The 4.0 patch is coming!

Among other things the world is being prepped to be almost completely remade. On PvP servers (with Cataclysm) 85s will be raining down to gank lowbies (since they can now fly around the old world,) but in 4.0, before Cat hits, you'll have a couple of months to get leveled up and avoid the gank fest.

With the complete revision of the talent system it's time to come up with new builds, but most leveling tips will remain the same. Here you go:

4.0 Rogue leveling guide - builds to all three trees, tips, and more.

4.0 Druid leveling leveling guide - This is a Feral build and also includes tips and such.

4.0 Mage leveling guide - Fire build currently and the other trees are coming soon.

4.0 Warrior leveling guide - Arms and Fury builds and stuff
 
 
Very possible.

Assuming level 1 toons on a new (for you) server. No rich alts, no buying gold, no transferred cash, no guild help, no farming, no heirlooms, etc.

From scratch, just as if you bought WoW for the first time (remember that?)

Start with a level 1, of any class, and run to the nearest Auction House and park there.

Start another, you main, get skinning and mining ASAP and gather a couple of stacks of each. Send to banker with some cash (for posting fees.)

Once the stacks sell you have some working cash. You'll basically be buying out low priced stuff and selling it for more.

Here's the day by day page and the first day:
 
 
The World of Warcraft Arms Warrior typically carries a big axe (or sword) and excels at generating massive damage to crush opponents. The opposition goes down quickly to the Arms Warrior's high level of "burst damage," and if they have a healer behind them? Well, they're pretty nearly unstoppable.

Prior to the release of Cataclysm, for the current 3.3 patch series, Arms is the build of choice for PvP, with Fury falling a bit behind. Arms also makes a very good DPS build for raiding and light tanking and if you're not yet at the level cap it's a pretty good choice for leveling. All in all, the Arms Warrior has a lot of versatility.

Some will say that Arms falls too far behind the Fury Warrior for raiding DPS. Others differ, saying that the two are comparable. Most agree that Arms DPS requires a lot more attention than Fury to generate comparable numbers.

After playing a Fury warrior (perhaps while leveling) for a long time it can be refreshing to play something that requires a little more skill. It's refreshing to move to the more difficult Arms after playing Fury for a while. Also, as mentioned above, Arms requires a little more attention to use properly, which is a nice change from Fury. That it hits really hard is no small bonus.

Your primary attack will become Mortal Strike. Besides hitting hard It's especially useful in PvP, with it's healing debuff. Arms specializes somewhat in burst damage and with the healing debuff from MS you might be able to put your opponent down, regardless of his healing.

When deciding on your Arms Warrior's talents, especially if you're going to be PvPing, stick with the Arms tree so that you can get into Mortal Strike ASAP. Bladestorm is a good reason to stick with the Arms tree, and after that feel free to pick up talents from the other trees to suit your particular needs. Once MS is in your toolset your generic attack rotation will then be something like charge > MS > Hamstring. Use Overpower, Sudden Death, or Bloodsurge if they proc, otherwise use Heroic Strike inbetween your MSs. 

The upcoming Cataclysm expansion brings two big changes to the talent system, besides a complete reworking of the talents. Well Ok, that's two after the reworking of the talents. The first is that once you pick your firs talent you're locked into that tree until you grab the top talent (barring having your trainer wipe your talents.) Only after that can you branch out. Then there's the Mastery system. In the case of Arms this will (as it currently works) give a chance for a free extra attack.   So this will simultaneously give players incentive to stick with one tree while also forcing players to... stick with one tree.

Your trainer can teach you the Mastery ability, once you get the top (Arms) talent, Bladestorm. Many pieces of Cataclysm gear will have Mastery Rating as one of their stats and this will add to your initial Mastery rating. This works the same way as gear with Hit or Crit rating points. Very well geared Arms Warriors will be getting quite a few of those extra attacks, which should boost their DPS quite nicely.

 

 
 
 
Despite the complaints you may hear from some, in the World of Warcraft game it's easy to earn extra gold. Like everything else in the game, or in life, it takes a bit of work, but do it and you'll have plenty of gold to spend on your items. Most of the basic stuff you can do while leveling or exploring and this basic stuff applies whether you're playing vanilla WoW or the upcoming Cataclysm expansion.

The most basic point is that over the entire game of the World of Warcraft there are only a couple of ways to earn money. You sell services or stuff to someone (whether a player or not) and/or you complete quests for the rewards. (If you're a Rogue you can open locked boxes or pick pockets to earn a little more.) Selling stuff to vendors is small change, but it adds up in the long run. Completing quests is a good way to go and the rewards are pretty good at high level. Advanced players will often have a routine where they complete a number of the Daily Quests in an hour or two and make 200 to 300 gold.

But selling stuff to other players is the best way to go and the Auction House (AH,) is how most people sell their stuff though some will do it in trade chat. (Selling your skills for tips is another good way to go.) The only trick is in discovering which stuff to sell is worth the effort and then obtaining that stuff.

So how to begin? You're going to make a brand new character and take that character to the big city, without leveling it (though you can if you want to.) I like Ironforge on the Alliance side and Orgrimmar on the horde side. This character will be your dedicated banker/buyer/seller. All sellable stuff that you characters fin will be posted on the AH by your banker. This means that your characters do not have to go to all the way to the big city every time they want to sell their loot, which saves you lots of time. Just visit the closest mailbox, mail your stuff, get rid of the vendor junk, turn in your quests, and get back to the game.

Grab "skinning" as your first skill. You'll be fighting 47 bazillion skinable critters on your way to the level cap and some of those skins sell for good money, even as a a low level character. Youir next primary skill will be either mining or herbalism, that way you can be detecting herbs or ores while skinning critters. . Just gather stuff and skin everything and spend a bit of time, if necessary, to make sure your gathering skills are high enough for the next zone.

Pretty much the same thing is done by characters of any level, even the highest. Pick up the gathering skills and start making loops around the low level areas. Gather and skin until your skill increases enough to move on. If you're high enough level, and you're on a PvP server, you'll also be in position to help out your side if the other side is harassing them. PvP won't help your gold stash, but it can be a pleasant diversion. When you get to the higher levels you'll have a better understanding of the more profitable routes, such as the elemental grinding that's very popular.

As you gather loot from your kills keep anything that isn't gray and sell it. All the gray stuff will go straight to the vendor to sell. Anything that's white or better, and that you're not going to use, goes to the banker. (By the way, pay attention to current AH prices so that you don't over or under price your stuff.)

You can also run your higher level character through the low level dungeons. You'll find plenty of junk to sell to the vendors and plenty of cloth, green items, and stuff to sell on the AH. With just a couple of runs through the instances you'll fill your (large and empty) bags with loot. If you're lucky you may even find a blue item which can be sold for a pretty penny.

These tips will keep you in mounts and decent gear as you level, if you apply them. Some people, though, are more ambitious. There are many advanced tricks that can be used if you want to earn a lot more gold and you can find a great number of these strategies in a product titled, The Massive WoW Gold Blueprint. Whether you are looking to hit the gold cap or just want to stay in decent gear this book has you covered. Read this review of the Massive WoW Gold Blueprint and see if it won't massively increase your gold stash.

 
 
The World of Warcraft (WoW) is a huge place, bigger than most all of the other Massive Multiplayer Online games (MMO.) What this means for you is that   just one character will never see it all, even if you do go from level one to the maximum level (which will be 85 with the Cataclysm expansion.) With that size comes thousands of quests, things to do, dungeons, raids, battlegrounds, arenas, and more.

If you want to get leveled as rapidly as possible, perhaps to join your friends at higher level or get to the end-game content sooner, you might find the number of quests and objectives to be daunting. If you follow a few rules, though, you can greatly speed up your leveling, regardless of class or faction. The fastest way to get leveled, of course, is with a professionally created product, like Zygor's, but that's only for the people who really need to get to max level ASAP.

First off, realize what the time wasters are. PvP is great fun (for many of us,) but it doesn't help you get leveled. Shopping is great sport, especially if you have a full wallet, but it doesn't get you leveled faster. Hanging out on the inn's doorstep, swapping lies with your pals, spreading malicious rumors about the other faction, won't get you to 80 or 85 any sooner. Not that you shouldn't slaughter them at every opportunity or inform your associates about just how slimey the other side really is, just be aware of the time cost.

There are a couple of ways to gain experience faster than the normal way. The first is "rest XP." Log out in an Inn and when you come back to that character you will get the bonus XP. The longer you stay in the Inn then the longer the XP lasts. The other is WoW's Recruit a Friend program.  Your and your partner's accounts will be linked and when you fight together you will pick up XP at 3x the normal rate.

Besides the better XP from Recruit a Friend, teaming will speed your leveling because, even though the basic XP gain is smaller, you will kill things much faster and have a lot less downtime. This gives you a net gain in XP/hour over going solo. Of course, to make this teaming thing work, you do have to have a compatible partner.

The crafting professions will just slow you down, so skip them for now. The gathering professions, mining etc., can be skipped as well, if you have enough gold. The idea is to control anything that will slow you down. Selling your loot is one such example. Make a "banker" character, which will live at the Auction House (AH.) Then, instead of heading the big city to sell your better loot, just mail it to your banker. Log into the banker when you're done and post your stuff on the AH. Make sure you always have the biggest bags that you can get your greedy little paws into. If you're making it a point to loot things then the big bags will allow you to collect a lot more loot before having to return to the mailbox.

Be aware of what skills are coming up next (you can go to Thottbot.com for a list) and skip that trip to town to train if there's nothing interesting coming up. Don't buy new stuff all the time. Every three to five levels is fine. Certain classes are, of course, a little more gear dependent than others, but even the most dependent can wait three or four levels between upgrades.

Do quests instead of just grinding and do your quests in groups. Any time you pick up new quests group them by area. Any quests that are in the same area will be done at the same time. Try to always have more than one quest in any area that you're working in, whether it's the dungeon or the city. The worst way to go is to do one quest that takes you all over the place, then hand it in and do another which hits the same areas.

Just by following a few easy steps and by organizing your time and how you do things you will greatly improve your leveling speed. You won't go as quickly as you would with a professional leveling guide, but you'll be a lot faster than most of the competition and you'll have fun doing it. And isn't that the point?
 
 
In the World of Warcraft grinding elementals is a tried and true method of  earning gold. They are all over the game world and come in a variety of types: fire, earth, air, etc. They all drop some form of elemental part appropriate to their types, such as Earth Elementals, in Northrend, dropping Crystallized Earth.  

The Market All of these bits can be used by players in a number of crafting recipes, so there's always a market for them. Motes and crystallized stuff can also be combined, 10 at a time, into primals/eternals. These combined elements are also used in a lot of recipes, especially higher level ones. Check the Action House to see what's keeping the high prices, then go farm that item.

Find Them and Farm Them Cataclysm will introduce new areas and new Elementals, but the idea will stay the same. Loot the bits from the assorted elementals and then sell them "as is" or combine them and then sell. ( Farming in PvP areas, Wintergrasp, for one, can relieve the boredom inherent in all farming. )

How do you find the Elementals that you're looking for? Well, if you're pretty high level you probably can already think of a few places, otherwise go to Thottbot.com, search for Elementals, then click "creatures." There will be a list of Elementals that you can sort various ways. Elementals from Cataclysm will eventually show up in the Thottbot database.

Farming tends to be mindless, boring work so stock up on soda, grub, and tunes and start grinding those Elementals. To make it more interesting time yourself, see how fast you can kill them. Try to take a bunch at one time, then try a bigger bunch. Take a buddy and make it a contest to see who gets the most, the fastest. Or kill everything, sit down and swap lies while waiting for the respawn, and then see if you can kill everything faster than before.

The next step, of course, is to send everything to your auction house banker and decide how to sell your loot.

Some tips on posting stuff to the Auction House Ok, here's how your going to sell your stuff once you've finished (got bored with) the farming part.

Think of their being only two types of items for sale on the Auction House (AH.) Glyphs, enchant scrolls, weapons, etc. make up the first group, the items that people only buy one of. Unless someone is buying for resale, or supplying his buddies, no one will buy many of these of any one time. The next group is stuff the people will buy a lot of and will probably buy over and over again. A Scribe will buy tons of herbs for her glyph making, a leatherworker will buy tons of skins, and so on. 

All of those elemental parts are in the second group. While people usually won't buy tons of primals/eternals at the same time, chances are they will be repeat buyers. The crafters want them and the people who want the crafters to make something want them. These are the people looking for crafters to make X, and may offer tips.

Understanding these two groups of items (and people) is important since it determines how you pick your prices. If you're selling one-off items, such as glyphs, those green/blue weapons you found, etc., you want to have the lowest price. You don't have to undercut by a lot, but the lowest price says that your stuff will go first.

You don't have to be the lowest price with the second group. You do not need to undercut everyone else. If my scribe is buying a ton of herbs for Inscription then she'll buy the lowest price stuff first, then the next higher, then the next... and so on until she has enough. The same is true with skins, ores, and your elemental bits.

Pricing and Grabbing Ok, you understand that. Now you're off to the AH with your load of motes/crystallized whatever. Check the prices on all of your loot. Post yours in the form that will get you the best prices. For example - motes of life are selling for 1g each, but the same primals are selling for 15g each (and the price rapidly climbs to 23.) Sell the primals and post them above the lowest price. But if the low price is 375g per bit, then I'd suggest undercutting. By a lot. :)

By the way, if some other seller (call him "Igntaz, the farmer") has posted a pile of bits at well under everyone else's prices, feel free to grab up all of his underpriced stuff and resell it at a better price. If he's selling Eternal bits for 3 gold, and you know they'll fly off the shelves at 15, then buy all the low priced bits. Post them over time, not all at once, you don't want to flood the market.

To sum up, you don't need to post at the lowest price to sell your bits. If you do sell them way under market that's fine, someone will by them, and chances are it will be me, or someone of a similarly greedy mind. You sell yours for 3g each, while doing all the work, and I'll buy you out and sell yours for 15g each. That's fair, right? ;)  You could also just hand the lot to your guild crafter, but that's hardly the point of this article.

Now get to work!
 
First Post! 08/15/2010
 
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    Just a fan of the World of Warcraft, passing on some of the things that I've learned.

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