World of Warcraft; I'm standing, now what?

The Game Room
21

This is where I shove people in the direction of Icy Veins. They’ve got a very nice series of class guides for Mists players. (The audience is assumed to know the basics of WoW, however, so I don’t think I’d recommend them for brand new players - for those folks, I’d probably point them in the direction of the WoW Insider Class 101 guides). I’ve found them to be pretty useful for figuring out what the hell the class of the moment is supposed to push as a starting point. They also seem to be a bit more accurate than Noxxic, which has frequently gifted me with a serious twitch in my eye. Advanced stuff is left as an exercise for the reader (or EJ/MMO Champ).

I’d also recommend poking through WoW Insider as well for returning players, they have columns on pretty much every aspect of the Mists game from lore to pictures to questing to pet battles to raiding.

22

Looks like exactly what I was looking for; thanks!

23

Let’s see. Attacking is pretty automatic and I will use my Special Abilities as I get them. I’ll put them in the Action Bar and bind my keys to how I like to do things. e.g. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8… or maybe 1,2,3,4,q,e,… etc.

Okay, now I’ve fought some Wyrms and was excited when the next quest was to train with Kariel. I went to him and accepted the training to learn Eviscerate. But it says “Reach level 3 to learn Eviscerate, then locate a Practice Dummy outside”. I think I can find a Dummy, but it goes on to say “As you grow in power you’ll start to figure out the tricks of the trade” Great, but how about that training first? Then it says “One of the first things you’ll probably figure out is how to Eviscerate your enemies” and “Get some experience, find one of the dummies outside, and give it a try”. Uh… how do I actually get that experience before practicing on the dummies. And when I practice on the dummy, how do I use the Eviscerate if I’m going to get it After I reach level 3?

I’m going to practice a bit on a dummy just to see what happens.

24

This thread is very timely as I also am trying the trial version, just to see how addictive it is! Besides, the sunshine is going to go away soon, and it will be a long, dark, rainy winter.

So, um. I died. I’m stuck in the graveyard. Now what? :slight_smile:

25

I’m a bit confused? What level are you? You can tell because (if you’re not in an inn or in combat) it will be the number displayed in a circle on the bottom right of your character portrait.

If you’re level 1 or 2 either find more quests to do or kill a few creatures. By experience they mean the in-game number that increases as you do thing such as explore, kill monsters, and do quests – as that number reaches a certain threshold your level goes up. The training dummy will not help with this.

If you ARE level 3, mouse over the icons in your action bar to make sure you don’t have eviscerate in there. Otherwise press ‘p’ to open your book, and look through there, if you have it, drag the icon to your action bar.

There should be a red arrow on your minimap in the upper right corner, if you mouse over it it says “corpse”, run towards that arrow until you see a gray tombstone (I always thought it looked like a knight helmet – a gray thing with a cross on it), try and get close to that grey object on the minimap by moving around. When you’re close enough, a box will pop up asking you if you want to revive, click the red button and you’ll be alive again. You can revive within a 30 yard radius from your corpse – since you have plenty of room make sure you don’t revive right next to an enemy!

26

Oh, hey, I wandered around as ghost, then got resurrected. Okay.

27

Heh. It wasn’t on an RP server, but one time, after I got ganked by a warlock named “Douchenozzle” I engaged in a little “meta-PvP” by reporting his name as “offensive”. It was changed soon after (I checked his Armory page).

The thing to remember about Auto Attack is that it will always kick in … automatically … when you engage in combat. Start combat, and use your special abilities as they become available. In between your special attacks, Auto Attack will fill in the gaps while you’re waiting for your other abilities to finish their cooldowns.

28

Jragon, the confusion was mine. I got the Eviscerate quest first and then the Lynx quest. I was doing them in order, but I couldn’t get the XP points until I did the Lynx quest. It seemed so mean killing those cute cats :stuck_out_tongue:

Once I got that done I became Level 3 (I see that in the title of my Character Sheet), checked my Spellbook (p) and saw Eviscerate was there. So I don’t practice to get it; I get it and practice :D. Then I accepted going on a quest to the Academy but had to kill these Tenders first.

So yes, Mister Rik, in fighting, I could right-click to target and they get a red circle. Then I threw a dagger (which seems to be infinite?) to get a hit in before it got close. Then while the auto-attack is going on I tried Sinister Strike and Eviscerate by clicking on the icons in the Action Bar. I switched near the end to using the keys because that’s much quicker and feels better. So as you said, I add in my Special Abilities as the regular attacking is going on automatically.

I also ran around and swam too (which is just running in water). When it was 10:30 realm time and dark, I swam just a few strokes into the North Sea and suddenly it was daytime. Then when I got to shore it turned to night again. :smiley:

When I got to Level 3, some (?) icon box popped up and it told my about the Action Bar and how I could put Eviscerate there. It told me some other tips too. That’s the thing that I would like more often - Tips and Tricks and Advice. Does anyone know how that popped up and how I can get it again?

I’m not going to describe every quest, but these first bits and pieces I thought would be useful to new players.

Oh, I saw this high level character on a horse, then the horse changed into an odd motorcycle thing. I didn’t know engines would be available at a higher level.

29

Ammo is infinite, yes, including throwing daggers. It was nice when that happened - previously, any hunter worth her bullets* had one whole bag dedicated to ammo.

Tips and Tricks pop up when the game thinks you’re getting something for the first time. You can reset them (getting them to pop up again) as an option in your Interface menu (Esc to reach a list of options including Interface). At work now so I can’t give the exact menu path, sorry.

The choppers (both flying and roadworthy ones) are made by engineers. Guess which mounts Ms Boomstick normally uses :smiley: the lass is about as silent as an avalanche of drums.

  • My main hunter is a dwarf, born from this “dwarves with boomsticks!” reaction I had in the creation screen. I refused to use a bow for years, leaving them for “dem elves”.
30

At level 20 you will get the ability to use Mounts to get round the world faster, to begin with you will only be able to use mounts applicable to your race, as a Blood Elf this means giant ostrich like things. The player you saw was probably a paladin on his charger which is a mount paladins get for being paladins, the motorcycle is a mount created by other players called the Mechano-Hog which you can buy for quite a bit of gold at the auction house.

There aren’t that many motorised mounts, two flying chopper things and a ‘robot’ head are there more?, most mounts are creatures of some sort.

31

This may be redundant now but I wrote this for my father when he picked up wow and wanted to play a rogue for the first time. Wow was his first MMO so this is a really basic guide and assume you are at level 8, he got this far and gave up as he didn’t like it so it was wasted on him but may be useful here.

Rogues have two resources that can be used to perform actions other than the usual auto-attack which requires none.

Energy – maximum of 100, fills up in combat slowly, out of combat quickly
Combo Points – maximum of 5, generated by your abilities and are ‘attached’ to what you are attacking.

So the basic idea of a rogue is to use abilities to generate combo points then consume these combo points on other special abilities to do more damage. Abilities that consume combo points are known as finishing moves.

So at level 8 you will have the following abilities:

  1. Sinister Strike – costs 40 energy and generates one combo point each time it is used
  2. Eviscerate – costs 35 energy and consumes combo points, the more combo points the more damage it does
  3. Stealth – hides you from enemies to an extent. You will get a new action bar when you are in stealth, at this level it only needs Ambush on it
  4. Ambush – costs 60 energy, hard hitting attack that can only be used while in Stealth. Called an Opener.

(Realise I didn’t mention Throw (the infinite supply of throwing knives you mentioned) here but I was trying to explain the traditional rogue approach.)
Here is how I would kill a creature.

  1. Enter Stealth
  2. Left click the creature to select it
  3. Creep round behind it – you can be seen in stealth if you are in front of a creature but not if you are behind
  4. Get close enough to use Ambush, when you are close enough the ability will not be greyed out on your action bars, press the key binding to use Ambush
  5. Use Sinister Strike a couple of times, this will add combo points to your target
  6. As soon as you get to 3 combo points use Eviscerate to consume them and hit the creature hard
  7. If it is not dead go to 5 and repeat.

As you play you will get a feeling on how many Sinister Strikes, and hence combo points, you need on the target before you use your finisher Eviscerate.

32

The main advice is every time you see a character with a ! or a ? on their heads, click on them and do what they say. Following the quests will teach you the basics. Kill x critters, kill y critters and collect x things they drop, collect x things, fetch this one thing, kill this boss, go see x character over there.

Oh, and if you hover over an NPC and they have a bag or an anvil, they are a shopkeeper who can buy the junk you collect and sometimes sell you useful stuff. Any item in your bag that has a name in gray that isn’t better than the item you already have equipped you can just sell to the vendor. White items a bit better and are sometimes useful, things like food or quest items or equipment or raw materials. If you get a green-named item then it’s really good.

However, lots of times you’ll get drops of pretty good items but your character won’t be able to use them. Later you can sell or trade with other characters, but now you can just ruthlessly sell everything you can’t use. If you can’t use an item, the type of item will be red when you look at it. So because you are a rogue, you can’t use bows and if you have a bow in your bag the word “bow” will be red. So just sell that crap. Eventually you’ll get enough coppers to buy some slightly better equipment from the vendors. And enemies will drop equipment that can be better than what you have.

When you leave the beginner area you’ll find guys to teach you professions, and you can choose to be a leatherworker or miner or blacksmith and so on. Don’t worry about that until you’ve completed all the beginner quests. Then one of your questgivers will tell you to head down the road and meet with another questgiver in the big city. Generally you get a bunch of quests in an area, complete them, get some more, and eventually you’ve completed all the quests from that cluster of questgivers. But don’t worry, because they’ll give you a quest to go visit the next cluster of questgivers.

33

If you’re feeling ambitious, you can re-bind most or all of the keys on your keyboard. Many players re-bind A and D to “strafe left” and “strafe right”, respectively, and do away with the “turn left” and “turn right” keys altogether (freeing up the Q and E keys); they turn only using the mouse. Mouse turning is much faster than using the keys, to the point that “keyturner” is a derogatory term; it’s fine to stick with it for now if you want because you’re new, but you’ll probably want to switch over eventually.

You can then re-bind Q, E, Z, and C to abilities that you need within easy reach. The default Z is just a cosmetic sheath/unsheath, but I rebound my character sheet hotkey to G so it’s still handy. I think it’s best to leave X as it is, because “sit” doubles as “move down” when you’re swimming or (at higher levels) flying. If you want to get really ridiculous, some players even re-bind their movement keys from WASD to ESDF and then re-bind everything to the left of the B key to a spell or special move.

Okay, that’s all probably a bit much for a new player, but you can do that whenever you feel like it.

34

One of the oddities of WoW is that it’s always daytime underwater :smiley:

35

Re-binding is definitely an advanced technique, and it will not matter until you get into high level raids or pvp. I would focus more on learning your abilities and being a conscientious groupmate. You can always change your keybinds around later. I played WoW for about 2 years before I unbound keyboard-turning and rebound my movement to ESDF. It sucked for about a week. Then I got used to it. And now it’s 6 years later, and my binds feel as natural as breathing. It can definitely wait.

Tip: Once you hit level 15, you can group for dungeons with 4 other random people (one tank, one healer, and 2 other damage-dealers). Press I–that’s a capital eye (i), not a lowercase ell (l)–to bring up the “looking for group” pane. As a rogue, you won’t be able to queue as a tank or healer. Rogues can only deal damage, so the queues can take a while–anywhere from 5 to 25 minutes on average. But also, there are a lot of people leveling monks right now. So maybe it’ll be quicker. You can and should continue questing while you’re in a dungeon queue. You just cannot queue for pvp while in a dungeon queue, it’s one or the other.

Oh yeah, you can queue for PVP battlegrounds beginning at level 10, too. Those don’t require any form of etiquette, really. Just activate stealth and sneak around, killing everything you can (try to focus on healers, their hands are usually glowing green or golden). And, although PVP is not the most efficient way to gain xp, battlegrounds are a lot of fun. They can be a decent way to level if you hate questing and dungeons and only enjoy PVP, which is true of a significant portion of WoW’s playerbase. There are two battlegrounds you can do right away, Warsong Gulch (aka WSG, capture the flag) and Arathi Basin (aka AB, control 5 bases). Rogues make decent flag-runners once they get Sprint, but they’re pretty vulnerable outside of stealth. You can be more valuable in WSG by sneaking around the enemy’s base and killing their flag carrier or healers. And in AB, you can sneak around and capture bases that the other team leaves unattended. It’s great fun, rogues are very tactical. Choose your battles, and run away if you have to.

As for group/loot etiquette, a loot window will pop up when a green or blue piece of gear drops. Blue gear is better than green gear is better than white gear is better than gray gear. Never roll “Need” (the little dice icon, on top) on something unless it is an immediate upgrade for you. Something with intellect or spirit on it is never an upgrade for you, not even if it’s blue. A need roll means you need and intend to use the item right now, so your roll gets prioritized over “Greed” (the little gold icon, on bottom) rolls. A need roll of 1 will beat a greed roll of 100. Most people roll greed on most things, and need only on the upgrade or two per dungeon they may encounter. Don’t “Pass” on anything, because you can sell some of those items for a decent amount of gold. When in doubt, default to greed. Or you can just ask the group, “Anyone mind if I need on that?” If it’s an upgrade for a rogue, nobody will care. If it’s not a rogue item, someone will usually speak up.

Something is generally an upgrade for you if 1) it has more agility than what you’re currently wearing (or raw attack power, which is sometimes a separate stat), and 2) it is leather or a weapon type that you can equip (1-handed daggers, fists, swords, maces, axes, maybe more?). You can’t ever use 2-handed weapons, and you should never use cloth. Never roll need on anything, gear or weapon, that has intellect or spirit or spellpower on it. Not even if it’s blue and you’re currently wearing a green. You’ll get called a ninja and may be kicked from groups if you need on stuff that isn’t a rogue upgrade, even if you’re replacing a gray with a blue.

36

I know this is likely to confuse him, but I want to say something: this is GROUP etiquette. At low levels before you get to groups (1-15ish) gear with intellect or spirit MAY be an upgrade. I know on my Brewmaster monk I had some Intellect gear just because it was leather, and had better armor and stamina than the no-stat-bonus white or gray piece I was already wearing. So if, WHILE ALONE, you see something that looks better equip it.

The general rule of thumb is that (for moderate increases/decreases), Agility and Stamina on leather gear, never be afraid to upgrade if it upgrades one of those two to not a significant detriment to the other. If you have gear that ONLY has stamina, it’s okay to upgrade (outside of a group) to leather equipment that has intellect if it has more stamina, but NOT if the intellect would be replacing agility. Essentially, for your purposes, pretend intellect, strength, and spirit don’t even exist if you see them on gear – you get no benefit. However, they DO have benefit to other people, which means that you shouldn’t roll need on them in a group because to them Agility might be the “nothing” stat and Intelligence is the stat they use.

If this confuses you, disregard it, I just don’t want a newbie to be dying running around in whites because he hasn’t found any +agi/+stam gear for that slot before level 10.

37

Ah, thank you! I wandered around as a ghost for a while, then got a chance to resurrect.

But I’m er, dead, again, so this is helpful!

38

That angel at the graveyard can also resurrect you, but this will carry a penalty: you’ll get a debuff (lowered stats) for 10 minutes. Resurrecting at the graveyard is something you do as a last recourse or if you were about to go take a shower anyway…
When you guys start going to dungeons (and assuming the party’s leader has the usual loot roller method on), you’ll be able to roll Need on pretty much anything, but there comes a point where you’ll start seeing items drop that have the “need” grayed: that means the item is flagged as inappropriate for your kind of character. For example, a rogue will get the Need button for Leather items with Agility, maybe with Strength, but not for Plate items (which a rogue can’t even wear); the button may be grayed or not for Leather items with Spirit (Spirit is a healer’s stat, leather with spirit is for healing monks or druids, not for rogues - but the designers don’t always remember to take that level of detail into account).

39

If you’re under 10th level, just ask the angel to resurrect you. You only get a “resurrection sickness” if you are 10th level or higher.

40

Has the manual changed since the game was released? If not, then have the UI or controls of the game changed enough to make the manual uselss?

OP: When I played a few years ago, it seemed that many people did not know that you can turn your character by holding the right mouse button and turning your mouse. This is a far better way to control your character than using the keyboard to turn; I used to be a good PvPer, and I rebound the "A and "D keys to the left and right strafe keys.