Thinking about your Worgen or Goblin and trying to pick a class? Want to run up an opposite faction alt to see Old WoW before New WoW hits? Or planning to use an offside RAF account and need a really low maintenance second character? Can’t pick a class? Here’s something to think about: what specific quests do you need to complete to unlock basic abilities of your class?
Druid: Bear form is a quest chain. Fairly straightforward, a little running back and forth and you have to kill a big bear spirit, and then you can become a bear. Easy but essential; even dedicated trees can find bear useful in a pinch.
Previously there were chains for swim form, cure poisons, and epic flight; the swim form quest is entirely gone, while the cure poisons quests are merely obsoleted because you can train the abilities without doing the chain. Same with epic flight, but it’s still worth doing; completing the chain means you can summon Anzu the Ravenlord boss in Heroic Sethykk Halls. He drops a nice raven mount that would make you the talk of town.
Hunter: You have to do a chain at 10 to learn how to tame and feed pets. Obviously if you don’t do this, you’re not going to be a very good hunter. You won’t learn to Mend your pet until 12, so don’t freak out. Tip: make sure you have a stack of food on hand to feed your angry, hungry bear cub when you tame him.
The quest chain itself is fairly simple: your trainer, in the second newbie village (IE Kharanos for dwarves) will tell you to go train a bear (for instance) and then a cat and then an owl. When you’ve completed all three quests, you learn the “Tame Pet” skill, the “Feed Pet” skill, and can go tame a pet of your own.
Mage: None. Every mage quest gives you gear. Some of them are cool, but none of them are essential, which made it doubly annoying leveling a mage years back when you ran out to Dustwallow Marsh (on foot) ten levels low, drowned in the swamp, got et by spiders, only to have Tabetha tell you she’d give you a nice belt.
Rogue: Lockpicking is still a quest chain, apparently. Poisons used to be, but no longer are. At level 16, your trainer will give you a quest. It’s pretty straightforward and leaves you near a field full of locked boxes you can practice your skill on to get a few points up. There are fields like this scattered around the world – like in the Wetlands, for instance – as a great way to train up your lockpicking skill.
Priest: Nope. Like mages, you don’t need to do any of them.
Paladin: At 12 you’ll get a quest chain to learn your resurrection spell. DO THIS CHAIN: I can’t believe how many paladins I’ve encountered, leveling, who don’t have a rez spell because they never bothered to do the chain. Basically, your trainer will tell you where to go; the chain involves, amazingly enough, resurrecting someone. Awesomely, Blood Elves get to resurrect someone who they actually killed in the previous step in the chain. Yeah.
Warrior: Defensive and Berserker stance are both quest chains. Make sure you do them, or you’ll be unable to tank! The Defensive Stance quest is at level 10 and is a simple “Bring me [NPC]‘s head” quest. The Berserker Stance/Intercept quest chain starts at 30 and will send you to the Barrens.
Warlock: Most demons require a quest, basically all along the lines of “This dude X has something that belongs to me. Kill him and bring it back. Oh, you’re back? Ok, go summon a demon in the basement and kill it. Yay! Now you can summon that demon as a pet!”. Do the quests. They aren’t hard and you need your pets.
Shaman: Saved these for last for a reason. Every one of your four totems requires a quest; Earth at 5, Fire at 10, Water at 20, and Wind at 30. They go something like this:
Earth: Talk to something, kill something, maybe drink something. Done.
Fire: Run around a bit, kill something, run around more, kill a Fire elemental, run around, get totem. Done.
Water: If you are Alliance, basically the same as fire, except underwater. If you are Horde:
1. Go talk to some annoying hermit on the edge of the Barrens, as far from a flight point as possible
2. Go retrieve a bag of water from halfway around the world
3. Return to the hermit
4. Go somewhere else, also halfway around the world. Get a bag of water.
5. Return
6. Guess what! You get to go get MORE water, as far as possible from ANYWHERE else you’ve ever been
7. Return
8. Ok, that’s enough water! Now, go halfway across the world and KILL some water
9.Realize you’ve just spent three hours traveling, log off, and cry. Congrats, you now have a water totem!
Wind totem: Show up, talk to an air spirit, get a totem. Anticlimax anyone?
Anyway, shaman require totems, so you have to do these quests.
Each quest also has assorted quests that give weapons as rewards. They are a fun way to feel more ‘into’ your class but honestly, leveling has been so nerfed these days it’s hardly worth it. All the level 50 quests land you in Sunken Temple so if you hate that place, skip them; if you love the place, grab the quests.
Haha, I think the Air Totem quest was a relief rather than an anticlimax :D And I’m sure I remember the Alliance water totem quest being really quite annoying too, especially since I did it before mounts were available at 20.
Eff the Horde shammy quests!
http://www.wowhead.com/item=23199/totem-of-the-storm
Goes on the AH on my server for about 100g–
The great thing about totems, they don’t have to be equipped to dropped (you will not receive the +bonus without equipping obviously)…
Whatever developer thought up the chain for the Horde water totem needs to be drawn and quartered.
They’re adding a pair of class-specific dungeon quests for each class in Cata; one at level 20 and one at 50. Not quite as much fun as *real* class quests, but I guess half a loaf is better than none – provide the slices they offer are free of sunken temple, of course.
Those totem quests… uggggh. And having done both Horde and Alliance version in the course of a few months… both just as annoying. Though the Horde fire one is particularly annoying. Walking off the mountain seemed boring, so I decided to jump, after asking the other lvl 12 shammy who was with me if he could res. He said yes, I jumped, he said “oops, no I can’t”. Yeah…
I seem to remember the Aquatic Form quest is still in game. Or at least it was a year or so ago. I started it, failed to find the damn jewel or whatever it was, so I just went and learned the form at the trainer.
You left out the Pally & Lock mount chains. Granted, they’re obsoleted by being able to train them at 40, but for those crazy completionist people out there (me), getting Achievements/Feats of Strength are fun (well, most of them).
Are you sure the Druid quest for Aquatic form is gone? I did it on my Druid alt late last year. I know the ability is trainable now but I believe you can still do the quest line, and it is well worth it since it rewards you with a nice blue belt at the end of the quest chain.
Apparently it’s still in: somehow I missed it when I’ve leveled druids at that level. Thanks for the correction!
Druid aquatic form quest is still available. And scales with your level (not the quest reward, but the XP). So possible to do at level 79 for maximum experience, if you missed it before.