Saturday, July 11, 2009

Get Started with Gear

It isn't a rare case when I meet people who are stuck in their gearing phase, desperate to make a break into raiding but are hindered by others when they do not have whatever achievement or are not all glad in sexy purples. It is a vicious cycle, there is no doubt about it, since you cannot get the gear and achievements without raiding,and cannot get into the raids without the goods.

Those of you who read my blog regularly (yes, amazing isn't it? *grin*) know how I feel about this so I will not bother to reiterate my disgust, but instead of ranting I decided to put together a small guide of how I personally solved the issue.

First of all, do not bother with progression guilds. Yes, they might take you in and might even gear you up, but personally I would feel like a bag and most still will not bother with you. This is understandable, so don't take it personally; a player with such outstandard gear and experience just simply does not bring anything to a guild so far ahead.

Casual guilds however, they should be your first home. You will find other people in very similar situations and a lot more opportunities to evolve than you would anywhere else. Yes, it is not sexy the way progression guilds are, but if you're poor, can't drive a jaguar. Casual guilds are good places to make friends and get people, who are willing to over-look your lack of awesomeness, and get into doing heroics.

Start from the easiest and work your way up, developing your skills and getting experience. It may not feel like it now, but some heroics are in fact harder than a full naxx10 clear. Also, get yourself the Atlasloot addon and browse all possible drops. I did this back in the day, with the help of notepad to remember what pieces I wanted from whichever boss.

While on it, you will have a chance to earn a lot of emblems and also reputation with various factions and these are actually extremely important. You should aim to get exalted with all major factions in northrend, for they all sell valuable gear and enchants that you will continue to use, even after heroics. So visit the emblem vendors in dalaran, write down the pieces you need and get the tabards for the faction you wish to start with.

Here are a list of the faction quartermasters and the respected list of goods they offer:
Rules for grinding reputation are very simple; a) always wear their tabard (if available) to heroic dungeons, b) do all normal quests associated with that faction, and c) continue with any daily quests that become available. It takes a lot of hard work and you will be doing the dailies once a day, everyday, but it pays off.

Another good place to find good gear is the Argent Tournament. Get in there, earn the rank of a Champion and you will be able to use your racial quartermaster, on site, for some exciting blues, or even purples. Plus the Crusader titles look good on anyone *wink*

Next place to get good gear, is to actually craft it. Here again the presence of a good guild pays off, because your guildies will likely have the designs and plans needed, so you only need to get the materials. To find available pieces, ask and look around what the various armor pieces have; titansteel for plate armor, arctic fur for leather, and frostweave for tailors. There are craftables for everyone, so look them up.

At this point, a lot of people tell me they cannot afford to craft the items, costs too much. While it is true that a frozen orb can cost up 80g, a titansteel bar up to 100g, making gold at max level is extremely easy. The best gold comes from quests, so you should make a nice buck just by grinding your reputation. Next off, search for daily quests. Doing 20 or more of then a day, can earn you an easy 300g a day. Practice selling the materials you collect on the way, or go out of your way to farm them, can make you two or three times that.

But it all takes the effort and you will not find anything for free. World of Warcraft is a game you need to spend time playing and there are very few short cuts along the way. The more you spend earning your success, the more people will infact respect you. It is a mark of a good and dedicated player when they know how to enchant and gem their gear, when they have factions on exalted, and display the experience of working through content and not just jump from first heroic to Naxxramas.

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