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New WoW Character Leveling Tips

May 25, 2012 Leave a Comment

Today I present to you a guest post from KhasDylar.  This is an entry for the monthly Cold’s Gold Blogging Carnivals over at Cold’s Gold Factory.

This month, the monthly topic asks participants:

“What Are Some Things You Recommend Players Look Out For While Leveling A New Character In World of Warcraft?“

For creating a new character, the first thing one has to decide: why do I want that character? I want it to be a gatherer alt, a raiding toon, am I rerolling ’cause I’m now bored with my old main? Or just simply want one from that class-race combo too, just to have fun? The most important thing is to set this goal before even creating a new character. This is simply important because you need to know what you want, not just wander around blindly or you are just wasting your time. There are several more reasons why someone could roll a new toon, but I won’t list them all here.

Time is a crucial point while leveling. Depending on your goal, you want either level the fastest way you can (for example: if you want to raid with it) or keep a slow pace.
Let me make an example: two of my friends play WoW only 1-2 months every year, meaning they are not too well equipped with high end help (only me and another friend helps them). I always keep a toon somewhere around their level range to be able to play with them. To ensure that I don’t level faster than they, I simply don’t use Heirlooms. We are in the same guild, so the guild perk bonus is equal for us.

Many players tend to forget about their mains and it’s possibilities, when playing a new character – don’t be that guy! For a lvl85 character it’s not a big problem to send some 20-22 slot bags for the little one and trust me, it greatly helps! Of course, it helps the most for a gatherer alt, but every new toon is gratefull for some new equipment.
If you happen to level a gatherer alt, don’t make the same mistake as I did with mine: I tried to get up the gathering profs while leveling my toon. You’ll be bored to death for sure. A max level character has much more traveling options (use of flying mounts for example) than a lower level one and in most regions he doesn’t have to fear from death, he can go whereever he wants – and the feeling when you AoE a dozen mobs who are guarding your precious mineral node, now that’s priceless!

Another way to use your mains resources are of course the Heirlooms. But hey! Watch where you buy them! Don’t just use the Justice vendors, there is still the Argent Tournament quest hub, where you can collect Crusader’s Seals, these can be used to buy Heirlooms as well. If you have some spare Crusader’s Seal with you from the good old WotLK days, it’s a good time to spend them. Another way to utilise them are the BoE pets: with the incoming Pet Battle System in Mists, their prices will elevate a bit – but that’s another topic.

Once you reach the max level, you stand there with a bunch of ilvl 318-333 stuff across all the slots and you can barely enter a Tier 1 Heroic instance with that. Don’t be afraid to spend some Justice and Valor Points on BoE high end epics: up from ilvl 365 ones ’til 397 Valor BoEs, you can almost equip your fresh toon in all of the slots with shiny purples. With that you can already enter Looking for Raid, where you can shower in the ilvl 384-390 stuff. This is not only important for wannabe raiding toons, but you can level faster with better gear in the upcoming Mists expansion, which is soon upon us!

Some words about the professions and their leveling. As I said above, it’s a good practice to first hit lvl85 (or similar high level) before raising a gathering profession. Of course it’s not forbidden to pick a flower or mine a node once in a while during the levelup, but it’s not worth spending too much time on it. This is still true nowdays, when the gathering also gives experience.
As to every rule, there are exceptions to this one also, Skinning is a good example. If you plan to level with questing, which can be very fun and effective in Cataclysm, you are killing lots of monsters anyway, it would be foolish to leave their pelts rot in the wastes – rather skin them and honor their noble sacrifice.
Enchanting being another exception as you’ll be getting tons of trash greens and blues, which you can’t use anyway. Don’t vendor, rather disenchant them. If you want to level Enchanting later, it will be either expensive or a real pain in the a$$.

So, to summarize my advices: the key point in leveling a new character is time management, because we all want to have fun (be it raiding or just fooling around in Azeroth) and why should we delay ourselves in that?
____________________________________

Best regards!
“KhasDylar“

Filed Under Leveling Tagged With , ,

WoW Racial Trait Profession Bonuses | Do They Really Matter?

June 13, 2011 5 Comments

20070316 world of warcraft WoW Racial Trait Profession Bonuses | Do They Really Matter?

One of the major selections when creating your World of Warcraft main character or  new alternate characters is the choice of what race to make your character.  Some races have distinct gold making benefits (especially the goblin race), while others have bonuses to primary or secondary professions.  Let’s take a look at the racial bonuses of each race that relate to gold making in World of Warcraft.

WoW Racial Traits

Note:  I am not listing all racial traits, just the ones that relate to farming, professions, and gold making.

Blood Elf – Arcane Affinity – Increases Enchanting Skill by +10

Draenei – Gem Cutting – Increases Jewelcrafting Skill by +10

Dwarf – Explorer – Faster Archaelogy Surveying Speed & Find Extra Fragments At Dig Sites (an extra +15%)

Gnome - Engineering Specialization – Increases Engineering Skill by +15

Goblin – Best Deals Anywhere – All vendors that have an associated reputation level sell to you as if you were Exhalted (20% off) and Better Living Through Chemistry – Increases Alchemy Skill by +15

Human – Diplomacy – Increases Reputation Gains by 10% (Allows For Faster Acquiring of Repuation Recipes)

Night Elf - N/A

Orc – N/A

Tauren – Cultivation – Increases Herbalism Skill by +15 & You Pick Herbs Faster

Troll – Beast Slaying – Increases Damage To Beasts by +5% (Allows For Faster Farming Of Beasts For Skinning)

Undead – N/A

Worgen – Flayer – Increases Skinning Skill by +15 and Allows For Faster Skinning Speed

So depending on the race you select, you could get a +10 or +15 skill point bonus to the Skinning, Herbalism, Alchemy, Engineering, Or Jewelcrafting Skills.  Does that extra bonus to your profession skill really matter? 

Do The Racial Profession Skill Bonuses Matter?

Sometimes they do matter, but usually they don’t.  Having a racial trait profession bonus is beneficial for your professions as you are leveling them to max.  Once the profession is at maxed skill, the bonuses are for the most part useless.  Example:  Your Blood Elf enchanter is above level 75 character level and his Enchanting skill is maxed at 535 (525 max skill + 10 racial bonus).  You get no benefit at maxed level, since there are no enchants that require higher than the maximum skill of 525.

The racial profession bonuses do help while leveling the profession, as you get access to better item recipes faster or, in the case of a gathering profession, you get to skin or herb higher levels faster than you would without the bonus.  Yet again, this bonus is mostly worthless at maxed level.  The secondary benefits of the Flayer (for skinning) and Cultivation (for herbalism) that increase collection speed do continue to be a benefit beyond maxed level.  They are also useful as there are mobs that need higher than skill level 525 to collect their skins, but a simple Gatherer enchant will help any character without the racial bonus.  Engineers can also “mechanical skin” high level mobs.  Currently only a maxed level Gnome Engineer can “mechanical skin” some of the higher end mobs in current Cataclsym Heroic content as they are the only race with the skill over 525.

The one major bonus of the racial trait profession bonuses is for twinking.  A twink is an uber geared out low level PvP alt character that hunts other low level players within the lower level battlegrounds.  Having +15 Engineering as a twink allows access to some extra gear and gadgets from the Engineering profession at a lower PvP bracket than usually found.  This can be a nice advantage in PvP.

So you don’t really have to pick the race that has the racial trait profession bonus associated with the profession you are shooting for.  Picking a race for the gathering bonuses tend to outweigh picking one for just a bonus to the maximum profession skill.

Filed Under Professions Tagged With , ,

Ideal Alts Series At Cold’s Gold Factory

June 8, 2011 2 Comments

Over at Cold’s Gold Factory, my main site, I have been running a series on Ideal Alts that has been well liked.  The Ideal Alts Series  is a great read for World of Warcraft players looking for ideas on what kind of alt character to create next.  Many Wolrd of Warcraft players have a main character and look for ideas for a new character when thinking of making gold.  I have looked at a few of the roles that an Alt character can provide.  Alt is short for Alternate, as this character is an alternate that you are playing instead of your main WoW character. 

With the Ideal Alts Series I look at what role the alt will fulfill.  Is he going to be a farmer?  Well, what type of farmer is this new alt character going to be?  I dig inside the various combinations and offer advice for both Horde and Alliance options.  I look at which professions to choose and which race and class can give the best results based on what role the WoW character will be used for.  So make sure to head on over to Cold’s Gold Factory and check out the series on Ideal Alts.

Here’s a handy shortcut to the series opener and the current entries in the Ideal Alts Series.

Ideal Alts Series

Enjoy the series!  Hope it triggers some ideas for you. 

Looking for an easy way to start learning to make gold?  Try a Collector as your first Ideal Alt.

Filed Under Professions, Strategy Tagged With , , ,