WoW Rookie: Tips and tricks for rookies

Oh come on, everyone knows that -- well, evidently everyone but you, poor rookie. Ever felt like a chump for not being aware of some game feature or function that would've made life so much easier, if only you'd known? Aww, it's OK. You're not alone. As accessible as designers strive to make games like WoW, it's easy for even a few basics to slip by, especially when you're brand new, thrashing about trying to find your quest objective and attack the monster and talk to that other player all at the same time.
Blizzard's tutorial tips help make sense of a lot of that under-the-radar knowledge. Still, players write in to WoW Rookie every week asking questions or offering various nuggets of acquired wisdom. Time then for another info dump -- the latest in our collection of frequently requested, handy things to know.
Unlearn your profession Finding the place to drop an unwanted profession has got to be one of the more annoyingly obscure functions in the game. Go to your character info, then the skills tab, and then click on the bar that lists the profession you want to get rid of. Now look at the bottom third of the skills panel; you'll see another bar listing the profession, and to the right of it, a small, red icon of a circle with a slash through it. (Check out the screenshot at the top of the post.) If you click that tiny red button, you'll get a pop-up confirmation box that asks you whether or not you'd like to drop that profession. (Whew!)
Some disenchanted evening Been automatically smacking the disenchant button every time an unwanted blue or green drops in your instances? You may be doing yourself a disservice ... The item's vendor value may in fact be higher than the value of the enchanting material you just won. Enchanting mat prices vary widely from realm to realm, but many economies are seeing vendor prices overtaking mat prices in certain level ranges. Pro tip: Visit the auction house and take note of the prices for mats at the level of whatever instances you'll be running. Then before you choose to roll DE or greed, check the tooltip for the item's vendor value to ensure you're selecting the best deal every time.
(On a related note, if you only seem to receive the disenchant option for some items that drop in your instance, it may be your group enchanter's skill level that's the issue. If your enchanter is light on skill points, he -- and therefore, your group -- might be able to disenchant green drops but not blues or epics.)
Lost and found Can't remember which way to head around the darned loop in Undercity to find your trainer? Ask a guard. Guards that show a map symbol when moused over will offer a menu of destinations if you right-click to speak with them. Once you've selected your destination, a red flag icon will appear in your map and minimap to mark the location.
Where's the flight master in this town, anyway? Speaking of finding important figures, the tracking button on your minimap allows you to find flight masters and other useful resources such as mailboxes, armor repairers and innkeepers. Right-click the tracking button on your minimap. (If you don't see one, you probably have an addon that's blocking it. Try disabling your addons to see.)
Pop that trinket If you've poked around with macros at all, you may be stumped at how to use a trinket in a macro. Here's the trick that will direct the action to your trinket slots: /use 13
/use 14
You can find a list of the corresponding numbers for every gear slot at the official site (or, you know, just look over yonder to the side), along with a slew of other tips on making macros.
Is my character still there? If it's been weeks, months or even (/gasp) years since you last played World of Warcraft, will your old character still be there when you log in? Yes! Unless you physically delete your character (which requires typing "DELETE" into a big confirmation field -- not something easily accomplished by accident), your character and all their goodies will still be there. The only thing that expires is mail left in your inbox for more than 30 days.
Speaking in tongues Click on the chat bubble icon on your chat box and scroll to the language option in order to change the language your character speaks. Language changes will show up in say, shout, guild and party chat, but not in general chat, trade chat or whispers. (Pro tip: Speaking obscure languages in guild chat is a good way to annoy guildmates and get yourself put on ignore.)
Your name not in lights Yes, it is possible to take screenshots without character names in them. You can remove your UI entirely by pressing Alt+Z (pressing Alt+Z again restores it). To remove those stubborn names: Go to your game menu (escape), select Interface, and scroll down and select Names. You can uncheck as many names as necessary for the effect you want. (Just remember to turn them on again afterwards!)
Make sense of it all Do you find yourself sucked in by the lore of Azeroth and hungry to learn more? Read up: Lore 101 will set you straight.
Wondering if there's an easier way to do something? Maybe you've gone and figured out the method to the madness all on your own. Send us your questions, tips and discoveries (lisa at wow dot com), and we'll collect them for a future tips and tricks edition of WoW Rookie. Meanwhile, check WoW.com's WoW Rookie Guide for everything you need to get off to a good start as a newbie, whether you're a new level 1 or a fresh level 80.
Filed under: WoW Rookie






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Mahgo Apr 22nd 2010 9:15AM
Second!
Yeah I agree. I started playing WoW a year and a bit ago and I wasn't aware of the resources out there. And now that I think about it, many people still don't. Just like those people who ask ''werre is teh thing...'' in trade, when it could be resolved in two seconds by Wowhead.
jonahb Apr 22nd 2010 9:19AM
all the crap I wish I had known about 2 years ago
Cetha Apr 22nd 2010 9:35AM
Auto-run.
I had played the game for over about 6 months before I finally asked a guildie how he could type while we were making our 9thousandth corpse run back to mara during the days of farming for gear, and he revealed to me the glory of auto-run. seriously changed the whole game for me. If only I had known sooner.
the more you know...
p.s. I believe the default for auto-run is enter, but I'm not sure since I've long since rebound it. Actually it's probably worth recommending that rookies browse the key binding list as there are all sort of surprises in there.
Mahgo Apr 22nd 2010 9:51AM
Autorun is Numpad by default. As I play on a laptop, I find it stupid it being that, so have it on the fullstop key.
TheMad Apr 22nd 2010 9:52AM
Yes, looking at the key binds is a good start. This is where I found the "walk" button. My guild were making fun of me because I couldn't find how to run again!
Kcaz64 Apr 22nd 2010 10:11AM
I prefer binding my auto run to cntrl+space. Laptop so no num pad for me.
Gemini Apr 22nd 2010 10:34AM
I've macro'd my mouse to use one of the thumb buttons to activate auto-run.
Hëx Apr 22nd 2010 11:07AM
Here is a complementary one:
"Why am I walking so slow?!?!111!"
You hit the "toggle walk/run mode" key, which by default is the "/" on the numeric keypad. Simply hit it again to start running again.
Here's another one:
"Why did my sound turn off?!?!"
You hit the "toggle sound effects" key bind, which by default is "CTRL+S". You can either hit it again or hit the checkbox in sound config. I also suggest changing the keybind to "CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+S" so it's harder to accidentally turn off.
Kuro Apr 22nd 2010 11:23AM
I don't auto-run in dungeons much anymore after a lag induced auto-run into a raid boss one evening. -_-;;;;;;;;;
Got "follow" macro'd to * on the numpad. Now, I just attach myself to a raid buddy and let them do the walking while I type.
Justin Apr 22nd 2010 6:53PM
My fave is auto-running through the door just after Saurfang... you only do that once... Funny how many people STILL do it... hehehe
Imbolcain Apr 22nd 2010 10:18AM
re unlearning professions:
The N key will take you to your talent trees and glyphs (something it took a certain young druid about 30 levels to find, heh), it will not help you if you want to unlearn your professions as the article indicates. To unlearn a profession, hit K, (or if you've bound that to something else, C and then click the skills tab) then click on the bar for the profession you want to unlearn. In the bottom 1/3 of the window you have open, you will see basically what is shown in the picture for this article, but with a bar for the appropriate profession. Click on that little red button to the right of the bar, and the profession will be unlearned. (I think there's a confirmation box, but I wasn't about to double check that on any of my toons ;) )
Jonathon Apr 22nd 2010 10:29AM
The department of redundancy department called, they want to know if you got the memo about the memos detailing the unnecessary memos.
Also, your going to need to go ahead and work on Saturday....
Stinkypete Apr 22nd 2010 10:37AM
you're*
Imbolcain Apr 22nd 2010 1:43PM
Thanks Jonathon...but when I posted that it was relevant. They have obviously fixed the article so that you don't have to go into the comments to get the correct information, a change I'm glad they made right away.
feniks9174 Apr 22nd 2010 10:43AM
Ya know, I've been wonderig about the language selection thing for a while. I was beginning o think my belf could only /understand/ Thalassian . . .
stevenwoodworth Apr 22nd 2010 11:16AM
I've been playing World of Warcraft since September of 2005 and only about two months ago did I realize that you could shift-click emblems when downgrading them to lower emblems which I guess had only been available via Wrath of the Lich King but I didn't know I could downgrade a stack of 80 emblems at a time I would just do it one at a time like a noob.
(cutaia) Apr 22nd 2010 11:23AM
Still no way to remove all the names in a quick Alt-Z style shortcut? How about a macro to do it for us...anyone know of one?
Raeenith Apr 22nd 2010 2:26PM
If you are trying to take screenshots without the names showing they have addons for that. The one I use is ScreenPlus. You have to bind a key in order for it to do it. Otherwise, I have no idea.
Erzfiend Apr 22nd 2010 11:54AM
The image made me lol pretty hard. I remember when I first started playing and accidentally picked up blacksmith and engineering instead of mining, I thought my character was ruined and started over.
tamillerkt Apr 22nd 2010 11:54AM
Here's one..
When someone has special characters in their name, how do you type them in?
Let's say you want to send a message to someone whose name starts with an A with an accent over it, and you don't have any other tricks up your sleeve (like having them in your friends list, or having had them recently say something in a public channel so you can just respond). How do you /w them?