So I finally succumbed to the lure of World of Warcrack…er…craft…after getting my new Mac, and I’m having a great time wandering around killing things and doing quests. Surprisingly, I managed to convince the spouse (“No–I’ll never do this!”) to play too, and now he’s enjoying it as well.
Trouble is, we’re like the blind leading the blind. I’ve looked online and found things like WoWwiki, which is somewhat helpful, but most of the sites I’ve found are waaaaayyyy more advanced than we need (ways to exploit the system, guild homepages, raid schedules…help! My highest character is 10th level!) For example, we can’t figure out how one of us can give an item to the other. I know this stuff should be intuitive, and some of it is, but in many ways we’re still stumped.
So…can anybody recommend a good newbie guide that goes beyond “which character type should I play?” (we’re past that now) and covers basic topics like the not-so-intuitive aspects of the interface and things that low-level players want to do? The manual that came with the game is some help, but we need more. Online or a real dead-tree book is fine. Thanks!
PS: Couldn’t figure out if this belongs in IMHO or Cafe Society, so please feel free to move it if I chose wrongly. Thanks!
To hand an object to someone, click on their character, click on their portrait to get the pull-down menu, and select ‘trade’.
The resource I mostly used was wow.allakhazam.com, but that was looking up quests and ‘where can I get that recipe’ and the like. I don’t know of a newbie guide of the sort you describe.
www.wowwiki.com is my top resource now for research into class and profession stuff. I’m really impressed with the sheer amount and quality of information there.
I use www.thottbot.com still for specific quest lookups, although the site itself tends to be temperamental.
Duh, it might help if I actually read your post for content. I see that you’ve already explored the wowwiki.
Hmm. My husband really used the Official Strategy Guide from BradyGames a lot in his early game, but it was published in 2004, I think from the beta version of the original game. I find a lot of the details are outdated now, but the broad strokes are still true and would be helpful to newbies. You might want to thumb through it in a games store before you buy it.
Thanks–I’ll check it out at the store and see if it’ll work for us.
We don’t mind exploring things and finding out stuff on our own instead of trying to optimize our characters–I’m sure that neither of us is going to become obsessed with trying to milk every advantage out of the game. Right now we’ll just be happy if we can continue doing quests and advancing at a somewhat reasonable clip.
Oh, you can also mail items to each other if you’re playing at different times. I just mailed my husband a spiffy First Mate Hat to play with on his character while I was home at lunch. (His toon is actually a rogue that wears leather, this will just be for dress-up pirate fun.)
(Mailing each other stuff probably wouldn’t be the best solution because the whole point of my conning him into doing this is so we can do it together. )
If you both want to share things and you’re online at the same time, here’s how it goes:
Walk up to person.
Click on them.
Right-click on the portrait of them at the top of the screen.
Select “Trade”
A trade screen will come up with two windows. One for you and one for them.
Drag/drop the item you want to trade into one of the slots on your screen, or type an amount in the gold/silver/copper boxes at the top of the screen*.
Click “Trade” at the bottom of your window, it will go green.
The other person does the same, and your items/gold/enchants are swapped and everyone’s happy.
You can always cancel a trade as long as the second person hasn’t clicked “trade”, and you will keep your items.
*If you want to trade an enchant, the enchant-ee puts the item to be enchanted in the “Will not be traded” slot at the bottom of the trade screen. The enchanter then selects the correct enchant for that item, and applies it. When both click “trade” the enchant will be performed and the item will be returned to the enchantee’s bag.
I’m on Khaz Modan as Bindii (Gnome Mage, FTW!) and Stormrage as Rebekha (Human Warlocks melt faces. Not as good as Shadow Priests, tho). If you (or anyone) wants a player on either of those two servers, you can come find me.
Also, just a little fun fact for anyone who’s interested.
How to get a prarie chicken pet…
Go to Saldean’s Farm in Westfall
Create a macro that is just the /chicken emote and stick it somewhere easy to click
Target a chicken that’s running around on the farm
Spam the chicken macro until the chicken goes green (rather than yello) and “looks at you quizzically”
Talk to chicken, collect the quest
Turn around and buy some special feed from the farmer (25c)
Go back to chicken and /cheer
Hand the quest in to the chicken (give it to the feed)
The chicken will lay an egg, grab it.
Yay, cheap chicken! That’s one of the cheapest ways to get a non-combat pet if you’re interested (others cost anywhere from a few silver up to a few gold). Plus the chicken looks neat.
There are a few exceptions to being able to trade or mail anything to another player: If the item is labeled “Soulbound” or “Quest Item”, you can’t do anything with it but use it yourself or sell it to a vendor.
You can also Alt+Click on items in your bag and it’ll pop them straight into your trade window. This also works for mailing stuff. It’s especially useful if you’re trading multiple items at once. Alt+Click FTW!
It works for the auction house as well, but only if you have single items… if you have a stack of items you want to sell, Alt+Clicking will only put one of the item in the auction window, dunno why it’s that way just for the auction house, though.
(Also, I know nothing about Macs, so if they don’t have Alt keys, I dunno what the equivalent would be)
Ooh, something else - if you want to see how you’ll look wearing something then Ctrl+Click it. That way you can try it on without either buying it or soulbonding it to yourself
If you check your options, there’s an option to turn on hints for the loading screens. It sounds hokey, but there’s some good tips I’ve gotten from those loading screens when I’m sitting there waiting for my lag to let me in.
IMO the only necessary sources are thottbot.com for info on quests, items, mobs and classes, and allakhazam.com for more detailed info on how to spec the various classes for what purposes, etc. Some of their info on tradeskills and professions is better presented than Thottbot’s but you should always have The Bot running in the background when in WoW, you’ll find you switch out and check things out all the time.
Also, you’ll need at least one mod to make use of much on the info on Thottbot, and that’s one that gives you map co-ordinates, choose from here . There are many other mods worth considering; some specific to classes and professions for instance.
