New Druid Guide Level 1 to 10

I recently wrote a series of druid guides that frankly sucked.  Therefor, I am choosing to rewrite the guides.  This time however I am going to writing in 10 level increments and give more of a walkthrough than a simple guide.

So, to start:

Druid Level 1 to 10

Welcome.   You are a new druid…and you are awesome.  As you first start out, you will be stareing at your first quest giver.  Go and talk to him and get your first quest (you will be killing cats and boars).  After you accept that quest, there is another quest that you will want to get right away, he is located right at the entrance to Shadowglen, i.e. the big tree building, (he has a giant yellow floaty “!” and is kinda hard to miss).  This second quest will direct you to go talk to a dryad who just happens to be right where you started out, so head back there and turn in the new quest.  Once that is turned in you will be looking for some felweed from the little imp guys running around.

Now that you have your quests lets take a moment to talk about the spells and your interface a little bit.  I do not use any addons on my computer, so I am just talking about he basic wow out of the box interface.  The first thing that I like to do is to lay out all the action bars that I can on my screen.  Please see below for more information.

Now, you really dont have enough stuff to warrent filling up the bars right now, but nevertheless I like to lay them all out there so that I feel comfortable as I get more spells and lay them out.  In order to get the bars out you want to press escape, choose interface, then action bars.  I choose all of the right action bars (don’t pick the left ones because as a druid you will have your shifting buttons at that location and it just pushes everything on the left side of your monitor up and looks really bad), also I think that these are the right steps, I am doing this from memory so it could be wrong.   Now, I also prefer to split up my chat logs at this time as well.  I will seperate my combat log from my chat log and move it over to the right hand side so it fits in the corner of my horizontal and verticle action bars.  This allows you to keep the chat log open and still see all the damage that you are taking/doing at the same time.

Now, for the time being, the spells that you will have on your first action bar (the default action bar) will be “Auto-attack”, “Healing Touch”, and “Wrath” (I think that auto attack will be removed in a future patch).  But one of the first things that I recommend that you do is to split up your offensive spells and your healing spells.  The way that I do this is I keep my offensive/attack spells on the first action bar, and I keep all of the healing/defensive spells on the second action bar.  The reason for this is because with the default wow interface you can press the “Shift + 2″ and access all of the healing spells by pressing “1″ through “0″, and then all of the offensive spells by pressing “Shift + 1″ and then by pressing “1″ through “0″ for the corresponding spells.  So, you want to move the “Healing Touch” spell to the second action bar and the first slot (“1″).  So that when you are fighting things just press “shift + 2″ and then “1″ for Healing Touch.  I then recommend that you put the “Auto-attack” spell in Action Bar 1, slot 1, and “Wrath” in Action Bar 1, slot 2.

So, now that you have your interface all set up, you are going to want to start completing quests and leveling up.  So by completing the first two quests (killing the imp things for the felweed, and killing boars and cats).  When you are killing these things, the easiest way that I recommend that you kill them is to start of at distance and open up with a Wrath bolt.  Then immediately afterwords finish up with a second wrath bolt.  This should land just as the mob you are attacking is within melee range.   Then finish the fight with auto attacks.   Keep in mind that initially it will take a couple of hits to kill things, your auto-attacks dont do alot of damage.  You can probably finish the mobs off with three wrath hits, but you will find that this will end up costing you alot of mana, and will increase your downtime.  At this level in the game with the mana pool you have you will pretty much never run out of mana if you just cast two wraths on each mob.  Since melee is kind of rough right now, you might need to cast the occasional heal spell, which is fine.

So after you complete your fist two quests and turn them in you will have gotten your first gear upgrades.   Be sure to equip them right away, and pick up all of your new quests.  One of them is a quest to go and see your druid trainer.  Before you do that you are going to want to get some cash so you can buy your next spells.  In order to get cash you will want to sell all of the junk that you get from questing.   What is junk you may ask?  It is everything that you looted that is not the two quest rewards that you just got.

One other thing that you should know about this early trash loot.  The stuff that you want to keep is all of the stackable stuff, like the stuff that you get off of beasts.   The weapons and unusable armor that you get from mobs you can pretty much destroy if you need the extra bag space because they are only worth a couple of coppers, where a full stack of whatever is usually worth 25 to 30 copper or so.  This will pretty much continue until you leave the starting area at around level 6.  Anyway, go into the bottom area of the tree-building and speak to a vendor to sell all of your trash gear.  Now go to the outside of Shadowglen and go up to the ramp to the first little cave you see and turn your quest in to the druid trainer.   While your there you will want to pick up your next druid spell which will be “Mark of the Wild”.  This gives you a little armor buff right now, but later in the game it will turn in to one of the most powerful buffs available as along with the armor buff, it will also increase your stats.   Make sure you get in the habit of always keeping this buff active at all times.

It should also be pointed out that you do not want to group.  Never-ever-ever group at this early level, it takes away to much experience from the mobs and really isn’t needed there is nothing in this starting area that you will not be able to solo.

As you continue your questing you will want to stick to the same strategy, start out at range with your casting and then wait until they get closer and start with the melee attacks, then rinse and repeat.   As you start your progression you will notice that as you level the mana cost of your spells will also increase a little.  The reason for this is because your spells cost a percentage of your total mana pool and as you increase in level your base mana pool also goes up.

At level 4 you get your next couple of spells.  You get “moonfire” and “regrowth”.   Moonfire is your first DOT spell.   Once you cast it, it has an initial damage and then it ticks for a small amount every couple of seconds.   I recommend that you place the moonfire spell in the second spell slot on the first action bar (where wrath is now), move wrath to the first slot and remove auto attack from the bar completely, right clicking on a target will turn on your auto attack.  Regrowth is your first HoT spell, or Heal over Time.  This spell will heal you for a small amount every 3 seconds for a total of 12 seconds.  At this point in the game regrowth is a helpful spell to start a fight with by casting it on yourself when you are fighting a mob that is a couple of levels higher than you are.  So that when you are hit you gain back some of the health during the course of the fight.  Plus it costs less than Healing Touch so it is a win-win.  Put this in spell slot number 2 on the second action bar.

Your basic strategy at level 4 is going to open up with a “Moonfire” and follow up with a Wrath or two.  As you get higher in level you will want to melee less and less, mainly because the mobs will start hitting you harder and harder.  Yes this will mean that you will have to spend more time between fights drinking and regaining mana.   But you will also be killing mobs faster and you will not have to heal yourself as much, so you will not be spending mana on healing.

At level 6 a few more things are going to happen.  The first is that you will finish up with the starting area and you will be asked to move to the new town, Dolanaar, to continue your questing.  The second thing is that you will start to see agressive mobs, that is mobs that will attack you if you get to close.   The third thing is that you can pick up your professions.   You can get cooking and first aid in Dolanaar.   As a druid I would also recommend that you pick up either alchemy/herbalism if this is an alt, or if you are a new player to WoW or this is the first toon on a new server to pick up herbalism and tailoring.   Herbalism is useful because it is a gathering profession that does not require any extra items (a skinning knife, or a mining pick, etc).  The alchemy is helpful because it will allow you to get extra mana, or health, or other effects.  The tailoring is helpful just because it requires no gathering professions and you are capeable of creating bags which will help with storage.   You can also make cloth armor to sell to other players via the Auction House which is a good way to make money (the same with any left over Herbs).

The last thing is that you get your new spells!   You will get your next rank of “Wrath” and a new spell “Thorns”.  The new rank of wrath is going to work the same as the last rank, it will just do more damage.  It will also not cost any more mana than the first spell (well I mean it will cost more because your mana pool is going up, but it will still be 13% of your base mana like the old spell was).   The new spell thorns is another buff.   This spell will cause any mobs that attack you (melee) to take a small amount of damage.  This will give you a considerable buff towards your fighting technique, and you will want to have this buff up all the time too, just like Mark of the Wild.

Even though you have a couple of new spells, your tactics for fighting will remain the same.  When you start a fight you want to open up with a moonfire just like normal.   Then cast a couple of Wraths as the target nears you.   The finish up with auto attacks until dead, rinse and repeat.   The only different is that now when you get hit the enemy will take damage as well thanks to Thorns.

So after you leave Shadowglen and head for Dolanaar you will want to turn in all the Fed Ex quests take you to the new town, and then pick up all the new quests.  You are also going to want to make Dolanaar your new home by talking to the inkeeper in the main building.

I would recommend that you start the quests by the lake to the south, then move to starbreeze village and turn them in.  You will get a quest that takes you to the area north of starbreeze village to fill your vial and find the missing night elf.  I would recommend that you wait until you are at least level 8 before you do the Twisted Hatred quest, you will have to fight a level 8 Satyr and he usually has a couple of mobs around him and its easier if you are the same level as him.  Head back to Dolanaar and turn all the completed quests in then head west, pick up the quest from the princess on the cat if you have not already and kill the furblogs in the cave to the west of Dolanaar.

After you complete this quest you might be around level 8 or so. I recommend wait on the spells and continue to the south of your location to a building, I think its called Thistle Fur burrow or something crazy like that.   This is the first time that I would suggest that you get a group together.  The quest for this location requires you to get 4 items from the burrow.   It is very crowded in there and the mobs hit hard.   This can be done solo, but it is much easier and faster if you work in a group.  After you complete the quests in this burrow/den thing then you want to continue to head southwest to the moonwell there (you should have a quest to fill a vial from this well), then continue to Darnassus.  You will have a quest to turn in to a gentleman just south of The Cenarion Enclave by the bridge.  You will turn the quest in and get another one requiring you to go get tumors.   While you are here go into the middle building of the enclave and train your level 8 druid spells.

You level 8 druid spells gives you another piece to your caster puzzle in Entangling Roots.   It also gives you your next rank of Healing Touch.  Entangling roots is a great spell because it temporarily holds the target in place and allows you to cast on them without them being close enough to hit you, it also does a little bit of damage over time.   I recommend that you place this spell in the farthest right spell slot in your first action bar.

You will activate this by a mouseclick instead of pressing a number mostly because this is not a true damage spell, it is a crowd control spell and as such it is situational and should not be part of your regular spell rotation.

You should now start your fights with an Entangling Root, then immediately cast Moonfire, then follow up with Wraths until your entangling root breaks then recast the Root and Refresh Moonfire, then continue with the Wraths.  The problems with this Entangling Root is that it does not last long and it has a chance to break with damage, so everytime you cast a wrath it has a chance to break the root.

From this point you want to head northeast to a small river heading north from a pool, sorry I forgot the name, but it is southeast-ish from the Oracle Glade.  Kill the elementals that are loitering around the river and get the tumors, then take them back to the person you got the quest from in Darnassus.

After you turn them in you will want to head near the portal that takes you to Rut’Theran Village.  Behind the portal you can pick up another quest, take the quest to the Temple and turn it in, you will get another quest to kill a big spider.  From here, cast your heartstone and you will be back in Dolanaar.  Turn in all the quests around town and pick up the new ones, now head south to Lake Al’Ameth and turn in your quest, you will get another to go kill another elemental guy, he is to the cave just west of your location.  After you kill him and turn in the quest head north or Dolanaar and complete the Twisted Hatred quest and turn it in.   Then head northwest to the lake where you were killing all of the elementals for the tumors.   There is a moonspring northwest of there, gather your sample, accept the quest to kill the harpies and then head north.   Look around for the Spider that you need to kill for the quest in Darnassus, its grey and hard to miss.  You will want to then kill the Harpies that you need for the new quest, then turn the quest in.

The final quest in this area will be to kill Ursal the Mauler, he is a Furblog in the south western part of the zone.  However, at this point in the game you should also be around level 10, so you have the option to either finish questing or go turn in your quests up to this point and then train in your new spells.  I leave that up to  you, but if you finish the Ursaul quest you will wrap everything up in this initial area, and you can move on to Darkshore to continue.

Needless, you will now be at least level 10.  This means big things for level 10 spell-wise.  Along with new ranks  of pretty much every spell that you have right now, you will also gain the bear form.  This is one of the  definitive druid spells.  However, I will be leaving that for my next post.   Until then peace out.

Professions Round 2

Ok, So finishing up my two part professions guide with the second part.

I give you Primary Professions.

Primary Professions

Primary professions can be divided into two different profession types. Gathering Professions and Crafting Professions.

Gathering Professions:

Herbalism

Mining

Skinning

Enchanting

Archeology (Cataclysm)

Crafting Professions:

Alchemy

Blacksmithing

Engineering

Leatherworking

Enchanting

Tailoring

Inscription

Jewelcrafting

Now, both of these professions can be used in order to earn money via AH items or trading to other players. But they are slightly different in their purpose. Gathering Professions are used to gathering materials or herbs to be used by the crafting professions to make things. The things that we can make with the crafting professions are things like weapons, armor, rings, necklaces, trinkets, potions, elixers, and even fun things like explosives and strange devices.

Now you may be thinking with all of the cool things that you can make with the crafting profession why would you want to have a gathering profession? Many people have two crafting professions and no gathering professions, why can’t I? Well the answer to that question is simple. While many people do have two crafting professions in order to level them they have to by the herbs, ore, or whatever else they need from the people that have the gathering profession. It is far cheaper to take a crafting profession and then take the supporting gathering profession. Then you can stock up on materials (mats) yourself and you wont have to be giving all your money to other people for them.

While writing this guide I will be pairing up the gathering profession with the crafting profession that would work well with it.

Enchanting

I chose this first because it is kind of the odd one of the bunch. This is the only profession that you could honestly consider both a gathering profession and a crafting profession. What enchanting does it take different dust and shards and use them to enhance armor and weapons via enchantments. This is the crafting side of the profession. Enchanting gear to help increase their stats. How the enchanters go about getting the dust and shards is what also makes this profession a gathering profession. In order to get the dust and shards you have to disenchant items (weapons or armor) of higher quality (green or better) in order to get the dusts or the shards. This is a gathering profession because you can then take the dusts and shards and sell them on the Auction House so that other players can buy them. And yes, they will buy them.

Herbalism, Alchemy, and Inscription

The profession of Herbalism allows you to gather flowers or herbs. These can be found anywhere and are usually found on the ground (such as flowers and herbs can be found in real life). When you train in the spell herbalism you will gain the find herbs talent which allows you to see herbs on the mini map.

The profession Alchemy allows you to create potions, elixers, and flasks using the herbs that you find with herbalism. Potions allow you to regain mana and health lost as well as other temporary buffs that you can get (suck as underwater breather or health regeneration). Elixers give you a buff to you stats, such as an increase to you spell power. Flasks give you the same benefits that Elixers give but they also persist through death so you dont need to use as many. You can also use alchemy to transmute other materials such as bars or leather. Once you gain a high enough level in alchemy you can choose to specialize in a different mastery in one of the three specialities of alchemy, Potions, Elixers, or Transmutation. Once you specialize in these different masteries you have a chance to get multiple items when you create one (when you make a potion as a potion master you have a chance to make up to 5 additional potions).

The profession Inscription allows you to use herbs and flowers that you gather with the herbalism profession and make inks. With these inks you will be able to create glyphs and other items that can be used to enchance a players talents and spells.

Mining, Blacksmithing, Engineering, and Jewlcrafting

Mining is similar to herbalism in which you use it to gather raw ore. Like herbalism you also get a talent that allows you to see raw ore nodes on your mini-map. Once you get the raw order you then use a skill called Smelting in order to turn the ore into bars. Some of the listed professions use the raw ore, and some use the smelted bars. Because you can use both of the gathered items, this makes both these types of minerals very profitable on the Auction House.

With Blacksmithing you take the smelted bars or ore and you use it to create weapons and armor. I must confess that this is the profession that I know the least about and so I do not have very much information about this profession. I can tell you that as you gain more experience in this you can learn different paths in blacksmithing. Armorsmithing and Weaponsmithing, from there I think it divides more but I am not sure, so I am moving on.

Engineering is kinda like Blacksmithing in that you can take the smelted ore bars and use them to create different trinkets and other devices. You can also create useful gear like guns, bombs, and head slot items such as goggles. Most of the item that engineers make can only be used by engineers, with the exception of ammo, guns and a few other items. I must say that Engineers are a really fun class because along with the other things that the engineer can make they also make some rather wacky items such as Gnomish World Enlarger, or the Gobling Rocket boots. Items such as this have an interesting twist to them in that they have a “Chance” or working and it is not guaranteed. If the weapons fail then they will backfire on the person using them. This causes things like the device shrinking the caster instead of the target, or exploding on use and damaging the caster. Very fun stuff.

Jewelcrafting is the last profession that uses mining as a gathering profession. This profession will use the smelted bars and the raw ore. The smelted bars are used to create items such as rings and necklaces. This profession will also use the gems that you sometimes get from the mining nodes are used to create other gems that you use in order to enhance armor. The raw ore is used by way of prospecting which will create more gems.

Skinning/Leatherworking

This is the last group that uses a gathering profession and a crafting profession in tandem. Skinning is the profession that allows you to get leather by “skinning” beasts. This is very simple, you see a beast, you make the beast dead, then you go and use a Skinning Knife to skin it. Easy Peasy. This gathering profession is also the only profession that does not have a tracking feature on the minimap.

Leatherworking. Like Blacksmithing I only have limited experience with this profession. What I know about this profession is that you use leather that you get from skinning beasts to create leather armor. Like Blacksmithing, Engineering, and Alchemy you will be able to select a specialization within leatherworking. These specializations are Dragonscale, Tribal, and Elemental Leatherworking. The Dragonscale Specialization creates mail armor, useful to Hunters and Shamans. Elemental Specialization creates attack based leather armor, useful to Rogues and Feral Druids. Tribal Specialization creates caster based leather armor, useful to Balance/Resto druids and possibly Shamans.

Tailoring

The last profession is Tailoring. This profession, like enchanting, also does not require a gathering profession in order to create items with it. With Tailoring you will be able to create cloth armor and bags. This is very useful to the caster classes (warlock, Mage, and Priest) as it allows them to create descent gear. This is also very useful for new players, or existing players trying to start out on a new server or new faction because one of the first things the new player will want to get is more bag space.

Now then, all of the professions are perfectly viable for any class to use, however some make more sense for certain classes than others. FOr example it makes more sense for a cloth wearer to take tailoring as a profession, than to take blacksmithing, because with tailoring he can actually make things that he can use, a priest, mage, or warlock would not be able to use much of the items he crafts as a blacksmith. With that said I will go through all the classes and list the best possible profession choices for these classes. Keep in mind that this is just my opinion and not necessarily an exact rule.

Classes:

Death Knight => Blacksmith, Mining, Herbalism, Alchemy, Enchanting, Engineering, Jewelcrafting, Inscription.

Druid => Herbalism, Alchemy, Enchanting, Inscription, Skinning, Leatherworking

Hunter => Herbalism, Alchemy, Enchanting, Inscription, Skinning, Leatherworking, Mining, Engineering

Mage => Herbalism, Alchemy, Tailoring, Inscription, Mining Engineering, Enchanting

Paladin => Herbalism, Alchemy, Inscription, Mining Engineering, Blacksmithing, Mining, Enchanting, Jewelcrafting

Priest => Herbalism, Alchemy, Tailoring, Inscription, Mining Engineering, Enchanting

Rogue => Herbalism, Alchemy, Enchanting, Inscription, Skinning, Leatherworking, Mining, Engineering

Shaman => Herbalism, Alchemy, Enchanting, Inscription, Skinning, Leatherworking, Mining, Engineering

Warlock => Herbalism, Alchemy, Tailoring, Inscription, Mining Engineering, Enchanting

Warrior => Herbalism, Alchemy, Inscription, Mining Engineering, Blacksmithing, Mining, Enchanting, Jewelcrafting

Now then. Most of the professions are fairly straight forward and they can be matched via gathering and crafting professions. The only two that are not are enchanting and tailoring. I would suggest that a well established player wishing to have one of these professions take the otherone as well. This will give the person two crafting professions, while still being able to utilize a form of gathering profession and thus in some ways can make money.

I would like to close out by giving advice to the new player. If you are a new player or a new player via new server or faction. I would suggest that you check the auction house and see what gathering profession sells the best and use that one, even if it goes against the above guidelines. Once the player gets set up with enough gold to extablish a firm base, then can then either continue with there selected profession or change professions to ones they think they may like better. I would also like to finish by saying that I do not suggest that any new player take enchanting, jewelcrafting, or inscription as a profession. These all are huge money sinks and they should be avoided until you get established on the server you are playing on.

I would also like to make a brief mention about archaeology. This will be a new secondary profession that will be available once cataclysm comes out, from what it sounds like this will be a very in depth profession that will lead to the new talent leveling path. I am very interested in this profession and I wish to learn as much about this profession as possible and so I have created a blog that will focus entirely on this profession. That blog can be found here.

Professions

So.

It has been a while since I have posted here. This troubles me, the whole reason that I created this blog that nobody reads (that sounds like it should be put to music “This is the blog that nobody reads, that nobody reads, that nobody reads.  This is the blog that nobody reads.  And nobody will still read–it!”) was to put words down that I could point people, should I choose to, which I haven’t for a long while…but I can if I want to. Point is, In order for me to get better at writing and to actually get to the point where I want to point people to this place in order to read things here, I need to write more. Practice makes perfect, as they say.

I wanted to make a post about something but I really didn’t have anything ready to post yet so I just thought I would write about something that doesn’t require a whole lot of research. I have come up with a couple of idea’s, one of which I will post the first part of this professions guide tonight and the final part of the guide I will hopefully post within the next couple of days (yes I know that nobody is actually reading this and sitting on pins and needles to see what I post next, but I think giving myself a deadline and then living up to that deadline is kinda healthy, for me anyway).

So then, Professions. I say this will not require a while lot of research because I have made quite a lot of alts in my days and for every alt that I have made, I gave them all professions, professions that I thought worked well for the class that I have chosen for them, this is what I chose to write about today. Professions and the classes that work well with them.

I want to start out by saying that this is not a guide, this is just theory, what I see in the different professions. If you are looking for a guide to the different professions that I would suggest you visit the official forums and look at this thread here.

Because I like to shake things up, I will be starting with the secondary professions first. That’s how I role baby.

The Secondary Trifecta

The secondary trifecta (I call it a trifecta because there is three of them, get it???) would be first-aid, cooking, and fishing. Everybody needs to get all three of these professions as soon as they can (I would say level 6 if you have the money for it, but definitely before you hit level 10 and leave the newbie area), and by everybody I mean EVERYBODY. Healers by think that they don’t need to pick up first aid because, guess what, they can heal! That’s not necessarily true, what happens when you are (as a healer) healing something and you run out of mana. Well if you have first aid you can always though out a band aid and there you go…healing without the mana.  So, for the secondary professions I say every class should be using all of these professions.

To start things off lets take a look at first aid. You can start learning first aid once you reach level 6. This is also the easiest profession that you can learn. It doesn’t cost anything, besides the actual cost to level up to the next stage in the profession, because you get all of the cloth required to level in this profession from humanoid mobs that you kill. Also you can level the profession while you are leveling your character as you level, the mobs level, and in turn the cloth that they drop will also change to the next level up. See very easy first aid levels as you level.

Next lets look at the next easiest secondary profession to level up – cooking. This can also be learned at level 6. I say its the second easiest to learn because it too can also be learned as you level up. As a matter of fact, right after you purchase the skill you can go to a cooking supplier (usually standing right next to the cooking trainer that you bought the skill from) and by a couple stacks of flour and a couple stacks of mild spices and make spice bread until you go green (grey if your really patient) in that recipe right off the bat. That should get you to around level 40 and you will be able to learn a couple more cooking recipes right away. The only problem that I have ever had with cooking is that its hard to keep up with level appropriate recipes while you are leveling without buying mats from the Auction House. I always seem to be one food level behind what my character is (if I am eating food for level 55 toons, I am usually making food for level 45 toons). What I would recommend is hording the different meats or fishes in your bank. And then level the cooking in spurts. Go from apprentice => journeyman in one sitting.

The final profession is the pain-in-the-ass-to-level profession, Fishing. This profession will take the most amount of time to level out of any all of the other professions (secondary and primary). The reason is because this profession is the only one that you can’t buy yourself through. You cannot go to the AH and buy stuff to make it go fast, that is because this requires no mats besides fishing lures. The only way that you can level fishing is to sit at a body of water and fish, and since each cast can take around 20 seconds or so and you have to level up to 450 skill points and after you hit level 100 in fishing you don’t get a skill point after every fish caught, and you cant train above 225 until level 35 (as with the other secondary professions) well you can see why it would take a while and trying to do it in one setting would be a bad idea. I think trying to do any one of these secondary professions in one setting is a bad idea, that is why I recommended doing it a little at a time as you level. But this would be horrendously bad because it would take forever to level.

Well this just about finishes my first post. I will get back to you with the second part of this post hopefully soon.