December 4, 2008

Get Your WoW Character to Level 80 Fast

If you want to know how to get your WoW character to Level 80 fast, you need to know what it is that slows players down in the first place. Here's a list of things to avoid whenever possible in the wow wrath of the lich king, each of these concepts alone will help you get your WoW level 70-80 faster, but the best way is to combine all these concepts and others in a cohesive plan.

1. Doing one quest at a time. This is a killer, because you have to run back to quest giver or wherever you need to turn in your quests before you can start a new quest. This will at least double the amount of time spent traveling, which could otherwise be spent grinding or questing.

2. Criss-crossing areas to do quests. It is far more efficient to do quests in geographical order, again in order to minimize the travel time.

3. Dying! Yes, that sounds stupid, but it can be a bigger waste of time than you might realize. Some areas are huge and have graveyards only at the opposite end of where your corpse is. Not fun.

4. Not dying! Okay, that sounds even more stupid! But sometimes you can plan it to die right after finishing a quest in order to quickly return to the quest giver. Rez right at the graveyard, accept the penalty, and move on. This works best at lower levels when the penalties are no so severe.

5. Traveling to Auction Houses. This is a huge waste of time, as you can easily send your auctionable items to a bank alt. Your alt can also buy things on your behalf and send them to you.

6. Not having food and drink for your level. Sure, the food and drink you can buy might exceed the total health or mana that your character has, but remember that eating and drinking takes time. The higher level stuff will bring your health and mana back to maximum much faster, keeping your downtime to a minimum. And this really helps in situations where fast recovery is important, like escort quests.

7. Not knowing what to do next. You have to have a plan, or you will sitting around wondering what to do next!

8. Not having First Aid levels. You need to have different ways to heal, and you cannot use food and drink while in combat. First aid is indispensable, and makes a great backup in case you run out of food. Oh yeah...and don't run out of food, either!

9. Not resting. Logging off while in a city or an Inn doubles the amount of rest you get. This means you stay in a rested state for longer once you get back into combat, and you get double the XP while you are in rested state.

10. Choosing the wrong spec for your character. Whatever spec you intend to have for the end game (Levels 60, 70 or 80 depending on whether you have Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King), that spec may not be optimum for fast leveling. Pick a spec that allows you to burn through mobs quickly without any help, and then switch your spec once you reach your desired level.

wotlk daily quest guides

Today I'd like to share the news about Break the Blockade in Howling Fjord, It's one of famous wotlk daily quest guides. So, let's go!

One of the semi-new concepts in wotlk is the idea of PVE leveling dailies that are available long before max level. One of the first ones that Alliance humans will see is Break the Blockade in Howling Fjord.

Honestly, I feel pretty safe in saying that this isn't one of the most well-designed quests. It's a basic bombing quest, except they seem to have forgotten all the lessons they might have learned from previous bombing quests in Ogri'la and Quel'danas.

First, Instead of a personal flying mount, you have to bomb the ships from a zeppelin that makes its rounds every few minutes, so you have to wait for it dock before beginning the quest. Secondly, the pirates and ships you have to bomb are scattered very far apart, often hidden by icebergs until the last moment, and don't seem to respawn very fast. All of this adds up to making the quest somewhat of an exercise in frustration solo.

However, there is hope.

This is a wotlk daily quest where you want to try to convince a friend or the random stranger who wants to do the daily at the same time as you to group up. Once you do, you can post people at different sides of the boat, ready to toss their bombs. Everyone will get credit, you can cover more ground and bomb more pirates, and you should be able to make the quest with one pass, something that feels nigh impossible if you're soloing it.

The wotlk daily quest itself gives Valiance Expedition reputation as a reward, which feeds into Alliance Expedition reputation. It's probably a wotlk daily quest you can technically skip, but if you're a rep junkie, this is probably one of the best ways to get the rep, as long as you look for another rep junkie to help you get through the ordeal.

December 3, 2008

WoW Dragonblight Quests

WOW Northrend quests were available along with wotlk released, So many plays rush into the wow northrend. This article is the impression of the Horde player who did some wow Dragonblight quests, it contain some infos about WOW Overlord Agmar, you must know who's wow Agmar in WOW Northrend, so have yourself.

There are a few wow Northrend quests I've done so far that have really made me squirm. I play Horde, and you just know that most things the Forsaken are wrapped up in are going to be kind of dodgy. A lot of our early questing in WOW Northrend concerns the wow Apothecary Society's attempts to find a Scourge-specific plague (...right), and that doesn't end particularly well. I can sort of accept that, because the quest series skates a thin moral line between plausible deniability on the character's part as to the apothecaries' true intentions, and what actually ends up happening. But there's one quest in particular that has nothing to do with the apothecaries that really gave me pause. It's actually one that has an Alliance equivalent as well, although it ends somewhat differently there.

If you're not that far into Wow Dragonblight Quests and don't want to be spoiled, I'm putting it behind the cut.

The quest is A Letter for Home, and if you're doing or you've done the questlines in Dragonblight concerning the Moonrest Gardens (most of which are identical regardless of your faction), eventually you'll run across a drop from an important leader amongst the Blue Dragonflight forces. The Alliance will get Captain Malin's Letter; the Horde will get Lieutenant Ta'zinni's Letter.

Both letters have been written by people (the former a human, the latter a troll) who were blackmailed into service for the Blue Dragonflight under threat of harm to their families, but are secretly working to destroy the dragons' efforts from within. You kill the turncoats and then you get the letter drop explaining this sad state of affairs, and decide to take it to your local commander to see if there's anything that can be done for this person's family.

Now, WOW Overlord Agmar, the guy who's running the eponymous Agmar's Hammer for the Horde Quests in Dragonblight, is no bowl of chuckles under ordinary circumstances. He's slightly stressed and utterly disgusted by three other traitors running around the area. He is one of the most unsentimental and least forgiving NPC's you will find in the entire game. As far as he is concerned, you are a member of the Horde. You are aware of the problems that the Horde (and, he will grudgingly admit, the Alliance) faces in WOW Northrend; if you weren't, you wouldn't be here. You will do your job and you will do it to the best of your ability, aware of all the things that ride on it, and he will not pity or accept cowardice, hesitation, or -- God help you -- betrayal, because you do not have the luxury of thinking only of yourself.

So I wasn't expecting him to react well, but I also wasn't expecting this:

Ahahahaha... boo hoo, how touching.

What did I say? Traitors! Still, I knew Deino once upon a time. She at least is a troll with honor!

I'll see to it that she finds out what happened to her brother. I'll even forget to tell her that you're the one that killed him.

But I own you now!

This...bothered me, the sheer callousness of it, to the point where I really wondered for the first time if I were playing the right faction (although I got over it when I logged to my Dwarf and spent an hour being directed to kill the people who'd wound up rebuilding Stormwind for free). A more charitable person might shrug and say that Agmar wow is simply a character in the mold of Gregory House, M.D. -- you can be a good person without necessarily being a nice one -- but still. That kind of sucked.

A lot of people playing Horde will cite Message From the West as being a sort of epistolary counterpart to this WoW Dragonblight Quests, and it's very true that Saurfang's letter washes away a lot of the unpleasantness you've probably dealt with while leveling (as does Saurfang's conversation with Garrosh Hellscream in Warsong Hold; hang around them until you see it). There's a lot of infighting over what truly constitutes the soul of the Horde. I can only hope that Saurfang's concern prevails over wow Agmar's indifference.

December 2, 2008

WOW Paladin in wow patch 3.0.4

A lot of hints and news on the upcoming Paladin in WoW Patch 3.0.4 have been dropped on the forums recently, so like other WoW Insider writers have mentioned on and off, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw it on the WOW PTR in the coming weeks. Before we get ahead of ourselves too much though, there was a lot of neat Paladin stuff in wow patch 3.04 announced by Ghostcrawler yesterday. A lot of it is simple stuff we've sort of expected would happen, but there's still some interesting new stuff in there. Now let's refer to the detal about wow paladin patch 3.0.4:

  • Divine Shield: Penalty changed so that all damage done is reduced by 50% instead of an attack speed penalty.

Interesting change, and admittedly a needed one. I think Retribution Paladins being able to go immune and use the entire range of their special abilities at full damage was a bigger problem recently than their actual damage. Yes, even with the cooldown on Divine Shield. Their damage was way, way overpowered before, but it's more in line now and I would rather see this change than another hit to their overall DPS.

  • Sacred Duty: This talent no longer affects the attack penalty of Divine Shield and Divine Protection, but grants additional Stamina.

Again, good. While this means that Protection Paladins wow still suffer the the -50% damage 'debuff' or Divine Shield, that really shouldn't matter at all. Divine Protection is our bread and butter in groups, and it hardly makes a difference soloing.

  • Avenging Wrath, Divine Shield, Divine Protection and Hand of Protection have a shard, 30-second cooldown. The Forbearance effect is no longer triggered by Avenging Wrath.

This is good! This is what I believe was the plan originally, but they couldn't hotfix this large of a change, if I understand correctly. I wish they had pushed this paladin change a bit earlier, but we'll live. My only concern is that Hand of Protection is on the same shared cooldown. I suppose it makes sense from a PvP perspective, I can understand why you'd want things that way in Battlegrounds or the Arena, but it seems... off in PvE. You get the option of defending yourself or defending your groupmates. Funky.

  • Judgement of Wisdom now returns a percentage of base mana instead of a percentage of max mana.

Ouch, nerfbat. I suppose I can understand it, they actually want mana users to worry about their mana in wotlk, and Judgement of Wisdom contributed to DPS classes still not caring. Only Healers felt the strain. Also, the way it is right now benefits high mana classes like Mages moreso than low mana classes, like the very Retribution Paladins putting up this Judgement. This normalizes it a lot. It also has a negative impact on Holy Paladin soloing, but... hey, Dual Specs on the horizon. Just go Ret!

  • All mana drain effects now drain a percentage of max enemy mana.

This is intended to help classes with smaller mana pools, like Retribution Paladins. This is good. Sapping half of a Paladin's manapool in one cast is stupid, stupid, stupid. I don't even PvP, and I know it was stupid.

  • Judgements of the Pure: This Holy talent now increases the damage done by Seals and Judgements.

I'm going to assume this is in addition to its previous effect, because it's an extremely silly change otherwise. Assuming common sense is correct, this is a nice boost for Holy Paladin soloing, running counter to the change to Judgement of Wisdom, but... hey, no big deal. If you solo as a Healer, more damage is always a good thing. You might have to drink a little more after this wow 3.0.4, but at least you'll do more DPS, too.

  • All Paladins receive a single-target taunt as a base ability.

Yes. Yes! Why did this take so long to happen!? Freaking Death Knights got one before Protection Paladins did. But who cares, we finally have it. No more silly games with our taunts, no more dealing with Righteous Defense cocking itself up when your mob decides to change targets last second, none of that crap. I can just... push Taunt, and Taunt my mob. Thankyou. And we actually have two taunts now, just like everyone else! We're not the murlocs of the Taunt world anymore. Ladies and gentlemen, head on over to Dalaran and buy yourselves a cake.

That's all about today's wow patch 3.0.4 about Paladins, more informations about wow paladin 3.0.4 we will update the news once we got it, and now we can wait and see what will happened after wow patch 3.04 available.

December 1, 2008

New details on upcoming 3.x patches

Curse is running an excellent story about their time spent last evening with Blizzard developers Jeff Kaplan and Tom Chilton . There's a few things we didn't know before that are in the article. The major ones are:

  • WoW Patch 3.1 is already done (says Kaplan). Will release Ulduar 10-man and 25-man raids.

  • WoW Patch 3.2 will contain a yet to be announced raid instance. Hopefully more on this over the next two day. Release date / timeframe is unknown.

  • WoW Patch 3.3 will continue the Ashbringer storyline. Release date / timeframe is unknown.

  • Dance studio to be released after Wrath of the lich king .

  • Guild ratings, where guilds get a rating based on PvE/PvP achievements. The idea is being "tossed around."

The other interesting note is that the development team is three patch cycles ahead of the live game. That's amazing, in my opinion. And beyond that, they're also working on the next expansion. Doesn't that raise your eyebrow just a bit? Perhaps we'll hear something major in the next few hours...

WoW Dual spec update

Ghostcrawler provided a bit of an update yesterday on the ETA of WoW Dual Specs. He makes it clear that while they'd love to have them in patch 3.1 (which is when we'll see Ulduar and some other post Wrath), he doesn't want to say something and then not deliver – only to get players upset.

WoW Dual specs are a feature that's very much looked forward to by many players, in particular tanks and healers. No longer will players have to spend horrendous amounts of gold just to enjoy both solo content and group content. The introduction of them will truly be game changing for many folks.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we'll see dual specs appear in wow 3.1. The 3.0.4 PTR should be coming around shortly, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a 3.1 PTR shortly after the beginning of the new year. So maybe if I'm lucky around February or March next year I won't be spending 400g/week respecing.

November 30, 2008

wow violet hold guide for northrend life

Once you get going in the Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK) expansion, it does not take long before you gain access to the city of Dalaran. Once there you can enter a great little instance called the wow Violet Hold. The wow Violent Hold is an instance in much the same vein as the Stockades in Stormwind, it is the cities prison. Also similar to the Stockades, the instance has been overrun by the bad guys. In this case the bad guys are the blue 7 who are trying to over run the guards by attacking and setting inmates free in an attempt to break out into the city. Join Byron "Messiah" Mudry as he walks you through preventing the prison break in his guide to the wow Violet Hold.

The fourth of the possible bosses that you could fight is Moragg, who is a giant beholder. For those unfamiliar with a beholder he is the same as the large floating eye boss from Hellfire Ramparts. While he can be tanked, he also has a mindflay ability that targets a random player in the group. The damage increases the longer he casts the spell and you just have to heal through it.

There are many new instances in the World of Warcraft:Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK), some of them you need to travel a long distance to reach, others are located right underneath your nose. One such instance is the wow Violet Hold found right in the heart of Northrend's main city of Dalaran. The WoW Violent Hold is an instance in much the same vein as the Stockades in Stormwind, it is the cities prison. Also similar to the Stockades, the instance has been overrun by the bad guys. In this case the bad guys are the blue dragonflight who are trying to over run the guards by attacking and setting inmates free in an attempt to break out into the city.

As mentioned, the instance itself can be found right inside the city of Dalaran. When you first find it, it will be locked. However, all you need to do is to be level 75 and accept a simple quest and you will gain access. Once inside you are greeted by a stark looking prison hall. There is a large common area in the centre with cells along the ground and balcony level. In the cells are various prisoners locked behind magical barriers. Kirin Tor guards are fighting off blue dragonflight attackers on the steps in front of you.

The main hall, balcony and cells comprise the entire instance. That's right, one room is all you get here. Once you talk to the NPC at the front door as you walk in the instance starts, and it is very similar to the Caverns of Time: Black Morass instance. The instance is comprised of 18 waves of enemies that spawn through portals that appear around the area. The 6th and 12th waves are not spawned but instead they are two random mini-bosses released from the cells. The 18th wave is the final boss, the blue dragon Cyanigosa.

To start the instance, you simply talk to Lieutenant Sinclari at the door and she will pull the guards out and lock and seal the door behind her. Portals start opening and the waves then start, at which point you must start defending the door's seal. Each portal will spawn one of three possible guardians: a caster, a warrior, or a group of four elites. In addition to the guardians the portal will occasionally spawn other creatures that will make their way to the doorway and try to break the seal.

The tanks job for each wave is to grab the guardians and hold them. DPS should work on the guardian as much as possible, while switching over to any additional creatures that are spawned. The additional creatures (adds) should go down fairly quickly with even just a single DPSer on them. If the person assigned to the adds gets behind they should call for help. You have a few minutes to deal with each wave before the next portal opens. If you are quick you will have time to rest, eat and drink in between waves, if not, you could end up with multiple portals open at a single time.

Once you have completed 5 portals you move onto the first of the random bosses. When the 6th and 12th wave starts a saboteur emerges from a portal and runs to one of the cells to set a prisoner free, you can not stop the saboteur. There are six possible bosses that you could get. They are Erekem (an Arakkoa), Ichoron (a water elemental), Lavanthor (a core hound), Moragg (a beholder), Xevozz (an ethereal), and Zuramat (a void lord).

The first possible boss, Erekem, is an Arakkoa bird man that spawns additional creatures to assist him. Erekem and both adds are able to cast bloodlust which ups their damage output. It can de dispelled though, so players need to watch for it and remove it. In addition if both the adds die before Erekem is defeated then Erekem will enrage boosting his damage output and attack speed significantly.

The trick to defeating Erekem is for the tank to hold him and his adds in one place, then kill one of the adds, then kill Erekem. The whole time removing bloodlust any time it is cast. If the tank is geared well enough, you can leave both of the adds up, however it lowers damage taken by removing one early.

The second of the possible bosses is Ichoron, a water elemental. When you fight him at intervals he breaks apart and has pieces flung all over the room. These parts them start moving back towards his body in the center. You need to kill as many of these pieces as possible as each piece that gets back to hi body heals him. If they all get back they will restore almost all of his lost health. It is a very different kind of fight having players running all over to track down the elemental bits of him.

The third possible boss that can spawn is Lavanthor, which is a core hound pulled from the Molten Core. Lavanthor is a fairly easy boss as his main ability is a flame breath with a front arc. All the tanks needs to do is face him away from the party, the healer will then have a fairly simple job since the tank will be the only player tanking damage.

The fourth of the possible bosses that you could fight is Moragg, who is a giant beholder. For those unfamiliar with a beholder he is the same as the large floating eye boss from Hellfire Ramparts. While he can be tanked, he also has a mindflay ability that targets a random player in the group. The damage increases the longer he casts the spell and you just have to heal through it.

The fifth of the bosses is Xevozz, who is an imprisoned ethereal. When he is released he summons an arcane orb that assists him. Both Xevozz and the orb have separate attack tables so could go after different targets. The orb has two abilities, it can place a magic debuff on its target that increases the arcane damage that they take and it can summon everyone to it and then attack with an arcane explosion that hits everyone nearby. Xevozz attacks players with an arcane missile volley but can be tanked.

The tactics for this fight are to kite the orb around so that it is away from as many people as possible, while killing Xevozz. If you have have a tank that can absorb the damage and a healer that can keep up you can simply hold both and drop the boss.

The last of the possible bosses you can get is Zuramat the Obliterator, who is a giant void lord. Zuramat is a very interesting fight since he summons additional creatures (adds) that you can only damage once you have been hit by Zuramat. The summoned creatures volley the party with damage every few seconds, which will keep the healer busy.

The boss himself hits players with a shadow based damage over time (DoT) effect that lasts for 10 seconds, while affected by this DoT you can see and hurt the additional summoned creatures. While a player is affected by the debuff they need to target and kill the adds as quickly as possible. To get affected by the debuff you must stand in the shadow spots where the damage is coming from. The best strategy seems to be killing the adds as soon as you can, however if you have a strong healer and DPS you can ignore the adds and down Zuramat through fast hard DPS.

Once you have defeated the boss that spawns for wave six you get a brief break. The waves then restart and you fight your way through them until the 12th wave, which will be another of the six random bosses. You will not get the same boss that you just defeated as his cell will now be empty. Once you defeat the second boss, you once again get a quick break and then continue on through additional waves. The waves at this point are mainly groups of four elites, although this could have been random. Once the 17th wave has been defeated the last boss will spawn.

The last boss in the instance is the blue dragon Cyanigosa, who is in charge of the assault on the prison. Cyanigosa will appear in the middle of the main prison area in her human form and then transform into her dragon form. While she does give a speech it is short so the tank needs to be ready to grab her when she finishes. She has a few abilities such as a blizzard spell that she casts on the tank, a frost breath attack, and a summon ability.

Her frost breath attack hits everyone in her front arc, and her blizzard is always targeted on the tank. This means that the tank must face her away from the party and mover her backwards or sideways any time she casts blizzard. This will keep incoming damage lower and focused only on the tank. Anytime she uses the summon ability, the rest of the party it pulled in front of her, so they simply need to run through her to their original positions again.

Once you have defeated Cyanigosa, Lieutenant Sinclari re-enters the prison and can be spoken to at the front door. The instance at this point is finished.

If you are a player that liked the Black Morass instance then this instance will appeal to you. It is basically a Black Morass without the need to clear the swamp trash before starting. The WoW Violet Hold is a great little instance for something to do to gain experience or just practice your class. Being located right in the city of Dalaran, and being insanely fast to complete (less than 30 minutes), it makes it an ideal distraction from questing. Any time you pop into the city between the levels of 74 and 76 you can find a group and run through it to gain a quick bit of experience. It also has some pretty good gear as drops. In particular as a tank you will likely want to grab the Riot Shield and Cloak that drop there as they will serve you well until level 80.

If you want to see more information from the wow Violet Hold check our wow Violet Hold guide or wotlk daily quest, just dorp by for more!