Your First Toon - Make a Human Hunter

Make a human hunter.  Don't agonize over it.  This is the one you will play to a) see if you like the game at all and b) to learn the basic mechanics so you can be more in control of your style of play.

Human hunters start in Northshire with wolf pet. 

I tell new players to make a hunter first because hunters get a combat pet that helps you fight. You may not know the mechanics of the game, but your pet does, at least when it comes to combat.  And combat for a new player - AKA a "noob" - is where you can get totally confused when you are mobbed. But your pet keeps going because your pet knows how the game works.  I've had people who started WoW once and hated it try again with a hunter at my suggestion and they really get into the game that way, even if they never make another hunter toon.  I suggest you play a human because you get a reputation bonus, and the pet you get to start with, the wolf, gives you a hit bonus as well.  The only down side of the human hunter as a start toon is that the starting zone will be crowded because humans are the most popular race in WoW.

Once you hit level 20, you'll have some idea of the game.  If you like the hunter, keep it (hunters are one of the most popular classes for a reason).  If you like your human avatar great. If not, start a new toon.  Leveling to 20 will be so much easier the second time.  You can decide if you like playing a hunter or want a different class that has a different style of playing.  If you prefer mixing it up fighting in close range, you want a melee character. If you like the distance fighting of the hunter, but want more raw damage power, there are other ranged classes. If you want to be able to heal yourself as you fight and don't care about hit power, then a priest is another ranged fighting choice.  Then there are hybrid classes that do a little bit of everything but are harder to learn for that reason. They are all fun in different ways, though most people tend to have favorite classes.  Changing races also changes the game feel, just not as much as class.  (My thoughts about the races here.)

Hunters are loved by some and called "huntards" by others. People who don't like them say that a hunter doesn't have to know how to play the game but just lets the pet do the work of fighting. I say for a "noob" that is fine.  You're still trying to figure out how to read the map, find your trainer, learn your professions, buy and sell items, all the while not dying too often (for you will die...it is not failure to die, just part of the play). Some of the hunter abilities you get include tracking so that you can see where  "mobs" (the game creatures who "mob" you) are in relation to your location even if they are hiding.  Also, as you get a little better at using your pet to take damage while you shoot from a distance, you learn the basic etiquette of dungeons.  (More on that later. You cannot go into dungeons before level 15.)

Objective Difficulty Color Coding

WOW has a system of color coding that can help you know your skill level relative to a quest or task: red, orange, yellow, green, and gray.  (There is another, slightly different color system for items you loot or craft.)

The color of a quest in your log represents its difficulty relative to your level.

RED means no.  You can't get any red quests.  You can"t gather items that show up red when you run your tooltip over them, even if it is your chosen profession.   If you select a mob and its level number is in red, you have to be skilled to take it out. 

ORANGE means good but dangerous.  You get high experience points (XP) relative to your level for completing orange quests and for orange-level tasks in your chosen profession.

YELLOW means just right.  You should be able to do any yellow quest, even if you are mobbed a bit.  Yellow gives you decent XP and when you craft a yellow item, you usually (but not always) gain a point in your profession.

GREEN means easy and low XP.  In every region you quest, if you enter at orange, the quests will be green or gray if you do every quest there.  You will level slowly and gain very little in your profession.  Move on.

GRAY means zero.  No XP.  No value gained for making an item. No point except that the quests may also give you reputation.  There are various ways of gaining reputation. Don't worry about that now.

Your quest log shows the quests in one of four colors.  When you select that quest, the bar highlighting it will also be in that color.  Similarly, when you open your crafting profession window, the items you can craft are listed in the same four colors.  (There are only 4 colors because you cannot get a quest or learn a skill in your profession at the red level.)

The wolf's level number is gray meaning the level is too to give XP.

These colors show up in all kinds of places and relate to experience and skill.  On the red end of the spectrum, the experience you get for any completed action like killing mobs is highest.  That diminishes until you hit gray where you get zip, zero, no levels at all. The only reason to do gray quests is for the reputation they give with a city or faction.  That can get you valuable rewards, but you shouldn't worry about that now.  Know that as you level, quests you have accepted change color, and you should abandon them once they are green or certainly gray.  You will not even see any gold exclamation marks offering you new low quests unless you turn on low level quests in the objectives
menu.

Knowing what the five colors mean can make your game play easier and more fun. It can save you from getting repeatedly mobbed and killed, from going out of your way to farm a mineral or herb only to realize your level is not high enough, or for grinding and grinding quests as you wonder why you are not leveling.

Action Bars

You can activate action buttons by clicking on an icon or by pressing the key that is bound to it.  The game default shows one row of action bars at the bottom of the screen.  The left half of this action bar is bound to number keys 1-0 and then - and =.  You can add more rows of action bars now or wait until later. You will definitely need a place to lay out your tasks as you get more and more options.  I do it first thing when I make a new toon.  If you go to your game menu by hitting escape or by clicking on the little computer icon in the bottom right action bar, you will see an option for interface.  Click it and you get a screen with a menu on the left.  Click the ActionBars menu and then select all of them.  Do not check to make them visible, so that you won't even know they are there until you want to put an icon into them.

 You can drag icons from your spell book to the action bar. You can rearrange them once they are there by holding shift and left-click as you drag the action to a new spot.  You can play around with it, but most people move their main rotation of hits/spells to the 1-2-3-4 keys.

You can also bind actions not in your spell book.  Go back to the Game Menu and select Keybindings this time. You will see so many options for binding keys it will be intimidating.  Don't worry.  Read through for future reference.  You can put mount/dismount on a key once you can ride. You have target functions and chat functions.  Play a while and then check back to see if there is a pre-programmed key-bindable action written for you to make your game play easier.

If you are going to bind to a letter key, however, scroll through the list to make sure you are not un-binding something important if you assign a letter to an action.  One thing I like is to have a key to stop auto-attack.  I put it on the C key, which by default is simply an action to sheath/unsheath your weapons.  It doesn't do anything active in the game, and so I don't mind giving up the key for that.

Don't go crazy with this. You can keybind so many items you might have a hard time remembering them all, so you want your most common actions on the main action bar in the left hand number keys.  That way you can press buttons to fight while moving around using the mouse with your other hand.


If you really start to jam up and have a hard time finding the right key for everything you want to do, you will have to start making macros, which are custom icons that you can write instructions for that combine and automate some stuff for you.  More about that later.

Level 2-3: Targets and Tasks

By the time you finish your first 2 quests, you should reach Level 2.  Your next quests will expand your skills.  This is usually when you have to find and fight a stealthed target, a spy or lurker of some kind that semi-transparent and so is hard to see.  Hard to see if you don't have enemy name plates activated, that it.  Press the V key to toggle nameplates on.  Now even a stealthed enemy will have a giant yellow health bar over its head.

Use your TAB key to select one.  (If nothing selects, you are too far away.)  You will see a corresponding yellow circle at the feet of the selected mob and its name plate will appear in the upper left corner of your screen next to yours.  Make sure you have not targeted the wrong thing.  Tabbing when you are in a dungeon can get you in awful trouble, but now, as you play solo, it is a good idea.

Notice the sounds.  When your tab chooses a target, you get a short pfft sound.  When a stealthed character is near, you hear a fading tone.  The game brilliantly adds these to trigger your attention so your unconscious can do more and more of the work as you level up.

Click on the square badge next to the objective to activate it.

At some point here, you will get a quest that is a task to accomplish rather than one for mobs to kill.  Usually, you will be given an object that appears as a Quest Item in your bags.  And next to the quest description in the Objectives list on the right side of the screen, you will see a tiny badge.  If, say, you have to bandage an ally, you need to select an ally.  A dot appears in the badge.  If you are too far away from the target, the dot will be red.  When you get in range, the dot turns white.  Click the badge and the task is done. If for some reason you cannot see the quest item you must use on your objectives list, you can open your bags and right-click the item to use it.


Another bonus you may get here is that one of the mobs you loot will have a 6-slot bag.  When you loot it, it will automatically go into your backpack.  You have 4 bag slots in addition to the backpack.  More about bags later.

Quests: Are We Done Yet?

When you gain a quest item or "kill" the tally
briefly shows up on your screen.

Most quests have a number of tasks you must accomplish to finish them.  If you have multiple quests, or multiple targets in one quests, you can check on the status of all of them in many ways, and you can find the right targets for what remains without having to kill blindly until the quest completes.

Every time you fulfill a task, a big message will appear on the screen with your count status for that task.

Your quest log tells you the status of every quest.

The count status also usually shows up on the quest description in your quest log so you can check it there.  If you are not sure, open the quest in your quest log, and it will tell you your status. It also shows up on the right of your screen just below the minimap if you have your Objectives turned on (that's the default).  It tells you about your status there as well, and changes as you progress. Once it is complete, the quest changes from a numbered "to do" item to a "?" completion marker in your objective list.

Your quest objectives are listed on the right side.  You can
set the order and kind of quests that display..

Sometimes a quest asks you to do multiple tasks.  You may have completed some but not all.  You can just keep "farming" everything until the quest completes.  If you want to focus and get it done, you can click on a target to simply select it. That brings up a small description window in your bottom right corner.  It will not only tell you what that target it, but if it qualifies for any quest you have and what the tally currently is. Information EVERYWHERE if you know how to find it.

Sell Your Junk

You get new equipment when you turn in quests.  After you put it on, you should sell your old stuff.  Go to a vendor.  You will see a bag or an anvil when you move your cursor over the NPC (Non-Playing Character) if the vendor also can repair your damaged weapons and armor.  I have an addon that automatically opens my bags when I open a vendor window and that sells my grey items without me having to think about it.  However, your old gear will not sell itself.  You have to click on it and manually move it to the buyback tab. 

 Don't worry if you sell something by mistake. The most recent 12 items stay in there for a while, so even if you go away, do a quest and then realize you messed up, the item will most likely still be there.  However, if you fill the windows with more items, the top ones will disappear and cannot be retrieved.

If you are on a trial account, you have to sell all your stuff this way.  You cannot use the auction house or get mail until you are a paid subscriber.  Just so you know.

Buffs: Food

The slice of cheese next to the minimap indicates a food buff
and shows the time remaining.  If you scroll your cursor over it,
it will tell you what exactly is being buffed.

Some food just heals you once you are out of combat. Other foods not only give you health (and sometimes mana), they also give you a buff to your stats for a period of time.  Most give 2 buffs:  stamina since everyone can use stamina plus one other.  Low level food buffs are for stamina and spirit. The spirit only helps toons that use mana as a resource since spirit speeds up the regeneration of mana. If you don't use mana, it provides no benefit. 

Foods that contain buffs are almost all made using the cooking profession.  At higher levels, foods start to add other buffs that increase useful stats for different toons.  At that point it becomes important to know which ones will give you an advantage and learn to make those foods with your cooking skill.  Or you can buy them in the Auction House, since food is not soulbound.  Food without buffs can be bought at most inns, many vendors, and is dropped by mobs. 

Level 5: Leaving the Start Zone

Sometime at level 5, you will finish all the quests in your start zone.  You will be given a request to report to a small town outside a major city.  This is where you will quest from for a while...maybe 10 levels.  At 15 you unlock the Dungeon finder, and your game play starts to include choices of where you want to quest.   The village may be a hike, but stay on the roads instead of heading straight across the map in the arrow direction unless you are not worried about being mobbed and killed.  Advice on travel by foot here.

You can change zones here if you like... I have favorite areas for leveling as do most players.  But if this is your first, you home zone will be fine, and save you from some possible headaches. For example, races that can not be shamans don't have any shaman trainers in the town at this level.

Questing: Caves–Finding them

Very early in the game you will have to go into a cave of some kind.  Caves can be hard to find if you don't know how to look on your map, and they are extremely easy to get lost in, making you go round and round in circles looking for an exit. (Time to hearth perhaps?)

Low level quests will put the quest objective number right over the entrance, but later quests may put the number locator over the objective inside the cave.  If you don't know how to find the entrances on the game map, you will search, get stuck, backtrack, curse, turn around, cry, want to throw your computer out the window like I did.  Once I learned that cave entrances show on the map, and once I got an addon that let me see the whole map even for areas I have not yet explored, it got a lot easier.

Head toward your objective marker.  If you see a cave entrance, great.  If not, open your game map. Your zone map will have miniature line drawings with the same configuration as game cave entrances.  Find the nearest entrance  and you're gtg.

Vendor Trash

Items in your backpack are color-coded into 5 categories: grey, white, green, blue, and purple. Grey items are considered "vendor trash." Most of them have no use in the game. Some can be equipped as weapons and armor, but their stats will be so low, the only time you will use them is if you have no item yet in that slot and cannot afford to buy one. There are addons that will automatically sell all grey items whenever you open a vendor window, and others that will suggest grey items to throw away if you are looting a corpse and have no room left in your bags.  Get rid of the stuff.

Sometimes there are white items that used to be useful but no longer are, yet Blizzard hasn't gotten around to changing their status.  And many white items are not really valuable to anyone else so you won't be able to sell them at the Auction House.   White armor and weapons, food and drink that does not have any buff stats, things that can be bought at almost any vendor and are now below your level.  All that should be considered vendor trash and sold for whatever you can get.

Questing: Where Your Arrow Points

Your minimap will have a golden arrow pointing to where IT THINKS you should go.  It may not be the same direction you want to go next.  The quest it is directing you to either perform or turn in is marked with a golden circle in the list of objectives.  I can't tell you how many times I have followed it in one direction to do something that is in a faraway zone, while the quest that want ten feet away is left in my dust.

The cactus I am facing is sparkling to show that it is something I need for my current quest, but minimap arrow points me in a different direction because the cactus apple quest is not the one that is in gold on my Objectives list.

If you the quest you want is not the one lit in gold, click on it in the list of objectives.  That will bring up the quest with all the instructions.  (You can do this to check on what you need to do as well.)  That window will have a "show map" icon. If you click that, another window pops up and shows where you should go for the quest.  This changes the priority of your objectives list to show that one on your minimap as well.

Level 1: Quest 1–Accepting and Turning in Quests

The minimap orients you (arrow) to
quests (! and ?) and trainers (book).

You arrive in front of someone with a gold ! over his or her head.  Right click on that person and you are told to report to someone else.  You will see a gold ? appear on your mini-map in the upper right hand corner.  (Sometimes you will also see the gold ? on your main screen.) Doing this very basic quest teaches you how to figure out how to use your mouse to move (explained here) and how to read the mini-map to find the marker. 

Right-click on the person to
turn in a quest and receive your reward.

The quest you get will ask you to go kill a certain number of (usually) beasts of some kind.  That's next.

Travel - How to get from city to city

Around level 5, you will head to your second zone, a small town outside your faction's home city.  In this town you will get a quest to buy a ride to the city and make a delivery there.  The gold ? you see when accepting that quest will by the flight master.  You always want to know where the flight master is, so go to your minimap in the upper right hand corner and click on the magnifying glass.  You have an option to click the flight master so one will always show up if near.  (You should also click some other things if you haven't done so, things you will need to find as you level.  I talk about that elsewhere.)  Check the flight master so that even if you don't do that quest immediately, he will always be easy to find when you are ready. 

Alliance ride on giant eagle-like gryphons

Horde fly around on giant bats

You also have ways to travel from continent to continent.  There are boats, zeppelins, and portals.  That's for later.

Travel - How to get around on foot

You have buttons to move, true.  The game instructs you on using the A-S-D-W keys to move forward and back and turn left and right, plus you can strafe or sidle sideways using Q-E.  But don't.  Use a mouse instead.  If you hold both right- and left-click buttons at the same time*, you run forward.  You turn by moving the mouse and it is so much easier.

You can also run (or ride after level 20) by hitting the "number lock" key and sitting back.  If you need to steer, hold only the right-click button and you are gtg (good to go).   You will sometimes use the keys when your mouse has other things to do.  In later dungeons, for example, there are times you must strafe (Q-E) to escape boss damage while still using your mouse to click on other actions like spells, attacks, and heals.  But for the most part, the mouse is your travel tool. 

(*Mac users take note: if you have a single-button mouse, spring for a double-button one. These are cheap and you will use it a lot, not just in game. Meanwhile, it will transform your game experience. I know. I am a die-hard Mac user and suffered moving with only the buttons for my first 60 levels...suffered, I realize now in hindsight.  At the time, I didn't know any better....)