|
|
|
 |
The "OMG I am lvl70! Now what?!" Guide
4/12/09 12:07pm
(repost - originally appeared in August 2008 at the Exodus website)
It is that heavy existential feeling of purposelessness. You wake up in the morning, but cannot think of any goals, aspirations or dreams. Why bother getting up as you don't know what to do...
Reaching level 70 for the first time feels similar, but is not as serious a condition (I hope!). If this is your first toon reaching the (currently) ultimate level of 70, you might not know where to go or what to do next. We will briefly discuss the possibilities in this article.
At this point in WoW, you have the following options:
1) Begin working on your next character
But that's like so .... boring... Of course, if that's what you want... You might happen to be the one who likes watching reruns of Charles' In Charge or Bonanza over and over and over (and over) again.... No, no, there is nothing wrong with that! Not at all. I am not judging, you know.... Some of my best friends like watching reruns of Bonanza... Really..
On the other hand, if you're not that type, read on!
2) Pretend nothing happened: Continue questing
There is no shame in this. Just look up, start whistling, walk around like you own the place and keep getting and turning in quests. You will not be earning any more experience points, but these quests will still get you gold and much more importantly reputation with different factions. One detail you might want to change is on which faction(s) you would like to focus. You need better gear for heroic instances and raids. To obtain most of this gear, you need to have certain levels of reputation with certain factions. Decide on your gear requirements early and work on raising your reputation with those particular factions. Of course, if you are not very interested in specific gear, feel free to roam Azeroth and help all those in need.
3) Exodus is your HOME: Help others in your guild
I am sure you had guild members help you at one point or another for accomplishing some thorny quests. Now it is your turn. There are many others in Exodus who need the same type of help for their alts and even their mains. Provide help. Take some time every now and then and ask on guild chat if anyone would like some help. This will not only make the guild better and stronger, but it will also continue to build your relationships with other members. We all have more fun TOGETHER!
4) Fame & Fortune: Do dailies
Widespread daily quests (dailies) are curiousities you have been hearing about from those big meanie lvl70s. Now that you are one of those big meanies, you can embark on the road to fame and fortune by hitting the dailies.
Questgivers for dailies are shown on the map with blue exclamation marks (and blue question marks for returning completed ones) and are available only to lvl70s. (With the exception of the battleground dailies that you might already have encountered. Those are available to everyone level-qualified for BGs.) Dailies are done for reputation and gold. Some dailies reward care packets that contain random equipment or if one is lucky, even badges. A few of the dailies reward outright badges. (Badges are used to purchase high level equipment from faction quartermasters.) On the average, each pays about 10g and the reputation rewards range from about 150 to 350 for various factions. Once again it is important to choose your dailies carefully if you aim to increase your reputation with particular factions for the special perks.
Each daily can be performed only once per day (thus the name "daily") and one can complete only 25 dailies total per day. This total includes the BG dailies. In general they require one to accomplish tasks similar to other quests, collecting, burning, blowing up and good ol' beating the... ahhhmmm... excrement out of a variety of unsavory characters (and no I don't mean Smaggs! And don't go around implying things like that because he is one of _ours_! :-)). The difficulty level in general is very manageable for soloing, but a few dailies require one to foray into Outland instances and one needs a full group for that! Of course grouping for most of the dailies makes things go faster and also more fun.
Most of the dailies take about 10 to 15 minutes to complete. Following the link below, you can reach a comprehensive and informative list of the dailies.
http://wow.curse.com/c/daily-quest-guide/
5) Jump on instances; both normal and heroic
It is time for instances now. Have you been doing instances? I don't mean the watch-the-helping-lvl70-breeze-through-the-low-level-mobs-while-you-run-run-run-to-keep-up type instances. Real instance runs with level-appropriate groups are what is necessary to gain the suitable experience in how a team works, how to fight in a group, who takes on what role, etc. If you already know these, great! Keep doing it with Outland instances. If you don't know what it all takes, now is the time to learn.
One should always start with the non-heroic instances as in the pecking order, these normal versions come first. To handle the heroic instances, you will need better gear and more experience in how to handle yourself. Join a few balanced groups and do some instances. Perform the role your class is expected to fulfill to gain proficiency. This works best if you have a good teacher in the group. Try to identify some of the better teachers in the guild and join their groups. (Our courageous GM is one of the best, but she will kick my rear end for exposing her like this! :-))
After you learn some of the mechanics of a good group and what is expected of you and after you obtain some blue and purple gear, rush into a heroic instance or two. It is fun! It actually is a GREAT PLEASURE to be working in a well-working team in a challenging dungeon.
If you would like to plan ahead, you should consider two things: Decide on the instances you want to run based on the drops of the gear you need to acquire and do your homework ahead of time by reading up about those particular instances. It always helps to know what is facing you. There are two very good websites for these tasks:
www.wowarmory.com
www.wowwiki.com
More on these sites later...
6) Hit the battlegrounds - hard!
Do you like hitting others - in the virtual world? Do you like competing with other players instead of mobs? You can defend the Alliance honor (and earn honor) by doing battlegrounds. You can use the marks and honor you earn this way to purchase awesome blue and purple gear at Champion's Hall in Southwind City. Each major alliance city has battlemasters that can send you directly to battlefields.
Doing BGs is great fun also. (At least I think so.) To be useful and not a hindrance, first please read up on the four battlefields and good Alliance tactics and strategies. Wowwiki is a good source of information for this, too. (Warning: Regardless of whether you read up on strategies or not, if you go and cap FWGY before we cap RHGY in AV, I will come and personally kick your butt all the way to Ghostlands! :-)) (Don't be misled by the smiley. I am not kidding. :-)) (Really!)
(Go look at the gear at Champion's Hall; take extra napkins for the subsequent drooling.)
7) Start raiding, Baby. Go Raiders!
There is a big bad boss with your name on him (her?) (it?) in Karazhan. In fact, there are sixteen of them and many more in other raiding instances. Don't keep them waiting...
The ultimate experience of high levels and level 70 is raiding dungeons. For this you join a party of 10 to 25 and go into a raid dungeon with a week to finish it. Our guild runs multiple groups per week and we would like you to join one based on your timing restrictions.
To become a raid member, there are a few requirements you need to complete first. You can find an article on this at our Exodus website forums by following the link below:
http://wow-exodus.guildlaunch.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1141066&sid=bd592c37f3cc304181c870380dc4d7f9&gid=7751
One important factor to know is that these raid dungeons are very (very) difficult. They require good gear, good cooperation and good game play. The first you gain by drops and purchases and the latter two you learn via accumulated personal experience.
You can find more information on this at wowwiki (link above) and the forums on our Exodus website. You are highly advised to read up at these sites. Here I will focus on the gear requirements as this happens to be the most demanding and complicated.
First please read the "Starting Gear For Raiding" article on our Exodus Forum. You can use the following link:
http://wow-exodus.guildlaunch.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1005544&sid=bd592c37f3cc304181c870380dc4d7f9&gid=7751
In this article, you will learn what is expected of your class and specialization in a group. As part of this, you need to have the appropriate gear. When you follow the link above, you will find three fundamental statistics that you, personally, need to focus on. For example, for a holy paladin, one needs to have high numbers of healing bonus, spell critical rating and total mana, in that order of importance. All the new gear that the holy paladin needs to accumulate to specialize in his expected role of primary healer needs to improve one or more of these three stats. The same is true for your gear. You need to obtain new gear that improves the three stats critical for your class.
How do you do this? Or more specifically how do you know what piece to get and where? For this we have wowarmory with the link above. When you go to wowarmory, type in the name of your character and have it bring it up. All of your current gear will have you dressed up (with the exception of those of us who like to run around shirtless and even, god forbid, tabardless... Not that I am judging... I have nothing against exhibitionists... In fact, some of my best friends are exhi.. ahhmm no, scratch that last part.). On each of your items, there is a small arrow to the side. When you click on this arrow, the website will give you a list of items that it considers as a good replacement for that particular item. The list includes the stats of each piece and by clicking on one, you will be moved to a page that provides much more information about that piece including where and how to get it and what it costs.
This is where you can build your shopping list. You sift through each list while keeping in mind the three stats you need to improve. If you are mathematically inclined and obsessive/compulsive as the author happens to be (I hang my head in shame), you can calculate the "incremental improvement" of each item for your raid-gear score. While going through this exercise, please understand that most of the gear happens to be impossible to reach at the beginning as they are drops from high level raid bosses in high level raid instances. You need to "build up" to those. Because of this the next detail to consider is where you can obtain an item. This will affect decisions such as "on which faction to concentrate for reputation" or "whether to do BGs for gear or not."
When calculating your overall raid score for your gear, you need to be warned that there are interrelationships to watch out. Stats occasionally affect each other and you need to take this into effect when calculating incremental improvements. For example, the same paladin in the example above should know that his intellect not only affects his total mana, but also his spell critical percentage. Each point of intellect increases his mana total by 10 and his spell critical by 1/80. (In fact, if he has chosen certain talents on his specialization tree, his Int will even affect his healing bonus.) All of these can be researched very effectively at wowwiki. Therefore, make your shopping list, prioritize and start working towards those items...
That's it! You are now a lvl70. Represent Exodus well. Make us proud. Go have fun, you Exodus raider boy/girl/boy-on-girl-toon/girl-on-boy-toon/indetermined-gender-toon-entity! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
