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.

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.

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.

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 2–Fighting Basics

Your second quest teaches you how to use your class abilities to fight.  You will see one or two buttons on your toolbar have icons.  Usually one is simply an attack or auto-attack button.  The other is a special class skill.  On the right, if your race has a spell it can activate, it will be in the 0 slot. Run your mouse over each one and see what it is.

Warrior Level 1 action bar has an attack button, a dark second button for Strike because it cannot be used yet, and on the right the Orc special ability called Blood Fury that increases attack power.  Not all classes benefit from attack power, but warriors sure do.  Many racial perks, like skill with certain weapons, only benefit some classes.

You will also see some mobs with flickering yellow nameplates.  You may have to move in the direction of a golden arrow on your minimap to see them.  The yellow name means the mob is neutral and won't attack you unless you attack it.  More about the colors on nameplates elsewhere.

The numbers on the attack bar correspond to your computer number keys.  Tapping the number 1 will activate whatever spell or ability is labeled with that icon.  Go up to a mob that has got the yellow name above it and hit your 1 button.  Just stand there and watch what happens.

If you have a second button, it may or may not be lit.  Warriors, for example, have to build up rage before they can use most of their skills.  Once it is lit, you can tap that one again.  It will go dark for a period of time called its "cooldown." Once it is lit again, you can use it.

You can activate a skill by right-clicking on the button with your mouse (control-click works too if you have a one-click Mac mouse. ) Or you can use the number buttons. You will use the number keys most of the time at upper levels, so start now.  Your most common spells/abilities should be on your 1-4 keys. (More on how to set up keybindings elsewhere.)

Once you start hitting the mob, its name will turn red.  Even if you are out of range, if you right-click to activate your auto-attack,  the mob's name turns red.

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.