Little yellow dots.

For players that are new to the game, or don't want to get too distracted by professions, or just those that want to make some easy scratch you might want to look into gathering professions. Their are three gathering profession, mining, skinning and Herbalism.

The circle isn't part of the map I just added it to make it easier to see.

Gathering professions require little to no need for additional items to level. Herbalism requires no items, while skinning and mining only require one item each (pickax and skinning knife respectively). In order to get into the professions you need to head to your capital city ask a guard and they'll point you in the right direction of the profession trainers. Click open your map and you'll see the flag on the map where the trainer is located. This will keep us from waisting time running all over hells half achier looking for the proper trainers. If we talk to the trainer they will offer to teach you the starting level of whichever profession you'r trying to learn. You then click okay and pay ten copper to get started. Your mining pick will cost seventy copper but if you've been looting everything and selling off the junk every time you stop at a vendor you should easily have enough.

Once you've picked up your professions and supplies (mining pick or skinning knife) it's time to get to work. If you mouse over your mini map you can right click on it and it will give you a list of things that you can set your map to show icons for when your close to them. Now that you have mining you will be able to choose find minerals and this will display a little yellow dot on your mini map and that will allow you to track down your mining nodes. once your their just walk right up to it and right click it and your character will go to town. Congratulations you will have just earned your first skill point in mining. As your skill level gets higher you will have to go to a profession trainer again to learn the next level of training to be better able to mine the more advanced ore. This same rule will apply to all gathering professions. If you want to keep a closer eye on how far you have to go just hit your "k" button your professions tab is bound to it by default. I do want to point out that sadly their is no find leather option on the mini map for skinners but the good news for you is that pretty much any animal you kill can be skinned. This is of course excluding a few of the more human like animals (worgan, yetis etc.) if your ever in doubt just put your courser over it and if you can skin it the icon will appear.

Circle is still not part of the image, just their  to help you see

I told you at the beginning of this post that these professions are a good way to make money while leveling and indeed they are. It hardly takes you out of what your doing to run to the nodes on your map while questing in an area. You then simply keep what you collect in your bags until you can get to an auction house and post what you have. I always try and post just a little below the lowest cost for the same amount of what I'm selling. Doing this will not make you absurd amounts of gold but it will cover your repair costs and given the small amount of your time it will have taken I'd say it was well worth the effort.

Remember we're all noobs, some of us just fly the flag a little higher.
-Morison

   

How do I put some green in my wallet?

Everyone needs a job, even Starcallers, King Slayers and Saviors of Azeroth. That's right work is something you just can't avoid even in your game time. As of level five players can start learning professions. Their are eleven professions, and five secondary professions (I'm only going to count four of them, but more on that later ).  Players can learn two professions and all five secondary professions. Over the next couple of posts I'm going to break these down for you into sections and then take them profession by profession. In this first post I'm going to go over all the basics of professions as a whole. Professions can be broken into two categories; gathering(3) and crafting(8). Gathering professions as the name implies are professions where the players gather things and

crafting professions are where you make things. Just like you measure your progression through the game with levels and experience points you will measure your progress through your professions in skill points. these skill points at current go from 1-600 (615 with racial leveling bonus) Their are several stop points along the way that speaks to where you are. Apprentice 1-75, Journeyman 50-150, Expert 125-225, Artisan 200-300, Master 275-375, Grand Master 350-450, Illustrious Grand Master 425-525, Zen Master 500-600. Your professions will be gated by your levels here's the breakdown; you need to be at least level 10 to level your profession skill past 75, you need to be at least level 20 to level your profession skill past 150, you need to be at least level 35 to level your profession skill past 225,you need to be at least level 50 to level your profession skill past 300, you need to be at least level 65 to level your profession skill past 375, you need to be at least level 80 to level your profession skill past 450. you need to be at least level  85 to level your profession skill past 500 and you need to be level 90 to get your skill points to get your skill points to 600 (or higher with racial profession bonuses). These are the skill

point guidelines for crafting professions, the requirements for gathering will be more lenient. I leave you these numbers instead of both because I don't want to provide confusing information, this game is confusing enough. Besides, if we set the bar high you'll still clear it in gathering with no complications. So keep an eye out for the next couple of posts and I'll let you know not only about the professions themselves but also Addons and web sites that will help you to simplify and get the most out of your professions.

Remember we're all noobs, some of us just fly the flag a little higher.
-Morison

So I can't have all the things?

Last time we met we we're talking about bags and banks and I told you I would talk about guild banks later, well it's later now. Actually as my sister has pointed out it's never later it's always now, but no matter we're talking about it anyway. As far as use go's it's not terribly different from your personal bank. To that end this post is more about etiquette then use. The three big differences between your personal bank and the guild bank are; guild banks can have up to eight tabs. Obviously enough the contents of which don't belong to just you. Which leads us to the last thing; What you can withdraw from the bank (be it items or gold) on a daily basis will most likely be limited. The contents of the guild bank are made up by the collective donations of all your fellow guild members. Unless your guild is remarkably unorganized the items in the bank will be sorted within the different guild tabs. Before putting anything into the guild bank you want to make sure your putting it in the right place otherwise this can become very annoying for a guild master. To see what any given tab is

intended for you just have to mouse over the tab at the top and it will tell you what the tab has been named. By clicking on the tabs at the top it will switch you to a different bank tab (blatantly obvious I know). Some of these tabs will be earmarked for different things, often times their will be an officers only tab, or a tab intended purely for raid team members. In cases like these unless you fall into one of those categories you wont be able to access to any of the things in those tabs. Sometimes their will be a tab that says "Ask an officer" to this end it's a really good idea to know who all your guild officers are. If you don't know you can always press the "J" key. This is the default key to open your guild window, click on the roster tab and set the pull down menu to "Guild status" and that will show you all online guild members ranks. Back to banks. Guild gold just like items in the bank will be limited on how much you as a player can withdraw. That amount will also count towards the amount you can use for guild repairs for the day. Guild gold has been donated by guild players as well as collected from guild members completing quests, guild raids, battlegrounds and other activates that the game rewards the guild for.

If you should find yourself flush with cash (me neither) and want to donate some to the guild just mouse over the guild gold in the bottom right hand side and left click on it. A menu will pop up that you can fill in and then click accept. Should you for some reason want to know the transaction (withdrawal/ deposit) history of a tab just hit the "transaction log" tab and it will tell you all the comings and goings of that tab. Their is also a "money log" that will do the same thing for guild gold. Unless you are a guild master or officer their isn't much point in looking through these. As a low level guild member, bank restrictions can be really frustrating. However you need to see things from the guild masters perspective. Until you know a player you have no idea who is honest and who is going to walk away with everything in the guild bank. Sad to say but I've lived through this scenario before. As you can imagine it's not fun. So prove your character and climb up the guild ranks and don't rob people blind.

Remember we're all noobs, some of us just fly the flag a little higher.
-Morison    

Where do I put this crap!

You're questing, you're killing things and robbing their corpses, Hope you got some good stuff and had fun. If you aren't running out of bag space yet you will be in another quest or two. Good news is that you will  most likely be receiving a bag or two as a quest reward, that's the good news. The bad news is, these bags are tiny and chances are that theirs better options. Including bags especially

designed for certain professions (we'll get back to those later) with amazing amounts of space but can only carry items pertaining to that profession. If you don't have any bag addons you're going to see some grayed out boxes next to your backpack. These four spaces are intended for you to add extra bags to. You can open your bags one at a time by pressing your f12 through f8, starting with your backpack at f12 and working backwards from their. In order to get newer bigger bags you can make them yourself if your a Taylor or ask a guildie to make them for you. Often a guild will have bags set aside for new players in their guild bank (We'll get back to that in another post). Aside from bigger bags. Players also have banks at their disposal. You can find a bank in any capital city, if you're a goblin or you can access your bank remotely with your Pack Hobgoblin ability. You can find them by setting your mini map to show you the location of all banks.  Their are two varieties of banks; Personal; and

Guild (I told you we'd talk about it in another post, so stop asking) For our purposes we'll only be talking about the personal variety. Just like with your backpack the first bag for your bank is free but the others you have to provide for yourself. Unlike your bags though you will have seven extra bag spaces and you'll also have to pay to unlock these extra spaces (50silver for the first one, 1gold for the second, 10gold for the third, and 25gold for bag space 4-7 respectively) when all is said and done it will cost a grand total of 111gold and 50silver not counting the cost of the bags. I would suggest that you unlock these as you need them. We'll talk about void storage later on. It gives you extra space to store you belongings at a considerable cost (100 gold to unlock it) and it has some restrictions on what you can put in it. For the time being your bags and bank should fulfill all your packrat needs. I would also suggest to everyone to tryout the addon Bagon. This addon consolidates all your bags into one so that you don't have to waist time looking from bag to bag to try and find items that you can't remember where you put them. The addon will do the same thing for your bank as well. Good luck and don't be a hoarder.

Remember we're all noobs, some of us just fly the flag a little higher.
-Morison

Well hello, Mr. Red man

So you've been playing for a while and I'm sure you may have ended up on the ass end of an ass kicking. Don't worry. That's natural, it happens to the best of us. However their are ramifications to these ass kicking's. The more damage you take the more damage your gear takes. As your gear takes damage it protects your character less and less, and your character puts out less and less damage

particularly if your weapon breaks. In the case of several classes broken weapons will result in not being able to use many of your abilities. In the earlier levels you won't notice the damage as much because you're replacing your gear so frequently. However their will come a time when you aren't replacing your gear as often and the wear will start to show. You'll know when your gear is messed up because a small paper doll of a set of armor will start to appear on the right hand side of the screen. If a piece of armor is displayed in yellow that means it's damaged, if it's displayed in red that means it's broken. You will also be able to tell the state of your gear by moussing over a piece of your gear and reading the durability fraction. If the gear is altogether broken it will appear in red. Don't worry though, just because your gear is wrecked doesn't mean you have to replace it all. You just have to head back to a town/city and find a repair NPC. As mentioned in a previous post you can locate the repair NPC in any town by selecting the magnifying glass on the mini map clicking on towns people and then selecting repairs. Talk to him and you can

click on one of the two anvil icons at the bottom of the screen, the silver anvil will charge you for the repairs, the gold anvil will charge your guild bank for the repairs if your guild gives you access to guild repairs. If your gear is not damaged the anvil icons will appear grayed out. Their you go boys and girls remember to save your pennies and stay away from murlocks because theirs no armor insurance.

Remember we're all noobs, some of us just fly the flag a little higher.
-Morison      

But wait their's more!

Possibly the nicest thing that Blizzard has ever done was give us the ability to play with their toys. That's right Blizzard was humble enough to realize that they didn't have all the answers and smart enough to except that their players might. To that end Blizzard  allowed the creation of MODS (short for modifications) also called add-ons. These as the name implies are things that modify some of the games functions. Not to the extent that it gives someone an unfair advantage, more in the realm of creature comforts. Now I know what your thinking, this seems like a little bit of an advanced thing for a beginners guide. However I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to reference certain MODS in upcoming posts and it would be completely unfair for me to talk about those MODS and not tell you how to get or use them. The first thing your going to want to do is go to; http://www.curse.com/client from their your going to want to click the register button in the top right corner of the screen and set up an account. Just so you know their is a paid premium account but it's not necessary, a free account will do just fine. Now that you have an account you're going to

download the client. Once that's done you're going to click on the deck top icon and that will pull up curse. Log in and select what games you want to find MODS for. Now that you've done all that you will be brought to the main screen. In you're main panel Their are two tabs, "My Addons" and "Get More Addons" Click the get more addons tab. If you know the name of the addon you're looking for you can just type it in here and hit enter. It will pull up the addon and you can just hit install and it will automatically add it to your game the next time you log in. If you don't know what your looking for specifically, but you know what sort of MOD you're looking for you can click the category tap and scroll down to the right one and click on it. It will bring up a series of Addons that you can scroll through. Click on the description button for the MOD read what their all about. If it sounds like what you want download it. Go ahead and try out the Addon and if you like it great if not go ahead and remove it the next time you pull up curse. It's important to know that every time theirs a patch to the game you will have to update all of your Addons by clicking the "update" button. You may also want to keep the amount of Addons that you use to a minimum as they can consume a fair bit of memory and slow down the game. Some MODS work great right out of the box, so to speak. Others will

require some set up. For the more complicated ones I would suggest that you go to youtube.com and type in the name of the Addon and "How To" and you will most likely be met with a resource on how to set it up. If you need to deactivate any of your Addons you can do that from your character log in screen. Just press the Addon button and deselect the appropriate Addon. If you need to adjust any of your Addon settings in game you can either access them via icons surrounding your mini map or you can press the "esc" key and then press interface, and click the Addon tab and their you go. These are the basics of getting addons. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me on twitter @morisonwow and I'll do my best to answer them. Normally this is the part of the blog where I make a witty joke, but I got nothing so fill in the blank and tell me if it's a good one.

 Remember we're all noobs, some of us just fly the flag a little higher.
-Morison

Pay to win loose or draw.

 

Back in early November of last year Blizzard announced that it would be releasing it's sixth game in the Worlds of Warcraft series, titled Warlords of Draenor. What they also announced was that players who purchased this game would get a free level 90 character. This announcement was met with some mixed reactions. Some players saw it as a simple elegant answer to the problem of getting new players into the game (lets face it, buying six games and playing through almost a decade of content just so you can start is a little daunting ). Some players saw this as a slap in the face. How dare Blizzard just "give" away what they had to "earn". For the most part people got over it and excepted what was coming. However recently during a patch players became able to see but not use an upcoming Blizzard service in which players can purchase a level 90 character for $60. Not surprising it was at this point that the excrement struck the oscillating unit. Many players see this as the true start of "pay to win" believing that Blizzard has put players in a position of having to shell out large somes of real world money for the sake of keeping up with the Wrynn's so to speak. These people believe that this will take all the fun out of the game. That dungeons and raids will become flooded with players that have no idea how to play their class. That it's utterly unfair. However I'm not in this camp of thinking. I believe that Warcraft has become a little long in the tooth and honestly it's almost impossible to get new people into a game this far along. This boost gives new players a chance to jump into the game at level and play with their friends immediately. The buy a 90
option also helps to alleviate a drastic lack of tanks and healers in dungeons and raids. Playing these rolles is very difficult and people don't tend to want to learn how to perform them in random groups. When they have the option to boost right to 90 and learn how to do so with friends and guildies that will be more patient and understanding, people will be more prone to take up these spots. On the subject of players not knowing how to play their class, let's be honest; their are plenty of level 90s now that don't know how to play their class. This won't change a thing. As for the idea of it not being fair, I would question the validity of that statement. Offering players  a way to get leveled up is nothing new, We have already been given the option to start at level 55 as a Death Knight, heirloom armor and weapons, guild leveling bonuses, Darkmoon Fair carousel, the anniversary experience and reputation bonus, Darkmoon Fair hat, The Daily monk quest, rested experience, scroll of resurrection and recruit a friend, not to mention that the experience needed to reach max level has been decreased repeatedly. All these methods have been used and abused to speed the leveling process. Any player that has used any of these things for the sake of leveling has no right to complain about people using the "easy button" because frankly they didn't take the long road either. Giving players the option to buy a level 90 character is only logical. Players already being given the option to get one with Warlords would only lead to players starting extra accounts, buying expansions to get the boost and then transferring the characters to their main account, this option just saves both players and blizzard a lot of time and energy on account transfers. If you take nothing else away from this I would suggest you take this. Buying a 90 is an option and not a requirement, if you don't want to use it you don't have to. Or summed up by a quoit that I have found to be very comforting in tense moments of my life. "Just because someone dose it the easy way, it shouldn't stop you from doing it the right way".

Remember we're all noobs, some of us just fly the flag a little higher.
-Morison