Your Next Alt: Class Quests

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.

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No Ping, No Ding

Only made four levels on the noobs yesterday, even with triple XP. I thought I’d take a post and explain a few points about Recruit-a-Friend leveling with regards to established paired players, but first, our story:

Over lunch we made two levels in Darkshire killing some skeletons. Reversion works really close to the house so we can get forty minutes of playtime in if I’ve got lunch ready to go when he gets home. Usually we run an instance; right now, it’s easy to get a level or two on our RAF noobies. Run around, nom some food, ding. It’s that easy.

About four o’clock in the afternoon the power went out for a second. It does that around here kind of a lot. One of the many reasons that the power company may be my most despised utility. They have to beat out the internet provider and that’s a daily competition. Whose commercials do I hear more on the radio that day? Do I have to call up and yell at the internet guys that no, we don’t have cable tv, we don’t want cable tv, I don’t care if it’s only $5 more, go away and die. Or… do we get stupid unexplained power outages.

I get up, check all the parts of our network, turn my computer back on (I know, I need a UPS. Bleah) and wait… there’s a blinking yellow light on the new Airport Express that runs the gaming rigs’ half of the network. Ugh. I find the tool I want on Reversion’s Mac (we’re a mixed marriage; Catholic Mac fan to Presbyterian Windows user) and try restoring settings. It doesn’t work, I decide I’ll leave it and just play with the Nomster. She’s cuter anyway.

Reversion gets home, we set the network back up. He logs into WoW as I try to figure out why my machine isn’t getting a connection. I plug some  cables back into the switch. The network goes down.

We spend the next hour or more trying to figure out why, now, we can’t see the devices we could see before. Finally in the midst of brainstorming, Reversion looks at the switch… where I’ve plugged both ends of one cable in. Making a loop. This is a Bad Thing. I know it’s a Bad Thing. I have a masters degree in Computer Science. In grad school, I was a systems admin for our department. Go ahead, point and laugh.

Evening’s pretty much shot but we log on for 45 minutes, get two levels, pick up some flight points, and chat a little with folks that are on in SAN. It’s really cool saying Hi to people you know from blogs. Way more fun leveling up over there.

Anyway. The actual content of this post is about RaF leveling in pairs. First, a warning. Please don’t get your girlfriend an RaF account and nag her into playing WoW with you. Leveling goes too darn fast. She’s likely to end up with a level 60 character she has no idea how to play, a whirlwind trip across half of Azeroth, and a bad taste in her mouth. Honestly the best approach there is to let her develop an interest in the game and then use RaF to power level a character she wants to play, if you’re determined to use RaF at all.

Ok, that out of the way, RaF is great for pairs who play together and want to power level some alts. Decide who gets the new account and who is the ‘veteran’ player. The Veteran will get the loot (sweet rocket ride) so you may have to do this twice to make sure nobody gets left out 😉 Anyway the Veteran emails an invitation to the other member of the pair, who clicks the link in the email to create a linked account.

You can have this linked account on the same Battle.net account as your real WoW account. You just have to be on a separate Battle.net account from the Veteran account.

Now, this new account is a trial account. It can’t level past 20, or trade, or join a guild, or whisper people, or invite to groups. Thank your friendly neighborhood gold sellers for this one. If you are doing this to get the mount, what you do next is buy two game time cards or time card codes – these you can buy from Blizzard’s online store – activate your account as a real account, and apply the time cards. Now you have an active account with three months of playtime on it. When you add the first month of playtime, the Veteran account receives one month free playtime. When you add the second month, the Veteran gets the rocket mount.

The rocket can only go to one character on the Veteran account. You select which from the RaF website showing what rewards you’ve received, and the character gets the rocket in in-game mail.

A note about upgrading from a trial account to a real one: the leveling restriction is removed right away but the other restrictions may take a while. I upgraded mine around noon Saturday and did not get an email saying that the upgrade was complete until late Sunday. Meanwhile, I’d dinged 25 and was seriously hurting for cash.

Thanks to triple XP leveling speed, you need to train all the darn time and you have to do so little questing, you just don’t have money.  For this reason you might want to make the new characters on a server where you have friends or other characters who can loan you cash. Don’t bother taking gather skills and trying to mine your way to gold; you level way too fast for that. Fortunately we had a hundred gold or so on Argent Dawn already thanks to our previous time in SAN.

More RAF details: you have to be grouped together to get the bonus XP, and fairly close . Watch carefully, you don’t want to miss any of that precious precious XP! Pick up the “Kill Ten X” quests and not so much the “Bring me 18 tongues” quests. Takes too long. Plan ahead and pick up quests for instances, then run the instance and do all the quests. You’ll probably only go once before it’s not worth it for XP.  We did Stockades with the full set of 6 quests. By the time we could even get the Wetlands quest, some of them were green. Between running Stocks and turning in, we got four levels.

Strategize: once per hour each of you can summon the other to where you are. Set your hearthstones in different locations and use it as a quick travel method. (One at the trainer, one at the quest hub works nicely). Train every fourth level, or you’ll be running back to the trainer all the time. And look for quests that reward gear…

The newbie character can grant levels to a character on the veteran account, one level per every two that the newbie has. So if the newbie runs a character up to 60, he can grant 30 levels to a veteran character. To do this you have to be in the same location so it’s same server only.

You also gain a little more reputation than otherwise, I think it’s 10% extra. Just FYI.

So why would you want to do this? There’s the mount, of course. There’s having some level 60 characters fast – nice for figuring out if you actually like a playstyle, since many characters don’t really handle like they will at endgame until at least 40 if not 60. If you want a stable of alts on another server, this works well.

Cost: $20 for the new account plus $30 game time if you’re doing the two months = $50. If you’re paying for the veteran account from the same budget, subtract the $15 of free time the veteran receives = $35.  Any characters you transfer off of the newbie account are $25. I’ll probably just abandon mine  and we’ll RaF again so I can get a mount and permanent characters.

So far: our characters are level 34 and our /played time is something like 16 hours, and that includes leaving WoW logged in and walking away.

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Pairs Leveling: The Mage

The secret to getting the most out of leveling with someone else is in understanding exactly what your class brings to the duo. For a pure dps class, one with no pet and the survivability of a cloth-wearing snowball in hell, the mage can be a powerful addition to a pair.

First, the obvious utility spells. Conjured food and water mean you can avoid spending gold on these. Time between fights is reduced when you can recharge your mana-batteries quickly and easily. The portals you won’t get until 40, at which point you can get from Kalimdor to the Eastern Kingdoms a lot faster than a group with no mage, making Fedex quests a breeze. Dampen and Amplify Magic are almost totally useless spells – unless you’re leveling with a warrior and receiving no healing anyway, in which case reducing the magical damage you might take is great. And Feather Fall is situationally useful.

Second, crowd control. These days nobody uses it at high levels but you can and should use it as you level up. Convince your partner to let you sheep things at the start of a pull. Frost nova and blink away from mobs. Use frost bolts to slow things down. You’re more likely to survive when one of the six gnolls that want your spleen is suddenly a fluffy sheep and the rest are struggling across frozen ground while pelted with shards of ice.

Third, sheer firepower. It’s hard to match a mage for damage as you’re leveling up, and if you’re leveling with someone specced into healing especially you’re going to be doing the lion’s share of the killing. Just remember that especially in the first fifteen levels you are going to pull aggro off your partner even if you’re teamed up with a tank class, and be ready for it.

Tips for Leveling

First, do not spec Arcane. Arcane is not viable until you get Arcane Blast at level 64. Your choices are to level Fire or Frost. A mage who is planning to do a lot of soloing should level Frost. This is also a good spec if you are leveling with a healer or with some other squishy dps class. You can slow things down and kite them while taking little damage yourself.

However, if you’re leveling with a tanky class, you might spec Fire instead. Let your meat shield pick up aggro while you lob balls of fire at the kobolds’ heads. There are plenty of sites out there with leveling mage builds and I won’t replicate that here, but here’s a fire and here’s a frost that are pretty cookie cutter.

You and Your Partner

If you are paired with a warrior, hunter, enhancement shaman, ret paladin (at early levels, or prot later) or feral druid: Spec fire, let your partner or partner’s pet keep aggro on the mobs. Kill things. Don’t pull aggro; cast fireballs and pyroblasts at one mob as a time as long as the tank isn’t dying. This can work with a warlock with a voidwalker out too but warlocks and mages are bad pairs. One second you’re questing, the next second you’ve destroyed two or three countries and your hair is missing.

If you are paired with a priest, balance/resto druid, some sort of shaman that isn’t enhancement (I don’t think they’re doing it right. Unless she’s a resto shaman and you’re doing a lot of LFD), holy pally, or rogue: Spec frost. Plan your pulls carefully. Sheep things, then use frost nova to trap them, empowered blizzard to slow them. Kite ’em, shoot frostbolts, don’t let them near your partner if he’s healing you.

Either way, things are now dead. Sit down and have some conjured bread and water. Steal the kobold’s candle. Profit.

Other things to consider: Try to get your partner to role a class that does not wear cloth. If you’re teamed with a warlock or shadow priest, you’ll be fighting over gear. You aren’t likely to find a wand until level 15 or so, unless you get lucky, so you might have an enchanter make you a low level wand (the mats are pretty darn cheap). You’ll want a wand; at low levels your mana can disappear fast and leave you no way to kill the mostly-burned-to-death boar that suddenly isn’t dying. Do a little research as you level up to learn real details; this is supposed to give you a feel for the flavor and fun that a mage brings to a pair.

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The Levelling Experience: 1-10

As mentioned previously, Reversion and I have rolled alts on Argent Dawn to be part of Single Abstract Noun, the blogger guild. I started a druid, and he started a gnome rogue, and as we levelled 1-10 in separate zones, we  started having similar complaints.

“Where’s the quests? I’m level 6 and all the mobs are level 8.”

“I know I need to go here next, but there’s no quest telling me that.”

“All the quest stuff is filling up my one bag”

“Wow, you die easy without heirlooms.”

It had been a while since we had levelled without heirlooms, or not together, or not as draeni, and while it was not really difficult, it got us talking. So this morning I rolled a draeni paladin and compared the experiences I had with my night elf druid and my draeni paladin.

Parameters:

Classes I know well

No heirlooms, no help beyond my addons (no quest help beside the built in quest helper)

Same level range

Darnassus versus Azuremyst Isle

Experience:

Both zones start off with a “kill some of these critters” quest. Nice and easy – the critters are right there and Blizzard puts your abilities right on the action bar. After that you get a few more quests. I found the Azuremyst quests very nicely sequence, where I could complete all the quests I could pick up at the same time. On the other hand, the Darnassus quests often had me covering the same ground three or more times.

Equipment: in the first five levels, my draeni quests gave me a four slot bag and a fishing pole. I know they’ve increased the drop rate on small bags, and in fact both my alts have full sets of 6 slot bags, but awarding one as a quest reward is a nice touch, and the fishing pole was awesome.

Where to go next:  Azuremyst led me by the hand. Darnassus took figuring out.

Mobs: All critters in the 1-5 area are now yellow.  The first red mob for my draeni was at the fishing quest when a murloc popped out! I could see a complete newbiew being very surprised by this. Darnassus has several spots where the mob respawn rate seemed bugged and I was hard pressed to get out.

The Cave: All the 1-10 zones seem to have one or two cave complexes where you’ll go in, kill a named guy,  and come out. In Darnassus you have a cave full of demons where you kill a guy who turns into a cat, and a barrow where you wander around for eight years looking for four relics. In Azuremyst you have  a  cave full of nagas where you kill the boss, and a cave full of furbolgs where you kill the named boss, 9 others, and the Kraken hound. The Azuremyst versions were considerably easier and less frustrating. I never did finish the Darnassus version.

Quest rewards: About the same, slightly better (and better named!) gear in Azuremyst

Professions: Most professions could be learned at Azure Watch. About the same for the Darnassus hub, There’s no ore in Darnassus of course, while you can learn anything at Azure Watch.

Summing up:  a brand new player is going to have a much easier time in the draeni area compared to old world zones. I had some guild members talk about Azuremyst being “hand holding” or “spoonfeeding” and they’re right, but I think Blizzard has realized just how many players come to the game with NO previous MMO experience, heck, often no game experience at all. Before WoW, my major game experience was in Civ II. Not hardly the same. I’d have had a much easier time if the draeni area had been there.

In fact I think they need to make the first ten levels even more user friendly. If you’re still getting used to cameras, looting, and using your abilities, there are a number of things that can be annoying. Even experienced players can miss things when they roll a new class. For instance, we ran with a player last night who didn’t have her paladin res; there’s a quest you have to do at 12 to get it, and if you don’t know that, it’s easy to miss the quest.

After I get to 20 on both alts, I’m going to come back and finish comparing the two sequences. I don’t think it’s as drastic but I do have some really nasty things to say about Loch Modan, designers, and getting eaten by many many mobs at once.

(My two alts are Analogue the druid, and Annalogue the paladin, both on Argent Dawn-US)

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Need More Alts!

Or something. Like my last brief post, Rev and I rolled on Argent Dawn (US) to join Single Abstract Noun and after some pondering, I rolled a druid. I’ve levelled enough classes since my druid that it’s really interesting to be a lowbie druid again. I’m managing some stuff I could never have done the first time because I know what my abilities do, cold.

Rev and I did our first ten levels separate; he rolled a gnome rogue and I was in night elf land, and we both discovered that those zones have some really bad cases where you just aren’t sure where to be questing next; you’re level 7 and all the quest mobs are level 10 and want to eat your brain. And then you randomly wander across some dude on the mountain with a quest to kill a yeti in a cave. Our recent alts have either been run as pairs, where you don’t notice that it’s sort of hard to level a new character when the mobs are three levels higher than you and you only have two abilities, or we were in the draeni zone which is far better organized and laid out. Hopefully Blizz will clean up the early leveling experience even more in Cataclysm, because I can see why some people give up after five levels.

We’ve grabbed gather professions and I have a goal of getting all riding skills on time and being able to buy dual spec at the point where I can actually use it, without having to spend hardly any time grinding.  I’m personally convinced that buying gold is stupid and absolutely unnecessary and I want to demonstrate it yet again. We have no high level alts on this server. I have already accepted one “help” though; the guild’s bank vault had a number of 6 and 8 slot bags there for new members to take. Since they don’t soulbind, you can put them back as soon as you’ve got better ones, and I’ve already picked up one random pouch to add back, but it makes carrying stacks of herbs and fur much easier.

Haven’t seen any RP yet but I have been told to avoid Goldshire in the evenings…

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Why Blizzard Likes Alts

Blessed are the altaholics, for they shall receive heirlooms

Lissana over at Restokin had a long blog post today about Specialists vs Generalists as a play style. Pretty obvious this blog falls more on the generalist side of the equation! Reversion and I have three level 80s each and three other characters that we are actively leveling (each). We both have healers, tanks, and dps classes and play any of those roles pretty well. We’ve got most professions covered between us (don’t have a max level blacksmith and the leatherworking char is only at about 430 skill).

On the other hand, if you ask us who our mains are there’s no question. Reversion and Analogue, the druids, see the most content, have the best gear, and are definitely our most played. They weren’t our original mains by a long stretch but during the course of WotLK we began to realize how much more content we could see with a dedicated tank/healer pair than with a couple random ranged dps. I think our experiments with other classes have made our mains better. Analogue has become a better healer as I’ve gotten better with tanking on Divergent.

As Lissanna mentions,  one reason for alts is to see content you didn’t see before, particularly opposite-faction content. We’re trying that now with our low-level Horde alts. It’s fun, and I’m running a few other experiments at the same time (like whether we can run these guys up and afford epic flying without needing cash from our mains, thanks to gather professions)

She’s right that WotLK has been paradise for generalists, and her conclusion

However, I’ve come to accept that being a generalist is a viable play-style in WoW as of WotLK being released, even for end-game purposes. I appreciate handing out new gear and heirlooms and all the fun toys that generalists get to play with.

I agree with. In fact, I think that Blizzard has actively been pushing the generalist playstyle for the same reason they’ve made raids so much more accessible this expansion. They want to maintain their subscription numbers so the game can continue. In Vanilla WoW, hardcore raiders had a reason to play every day for many hours, but that never represented more than a tiny fraction of the population. In WotLK, anyone who devotes  a few hours a week can eventually see most if not all of the endgame content, and that makes Blizzard happy because players who feel like they are progressing continue to subscribe.

But, the player who really likes questing and leveling and running low level dungeons is just as good a source of cash as the end-game raider. In fact,  from Blizzard’s point of view he’s a better cash source because it takes few developer-resources to keep him happy.  I suspect most players fall somewhere in between those two extremes. My personal experiences make me believe that most end game raiders have some alts that they like playing with, and a lot of less-raid-oriented players still join pugs or weekly raid quest groups. I think that’s probably Blizzard’s intent.

Blizzard must like alts, because they’ve given us 10 slots per server and 50 total slots to play with. A lot of other games? Not so much. EVE Online lets you have 3 (I think) but because of the training system you really only play one character per account. Star Trek Online released with only 2 character slots as the default (you can buy more). On the other hand, Lord of the Rings Online supports the generalist playstyle and from what I’ve heard, that’s part of why people go back and play around in that game. It’s a lot harder to get totally bored of a game when you can just log in to a different experience every night of the week.

The day when you could claim that the specialist was the true WoW elite is passed. Nowadays, it’s the tank who can’t say “oh yeah I hate healing this goup on my shaman” or the dps who doesn’t mention “I know what a pain that pat is to LOS when I’m tanking” who is the noob. Anyone can be pretty good at one class, especially with the epics falling like cherry blossoms, but it takes skill to be uber at everything.

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Why Every Healer Should Roll A Tank

Because tanking is harder and if healers realized that they would stop whining? NO. Running some instances as a tank, getting ok at tanking, will make you a better healer, and here’s why.

You’ll know what the tank is going to do next, and why. If you’ve been healing for a while you probably already have instincts that tell you when a tank is going to LOS a pull or charge into the next one, but once you’ve tanked those pulls yourself you’ll know why. There is no substitute for actually doing it.

You’ll know what a tank is capable of, and what he’s not: This will make you more tolerant when he loses aggro,  remind you to keep an eye on those dps-ers pulling 5k damage, and know when to have your emergency macros on hand.

A change of perspective helps: I’ve run Northrend dungeons dozens and dozens of times on my mage and my tree, but it wasn’t til I tanked them on my paladin that I realized certain things, like that some of the portals in VH always spawn groups while some always spawn a single mob.  Or that those stupid orbs on the platforms in OK do LOS. Or that there’s an invisible wall in TOC by the door the enemies come in that they can get through but you can’t, so you can’t hit them.

You learn what healers do that makes tanking harder: I often start dropping HOTs on the tank as he pulls. Turns out it can be a bit annoying when the healer instantly pulls off you when you’re tanking. Makes life tricky. I’ve started looking for other strategies.

You learn just why tanks are always wanting to go-go-go. Oh, rage really is a pain to regain once it’s gone. And Divine Plea needs to stay up, so either start the next fight in less than twelve seconds, or wait out the cooldown til it’s ready again. And the mobs move around, so waiting ten more seconds changes the battle space.  Not that any of these concerns match “healer has no mana”, but maybe if I’m in all tier 9.5 or better and have 70% mana I can handle another trash fight…. yeah, probably.

Because there’s nothing you can’t do: We all dps, for daily quests or leveling. You know deep down you might not be as good as the rogue who tops the damage meters, but you can do it. But tanking seems like an esoteric skill. It is, but no more so than playing whack-a-mole with 25 health bars WHILE staying out of the fire. Give it a try. Most healers will probably find that they still like healing best – I know I do; I think raid healing 10 mans is my favorite part of the game by far. But I can tank, and I can tank pretty well, and just knowing that is empowering.

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Leveling Together

World of Warcraft is the biggest MMO game out there, so why does it often feel like a really slow single-player game while you’re leveling? If your newbie character is not in a guild, or in a guild without many others at the same level, it can feel like just you against the world, killing hundreds and hundreds of liver-less boars. Not fun.

Blizzard has worked to make the game as social as possible. Nowhere is this more apparent than the LFG tool. Even at low levels you can queue up and be put into a group that Blizzard builds for you, ported into and out. Even so, if you’re not leveling a healer or tank, you may have long stretches of wait time in between those instances, or maybe you just don’t feel like instances. What’s the solution?

Well, a leveling buddy of course! Could be a spouse or significant other (which makes WoW into quality time! Yay!) or a sibling or a friend, but the idea is that you have a pair of characters that level together. If your buddy is new to WoW, you can do the recruit-a-friend system and the levels will go past so fast you can’t blink, but either way, it’s a good way to keep WoW social. If you’re rolling a pair of characters to level together, consider these points.

1. Complimentary Classes – two Holy priests may take a while to level. A Holy priest and a warrior, on the other hand, will kill lots of things and not die very often. A hunter and a mage is a good combo, if the hunter can use his pet to tank while the mage kills stuff. A Ret paladin (to level 40 or so, then spec Prot) and a druid with a hybrid balance/resto spec are unstoppable together.

2. Complimentary skills – One of you wants to be a jewelcrafter, one wants to be a blacksmith. Only one of you needs to learn mining to keep the duo supplied, so maybe the other can pick up engineering or something totally unrelated.

3.  Have a Backup Plan – the key to “leveling duo” is the two characters need to stay close together in levels. If one can’t play for a few sessions, resist the urge to keep going on the other or all of a sudden you’ll be eight levels apart and have to either break up the duo or take time and level up the lagging member.

4. Communicate – If you’re in the same room, it’s easy. If you’re miles apart, a phonecall or voice chat makes playing together easier and more like actually spending time together.

5. Resist the urge to Cheat – Don’t pull out your level 80 character to kill a quest boss that’s just too tough for you and your bud, or run your partner through the Stockades. The point is to level a pair of characters together, not take turns power leveling. Instead find new solutions and learn something about your new class. Remember when Wrath hit and there were all these high-level death knights running around with no clue what their skills actually did? That happens when you get power leveled, too.

Other Ideas? Reversion and I are altaholics, we freely admit this. I think it’s made us better players on our mains, and it’s a nice break. If you’ve got suggestions for pair leveling, let me know – Cataclysm is coming and our goblins aren’t going to level themselves…

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Build a Better Alt

Getting Started

Part 1 of an occasional series

Step 1:  Choose your Class. Try something really different from your main, and watch your main’s playstyle improve. Every tank should play a healer. Every dps should have to tank a few instances. Every healer should get a chance to lob fireballs at gnolls. Ranged dps? Try a melee class. But make sure it’s something that appeals to you!

Step 2: Choose your Race. Unless you’re limited by your class, you should have a few races to choose from. Consider the racial bonuses – Gift of the Naruu is a nice racial for a class that has no heal, for instance. Consider the starting zone – if your last character was a Night Elf, maybe try a Gnome for a change (or even roll on the opposite faction for a real change)

Now choose your name, configure your apprearance, log in – and then log out, noting your new name, and log onto your main.

Step 3: Shopping Spree! Buy Heirlooms from the Heirloom vendor in Dalaran (next to the Badge Vendors), Wintergrasp (in the courtyard) or if you’re a Crusader, at the Argent Crusade in the tent. Your priority list is chest, shoulders, then weapon and trinkets. The chest and shoulders grant 10% extra XP each, for everything – exploring, kills, turn ins. Get these.

Pro tip: if you know you want lots of alts and you think you’ll be short on emblems/marks/whatever for the gear, buy the cloth shoulders and equip them even on your baby pally. At low levels, the silly stats and lack of armor mean a lot less than the 10% XP gain.

Now send your alt the gear, some cash (20 gold will keep your newbie happy for a long time) and a set of bags. While you can deck Mini-You out in Frostweave Bags, did you know that  mageweave bags don’t bind on equip? So your alt can use them, gradually replace them on her own, and send them on to another alt?

Step 4: Profit! Get your noob to a mailbox, pull out the goodies, then backtrack and start leveling! You’ll find it a lot easier to level the second time around. LFG starts at 15,  your mount will come at level 20, buy a portal to Dalaran and set your stone there and travel will be much simpler.

Don’t Forget Your Professions: it’s easier to level them up with you than to learn them at max level. Try to pick some your main doesn’t have.

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Looking for More!

I don’t remember whose idea the druids were, but it was brilliant.

I’d been hooked on WoW for a while now. It took a little time; the first character I rolled was a hunter, like my husband’s. WoW was my first MMORPG. I hadn’t even played that many computer games (shocking admission for a self-proclaimed computer geek, yes) but he was determined to share the game he loved with me.

It worked, sort of. I got that hunter to about 40 and I enjoyed the game but not so much the hunter. “Fake die!” he’d say, and I’d look for the button but too late. “No, use this shot, not that one!” I was always running out of bullets, panicking because my pet was unhappy, and to make matters worse, I’d rolled a dwarf hunter. A FEMALE dwarf hunter.

Then I made a mage, a cute little gnome with little red buns and balls of fire shooting out her fists, and it was a whole new game. It took me a while, but I got her all the way to level 70, and now we had a max level hunter and mage and it was three months out from Wrath of the Lich King and we had nothing to do. We weren’t in a guild, I liked PVP ok but it got old… and then the Refer-a-Friend program came out and we made the druids. We gt a third account and started Night Elves and had them almost to 60 before WotLK. Then they went into storage until the mains were levelled. But after that, out they came to run dungeons until they hit 68. A tank and a healer, we got parties whenever we felt like it and the levels just flew past.

They’re our mains now, although our hunter and mage are pretty well geared and we have fun with them too. But my Tree and his Bear get to raid ICC, or pug until we get bored, or whatever we feel like. The synergy that they have is awesome. Nothing says “date night” like slaughtering iron dwarves together!

Anyway, we learned a lot of lessons from that experience. It’s easier to level together. If leveling a pair, make one a tank or healer. If you’re bored with WoW, roll an alt. Always level your professions. Don’t try to do holidays on two sets of characters. Levels 45-58 are the most painful. It takes a long time to kill stuff by hitting it with your branches.

This blog is about alts, about duos, and about WoW. Want tips on getting your girlfriend to play WoW? Stay tuned. Dedicated to leveling Resto? I feel your pain. Not really sure whether you want an alt? You do.

Off and Away!

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