The Warcraft Freak

Speed Leveling in Outland: A Beginner’s Guide

The Freak — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 05:46:44 +0000

Welcome to Outland. After completing the initial leveling scheme that was introduced to the world in 2004, you have reached the first expansion content, the portal to Outland and the unmistakably large, open new zones filled with quests and new mobs. The potential for leveling making, end-game content, and instances is bigger and better than ever, but first you need to get through Outland and that means you need a good World of Warcraft leveling guide and a keen eye to the quests that you will perform.

The Early Levels

The first thing you will notice when you reach Outland and what most World of Warcraft leveling guides will tell you is that your experience cap has been bumped up by about 300% to almost 500,000. That’s right; it’s now going to take a half million experience points to reach level 61 and from there it just keeps going up. By the time you need to reach Level 70, you will be striving for more than 700,000 XP. It takes almost 6 million XP to get from Level 60 to 70 and with only 10,000 XP on average per quest, you can imagine just how much you have to do.

All the better reason to need to know exactly where you are going and what you are doing when you get to Outland. If you are going to complete around 500+ quests here, a World of Warcraft leveling guide that walks you through each one is absolutely necessary.

The first few levels themselves are actually a bit harder than later ones because Hellfire Peninsula, the new continent’s first zone, is a bit of a bottleneck. There are a lot of quests here, but you should complete 2 full levels in this zone and there are not that many – you will inevitably end up grinding or running a couple of instances out here to get the rest of the way to Level 62 before you head to Zangarmarsh. Luckily, after that, the quests are plentiful and with six full sized new zones to explore, you will have plenty of stuff to do.

The Later Levels

When you start to approach Level 70, things truly bog down. Quests take longer, World of Warcraft leveling guides will tell you otherwise, and you will get frustrated. The truth though is that you should largely ignore any “time frames” these World of Warcraft leveling guides give you. They are inaccurate and largely based on an expert’s leveling speed. It will take you anywhere between 6 and 10 hours to complete each level in Outland with less time for those who have been through it before and know where to go and what to avoid, even with a good World of Warcraft leveling guide.

But, with a World of Warcraft leveling guide in hand and a firm grasp of the area you’re entering, it is almost guaranteed that you can reach Level 70 a bit faster than your fellow players. With that many quests and that much new content, how could you not.

Image Credit: [Blizzard Entertainment]

The Speed Leveling Potential of Stranglethorn Vale

The Freak — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:13:10 +0000

There are a lot of articles out there that tout the usefulness of a good WoW leveling guide by telling you over and over again why you want to reach Level 80 and what amazing things you can do when you get there. But, don’t forget the 150+ hours between starting and finishing with a WoW leveling guide where you actually have to level up a character. It is in this time period that you will uncover some of the truly amazing things that the game world has to offer, including a few top zones with massive potential. There is a reason so many WoW leveling guides might seem exactly the same in some zones – those zones are too good to pass up.

Welcome to Stranglethorn Vale

This tiny, narrow strip of land is by far the best leveling location you will run into before you hit Level 50 and there are many good reasons for this. Any self-respecting WoW leveling guide will send you here around Level 30 or so to start the Expedition Camp hunting quests – a string of three separate quest chains, each with three steps and big XP rewards for killing Tigers, Panthers, and Raptors in the zone.

The WoW leveling guide will then send you toward Booty Bay where you will be spending a lot of time swapping out quests until you reach about Level 45 or so. This is a primary questing hub in the game and a great place to meet up with your fellow players. It also happens to be the first dual faction zone in the game where you might run across both Horde and Alliance players, something you will get used to as the game carries on.

In the 40s, a WoW leveling guide will have you attacking pirates in the bay beside Booty Bay and sending you back north to kill goblins, root out ruins, take on Nagas, and much more. In all, Stranglethorn Vale ends up accounting for as many as 7 levels of experience, and that’s at mid-levels. A good WoW leveling guide will have you here three or four separate times completing a wide range of quests and if you also happen to have a gathering profession and are not in a big hurry, you can make some serious gold by skinning your mastery quest prey or hitting up the wide variety of herbalism and mining nodes.

Zones like this are the reason that any good WoW leveling guide exists. Without the guide, if you missed Stranglethorn Vale somehow, you are missing out on one of the most efficient, highly rewarding XP farms in the entire game, regardless of your level. This zone, when all the quests are combined over the course of the 30s and 40s, saves you as much as 12 hours in grinding and can be quite profitable in the process. Don’t ignore your WoW leveling guide – visit Stranglethorn Vale often.

Image Credit: [Blizzard Entertainment]

Making Gold with Herbs in Northrend

The Freak — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:57:26 +0000

Making gold in World of Warcraft has always been an incredibly popular means of enjoying the content while getting a whole slew of new items and possibilities through your grinding. Since the release Inscription in the 3.0 patch, the game’s newest and most popular gold making activity has been in gathering herbs which have increased and held steady in value since they started showing up in two different professions. With a dozen new herbs in Northend to choose from as well, you can expect that they will continue to be incredibly popular for gold making for months to come.

The Top Spots in Northrend

Currently, there are a few spots that will yield you more gold than others in Northrend. For example, in the Borean Tundra, you will find a slew of Tiger Lily and Goldclover spawns all located within close proximity to each other near the lake beside the DEHTA camp in the middle of the map. Additionally, you will find that the game has a slew of new herbs that only show in select locations. The Talandra’s Rose that grows in the lower half of Zul’Drak is highly valuable as well and the content you’re going to come across when you reach the two zones of Sholazar Basin, Icecrown Glacier, and Storm Peaks is going to reward you with a slew of highly valuable herbs that sell for as much as 100 gold a stack. If competition is low, you can make huge profits in short periods of time.

Maximizing Gold Income

The best way to maximize income is to find areas that are not being farmed overtly by other players. This includes patches in Sholazar Basin, Zul’Drak, and Storm Peaks where there are multiple small patches that include dozens of different herbs tightly packed together. Look for different herb maps online that will guide you to the right spots, or install Gatherer and start tracking where you find nodes to maximize income. Also, make sure to save and sell of the Crystallized Life you gather from the herbs you pick, something that will occur for nearly every herb you come across.

Herbs are an incredibly valuable resource for nearly anyone that has an Herbalism skill of at least 400. If you can get yours up and start farming early at Level 70-72 you can make between 4,000 and 10,000 gold in the time it takes you to reach Level 80 and beyond for major profits.

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End Game Speed Leveling in World of Warcraft

The Freak — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:21:05 +0000

WoW leveling guides have been around since shortly after the game first launched with dozens of players putting their expertise to the test and using it to show others how to launch themselves toward the end-game content as quickly as possible. When Burning Crusade launched, WoW leveling guides had to upgrade and expand by almost 100% to match the slough of new content, a lot of it with little or no monetary gain on their part as they had promised free updates to their fans for their efforts.

As a result, many of the early WoW leveling guides disappeared, but the ones that remained continue to do a top-notch job completing a wide array of different feats in getting players through to Level 70 as fast as possible.

Questing in Outland

When you reach outland, a WoW leveling guide will give you a few different directives, but most of all, you should be completing quests as rapidly and in as much volume as possible. While the experience level needed to get to the next plateau jumped by as much as 300% from Level 60 to Level 61, the volume of quests and their rewards also increased greatly, making it possible to complete as many as five or six quests at once, all of them rewarding as much as 12,000 experience for your efforts. A good WoW leveling guide gets you through these quests as quickly as possible.

But, unlike Azeroth where you can skip a large chunk of quests that are not efficient or that are not much fun, Outland’s quests, for those that want to speed level, are actually limited (despite their larger volume). There are a few reasons for this. First off, you need somewhere around 6 million experience points to go from Level 60 to Level 70 and each quest gives you about 10,000 on average. Second, group quests can rarely, if ever be completed alone due to the heightened difficulty in almost every facet of the game. While some classes like the hunter may have a good shot of soloing two player quests with a good WoW leveling guide on hand, others stand no chance and are thus limited to the single player quests.

In fact, in Hellfire Peninsula, if you are exactly level 60 when you reach Outland, you will spend about 3 or 4 hours grinding for XP just to stay caught up.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line however is that grinding for XP in Outland would take weeks or even months to reach Level 70 and we all know that a good WoW leveling guide is designed to keep you from having to do that. No one wants to camp on mobs for days on end, so the quests are exciting, new, and creative and with the potential to earn about 60,000-100,000 XP per hour with a WoW leveling guide on average, and more if you have a group and a solid grasp of the game, questing is the only way to go.

Image Credit: [Blizzard Entertainment]

Making Gold with Ore in Northrend

The Freak — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:04:41 +0000

Mining ore has always been a highly regarded and incredibly popular way to make gold for anyone that needs to make some money and doesn’t want to spend their days logged into the Auction House scanning for cheap deals. Ore in Northrend is no different and appears in every zone in decent abundance. There are three new ores in the game with Wrath of the Lich King content and as the game has settled in, the final values for all three have been set and have made it possible to maximize your income much more easily.

Colbat Ore

Cobalt ore is the first of the new ores and is available in Borean Tundra, Howling Fjord, Dragonblight, and Grizzly Hills in solid amounts with smaller numbers in other zones. You will find a slew of different nodes in each zone, with each node dropping between 1 and 4 ores along with Crystallized Earth, Fire or Shadow, the latter two being relatively valuable at Auction.

Saronite Ore

Saronite ore is the second common ore in Northrend and is incredibly valuable across the board and can be found in every zone above the starting zones in Northrend. You’ll find that the ore is in both normal and rich veins and will provide you with between 1 and 3 ores for regular and 2 and 5 for rich veins along with the same crystallized elements. A good run through of Saronite can make you upwards of 250 gold an hour.

Titanium Ore

Titanium Ore is the extremely rare ore in Northrend. It cannot be prospected but because it is used in Titansteel which has numerous different uses in high level crafting, you’re going to find that Titanium ore sells for huge amounts of gold per stack – upwards of 200 or more on good days. The ore shows up on nodes of both Cobalt and Saronite in any one of the zones you may enter and is thus not settled into any one spot (making it harder to track).

Titanium ore is the ultimate goal but both Saronite and Cobalt will both help you get your gold making rate up much higher with a mining skill of at least 400 to work with. While you can no longer cash in on the early stages of the expansion, the gold making opportunities at Level 80 are still quite viable and incredibly profitable.

Do you want to make the most possible gold while farming ore in Northrend. Don’t waste time on the wrong ore in the wrong locations for the wrong amount of gold. Visit Warcraft Formula today for more information.

Using Instances in Speed Leveling in WoW

The Freak — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:58:23 +0000

When you read through a World of Warcraft leveling guide, you will find dozens of different tips for getting through the game and to the end-game content. To date, with the addition of the 2.3 patch, it is now possible to reach the end-game without having to grind or group up once, with the possible exception of some support classes that cannot complete some quests (and a possible bottleneck in Hellfire Peninsula for a half level). This means that World of Warcraft leveling guide have made it possible to bypass the instances that were required for so many Horde players for so long. But, should you outright ignore them like your World of Warcraft leveling guide tells you?

The Case for Instances

Instances are a great way to meet new friends, have a bit of fun, and come away with some great new loot, especially at lower levels when you have yet to join a guild or gather the gold you need to get the better gear the game has to offer. However, World of Warcraft leveling guides tell you time and again that they are not time efficient and that regular questing is a better way to go when trying to speed your way to the top.

The Case Against Instances

These World of Warcraft leveling guides tell you that it will take more time and that you do not want to rely on your fellow players when you are trying to speed level. While both of these are true, World of Warcraft leveling guide logic is not always best. There are certain situations, especially for support and tank classes where soloing through quests will take longer, if only because you can likely expect to die a few times more often than you would like. But, it is still more trustworthy than trying to rely on your fellow players.

What is the Answer?

So, what is the right answer for players who have a World of Warcraft leveling guide in front of them that tells them they should not spend any time in instances before they reach Outland? The answer depends on your situation, your goal in playing, and how much time you have to devote to a given instance or leveling session.

For example, if you only play for an hour or two at a time, playing through an instance might be a bit beyond your means – something that will take more time than you have to spend on the process in a given night. But, if your character does not perform well against multiple mobs or if they are not capable of making it through a thick area of mobs, you may want to group up despite the recommendations of your World of Warcraft leveling guide and head to an instance like Scarlet Monastery, Uldaman, or Blackfathom Depths where you can spend 2 or 3 hours and gain the same amount of experience from quests and high level mob grinding as you would have from the overly hard quests that some World of Warcraft leveling guide writer’s Hunter had no problems with.

Where to Get Your Reputation Faster in Northrend

The Freak — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:50:35 +0000

Reputation building was one of the biggest grinds in Outland and since the release of Northrend, many people have started seeing the same basic returns in the new content. However, the reputations have been streamlined slightly more this time around, making it much easier to get through content while developing reputation and not needing to spend weeks or months building it up before you can get the necessary rewards you need for your class or your raiding strategies.

Tabards

Tabards are the first addition to the game that has made it so much easier to hit top level content in reputation grinds without having to spend hours and hours grinding away in a dungeon you’re tired of. You can now purchase tabards for all the major neutral factions and wear them into any of the dungeons in the game and build reputation with that faction. Tabards are available from Quartermasters in reputation homes and in Dalaran. Heroic dungeons reward anywhere between 1000 and 2000 reputation for completion of the dungeons.

Questing and Instances

In addition to the way in which you can run instances with tabards, you can also now quest much more with each faction than before. Certain quests will reward you with more reputation for entire groups of factions. In addition, a lot more is tied to your main factions (horde and alliance) as there is no major faction split this time around (no Aldor or Scryer this time out). You can also switch between factions much more easily as in the case of Frenzyheart and Oracle. Progressive instancing has also made reputation gain at higher levels easier once you get to places like Icecrown Glacier.

Spread Out Dailies

The Dailies available throughout Northrend are not only more numerous, they are available starting at Level 71 and will continue to flow into your quest log through Level 80. You can use them all to boost reputation, allowing you to get reputation higher at a lower level than you could in the past. This is great for those who are more interested in the rewards available than reaching a higher level sooner.

Regardless of how you play the game, reputation gain has been made much easier than it ever was before. For those that know how to play the new system, the game is built much more friendly to anyone that just wants that mammoth a bit cheaper or their new enchants.

You think you know what it takes to get reputation at record speed? Visit Warcraft Formula today and find out how you can become the next top dog in your faction at record speed.

Image Credit: [Blizzard Entertainment]

The Perfect Leveling Concoction in World of Warcraft

The Freak — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:43:17 +0000

The perfect leveling concoction is a tricky business. There are dozens of WoW leveling guide out there that promise something akin to perfect leveling – telling you where to go and how to get there. They tell you that if you follow their lead, you will never have a problem again, that you will never be lost or never need to buy another WoW leveling guide. But, there are a few things you need to do on your end to make those statements true.

The Right Add-Ons – Every good WoW player adds a few GUI mods to their game to make it run smoother. Things like Cartographer, Map Notes, extended interfaces for your items, and quest information databases can all be extremely useful, even with a WoW leveling guide to get through tough zones.
Streamline Your Efforts – Many people think having an alt character and extra bags is relegated to players farming gold, but this simple strategy can help speed levelers too by reducing time spent returning to town.
The Right Class – Unfortunately, it is true that some classes take longer to level than others. It is not always about XP gain or even about the time it takes to kill a mob. Everything from survivability to downtime comes into play here. Most WoW leveling guides will give you paths and numbers related to faster classes like Hunters or Warlocks – keep this in mind and make the necessary adjustments if you are a priest or mage.
Online Backup – There are multiple online databases that you should use liberally to support your WoW leveling guide. Most WoW leveling guides can’t be updated every day and that means when something shifts or if people have new advice on how to do something, your best bet is to scour the online databases and forums first.
A Solid WoW Leveling Guide – The final and most important building block in speed leveling is having the right WoW leveling guide to start with. There are many options out there and just as many poor options. You need to be sure that your WoW leveling guide is not only well written, but that it is thorough, updated for the most recent patch, and that it will provide unlimited updates for the life of the game – a good guide is useless if it doesn’t help you when Wrath of the Lich King is released and you cannot reach Level 80 in the same timeframe as your friends.

Ultimately, speed leveling is like a game. If you don’t have the right equipment and the knowhow to play that game, you are going to lose. However, if you are prepared with resources on hand and a top notch WoW leveling guide to review, you can quickly rise to the top of the standings and dominate in a game that you may never have played before.

Image Credit: [Blizzard Entertainment]

World PvP in a Nutshell – What Wintergrasp Has Done

The Freak — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:36:40 +0000

Before Wrath of the Lich King, World PvP was a pretty simple aspect of World of Warcraft. There were a handful of objectives in Outland that allowed players to do a couple of very simple tasks like retaking Haala or killing their opponents and taking the towers or beacons in Zangarmarsh, Hellfire or Terokkar Forest. The objectives were easy but no one really did them because the reward was minimal and was often zone-wide so everyone got it. There was no reason to join in if a dozen other players did it for you once every hour or two.

But that all changed when WotLK hit and the game started emphasizing more advanced, real time battles in World PvP with their first real time PvP battle zone in Lake Wintergrasp. The new zone had players facing off in epic battles on the live server (no instancing) and getting rewarded with points that would allow them to buy rare and valuable items such as the new Heirloom items that can be used on any character in the account from level 1 to 80 and beyond.

In addition to the way in which the game now works on live servers, many players can get directly involved to include a slew of different ways in which players can take advantage of weaknesses of their opponents, use PvP to get into PvE content and then get rewarded with everything from Emblems of Heroism to the rare and valuable Season 5 Gear.

In the end, while there are new PvP objectives and World PvP options in Grizzly Hills as well, you are only going to hear about Lake Wintergrasp where Blizzard has put into place more options than ever before to get players involved, ensure that the content remains fresh and relevant and to build up a means by which they can grow their PvP options to compete with other MMOs built entirely on PvP like Warhammer Online.

World PvP is here to stay and as the popularity of Lake Wintergrasp dicates, you can expect a whole slew of new options in future patches and expansions as the game gets more depth added to real world PvP. Expect that your skill level now will have a huge impact on how you perform in the future as well, especially if you want to start getting the top rewards and achievements.

Do you think you know the secrets to mastering Lake Wintergrasp? Stop by Warcraft Formula today for more information the fast track to PvP success.

Image Credit: [Blizzard Entertainment]

Maximizing Your Mount Count in Wrath of the Lich King

The Freak — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:43:14 +0000

One of the many new goals that players have been striving to accomplish in World of Warcraft since Wrath of the Lich King was launched is the acquisition of large sums of mounts – upwards of and beyond 100 different mounts now available and rewarded with achievements. In the past this would have seemed nearly impossible but as the game has made certain restrictions more lax for lower content, developed new ways to get other mounts and now offers a slew of great rewards for certain accomplishments, there are dozens of new options that casual players and hardcore alike may not have had in the past.

The Lower Level Content

In the 3.0.8 patch, Blizzard made it so that players could easily and quickly get many lower end mounts that were not available to them before by opening up all racial mounts to all other players in the same faction. This immediately means that all players will have access to 15 mounts at Level 30 and another 15 mounts at Level 60. Of course, being able to afford that many mounts is a completely different matter altogether.

Higher Level Content

Flying mounts are becoming easier to acquire now as they are cheaper and slightly more available in many ways than they were in the past. Hard to snag reputation mounts are now slightly easier as well as the game slackens up a lot on some of the requirements needed to reach up to the top levels of a reputation – such as in Netherwing Ledge.

Other Options

Additional options now include crafted mounts such as the hogs that Engineers can now create, the slew of new reputation mounts in Northrend such as the various different kinds of mounts in the form of Mammoths. You will also be able to get new mounts from raid bosses like Sartharion and Malygos with different reins dropping from each at the difficulty levels you face off against them.

While there are not exactly 100 different kinds of mounts in the game, there are various types, colors, and speeds of each and there are plenty of options for boosting your mount count. With over 30 available before Level 60, and dozens more available before Level 70, the ability of nearly anyone to go in and build up huge stables of new mounts and pets is becoming more inclusive than anyone ever expected.

Everyone wants to reach 100 mounts, but can you actually pull it off. Learn everything there is to know about the secret achievements, top marks and paths to things like 100 mounts by visiting Warcraft Formula.