I recently lost an account because Blizzard mistakenly thought I was running a bot program when, in fact, I was playing in a scaled VNC window at 2 frames/sec. They wouldn't listen and didn't care, so I went and started a new account to try to regain my level 60 priest.

First time around it took about 5 months to get to 60 in casual playing. This time it took about 3 weeks of intensive leveling and I thought I would post what I did for others:

1. Do as many red quests as you possibly can. Don't worry about the difficulty. Red quests done quickly give the best XP (sometimes 6000 or more).
2. Have a guildy or two help you blow through those red quests. The key here is fast.
3. Find areas that you can "grind" XP. This is the worst part. It is crucial that you do this alone, not in groups. No matter what anyone says, grinding alone gets you much more XP than any other method. I did this by turning off all sound in the game, throwing a good DVD or recorded TV show up on my second monitor and just runing around in about the same area killing as much and as fast as possible. Try to find that point at which you can continuously kill stuff without having to break for mana drinks or health regens.

I know this sounds boring, and it really is. I've read a lot of "1-60 in 2 days" posts that are simply false. I think this is the only real way of being able to get to 60 in any reasonable time. By the way, time played for my character when I hit 60 was about 12 game-days total.

From 50-60 my average xp/hr was about 22k and I did 1-2 levels a day easily.

I hope this helps!

For grinding up a shadow priest (if you're going to go holy from the start don't bother grinding, run instances for your exp) stick to mobs about your lvl until you're around 40'ish then you can move up. You can kill mobs higher than you before that of course, but the xp/hour will be less. Green mobs are your friend.

Before you hit shadow form and have improved VE I would pull with mindblast, drpo a SW:P on the mob, shield, flay once or twice and then wand the rest of the way. With shadowform and imp VE I drop the PW:S (Power Word Shield) as it's incredibly mana ineffeciant and VE will top me off almost all the way during the course of every fight.

IMHO First Aid should be learned by every class and I have my first aid right up there as well, but I don't waste bandages during grinding sessions. Generally I'll sit down and eat some food when I have to drink every so often. Many of the higher level foods will give you nifty abilities such as increasing stam and spirit for 15 minutes if you spend 10 seconds eating it. I also love to have mages on the friends list that will drop me a stack of 80 conjured water as it saves on drink costs during long (10 hour+) grinding sessions.

When you're starting out wanding is a must and even at a higher level wanding is a must. When wanding you also get out of FSR (Five Second Rule) so you can begin regenerating mana quicker. When spirit tap kicks in it's almost as good as drinking. In addition your first wand should always be Lesser Magic Wand:

http://thottbot.com/?i=1325

This is made by a low level enchanter, you can use it at lvl 5, and it pumps out 11.3 DPS (can be had for very cheap as well).

I ended up with Cookies Stiring Rod next ( http://thottbot.com/?i=6502 ) which is from the DeadMine but the Greater Magic Wand (again from an enchanter) is another wonderful wand: http://thottbot.com/?i=1318

Greater Magic Wand: lvl 13 and 17.5 damage per second
Cookies Stiring Rod: lvl 17 and 22.3 damage per second

After those wands there's not much you can get on the cheap from enchanters for wands, you'll be looking at green drops.

For pure grinding I like a good mix of int/spi but don't get too hung up in stats. Once you hit lvl 40 and get Shadowform everything becomes a lot more fun.

From a Shammy/Warlock 2 boxer perspective.

As taken from Merriam-Webster. Definition 5 hits it on the head.

Farming (not to be confused with Grinding)

Main Entry: 2farm
Function: verb
transitive senses
1 obsolete : RENT
2 : to collect and take the fees or profits of (an occupation or business) on payment of a fixed sum
3 : to give up (as an estate or a business) to another on condition of receiving in return a fixed sum
4 a : to devote to agriculture b : to manage and cultivate as a farm c : to grow or cultivate in quantity
intransitive senses : to engage in raising crops, animals, or fish
5 : to pillage/plunder a particular honey spot in a MMORPG in such a manner that maximises a player's income and/or personal wardrobe.
IE: Dude!! We raped that lewt farm last night. I must have made 20 gold in just a few hours.

Ok, yes, I added #5 myself. It should have been there though. Those dictionary puds don't keep up with the times.

I was talking in guild chat the other day about farming a certain spot when someone asked, "What is farming?"

Huh?

Basically, you just head to a spot that you know is good for mobs dropping easily sold items that rake in the cash. I have a few spots that work really well for this, but are level dependent. As most of you already know, wow farming is tons different than Everquest farming was. The mobs in wow can (and will) still kick your ass even though you are 20 levels ahead of them. So don't think you are just going to walk into a place 20 levels your inferior and get the same result as you would playing Doom in god mode. There are no BFGs to be had here.

So, where are some of these honey spots? I have a few. It really depends on what I want to farm. This is all based on either a level 41 shaman (skinning/leathercraft) and/or 41 warlock (skinning/tailoring). Both have about the same kill/min ratio. I like to 2 box, but in some areas, it is a pain in the ass. If you 2 box and don't have a duplicate skill on both characters, you will make more dough than I do.

Tailoring supplies: For linen, the humans south and around The Sepulcher have a pretty high drop rate for linen. You can sell a stack of it for around 20-30 silver in the AH. Great for raising an alt's tailoring or first aid skill fast. Also mass producing 6 slot bags are decent income. It takes about a silver to produce and you can sell them to vendors for 2.

Wool drops pretty well from any humanoid above level 15, but I found the humans on the road heading to Hillsbrad from Sepulcher to be better than most. They are average level 18-20 and casters (low hp so you can kill them faster and you resist most everything). They respawn faster than the waiters at Applebee's (though not quite as friendly) so you will always have stuff to kill.

Silk is a pain. It never seems to drop fast enough. The Azureload Mine seems to be about the best I have found. Levels are around 25ish. Tons and tons of mobs, fast respawn, and high drop rate. Add to that the mobs drop silver about half of the time. This was a great place to get exp and farm at the same time. You have to be on your toes though. Easy to get gang raped in there.

You can also kill the humans around Dalomar. From level 30-35 you can sit here and make tons of cash and get quite a few tailoring skill points. They also drop the occasional Mageweave. Maybe 1/15.

Skinning: Again, from Undercity all the way to Tarren Mills, it is made for skinning. Once you get to level 30, north of Tarren Mills, you can easily make 4 levels and an assload of cash skinning the Yeti, both the brown and white ones. (I am pro-affirmative action, if I killed 1 brown one, I went and killed 40 white ones. Not really.)

Once you get to level 33ish, an alternate to Yetis and Humans around Dalomar are the Arathi Highlands. Ther are lots of roaming mobs for skinnning and human outposts for tailoring. Get xp while you do it. Just find a zone wall or one of the human camps and tear em up.

I generally go for mobs at or a few levels below my level. It seems to maximize and balance the intake of xp and lewt. There are better spots to be had, but either the run time to get there, or the recovery time for dying has made me pass on them. I tend to be lazy, but in a smart sort of way. Heh.

Okay let me tell you the low down on hunter builds for PVE strictly talking about solo build here.
I have tried marskmen build which is by far the most popular but from my past experiences with my hunter I started as best spec cause I was a dwarf and it wasnt popular this is before the big skill tree change. Now I noticed my pet cant hold agro from me I do have a blue rifle and crit good amount sure the numbers are nice but sometimes you get ganked by some gay spider walking by ect..
With markman shipbuild its hard to survive a fight with a creature 3-4 lvls above you if another one adds. But with beast build its pretty easy target the add tell beast to attack it do that until it has agro switch it back to orginal target start firing away. Also at early level hunter its okay to melee heck even 30+ you still melee sometimes your pet should hold agro even with a blue 2 handed weapon on. The most creatures I survived at once was about 4 wolf when I was lvling around darkshores that was all at once than shortly after I had 2 more attack thankfully not all at once but my dear fullfy nearly was dead take off taunt and use distracting shot and tank if you have life or potions if not use wing clip followed by dazing shot run short distance away channel as much mend as you can to your pet have him taunt again and keep tring to heal him.

Also your pet w/o beast skilltree has harder time hold agro due to its lower dps you wont miss markmenship trust me this is an almost no down time lvling build Marksmen is great for PVP but waste alot of mana in PVE when you can just weaken it up and run in with big axe to finish it ^^.

THis is a quite usfull technique for grinding loot from a boss thats far in an instance. All you need is a warlock, and of course your raid party.
Step 1:Have one person die and get outside of the instance (should be the party leader)
Step 2:As soon as he's outside have all of the other players pull their ehternet cords, or turn of their internet connection.
Step 3:Have the party leader go inside, and then back outside of the instance.
Step 4:Have the party leader reset the instance.
Step 5:Have everyone log back in, and summon the party leader with the warlock.
Step 6:Grind to your hearts content

Its quite a simple way to make money in my opinion and on my server have been making a lot of money with this idea. It wont work on all servers though as your economies etc will be different but its worth a couple of looks in the AH to check…

Basically just buy cards from the AH (Beasts, Warlords, Elementals and Portals) i would stick to the one that you can make the most money from at first. Bid on the cards when they are cheap or BO when they are cheap and usually you can get the 2,3,4,5,6,7,8 for about 100g (on my server and if you arent rash with your money) this is the easy part. Next you need to get the ace (Beast's ace is hardest simply because of the drop rate or cost, about 300 for beasts) Once you have all the cards create the deck and put it into your bank and wait untill the few days before the faire arrives…its at this point which everyone starts buying up cards and decks (because its the only time you can use them) and put your decks in the AH (no more than 1 of each deck at a time) and sell for the highest price you can on a server. You should be making about 200g per deck and you get get 1 deck every week (of each 4 type) if you can afford this. This means you could (server permitting etc) be earning about 600-800g a week with practically NO effort.

In short - Have enough gold to buy all the cards in a deck…buy them…make the deck…sell in AH appropriatly…make lots of gold.

I have gone from 400g to around 1600g (i have only been doing this a month) without any additional grinding aswell as buying items and keeping a deck for myself.

Tips : Beast's deck almost on every server is the most expensive…mainly becuase of the ace being a 3% drop from a UBRS boss (the beast). If you estimate how many runs will down this bloke a day you will realise you will only see 1/2 of these in the AH a week….

Be carefull when starting to buy the decks…just write down how much the deck will cost you to make…and how much it sells for otherwise you could end up losing money.

You need to have money to start with, sadly the old saying "it takes money to make money" is true…but its a good way to avoid any more money grinding.

I appologise is this idea/method has been mentioned before but i couldnt see it and its an excelent way to make money….enjoy!

This is in no way a new strategie, but I havn't seen it listed anywhere. I find this particularly useful on a lvl 60 character, as you can simply go afk and let your skill rise

Step 1 - Fly to Netherguard Keep, Blasted Lands.
Step 2 - Travel to 42,30ish where you will find mobs of humanoids. One of the mobs is called a "Servant of Sevine".
Step 3 - Clear your way to the servant, and agro the servant.
Step 4 - Kite this mob back to netherguard keep, and move it into the southern tower.

Here you must lose agro, and let the elite guards inside the keep tank the mob. Once you have lost agro, you are free to hit the mob, and go afk whilst your skill rises. If you are familiar with the quest involving these mobs, then you will know that you have to cog a crystal for the mob to die. Obviously there crystal is not cogged, and so the mob stays on 1% until a GM decides to despawn it (which usually takes 24hrs+ due to the obscure locale.) I'm sure you could pull the mob elsewhere for horde, although I am unfamiliar with the horde camps in that area. I would imagine you could do the same thing by kiting the mob to the horde camp in the south of the Swamp of Sorrows.

By the time I hit 30 on my first character I had really started to enjoy the tradeskills in World of warcraft. It was obvious though, that each tradeskill took a considerably amount of resources to gain access to higher level recipes. The big kicker though, is it didn t require a lot of time, which is where this guide comes in.

In World of warcraft most tradeskills require two professions, one creates items, and the other is used to gather resources for the creation of those items. So lets list out the tradeskills that are used to gather resources for their complementary tradeskills:

Herbalism (for Alchemy)
Skinning (for Leathercrafting)
Mining (for Blacksmithing & Engineering)

The only two we ve left out is Tailoring and Enchanting which do not need complementary skills, they work off drop rates and item collection. Looking at these, I came up with a plan of attack that will allow me to level all of the tradeskills at the same time and very quickly to boot.

Our strategy revolves around selecting two resource-gathering tradeskills for each of your characters you play with. As those characters progress through the game collecting resources with their tradeskills, they send the resources to the appropriate mule. At the appropriate level, each toon will untrain one of their professions and train the trade skill that their gathering skill complements. This will allow extremely rapid development of trade skilling from the resources you ve collected throughout all of your characters.

Which Gathering Tradeskills to Train

While you can choose between herbalism and skinning, you must have mining. The reason you have to choose mining is because you ll need to supply two different characters with resources and with mining, it s a pain already to get resources for mining, so you may as well make it easier on yourself and get as much of it as you possibly can on each character. Then choosing between skinning and herbalism depends on your preference. For less stress I d say skinning because you don t have to keep choosing between find minerals and find herbs as you go through your leveling process. You ll want to have all your bases covered though, so make sure you have at least 1 or 2 characters gathering herbs.

Now that you ve planned your tradeskill selection you ll need to create the characters you ll be playing and start gathering resources.


When to Untrain your Tradeskill

It all depends on your patience and your pack space. Around level 25/30 you ll start seeing problems with pack space on your mules and it may be a good indicator that you should untrain. Optimally, you shouldn t untrain until level 60. Though I don t have that kind of patience myself, but I wouldn t respect until a minimal level 20 on my toons.

The reason why you want to keep your two gathering skills as long as possible before untraining is simple, you want to gather as many resources as you possibly can before starting the complementary tradeskill. I can t tell you how easy it is to level blacksmithing once you ve obtained 500 copper ore and 300 tin ore. That s 150 smithing in an hour. Not only that, but you didn t waste any of your time gathering resources, since your alts did it while you leveled them. You didn t have to grind for ore, or hang around a mountain to farm it just to level your smithing up a few more points. You simply gathered it when it was convenient to your progression through the game. It s all based on efficiency and the value of your time.

What Tradeskills are Important?

I m not going to get into the debate about which tradeskills are more useful, that is beyond the scope of this guide. However, I will tell you which tradeskills make this system work smoother, then you ll be able to gauge what your next step will be.

Tailoring: Tailoring is probably the most useful (and the most efficient to level) out of our tradeskill selection. The reason why it is so efficient to level is that every one of your characters can gather resources for this profession without a gathering skill. Not only that, but finding cloth is so common that people don t have a problem parting with it for nothing. Around 150 Tailoring skill you ll be able to create 10 slot bags, which should be dispatched to all of your mules who are missing bags. Oh and alliance tailors have the Journeyman, Expert and Artisans located in Stormwind.

Enchanting: I like Enchanting because it brings it all together. Enchanting makes sure that there will be no wasted items once you start grinding points on your other tradeskills. Any items you produce through your tradeskills will go directly to your Enchanter for disenchanting. Likewise, any items you may find along your journey that don t sell at the Auction House should go to your Enchanter for disenchanting. While leveling multiple tradeskills at a time, you should be producing a great deal of green items which will all get recycled to boost your Enchanting skill.

Blacksmithing: For the purpose of this guide, think of Blacksmithing as a way to unload pack space, because that ore really fills your inventory/bank up quickly. You ll always end up untraining to Blacksmithing first just to alleviate all the pack space you re gonna fill up with the ore you ll collect from mining. I even went as far as making a second mule dedicated to smith stuff just to prolong my training of blacksmithing, but alas, it too filled up quickly. As you level up through the tiers of armor you ll quickly pass your own level requirement, which means you ll always have armor waiting when you level.


Alchemy: Alchemy will supply your characters with quest items and health/mana potions as they progress through the game. Since Herbs don t take up a great deal of pack space I usually just wait off when it comes to training Alchemy.

Leathercrafting: Leathercrafting is another major pack space unloader. Seeing as though leathers only stack up to 10, and hides up to 5 (most of the time) it becomes rather pack space intensive after about 25 levels. Like Blacksmithing, Leathercrafters can also benefit your alts by giving out armor when it is useful.

Engineering: Though I d pickup Smithing long before engineering, it is a great pack space unloader as well as quest item supplier for certain quests (darkshire, badlands).

So Why Do All This?

Eliminate dependency, prepare for the updates and to help bridge the higher level tradeskills. If you have 250+ on all of the trade skills in the game, you are a one man green/blue item manufacturer. You will have an ease of item creation that no other player in the game can match. You see, when you hit the 250+ recipes a great deal of the recipes require resources from other professions. High level bag creation requires leathers from skinning, high level leathercrafting requires a Salt Shaker made by Engineers, Blacksmiths require Arcanite that is purified by an Alchemist. By eliminating the middle man you eliminate dependency on other people as well as a quicker means of obtaining the resources you need.

Preparing for updates is just always a good rule of thumb in an mmorpg. Eventually they ll add hero levels and new 300+ recipes that will allow you to obtain higher level items. You can bet that these new additions will have a lot of requirements from other trade skills but given Blizzard s flare for non-cookie cutter gameplay, it may be hard to pinpoint exactly what will come. If you want to experience those new recipes and items first, I suggest you get your tradeskilling up to par and keep your ear to the ground as new updates arrive.



>>Though I am a big fan of tradeskills, not everyone may share this flare. However, a lot of players enjoy creating alternate characters and leveling them up to 30 and starting over again. You might as well play it efficiently and quickly gain resources and tradeskilling points by refining your tradeskills and untraining at a later time. Remember, you only have to be level 35 to get to 300 points on any tradeskill. Though the 225-300 range may require you to kill level 50+ mobs, you can still achieve 300 through alternate means. Just gather those resources and when you re ready to focus on your gameplay on a single character or many alternates, you ll be amazed at how much smoother the game gets when you have the best armor every level from tradeskilling.

horde to alliance communication:

101 101…………………………………Zug Zug

UO UO……………………………………..HA HA

27 11 11………………………………..mu ha ha

D F Z………………………………………..L A G

U G U……………………………………….L O L

As As As………………………………Ha Ha Ha

aw……………………………………………….no

d e d…………………………………………….l o l

Making your own phrase using the below chart only works if you put a space between each letter.

Orcish: a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Common: g g o l o a o o l n l n a o l n g n n l l l a n o g

==============================================

(alliance to horde)



h i………………………………………….y o………..

ss ee oo p…………………………..Me love u…….

D a p Ee bb………………………….You Lose…….

b ppp…………………………………..evil…………

zz fff………………………………….never…………

Fff d Ss pp………………………..Very Mean…….

Ss B ppp……………………………Me Evil…………

D a p aa B ppp……………………Youre Evil……..

D a p aa Ss pp……………………Youre Mean……

Making your own phrase using the below chart only works if you put a space between each letter.
Common: a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Orcish: o e o y y e o y o e o o o o y u e y y y y y y y o e

THis is a quite usfull technique for grinding loot from a boss thats far in an instance. All you need is a warlock, and of course your raid party.
Step 1:Have one person die and get outside of the instance (should be the party leader)
Step 2:As soon as he's outside have all of the other players pull their ehternet cords, or turn of their internet connection.
Step 3:Have the party leader go inside, and then back outside of the instance.
Step 4:Have the party leader reset the instance.
Step 5:Have everyone log back in, and summon the party leader with the warlock.
Step 6:Grind to your hearts content