Are you a clicker and a keyboard turner? (Someone who uses their mouse to click abilities and the keyboard to turn their character)

Or do you bind all your abilities to keyboard shortcuts so you can push them quickly in the heat of the battle, and use your mouse to turn and look?

Being a clicker and/or keyboard turner is viewed as being a noob by many players. Now, I’m no elitist and I’m not gonna do like Athene and slap you and call you a b*tch if you do (go ahead, youtube him) , but there are some advantages to key bindings.

In some cases you might get away with being a clicker, for example some raid encounters for some classes involve little more than repeatedly using one ability.

But if something unexpected happens you’ll be slow to react. And don’t even try to PvP without proper key bindings.

If you take my advice, you’ll be using the mouse to turn and look, and your keyboard to use abilities. It may feel awkward at first, but you’ll quickly get used to it.

You can have 2 key binds for each ability, but 1 is plenty. No need to have 2.

Here are some things I suggest you do in the Key Bindings screen:

• Unbind Move and Steer
• Unbind turn left and turn right. You’ll be doing it with your mouse. 
• Toggle Autorun: Bind this somewhere. I have it on my mouse. 
• Strafe left: Bind to A
• Strafe right: Bind to D

The default 1-10 buttons and the single action bar won’t cut it, either. We need better keys that are easier to reach, and we need more as well.

Here are some I suggest:

  
The above are my suggestions for 33 keys you can bind. That should be enough in most cases. You’ll notice that I have skipped many obvious ones like Ctrl-1, Ctrl-2 etc. The reason is I find those hard to reach with one hand, but if you have bigger hands go ahead and use them ;-) Also, don’t forget your extra mouse buttons if you have those.

The shortcuts I have are right around the WASD buttons so you can in many cases move and use your abilities at the same time.

If you want to use the above, you gotta move some default key bindings (my suggestions below):

• Sit/Move Down: Z
• Sheath/Unsheath Weapon: Shift-Z
• Chat reply: T
• Show Enemy Name Plates: Alt-V
• Toggle Character Pane: V
• Toggle ActionBar Lock Ctrl-T
• Assist Target: Wherever you want.

Once you have decided some keys you want to use for your abilities, go into the Key Bindings screen and start binding them to appropriate action bars.

I have made this easier for you with the picture below:

To see all the bars, you need to configure your ActionBars setting as shown in the pic. Hint: I bind Toggle ActionBar Lock to Ctrl-T.

Now you should easily be able to go into the key bindings screen and define some key binds. Once done, open your spellbook and drag your most used abilities into the defined slots and start pushing buttons instead of clicking!

Hints:

• It’s best to keep your instant casts where you can reach them with your index or ring finger so you can keep holding W with your middle finger to run. 
• Use the easiest shortcuts for your most used abilities. 
• You don’t have to bind everything. It’s perfectly fine to click rarely used abilities.
• Remember, you can always hit "Default" if you screw up :-)

Finally I’m on the "magic" level 60, the old level cap.

10 more levels to go, as my to be arena partner constantly reminds me…

Let’s see just how fast level 1-60 went by:

3 days 20 hours! Completely shattering my old record 5 days 21 hours to 60 with my alliance hunter following Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide. (However, that was before patch 2.3 so things were slower then.)

Since 3 days & 20 hours = 92 hours, if you were to play 3 hours a day on average you could get to 60 in one month. If you play 2 hours a day it’d take 1½ month and if you play 1 hour a day it would take 3 months.

Or you could do like Joana and do it inside one week ;-)

Full disclosure requires me to mention that I was using some rested EXP here and there. Consequently, I was running about 1 level ahead of the guide, which didn’t hurt and resulted in less grinding at level 59 (you have to grind out the last level in Outlands, or you can do some other quests in Azeroth but the grinding is quicker according to the guide).

This also allows me to calculate an estimated leveling time from 1-70 with Joana’s guide. Since I’ve done level 60-70 with my mage already, in 54 hours (starting with full rested EXP at level 60), that would bring the total 1-70 time to 92+54 = 146 hours, or 6 days 2 hours!

Will you be able to level this fast? That depends. Sometimes you don’t want to powerlevel because you want to take things easy and not feel stressed. That’s what I would do but for this review I wanted to go fast…

What I can tell you is that you will immediately start to level much, much faster than you could ever do on your own, surprising your guild mates and friends with your progress.

Next up, I’m going to wait for full rested EXP and then do 60-70 with Team iDemise’s brand new Horde Leveling Guide to see which one is faster (I’m assuming warlocks and mages level equally fast).

For the purpose of this review I’m gonna skip the warlock epic mount quest for now and save for a normal epic mount to save some time.

If you want to level this fast, all I can say is check out Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide. It really is an amazing help and I could never have gone this fast without it. I’m sure it slashed my leveling time by two thirds.

Thanks again Joana!

I dinged level 50 today on my blood elf warlock.

As you may know I’m testing Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide and following it pretty much to the letter. I was using some rested XP at level 40 and then again a few levels later, so I’m running approximately 1 level ahead in the guide. I think I’ll skip an entire chapter of the guide soon to catch up.

The warlock is fun and quite easy. Everyone my level who has tried to gank me has ended up doing corpse runs instead of me. I’m using the leveling talent build from Killer Guides’ Warlock Guide and it has served me really well.

My /played time now on level 50 is 2 days 21 hours. When I was leveling my hunter with Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide I was level 48 in 3 days 20 hours, so the 2.3 patch has saved me a lot of time so far.

It also means I’ve gone from level 40 to 50 in 20 hours.

Joana’s guide has been a tremendous help, but a little more detail in some places wouldn’t hurt. Sometimes he just says: "Go do the following: Quest X, quest Y, quest Z" without saying what to do. He does have maps that help a lot but I find myself reading the quest log often as well. But since I’ve done many of the quests before, it’s not a big deal for me.

Click for larger image.

I just dinged lvl 40 yesterday on my blood elf warlock. Getting a free mount is sooo nice.

I’ve been following Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide and recording my leveling times. I didn’t want to feel stressed out all the time so I haven’t been rushing every single step. I’m still trying to go fast and not waste time but, for example, if I have to take some time off from leveling to gank an alliance who’s bothering me I will. (I play on a PvP server as always.)

The guide, together with the in-game addon Meta Map, has been a tremendous help and the instructions in the guide were for the most part enough to complete the quests. Only rarely did I have to read the quest log (hard work indeed) or look things up on wowhead.com (takes all of about 30 seconds). But I’ve done many of the quests before so I guess I have a small advantage there.

This is also the first time I’m leveling up with the new 2.3 patch with the faster leveling changes.

Here are some pics of my progress:

Notice the arrow in the picture above? It’s part of the map addon that comes with Joana’s and Brian Kopp’s guides (as well as some other ones now) that shows you in which direction to go for the next step in the guide. I don’t think I have to tell you how extremely useful that is.

I was using a little rested experience here and there but not too much.

For comparison, when I was leveling up my hunter with Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide (before the 2.3 patch) I was level 30 in 1 day 12 hours (8 hours slower) and level 40 in 2 days 17 hours (16 hours slower). And the hunter is a faster class to level than the warlock, so the patch is really a great timesaver!

You might compare these leveling times to your own by typing /played and see how much time you could save by following a leveling guide.

I have never paid much attention to the Lunar Festival before but this year I decided to explore it (mostly for the purpose of giving you this free guide to the lunar festival).

I quickly realized it’s all about collecting coins and turning them in for rewards. Little did I know there are 50 elders to visit to get the coins from, scattered all around Azeroth. And some of them are hiding deep within instances, too. Luckily I visited them on my lvl 70 hunter (feign death ftw) so I got through most of it in one piece.

Things got hot when I decided to pay a visit to the major horde cities though.

I guess the horde took offense to my honoring their elders. I snuck in the back way to Orgrimmar but decided to piss them off on the way out and rode past the AH and the bank. Let me tell you they were not happy about it! But I would have escaped unless a guard had dismounted me… Once on the ground I popped beastial wrath and a swiftness potion and ran out of the gates with a train of horde behind me that eventually zerged me down. But it was worth it!

Apart from that the other elders were EZ mode to visit at level 70. I think the horde have it tougher, though. The elder in Stormwind is pretty deep inside the city and to get into Ironforge you’d have to go through the front gate past the dueling allies. Darnassus might be even harder. Remember to take your gear off if you plan on corpse running!

After a hard day’s work I finally got my rewards: Festive Green Dress, Festive Pink Dress, Festive Purple Dress, Festive Blue Pant Suit, 2 x Pattern: Festival Dress, 2 x Pattern: Festival Suit, 2 x Schematic Cluster Launcher.

The light in the pictures is from Elune Stone.

I hope to make around 300-600 gold from the patterns and schematics. And I’m also almost exalted with 3 alliance cities now after gaining 3750 rep with each from visiting the elders. So I think it was worth it.

But I doubt I will do it again next year.

Except maybe provoking the horde in Orgrimmar again!

The Feast of Winter Veil (December 15th - January 2nd) is coming up and I’m gonna do something nice in WoW this Christmas…

Since I had collected more gold than I knew what to do with (12 000+) by following the principles in the Cash Creating Guide and Valkor’s Gold Making Guide, I thought I’d buy Christmas gifts to my entire server (more info on how I did it here).

I received a nice gift from a guild mate I hardly knew last year, and I really appreciated the gesture so I thought I’d do the same for someone else this year. Well, at least to players on the alliance side of my server… the horde don’t deserve anything! ;-)

So anyway, I decided to spend 2 000 gold, but it turned out to be more like 3 000 in the end. I have a few hundred gifts in my banks now. More than likely it won’t be enough for everyone, but a lot of people will get a nice gift wrapped package with something fun or useful.

If you want to give away something but don’t know what, here are some ideas that will fit most any budget:

• Bags! Who doesn’t need bags? It’s a great gift to lowbies who will appreciate a 16 slot bank to use on their character or on their bank. And it will only cost you 7-10 gold at the auction house on most servers. If you have the gold and really want to give away something special, an 18 or 20 slot bag will be treasured even by a level 70.

• Potions! What do people want for Christmas? Something fun, not necessarily something useful. There are a number of funny potions you can give away. Here are some of them: Swiftness potion, Free Action Potion, Winterfall Firewater, Elixir of Giant Growth (especially the two last ones together in combination with a shamans heroism ability can make a person look HUGE!)

• Food! There are many special items made with cooking that you can give away. Some of these require hard-to-find recipes and ingredients, but if you know a good cook they may be able to make them. Delicious Chocolate Cake (new item that will have you shooting fireworks as you eat it), Savory Deviate Delight (classic, but still funny), Egg nog (chance to turn you into a reindeer! the recipe can be bought from goblins in major cities during the Feast of Winter Veil), Dragonbreath Chili (sometimes spews flames on mobs in melee combat), Stormchops (new item which sometimes zaps enemies and can do huge damage to beasts).

• Vanity items! Who doesn’t love to show off unusual and cool looking items and get whispered compliments? There are loads and I’m not familiar with them all, but here are some ideas: Blood Elf Bandit Mask, Farmer’s Broom, Farmer’s Shovel. Try to put enchant on the broom or shovel for added effect.

• Pets! There are numerous different companions, ranging from cute to horrid, common or rare. Here is a Small pet list. Some of these are made by engineers and can be traded to other players.

• Clothes! If you have a sense of fashion, and know someone who doesn’t, why not surprise them with some festive clothes? There are many tailor-made items to choose from, as well as some brand-new stuff available for the first time this Christmas: Green Winter Clothes, Red Winter Clothes. I’m not sure how to obtain those two yet, though… If you want to give away tailor-made clothes, you need only concern yourself with the white quality items from the list here. Find a tailor to craft these for you or look on the auction house. A tailor can link these to you so you can ctrl + click on them to see them in the dressing room.

• Boosts! If you know a lowbie who likes good gear, you can give away an hour of free boosting to them at a dungeon of their choice! Alternatively, if you don’t wanna do the boosting yourself, pay someone else (someone trusted) to boost your friend.

• Toys! One thing I will give away a ton of are Crashin’ Thrashin’ Robots! (I’ve had an engineer make me 50 of these units!) These very cool robots can be used by anyone at any level, and they will fight each other until one is destroyed. The problem with these, however, is finding another person who has one. But if you give away some to your friends then you can have a big battle.

• Temporary Item Enhancements! Look through the list and see what would make sense.

• Ammo! If you know any hunters, I think crafted ammo is a nice gift. There are many varieties, but the best crafted ammo comes in the form of Adamantite Shell Machine and Adamantite Arrow Maker. Just remember there are level requirements on ammo. Talk to an engineer and see what ammo they can craft.

Now, once you have your gifts you need to gift wrap them. You can find a list of wrapping paper here. Some of those are only available during the Feast of Winter Veil. Unfortunately, you can’t wrap stacked items or bags, which kind of ruins the surprise when you put them in the trade window, but you can split a stack into single units by shift + left clicking on it and wrap each item individually.

What if you don’t have gold to buy gifts with?

Well, as I said, the Cash Creating Guide and Valkor’s Gold Making Guide will take care of that problem. But I’m also going to give you a couple of my own gold tips:

First, understand that there are some quests during the Feast of Winter Veil which will require some food to complete. Specifically, everyone will need 5 x Gingerbread Cookie. The challenge is that you have to make these cookies with cooking (you only need skill level 1). The cookies require Holiday Spices and Small Egg to create. The spices you get from a vendor for cheap, but the eggs you have to grind. Fortunately, I know the best places to grind them FAST: Moonkin in Darkshore (for alliance or horde), or Feral Dragonhawk Hatchling (for horde or high level alliance). The latter mob is best and is easiest to find just south of Silvermoon City.

Then when the day comes, and you really gotta do this on the first or second day of the Feast of Winter Veil i.e. December 15th or 16th, you bake up the Gingerbread Cookies and sell them on the auction house or in trade from an alt for 50s-1g each. You see, many high level players can’t be bothered to go to a low level area, grind the damn eggs, purhcase the spices and the recipe, acquire the cooking skill and find or make a fire to cook them. They just want the cookies fast and 2.5-5 g is nothing for them.

If you grind 200 eggs which you can do pretty fast in the spots I mentioned, you can make 100-200 gold, which may be a lot depending on your level.

There are also some quests you can do which can give very valuable rewards. I suggest you read my entire Guide to the Feast of Winter Veil.

There you have it, my best ideas for giving and receiving during the Feast of Winter Veil. You can give away just about anything, be creative! If you have any other ideas I’d love to hear about them.

Martin

Today is a special day.

The day that my bank character has 10.000 gold in cash. Man, it feels good to just see it lying there in the bag. It’s even better to shove it in a trade window and see the reactions.

Personally I don’t care too much about the best gear, enchants, stuff like that… so I’m just gonna let it sit in my bags while I accumulate more and more.

One thing I like doing, however, is giving away some gold to lowbies. Whenever I suspect a lowbie is also a beginner, as opposed to an alt, I ask them if they want some gold. It’s amazing how giving away 10 gold can really make someone’s day.

How did I earn all this gold?

Well, I started with 1600 gold farmed by my level 70 hunter. Then I read Derek’s Pathway to 27.000 gold and got inspired to trade the auction house more aggressively. I simply buy stuff that people have listed too cheap, and put it back at a higher price.

I’ve always known about auctioneer and picked up the occasional steal from the auction house that way, but this time I started being more systematic and pushed the limits. I began to take some risks and buy much of the stuff I never bothered with before: low-level green gear and schematics, twink items, large stacks of enchanting mats and potions that I split up, expensive bind-on-equip epics… stuff like that.

Of the original 1600 gold I invested 300 in items. And that got the ball rolling. Since then I’ve made about 100 gold each day I’ve traded the auction house, on average. I know you can make more, but 100 gold per day adds up to 10 000 if you just keep doing it. And it doesn’t take long, either. Maybe 20-30 minutes per day.

Best part: You can do it at ANY level. Level 1, 4, 20, 70, whatever. Of course, it gets better the lower level you are. A high level character can earn a lot of gold from questing and grinding, but a lowbie can’t. So it’s the ideal way to make tons of gold when you’re starting out.

Where did I learn all the ins and outs of AH trading?

Originally from the Cash Creating Guide. But the same information is available in Valkor’s Gold Making Guide and Derek’s Gold Mastery Guide. I don’t recommend the last one anymore, since there have been some problems with it. Valkor’s guide is probably the best choice for most players.

The thing that really made a difference though was seeing how much gold can be made this way. It made me go outside my comfort zone and experiment. Sometimes I lost, but most of the time I earned huge piles of gold.

I’m not sure what I’m gonna do with it, but I plan on dressing up like Santa and giving away gift-wrapped items for a total of 2000 gold on Christmas to random people on the server. Someone did that last year on another server I’m on, and I still remember it.

Now it’s your turn!

How would having 10 000 gold, or even 1 000 or 100 (which is damn easy to get this way) change your life? Never worry about where the money for your mounts is gonna come from… make a twink in the baddest gear and own the battlegrounds… buy those nice blue items from the auction house and enjoy getting inspected and complimented for your gear.

Remember, you can learn to do this from the Cash Creating Guide or Valkor’s Gold Making Guide.

Good luck.

PS. Here’s how it looks:

I’m writing this post in a hurry as the next expansion pack to World of Warcraft was announced today on Blizzcon.

More info and trailer here:

www.wow-europe.com/wrath

I think it looks awesome.

What do YOU think?

So I’ve hit 70 now with my mage, following Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide from level 60 when I started Outlands.

It took me only 53 hours and 50 minutes, which was quite a surprise.

When I did 60-70 with Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide on my hunter it took me 68 hours. However, this time I started with full rested experience so that explains a large part of the difference. I had also done many of the quests before, which helped. But I still think I did well considering a hunter is faster than a mage.

Overall I’m very impressed with Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide. The path he takes you on is very streamlined, and you can solo almost everything. (There were a few 2 and 3 man quests that he tells you to do, which he soloed, but I had to skip those with my mage. A hunter could have done them solo though.)

There was also a quest chain on the level 69 part of the guide that now requires level 70, so it had to be skipped as well.

Despite skipping most of the group quests and optional quests, I turned 70 with quite a few quests left in the guide. So even if you’re not using rested XP you should be able to quest the entire way to 70 using this guide.

Compared to Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide I think Joana’s could’ve had a little more instructions here and there. Or maybe I’m just lazy and don’t like reading the quest log too much. Nevertheless, I think the guide is a great help for leveling as evidenced by my 54 hour run.

Thanks Joana!

I’ve done three more levels now in 19 hours with Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide. That comes out to 6 hours and 20 minutes per level. And this was without any rested XP. That’s about the same as with Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide.

I find it stressful to speedrun. I don’t think I’m cut out for it. I’d like to slow down and smell the roses, but for this review I do my best to complete all instructions as fast as possible.

I’m also a bit perplexed by the fact that I’m almost at the level 67 part in the guide, and still just a few bars into level 66, even though I started with full rested XP at level 60. I have skipped almost all group quests and optional quests, true, but the guide is a solo guide so it shouldn’t set me back this much in my opinion.

I guess I’ll have to wait and see how it turns out.