - it is, after all, a giant tree.
Mining also includes the ability to smelt the ores you collect. Go to a city and find a forge, and you can convert copper ore into copper bars. Smelting does not affect the stone you quarry or the gems you find.

Skinning is collected from creatures you or others have slain. After looting a corpse of a creature that can be skinned, almost always a "beast", the game will indicate that the corpse is skinnable. You must have a skinning knife in your inventory, also buyable from a trade supplies vendor. In general, skinning levels faster than any other tradeskill since there are more opportunities to skin, but leatherworking requires large quantities of leather, so there is no direct advantage there.

Fishing is the most unique skill. Find a body of water, equip a fishing pole (bought), and select fish. Somewhere in the water, a fishing bobber will appear and eventually it will make a small dip to indicate you've got a bite. Right click on it to try to reel in your catch. When you first start off, you will get easily frustrated at the amount of catches that get away, but once you get your skill to 30 or so, it goes MUCH more smoothly.

Those were the gathering skills. Here's what you can do with them.

Smithing uses mostly ore to make weapons and heavy armor, as well as a few other metallic odds and ends like skeleton keys, shield spikes, and sharpening stones. At higher levels, smithing can specialize into weaponsmithing and armorsmithing. Smithing requires a smithing hammer and must be done at an anvil.

Leatherworking produces leather armor and armor kits for slight improvement of the armor rating of equipment. Some leather items are not made wholly from leather and vendor items; you will occasionally need other random animal parts such as murloc scales, or an alchemy potion related to the item.

Tailoring creates clothing out of cloth. There is no gathering skill for getting cloth. Instead, one must gather it from humanoid creatures. Any time you kill a defias bandit, a furbolg, a scarlet crusade member or a venture co. miner, you have a chance to get linen. Higher level creatures will eventually drop the more advanced types of cloth. If any gathering skill goes with tailoring, it would be skinning, since tailoring can also make bags with the inclusion of some leather. This is fairly minimal though. Tailors are generally free to choose any second profession they want.

Alchemy makes potions from herbs. Potions take on two varieties - potions that give short term effects, such as a potion of agility, and those that give immediate effects, like a healing potion. Because the act of gathering herbs is more labor-intensive than many non-herbalists realize, the market for potions is not as strong as it could be, but there are select potions that consistently sell well to players. Some potions require non-herb components, usually in the form of oils derived from fish. Thus, alchemists will often take up fishing, but this isn't a necessity. Alchemy potions are also used in several recipes among the other production skills, such as an intellect potion being used for a tailoring robe intended for mages.

Engineering is the strangest tradeskill. Strange, because most of the items it makes require you to be an engineer to use. This makes it a popular choice among people who want to be able to do everything, since they can let somebody else do the work for other tradeskills. Engineering is especially popular among paladins who have no ranged attack and can lob the bombs it makes, and hunters who enjoy the benefits of self-made guns and ammunition. There are all kinds of other quirky items engineers can make though, from target dummies to gnomish shrink rays. Engineering also produces head slot items potentially before you could acquire one yourself, since head items tend to have at least a required level of 20.

Enchanting is the often-forgotten tradeskill because, to steal a company's tag-line, it doesn't make the armor you wear. It makes the armor you wear better. Enchanting is not a skill to take lightly though - it is highly expensive. The components gathered for enchanting are created by the enchanter by DIS-enchanting other magical items. Generally speaking, this means items that have any stats on them besides just damage for weapons or just AC for armor, which you would ordinarily sell in the auction house for money, instead gets destroyed to make enchanting components. It is also thought by many to be the most powerful tradeskill because of the way it can enhance everything else. Since many tradeskilled items beyond the basic starter items have magical properties to them, an easy way to get items to disenchant is to take them from someone who is mass-producing a particular item to raise their skill level. Enchanters can freely take another tradeskill, so tailoring with its lack of gathering skill is appealing in this regard.

Cooking makes food from, well, food. Killing creatures often gives some kind of meat or giblets or whatnot. Fishing gives fresh fish that can be fileted. Cooking can be very handy for a soloing warrior or a hunter that is trying to keep his pet fed. Sadly, food only restores HP and not mana, and there are only a very few select recipes at this time that don't just regenerate health. Cooking requires a fire to make items. There are fires in town or you can bring tinder to make your own on the road.

First Aid is another skill for non-healing classes. Cloth gathered from humanoids, rather than being used for tailoring, can be fashioned into bandages which can then restore a small amount of health. You can only apply a bandage to a target once every 30 seconds, and neither you nor the target can be getting hit during the bandaging.


So the question everyone always wants to know is, Which professions would be best for *me*, as a <random class>, to do?

Here are some of the common tradeskill combinations and who often does them:

Mining/Smithing: Warriors and Paladins for armor, sometimes Rogues for weapons
Mining/Engineering: Paladins for bombs, Hunters for ranged weapons and goblin jumper cables, everyone for the unique engineering-only items
Skinning/Leatherworking: Any leather-wearing class
Herbalism/Alchemy: Anyone who likes to use potions, often warriors or priests
Skinning/Tailoring: Cloth-wearers interested in being career clothiers and bag-makers
Tailoring/Enchanting: Enchanters looking for easy source of disenchantable items
Herbalism/Skinning: People who seek easy profit, since gathering skills have no overhead cost
Skinning/Mining: Same as above. Herbalism/Mining isn't normal since you can't have both tracking skills active at once.

Note that none of these include fishing, cooking or first aid since they do not count against your two profession limit.




Other general information about tradeskills.

You will NEVER fail a production combine. If you fail a gathering combine, you can simply try again, since the ore vein won't disappear until you harvest it.

Tradeskill difficulty is color-coded. Either the background of the item name in the production menu or on the tag of the item you are trying to harvest will be color-coordinated. Something that is an average challenge for you shows as yellow. Easy items you are unlikely to gain skill from are green, and gray are trivial. Challenge items you will almost definitely gain skill from are orange. Red items cannot be attempted. You'll note that this color arrangement extends to quests in your quest log, and to the level of creatures you have targeted, to a similar effect.

Any item that is not clearly part of a quest or a worn item, but has its name in a color other than gray, usually white, is used for *some* tradeskill. Items you find on creatures such as large fangs and goretusk livers might not *seem* like tradeskill items, but their name will be listed in white because they are used for alchemy and cooking, respectively.

Edited, Wed Nov 10 20:02:02 2004 by Azuarc

Items, inventory, and money

If you've read this far, you know there's a lot of different items in the game. This site exists largely to chronicle the knowledge of equipment in games of this genre.

There are two ways two classify items - function and quality.


Function is the obvious. What's this item for?

Equipment is something you wear. A sword. A piece of armor. Duh, no brainer here. Equipment says exactly what inventory slot it is used in, and any aspect of the text written in red means that you can't use it for that reason. (Mail would be in red for a druid, level 35 would in red to a level 30 character.) Equipment is the only type of item that quality applies to, although tradeskill items sometimes have one.

Consumables are items you use. Food and drink. Potions. Scrolls of stamina. You right-click them in your bag, they do something, and they disappear. (Arguably, ammunition could be consumable, but that isn't how you use it.)

Quest items are objects you acquire, usually but not necessarily from corpses, that specifically say on them "quest item", and are for the explicit purpose of completing a quest. You will usually not see a quest item unless you actually have the quest. Some items for quests are not markes as "quest item"s, which means they have an additional purpose. True quest items do nothing else, and cannot be sold to vendor.

Junk items, sometimes called vendor trash, is anything that does not fall into one of the preceding categories, and when you mouse over it, its name appears in GRAY LETTERS. Anything that meets this criteria is only meant to be sold for money when you get back to town.

Tradeskill items are anything that doesn't have an obvious purpose, but has a name in white or sometimes green letters. It may not be obvious what exactly, but it will be used in *some* tradeskill recipe. Obviously herbs, ore, and leather fall into this category. Tradeskill items often make a decent sum of money in the auction house, but if you can't figure out what it's good for or don't feel like wasting the time, it might be worthwhile just to sell the item anyway. (Chances are there aren't too many people looking for Zesty Clam Meat anyway.)

And there are a few miscellaneous items that don't fall into any category. Bags have a fairly obvious purpose. If you have a mount or a non-combat pet, you will possess an item that calls or summons it. (Nightsaber reins, bird cage, cat carrier, etc.) Skinning knives, fishing poles, and mining picks aren't really tradeskill items, nor do they do anything directly.



Additionally, most things you wear have an item quality, indicated by the color of their name. Most items you pick up initially will be gray, indicating the poorest of quality. White is one step up from this. Generally gray and white items have no properties to them other than just "armor 13" or "damage 5-8." Low-level quest rewards and very high-level whites are sometimes an exception.

Green items and anything above that, for all intents and purposes, are magic items. They possess some additional benefit beyond protection or damage, usually a bonus to one of your attributes. Sometimes the bonus will be an effect, like an effect on a weapon that causes extra damage. Unlike white or gray items, these can be disenchanted.

Blue items are much rarer than green. Usually greens only have one or two bonuses on them. Blue items often have three. All other things being equal, though, blue items have much lower required level than green for the effect.

Blue items typically come as treasure from killing a boss in an instanced dungeon. Green items are sometimes randomly generated, a la the Diablo suffix system, but blue items are always the same.

There are even higher qualities of item. Purple items have been seen by beta players as extremely rare random drops. Blizzard has alleged that there are two tiers beyond this. Nobody is entirely certain what they are from.

The item qualities do technically have names. Nobody uses them, and just refers to the color, which often makes item discussions sound like racial bigotry. If you want the "proper" terminology, gray is poor quality, white is common, green is uncommon, blue is rare, purple is exceptional, and it is reported that red will be legendary and orange will be artifact items. (I am working from memory and might have these terms slightly off.)



There is one other very important attribute to equipment - binding. An item that is soulbound belongs to you. Forever. You can sell it to a merchant, but you cannot trade it to another player. Quest rewards are nearly always soulbound so you are forced to do the quest yourself.

Most green items you find along the way have the status "bind on equip." This means that you can trade the item, but as soon as you equip it, it becomes soulbound to you. Most blue items are "bind on pickup," meaning the person that loots it will keep it forever. This is usually an aspect of boss loot, and it is important the group discusses who gets the item before you blindly pick it up.

DO NOT JUST TAKE BIND ON PICK-UP ITEMS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WHATSOEVER.

Don't make me enlarge and bold that. This is the reason why so many different loot options exist, but it is still best to discuss with your group what is to become of an item. Most people follow a policy of NBG (need before greed) that mandates that if you are a warlock and you could loot a really nice bow, it should instead go to the hunter in the party. For this purpose, "need" for cash and disenchanting are on an even plane, and squarely below someone wanting an item because they would use it themselves (on that character.) In the event that more than one person wants an item, it is generally acceptable to roll for it, but typing /random. Highest roll (from 0 to 100) wins.


<will finish later>

Edited, Wed Nov 10 21:30:21 2004 by Azuarc

These are great Azuarc. I just added them to the guides section.

Abilities and Talents


For the mostpart, what defines the things your character is capable of is your class skills and talents. Choices for race and profession matter to a lesser extent, but a majority of the things you can do are dictated by the class you choose. Further down, there will be a list of the abilities you should know every class is capable of.

You can train every ability if you have the money and level to do so. Talents, however, are things not every member of a class will have - because they have to make a choice between them. (Some of the items in the trainer window stem from talent choices, but let's not split hairs.)


Beginning with level 10, you will start getting a talent point every level. This means you will only ever have a maximum of 51. Starting with level 10, you will also have a talent menu that shows you the options you could spend them on.

The purpose of talents is to give your character a sense of direction. One rogue might want to play a strong-armed thug while another might want to play a slippery thief or a shadowy assassin. Talents let you emphasize a particular aspect of your class.

Talents usually only affect your abilities in a passive way - this spell is 10% more effective, you deal an extra 20 damage with that skill, the cooldown on that skill is half a second less, etc. There are some talents that actually give you a new ability though. Once "trained" from the talent menu, there will be an icon for that skill in your spellbook, and you can drag it to your hotkey bar like any other. These skills very often have higher ranks you can train at later levels to make them more effective.

For example, Aimed Shot, a hunter talent that could be acquired at level 20, deals 70 extra damage on a shot that takes extra time to fire due to concentration. At higher levels, the extra time and mana wouldn't be worth 70 damage, but there are higher ranks of Aimed Shot that allow it to deal much more extra damage, making it still worthwhile later in the game.


Every class has 3 talent trees, usually representing three major aspects of your class. Druids, for example, have abilities to enhance their healing, their other spellcasting, and their shapeshifting. Hunters have trees related to improving their pets, their ranged damage, and their melee prowess.

Each talent tree has the abilities arranged to rows most people call tiers. There are only two trees on the first tier of a talent tree, and they are the only ones initially available. Once you spend 5 talent points on the items in the first tier, the second tier becomes available. (Obviously, this means that some talents can have more than one point spent in them.) After you have 10 points spent amongst the first two rows, the third row opens, and so on, all the way up to a row that requires 30 points spent.

Due to the 51 point maximum, this means you will never be able to get everything two different trees have to offer. You will need to make a conscious decision as to what you want your character to focus on.

Fear not! If you accidentally "waste" points by spending them away that you don't like in the long run, it is possible to reset your talents completely. This costs money, however, so it is not something to be taken lightly. The intention is to allow you to correct mistakes in your talent design, not to reselect them completely based on your situation.

To reconfigure your talents, go to a class trainer and select the second options, the one regarding talents. Your trainer will warn you of the cost, and after you confirm your talent reset, you will hear a shattering sound. Open your talent window, and they will all be unspent again. It costs 1 gold the first time you reset your talents, 5 gold the next time, and eventually it will escalate to 50 gold. You can reset your talents any time after that for 50 gold.


OMG, What talents should I get??

Well, that's up to you. Some are better than they sound and some aren't. Some are also very much a matter of taste. For example, most casters have a talent that allows them to get a portion of their normal mana regeneration while casting, which is normally completely turned off during the cast and the five seconds after the spell. Some players feel this is extremely helpful to a character, while others feel that is total crap and the 5 points to get 15% of your mana regen back could better be spent elsewhere.

Keep in mind that there are also prerequisites beyond just the X points spent in tree requirement. For a priest to get Silence, in their Shadow tree, they must first spend 2 points in Improved Psychic Scream. Many non-PvP players aren't terribly thrilled with Improved PS, but they spend the two points in that skill anyway just to get to Silence.

Generally speaking, look at your talents carefully, and consider the things that look like must-haves. Make a list of them, and how many talent points it would take to get to them AND GET THEM. A skill that requires 20 points to get and takes up to 5 points has a cost of 25. Now pick a combination from the three trees that adds up to no more than 51. The priest that gets Silence would be spending 21 points. If they decide they also must have Inner Focus, a skill in the Discipline tree that would force them to spend 21 points, they will have at most 9 points left. Of course, things that are lower in the Shadow and Discipline tree that they need can be had along the way, but that priest could not spend more than 9 points in the other tree, Holy, without giving up one of those two skills.

Blizzard has designed the trees very carefully so in many cases you can NOT get the combination of high-end talents you want. It is not possible to get the last talent in a tree, that takes 31 points, and get a talent in another tree that is in the row that requires 20 points.

Also, most (not all, but most) of the talent-generated skills come on the 10, 20, and 30 point rows, while many of the 5-point enchancement talents are on the "odd" rows. This means you can get one high-end ability choice, and then work up to one of the major enchancement talents, but not get two of the high-end ability talents.

You might find that an aspect of your class is not the one you would have thought you would have wanted to play. Most people that play traditional healing classes would pick a priest, and assume they should get the Holy talents that affect their healing spells, but later find that they appreciate the damage-generating Shadow talents instead. (Indeed, this has created a rift within the priest community.)

To this, all I have to say is, play what you want to play, and what makes the game fun for you, and don't let anyone dictate how to play to you. Your warriors do not have to get defensive talents, your druids do not have to get restorative talents, your mages do not have to get arcane talents...even those these have come to be accepted as the most useful for a high-octane instance group. While some players you encounter might seem to disagree, you can play the game without these talents - without any talents, even. Remember,

TALENTS ARE SPECIALIZATIONS. THEY MOSTLY DO NOT DETERMINE WHAT YOUR CHARACTER CAN DO, OR INDICATE YOUR SKILL AS A PLAYER.



Playing the game effectively does require you to know a little bit about the other classes and what they ARE capable of though. In the very first section of this guide, there were very brief descriptions of the classes and what their usual roles are. This doesn't tell you that a mage can remove curses though, and it might be some time before you learn this. Here is a partial list of what you should know about other classes:


WARRIOR

General: Warriors have three stances, that determine which skills are available to them at that point in time. They can switch stances at any time, but they lose all their "mana." Warriors don't actually have mana though, they generate rage as the battle progresses. Most battle skills require rage, or generate additional rage. Warriors can dual wield at level 20, but it is usually preferable for a warrior to use a shield or a two-handed weapon, depending on the situation.

Abilities:
Charge (level 4) - starts a battle by furiously running up to an enemy at a speed that rivals the Flash, and begins with a certain amount of extra rage. A good way to start a fight when there is no better alternative (and often there is.)
Dual Wield (level 20) - you miss 24% of the time while dual wielding, and there aren't any specific advantages for a warrior to dual wield, but yes they can do it.
Hamstring (level 8) - Makes the enemy unable to run at full speed, allowing you to run away, or preventing them from escaping.
Heroic Strike (level 1) - Deal additional damage with an attack.
Plate mail (level 40) - Warriors can wear the heaviest armor in the game, beginning at level 40.
Rend (level 4) - Creates open wounds that make your target lose damage over time.
Shield Bash (level 12) - Interrupts a spell and forces the caster to not cast that spell for 6 seconds.
Shield Wall (level 28) - Reduce all incoming non-magic damage to 25% for 10 seconds.
Taunt - while there is an actual "taunt" skill, I use this as a general term to refer to a number of different skills the warrior has to redirect attention to himself. This is, arguably, the warrior's most important quality.

Talents:
The three trees are Fury, Protection, and Arms.
If you are actually a warrior, there's a lot more to know, but for general purposes, there aren't many specific warrior talents everyone should know. Mortal Strike is the best known warrior talent, that generates a large amount of damage on the target and also reduces healing briefly.


PALADIN

General: Where to start...paladins have been turned upside-down recently. Paladins are perhaps the most enduring of all the classes; these guys are just plain hard to kill. Warriors can take more damage, but paladins have other ways to keep themselves, or others, alive. They have...well, read abilities.

Abilities:
Rather than listing individual abilities, here are the general types of skills paladins get --
Auras - permanent effects that follow the paladin around. Anyone nearby and grouped receives this effect. Examples include Devotion Aura (bonus AC,) and Retribution Aura (reflects damage.) A paladin can only put out one aura at a time.
Blessings - these are short-term effects the paladin casts on others. A paladin can only bless a person one way at a time. Examples include Blessing of Wisdom (extra mana regen,) Blessing of Might (additional attack power,) and the oddball Blessing of Protection, that completely prevents a target from taking damage or making any actions for several seconds. Other blessings generally last for 5 minutes.
Seals: Paladins have self-only, one-at-a-time buffs called seals that last for 30 seconds. Seal of Righteousness generates health for the paladin per successful attack, and Seal of the Crusader makes the paladin swing harder and faster at the expense of damage reducing as the seal progresses, for example.
Judgements: Any seal can be released as a judgement using a skill called judgement. The effect then becomes a negative effect on the paladin's target. Judgement of Righteousness (from the seal of the same name) makes everyone who attacks a target regain a few hit points. Judgement of the Crusader increases the holy damage taken by the target. All judgements last for 30 seconds, and the actual judgement skill to convert seals has a 15 second cooldown.

Other abilities:
Just about every other paladin skill is fairly significant. There's too many to list. Paladins can heal, rez, stun, make a target invulnerable briefly, summon a horse, wear platemail, heal someone completely once per hour, among other things. Look at the class skill information on the site if you want to know more. I don't want to make this longer than it has to be. (Believe it or not!)

Talents:
The three talent trees are Holy (divine magic), Protection (shield and armor skills), and Retribution. (offensive damage)
Everyone's still learning talents as of this writing. Some of the abilities that seem important to many players include Holy Shock (ranged holy attack), Revelation (reduced LoH timer), Holy Shield (block percentage and damage shield for 10 sec), Improved Devotion Aura, and Consecration (AE holy attack). The seemingly most significant ability as of this writing is Blessing of Kings, which increases a target's attributes by 10% for five minutes.


SHAMAN

General: Shamans are the Horde-only class, and while slightly less defensive than paladins, and perhaps slightly less offensively-inclined for melee, they are potent spellcasters as well. Their heals are considered powerful and flexible enough to allow them to be a main healer, but they also have many skills that make them able to tank, melee, or nuke as well. They are the truest hybrid class of the game.
Shamans function largely through the use of totems. At various stages, shamans get the use of totems of a new element. Earth totems are largely defensive, fire offensive, water restorative, and air general melee prowess. A shaman can use one of each class of totems at any point by casting it, and it plunks down on the ground and creates a local effect. Totems are attackable and generally die quite easily, but also are immune to AE attacks.

Abilities:
Rockbiter Weapon (level 1) - adds attack power to the shaman's weapon, effectively making him hit harder. There is a weapon buff for each element, each with a different effect.
Stoneskin Totem (level 4) - Earth totem. Reduces the damage taken by nearby group members by a fixed amount per hit.
Earth Shock (level 4) - Instant nuke that also interrupts spellcasting for 2 seconds. There is a different "shock" nuke for each element, each with a different effect.
Lightning Shield (level 8) - Creates a damage shield with 3 charges.
Ancestral Spirit (level 12) - Resurrection.
Ghost Wolf (level 20) - Turns the shaman into a wolf, that runs with an extra 40% of normal speed. (Level 40 mounts are 60%.)
Lesser Healing Wave (level 28) - fast-casting heal spell
Mail (level 40) - At 40, the shaman graduates from leather armor to mail.

Talents:
The three talent trees are Elemental, Enhancement, and Restoration.
The elemental combat tree focuses on magic damage, and is best known for the three shock talents, Concussion, Convection and Reverbation, that increase the damage on all four "shock" spells.
Restoration focuses on replenishing health and mana, and many shamans go deep into this tree just for Nature's Swiftness and the chance to cast a nature spell instantly every 3 minutes.
The enhancement tree is critical, at least in part, for any shaman. With mana defensive talents, offensive talents, and a few general purpose skills, this tree overall is very important to consider. There is no one single stand-out talent. Rather nearly all of them are quite good.


HUNTER

General - Hunters are ranged combat specialists that keep their opponents at bay by siccing tamed beasts on their foes to keep them busy. Hunters can tame *most* creatures of type "beast", and generally there are only stat differences. Some creatures start with abilities which the hunter can learn, and then teach other pets, but he can only have one active pet at a time, (and two others stabled.) Hunters are also competent at melee, although nowhere near a match for a warrior or a rogue.

Abilities -
Auto-shot (level 1) - The hunter is the only class that can shoot automatically the way most classes can turn on attack for melee. This ability activates after using most special shots.
Hunter's Mark (level 6) - The famous Eat At Joe's arrow from this ability makes targets more susceptible to ranges attacks, and is also useful for picking a target for the group to attack, (as silly at it looks for a hunter to mark his prey with a big bobbing arrow.)
Aspect of the Hawk (level 10) - One of the hunter's "aspect" spells, only one of which can be active at a time, this effect gives the hunter bonus ranged attack power.
TAME BEAST (level 10) - Find a tameable beast, and use this skill before engaging in combat. If you can woo it for 30 seconds while it rebels against you (fights you,) you will tame it.
Feed Pet (level 10) - Pets leave if you don't keep them happy. Initially a pet will be very unhappy. They slowly lose happiness on their own, but take a big hit after dying. Make sure you feed pets after you revive them. This also helps restore pet HP, but only works out of combat.
Mend Pet (level 12) - This is a *channeled* heal spell that works only on your pet.
Immolation Trap (level 16) - The first of the hunter's traps, create this on the ground in front of you, and then lure a target through it. It will become encased in flames and take fire damage over time.
Scorpid Sting (level 22) - You can use one sting on a target at a time. Scorpid Sting reduces a target's strength and agility significantly.

Talents -
The three trees are Survival, Beast Mastery, and Marksmanship
Aside from two aspect abilities, Beast Mastery is exclusively talents that increase the effectiveness of your pet, culminating with Spirit Bond, which gives you health for every hit your pet lands, which can be rather noticeable with some of the other pet talents.
Survival focuses on traps and combat skills, and includes Deterrence and Counterattack which, respectively, give a temporary dodge/parry boost, and allow you a special attack following a parry. (Hunters have one automatically following a dodge.)
Marksmanship is the default tree for most hunters since ranged combat is their strength, and ends with Trueshot Aura, a group effect that increases melee and ranged attack power.


ROGUE

General - Rogues are sneaky little, um, devils. Aside from being the masters of fighting dirty to gain any advantage they can in combat, they also can enter a stealth mode to approach an opponent without notice and backstab them or pick their pockets. Rogues in combat use a system of combo points: certain attacks give you a point, and you can store up to five against your current target. You lose them all when you either change targets or release them through the use of a few special "finishing moves," that do absolutely nothing without a combo point. This is *vaguely* reminiscent of Diablo assassins, but it is definitely not the same thing.
Rogues have a mana-like bar called energy that has a maximum of 100 points, always, but refills very rapidly.

Abilities -
Sinister Strike (level 1) - basic bonus attack that adds a combo point
Eviscerate (level 1) - finishing move that deals extra damage per combo point. At higher levels, with the right talents, this can be one of the most damaging attacks in the game.
Sprint (level 10) - makes the rogue run really fast for a short period. Can only be done once every 5 minutes.
Sap (level 10) - Before combat begins, a rogue can sneak up on a humanoid target and bop them on the head, putting them out of commission for a little while as you get to work on his friends.
Ambush (level 18) - Attack made while stealth to start combat that does a large amount of damage and adds a combo point.
Poisons (level 20) - Rogues can poison their blades with a few different types of poison.
Vanish (level 22) - puts the rogue in a special super-stealth for a few seconds, automatically breaking any awareness anyone had of him.

Talents -
The talent trees for rogue are Assassination, Combat, and Subtlety.
Subtlety is good for being elusive, and has skills like Improved Sap, which gives the rogue a chance to not become visible after sapping a target. (He cannot sap more than once.) While Subtlety focuses on the sneakiness of a rogue, the difference between Assassination and Combat isn't immediately obvious. Combat focuses more on "pure" melee fighting, with weapon masteries and increased chances to dodge or hit, whereas assassination dwells on ruthless, remorseless killing, increasing the damage on your abilities, such as Cold Blood that gives your next major attack skill a guaranteed critical.


DRUID

General - druids are natural spellcasters. While more flexible than a true cloth caster, calling them a hybrid is really only justified by their two animal forms that transform them into an effective warrior (bear) or rogue (cat). They also have a travel form (cheetah) and aquatic version of it (manatee) that do not really afford them any offense.
In caster form, druids are excellent healers, supposedly second only to priests. Their damage capability as a caster is not as good as the caster classes, but it is respectable. If all they want to do is damage, they can always morph into a cat.

Abilities -
Mark of the Wild (level 1) - general all-purpose buff that increases all stats, armor, and resistances. Dubbed by Blizzard the "best buff in the game."
Rejuvenation (level 4) - heal over time spell. Druid heals focus more on HoT than priests'.
Moonfire (level 4) - combination nuke and damage over time
Bear Form (level 10) - go into warrior mode, as a bear
Regrowth (level 12) - combination heal and heal-over-time. Strongest druid heal as far as raw numbers go.
Hibernate (level 18) - puts beasts and dragonkin to sleep. Only one target can be hibernated.
Cat Form (level 20) - go into rogue mode, as a cat
Remove Curse (level 24) - I mention this only because nobody seems to know what classes can cure curses. Mages can too.
Travel Form (level 30) - special run-speed enhancement form

Talents -
Balance, Feral Combat and Restoration are the Druid talent trees.
Balance focuses on nature and natural damage, and while often overlooked, can just as often spoke attention for Omen of Clarity, a weapon effect that can give the druid a chance to gain a buff making his next healing or damage spell free, and for Shapeshifting, which reduces the delay after changing forms before the druid can use abilities again. Feral Combat focuses on those forms, with perhaps the most skills in any tree because many of them are bear- or cat-form specific. Restoration for the druid includes an Improved Mark of the Wild, as well as the same Nature's Swiftness talent that shamans have.


PRIEST

General - the healing rival of the druid, the priest has a few extra tools to make them more capable as a healer, but not much more powerful. Priests can also deal damage through the use of dark arts and shadow words. It should also be noted that each priest race has two specific spells only they can cast.

Abilities -
Power Word: Fortitude (level 1) - stamina buff, effectively increasing max HP
Shadow Word: Pain (level 4) - instant-casting damage-over-time spell
Power Word: Shield (level 6) - this spell absorbs damage on the target until it reaches its limit. While this happens, the target is not taking damage, so their spells are not being interrupted. There is a recast timer per target on this spell. While this spell is not a very good heal substitute, it is a crucial utility skill.
Fade (level 8) - Useless in PvP, this skill reduces your effective hate amount for the 10 seconds it lasts.
Resurrection (level 10) - as per name.
Psychic Scream (level 14) - AE fear, affects limited number of targets
Heal (level 16) - upgrade to the "lesser heal" line, this is the primary "strong heal" of the class that is complemented by flash heal.
Shackle Undead (level 20) - prevents an undead target from performing any activity, including moving, so long as it remains undamaged. Undead players are not considered undead for this spell.

Talents -
Priests get benefits in Holy, Shadow, and Discipline
Holy is the tree with all the direct healing talents, and one might expect that makes it the universal choice for priests. It does, after all, include Spiritual Healing and Improved Healing that directly increase the efficiency of heals. But not so!, for Discipline is a general all-around boost to various skills, such as a direct increase to mana pool (Mental Strength) or a reduction in the recast timer on Power Word: Shield.
The shadow tree is the polar opposite of the holy tree, giving priests increased damage output rather than their healing so they can be more self-reliant. The most notable skill in this tree is Mind Flay, a channeled damage/snare with high mana efficiency and very good synergy with the rest of the shadow tree.


WARLOCK

General - Warlocks are inferior damage casters to mages, however they look like more of a rival when a battle is extended across time, since they have many "over time" spells. Additionally, warlocks have utility de-buffs and, most importantly, demon pets. There are 5 different types of pets, Imp, Voidwalker, Succubus, Felhunter, and Infernal, each with different function. Warlock also need Soul Shards for some of their spells, which are generated from absorbing the souls of dying targets.

Abilities -
Immolate (level 1) - one of the warlock's damage over time (DoT) spells. Corruption follows it at level 4.
Summon Imp (level 1) - summons an imp pet that nukes targets with you, and has a group stamina buff later in level
Curse of Weakness (level 4) - just the first curse in the line, only one can be active at a time. Weakness reduces the damage the target causes.
Life Tap (level 6) - convert health into mana
Summon Voidwalker (level 10) - summons a big amorphous blue blob of a pet that does little damage but serves as a decent tank for the warlock
Drain Soul (level 10) - gives the warlock a soul shard if the target dies while drain soul is being cast
Summon Succubus (level 20) - summons a pet with moderate melee damage and the ability to mesmerize targets
*Ritual of Summoning (level 20) - one of the biggest utility spells in the game, warlocks can bring a party member to their location if two other group members help the warlock in the ritual. Requires a soul shard.
Banish (level 28) - removes a demon or elemental from the game for 20 seconds...it can't do anything to you, but you cannot do anything to it either.
*Create Soulstone (level 30) - the other major utility spell, target's soul is stored for 30 minutes, and if they die, they can resurrect themselves shortly afterwards rather than returning to the graveyard
Hellfire (level 30) - very powerful AE attack that also damages the caster

Talents -
I'm afraid I know jack and squat about warlock talents. They haven't been in the game long, and unlike the paladin and hunter, I don't have direct personal experience to rely on.


MAGE

General - Mages make stuff go boom. They also summon food/drink, teleport, and "sheep" stuff. But mostly they just make stuff go boom.

Abilities -
Arcane Intellect (level 1) - increases target's intelligence, effectively increasing their mana pool
Fireball (level 1) - basic fire attack. Ice bolt follows for frost damage.
Conjure Water (level 4) - just the first of many food and drink summoning spells. Conjured water helps mages replenish their own mana without buying large quantities of drinks
Polymorph (level 8) - turns a target into a sheep unless (until) it takes damage. Only works on beasts, humanoids, and dragonkin.
Arcane Missiles (level 8) - channeled damage spell that is arguably the most mana efficient single-target mage spell
Frost Nova (level 10) - all targets nearby take minimal cold damage and become rooted to the ground by ice, allowing the mage to back up to safety.
Remove Lesser Curse (level 18) - as mentioned under druid, so you know which two classes actually cure curses. Nobody ever seems aware that mages can do this.
Blizzard (level 20) - the most widely-known area effect spell, although Arcane Explosion is often more popular with some mages.
Teleport (level 20) - teleports the mage to a specific capital city.

Talents -
Mage talents are quite simple: fire, frost, arcane (aka not hot or cold)
Fire spells do the most damage. If you want to make stuff go BOOM instead of boom, look into Blast Wave, a fire nova attack that dazes opponents. Cold is the most defensive of the mage trees, focusing on slowing opponents down so you outlast them. Due to the recast timer on Frost Nova, the talent reducing its recast is useful to even mages that aren't frost-focused. Arcane is the hardest to use, but the most mana-efficient, meaning you can do the most damage in a long fight. There are several must-have skills in this tree, and in particular Evocation is *the* mage talent. Moreso than any other talent, essentially every mage has this talent, because it turbo-charges your mana regenation to squeeze a minute-and-a-half worth of mana regen into 8 seconds, giving the mage usually at least half of their mana bar back.

Edited, Thu Nov 18 05:00:45 2004 by Azuarc

Edited, Mon Nov 22 16:41:28 2004 by Azuarc

Edited, Mon Nov 22 16:43:05 2004 by Azuarc

wow, great guide man. Thanks!

Thanks Az, I will add those later today!

THE STUFF THEY DON'T TEACH YOU IN SCHOOL
aka, the miscellaneous leftover things to know


Since this is a random hodgepodge of info, here's the list of stuff that will be in this post:

Accounts
Ammunition and quivers
Attributes/statistics
Buffs and debuffs
Dual wielding
Durability
Etiquette
Five-second rule
Game clock
Inns and resting
Instance deaths
Level cap
Macros
Naming characters
Non-trade slot
Quest items
Reputation
Set items
Slash commands
Spell interrupts
Stacking (of items)
Tradeskill training
Unlocking chests



ACCOUNTS:
Your World of Warcraft account will support up to 8 characters per server, according to Blizzard's website. While there are forced servers in the sense that only North American players are supposed to play on NA servers, US players will be free to play in any of the 4 time zones across the country. (International releases are coming!)

Accounts run 14.95 per month, have a free first month, and will include a 30-day trial period for a friend to try the game.


AMMUNITION AND QUIVERS:
Ammo adds damage to your ranged attacks. While you need *some* type of ammo to shoot, you can have the most basic type if you want to save on costs.

Quivers and ammo pouches are special containers that can ONLY hold ammunition. Possessing one increases your attack speed with a ranged weapon, however you do not need one to use a firearm. It is only recommended that hunters have one, as the loss of an extra bag slot is not justified for warriors or rogues.


ATTRIBUTES & STATISTICS:
Your characters have 5 major attributes, strength, stamina, agility, intellect, and spirit. Strength affects melee damage and blocking rates. Stamina affects max HP. Agility affects chance to dodge or parry, ranged damage, crit rates, and melee damage for rogues (split with strength). Intellect affects max mana and spell crit rates. Spirit contributes to health and mana regen.

In your character window are several other statistics. Alongside your character are 5 icons for different spell resistances. Below that is your character's ability to hit with a weapon and the power with which he/she strikes your opponents. Mousing over this area will also give a DPS rating for your character, split into each hand if you dual wield. This section is repeated for your ranged weapon.


BUFFS & DEBUFFS:
When you receive a beneficial spell, it will go in one row. When you receive a detrimental spell, it will go in a second row. Spells that remove effects will ONLY affect debuffs on you, and buffs on your opponents. You cannot dispel your own stamina buff trying to remove a slow spell. Likewise, you will negate the heal over time on your enemy rather than removing the silence effect you just cast.


DUAL WIELDING:
Three classes can dual wield. Rogues learn to at level 10, and at level 20, warriors and hunters gain this ability. Since rogues have no other real option for their off-hand, rogues almost univerally dual wield, but warriors rarely do, and hunters often prefer a two-handed weapon.

The main issue with dual wielding is that there is a base 24% chance to miss, and the off-hand weapon damage is halved, meaning that for equal DPS weapons, a second weapon only adds about (.75+.375) = 12.5% damage increase. A hunter will typically prefer the extra damage a two-handed weapon, and a warrior will either want a 2H or a shield.

Rogues have talents that increase the effectiveness of dual wielding. Expect to be frustrated with miss rates though.


DURABILITY:
As you participate in combat, your equipment will slowly wear. If you die, your items all lose 10% of their max durability. If you use the spirit healer, they lose an additional 15%. So after dying several times, your items will eventually break if you do not return to town and repair.

Items that are broken are not gone for good. They merely stop working. Repair costs are a minor nuisance at lower levels, but at the higher end of the spectrum, they help keep inflation in check by being quite expensive.


ETIQUETTE:
Your reputation with other players is important. As such, try to be polite and considerate. There are any number of ways that this could be described, but getting into all of them would make this post a novel. Just remember that other people are here to enjoy themselves too, so don't explicitly try to ***** them, and don't spam general chat with tons of stupid comments. If someone clears to an ore vein, don't run up and mine it while they are fighting the last mob in the way. Don't skin other people's kills until they walk away from the corpse. Don't rush to attack something just because you see somebody else going for it. If someone is waiting for a named to spawn, let them have it. I could go on, but I don't want to actually write that novel.


THE FIVE-SECOND RULE:
When any class performs an ability that uses mana, with little exception, their mana regen does not function during the cast or for five seconds after it is finished. Blizzard was concerned with the potential for players with a pure spirit build to be able to effectively chain-cast whatever they wanted. Unfortunately this game has a tremendous impact on the low-end game for starting players, and often affects strategy in a rather negative way.

I try to be largely impartial writing these guides, but I have to come out with a personal opinion here: the five-second rule sucks, and doesn't seem to really serve any benefit. Blizzard, if you're reading this, please remove the five-second rule.


GAME CLOCK:
The timer in-game runs on a 24-hour cycle. When it is day in real life, it is day in the game. Night time does actually get dark, although depending on your gamma setting, it may or may not be very noticeable. The clock is based on wherever the server is located, so a West Coaster playing on an EST server after dinnertime hours will find it to usually be night in Azeroth. This aspect of the game is why shadowmeld works at any time of day - some people would never be playing at night.


INNS AND RESTING:
Inns serve two purposes. The first and more obvious is that they are the home points for your hearthstone. You can move that bind point to any inn you travel to.

The second is resting. When your character portrait is flashing yellow, this means you are resting. This sometimes occurs in other parts of a major city. While you are resting, a small notch appears in your experience bar in front of where your actual exp stops, and (very) slowly moves up the bar -- to be specific, at a rate of one block (5%) per 8 hours. While you are considered rested, the experience you get from creatures will be doubled.

This effect remains until your experience catches up with the notch. Other sources of experience, like quests, do not affect your rested exp and will move the notch as well. The maximum amount of rested exp you can accrue is 30 bars, or a level and a half.


INSTANCE DEATHS:
When you die in an instance, you cannot run all the way back to your corpse. You will revive as you zone into the instance. While not everything in an instance respawns, some of it will, so you may not be able to simply pick up where you left off. If you are grouped with a player who is able to, they can resurrect you back to your corpse. This means it is rather significant to have a paladin, shaman, or priest in your instance group. (Druid rez is only once per half hour.)


LEVEL CAP:
The maximum level in World of Warcraft is 60. There are no plans in the near future to change that. Eventually hero classes will be added into the game to give you something to do at the level cap to further progress your character. Nobody knows anything about hero classes.


MACROS:
The macro window is in the options menu. It has very limited use. To make a macro, pick an icon and add the lines you want in the macro, and finish by giving it a name. You can drag the macro down to your hotkey bar from there.

Legitimate commands in macros include and slash command or using an ability (which you can add easily by shift-clicking the ability in your spellbook.) One thing you can NOT do with macros is add a pause command to chain commands together. This was done intentionally to prevent botting.


NAMING CHARACTERS:
Blizzard has a big long naming policy that a lot of players have protested as being fascist. Simply put, this is what the naming policy says:

Your name must be a *NAME* that *YOU* created.

Those that complain want names that are either unoriginal or not something you would name your child, even in an alternate world. If you really can't come up with something, use the random name generator.


NON-TRADE SLOT:
In the trade window, there is a special slot for items that will not be traded. This is for performing services on that item, especially if that item is soulbound, such an enchanting, unlocking, or applying smithed goods.


QUEST ITEMS:
Items for a quest that have the specific heading "quest item" will only appear for people who actually need that item. If you do not have the quest, or you have finished it, you will never see the item drop. If someone else in your group *does* need that item, they will have the option to loot it, even if the rest of the corpse is your loot. These items become FFA among the people who need them.


REPUTATION:
Reputation hasn't had a significant effect on the game in beta. As you perform acts for a given faction, they begin to like you more (or hate you more if you are killing them.) This can make a hostile group become neutral, or a neutral group regard you as friendly. Some factions won't give you quests, or their merchants will give you better deals if you have good reputation.

If you perform in dishonorable PvP kills, you will lose reputation with everyone, which could leave you without a single place to conduct your affairs such as repairing your equipment or buying drinks.


SET ITEMS:
Some very rare items are parts of a set. These are almost exclusively from instances, and not many of them are very low-level. Items in a set will gain bonuses from wearing multiple pieces of the set. Set items are clearly marked as such, and will tell you the other pieces in the set.

XXX "of the Bear" or "of the Owl" is not a set item.


SLASH COMMANDS:
In addition to talking, there are a lot of commands that can be performed by typing slash-something. Most of these can be accomplished by other means as well. /sit can be done by pressing X, for example. Since there are alternatatives to these commands, listing them isn't terribly important. /follow is the command I find myself actually typing out most often, although I could just right-click my group member's portrait instead. A couple fun ones you might try are /dance and /train.


SPELL INTERRUPTS:
When a caster is performing a spell, their cast bar fills from left to right. If they become hit during this time, the bar jumps a bit to the left and continues from there. Usually this results in an extra second of cast time. Damage prevention abilities like Power Word: Shield and Blessing of Protection can prevent this.

Some special abilities actually completely stop casting, either by knocking the caster down or making them unable to cast in general. The paladin immunity skills are unaffected by these, but skills that absorb damage will not prevent these effects.

Casters can also fail to cast if, upon completion of the spell, they can no longer see their target because an obstacle is in the way or they moved behind the caster. In PvP, melee will very often circle-strafe behind a caster to try to avoid being nuked.


ITEM STACKING:
Some items stack. You will not be able to stack ******* swords, but you can stack smaller objects like herbs and pieces of cloth. Depending on the item, it might stack to a limit of 5, 10, 20, or 200. 200 is almost exclusively for ammunition.

To split a stack, shift-click on the item. Before you actually "pick up" the item, the game will prompt you for a number of them. Control-clicking will take a single item from that stack.


TRADESKILL TRAINING:
Tradeskills can be learned from any tradeskill trainer, and the most basic recipes can be learned from them. Note that you should start with a few recipes. (Ignore recipe comments for gathering skills.)

When you first take a tradeskill, you can only learn up to a maximum skill of 75 in it. When you reach a skill of at least 50, you can raise your training from Apprentice to Journeyman, which will make your cap 150. Apprentice trainers cannot teach you this, and you must be level 10.

Additional ranks of tradeskilling include Expert (new cap 225, requires skill 100 and level 20) and Artisan (new cap 300, requires skill 150 and level 35.) These level caps are imposed to keep a player from simply creating an alt or mule to do their third and fourth tradeskills. They are usually not terribly restrictive to someone actually playing that character and skilling up as they go.

At higher levels, there will be fewer recipes that are learned from trainers. Aside from the occasional rare bought recipe, you will need to rely on finding them as loot or buying them in the Auction House from people that find them. The non-profession tradeskills must be raised past journeyman through alternate means. (Expert requries finding a book somewhere, and artisan involves a minor quest.)


UNLOCKING:
Sometimes you will find a chest or door that is locked. Only rogues and blacksmiths can open locks. If one isn't in your group, you might be out of luck. If the chest is small, i.e. lootable, you can take it to give to a rogue later. Use the non-trade slot so they don't just steal the items inside!

Great places to better your knowledge of the game, while allowing time to pass before the big day:

Getting Started: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/gettingstarted.html

What to do in your first few levels: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/firstfewlevels.html

Worthy Topics of Interest: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/

In the above section the following things are discussed in detail:

New Players

# Realm Types - Figure out which server type you want to play on!
# Getting Started - How to first begin playing the game
# First Few Levels
# Character Information
# Reputation
# Controls
# Slash Commands
# Slash Commands: Emotes
# Glossary - Definitions for common terms

Basic Information

# Death - About Death, Resurrection, and Ghosts!
# Resting - About Inns, Resting, and Hearthstones
# Spell & Ability Basics
# Combat
# Player vs. Player Combat - Special Rules for fights between Horde and Alliance
# Quests - Introduction to Quests
# Quest Basics - Basic information about Quests
# Quest Management - Tips on managing your Quests
# Bags - Collecting and storing Items
# Food/Drink - Info about food/drink
# Banking - Store Items
# Combat Pets
# Small Pets
# Mounts
# Monster Basics - Learn about Monsters
# Public Transportation

Player Interaction

# How to be Nice!
# Parties: Basics - Learn how to party in a party when you're not partying!
# Parties: Grouping - How do I find a group?
# Parties: Etiquette - Learn recommended behavior in a party
# Parties: Tips - Learn how to be a good party member
# Parties: The Art of Pulling - Learn about pulling monsters
# Parties: Roles
# Parties: Crowd Control - Learn how to deal with fighting multiple monsters at once.
# Mail - You can mail messages and items to other players!
# Trading
# Auction Houses
# Chat Auctions
# Duels
# Guilds - Information about Guilds
# Joining Guilds - Tips on finding a good guild.
# Guild Management
# Guild Leadership - Tips on running a guild.

World

# NPCs
# Merchants
# Exploring the Map
# Instancing
# Dungeons
# World Dungeons
# Region Levels
# Major Cities

Advanced

# Race War Tips - Tips for Race War Servers
# Macros - How to create and use Macros