Posts with tag dragonblight

Northrend is finally available, and it seems like everyone is out in full force. There are so many new things to do and see that it might be pleasantly overwhelming at the moment.

In order to help you find some direction, I've put together a list of 10 easily attainable achievements that you can earn in the next few days while questing. These are along the way, so you won't have to break your stride. Many can even be achieved today.

1. Train one of your professions! A skill of 350 in any of your professions will open up the ability to train Grand Master, which will award you with the achievement, Professional Grand Master. Check out our guide to finding your profession trainers.

2. Most level 70s will have at least two professions with a minimum skill of 350 by this point, so why not train them both to Grand Master? This will give you the achievement, Working Day and Night.

3. If you have leveled Fishing, First Aid and Cooking to at least 350, and train their Grand Master ranks, you will earn the achievement, Skills to Pay the Bills.

If you haven't, but would like to, then check out our guide to leveling Fishing to 375 as well as Cooking to 375. First Aid should be a breeze, as all you need is cloth! Still, should you find yourself at a loss, check out our Guide to Farming Cloth.

Yes, folks, the proverbial fat lady has sung, and this is the last "real" Ask A Beta Tester. Tomorrow we're going to run an AABT that showcases the best, funniest, and most prescient questions we received, and after that -- bowing to popular demand -- the column's going to change gears somewhat and become Ask A Guy (or Girl) Something, or...I dunno, whatever we decide to call it. AAGoGS is cumbersome but oddly endearing, I admit.

Deri (among others) asks...

At 77, approximately how much money will I have made levelling up through quests?

At 77 you'll be eligible to train Cold Weather Flying for 1,000g, which I assume is what this is about. Will you have made that much questing? I'd made...I want to say somewhere in the region of 800g leveling between 70 and 77, but I also tanked and healed a LOT of instance runs, so my quest income was on the low side. So I'd say it's probably going to be very easy to finance Cold Weather Flying just from Northrend quests. If you're occupied with a lot of instance runs, just keep in mind that you'll be leveling proportionately faster than you're making money, though.

Previously, we covered the Alliance flight paths of the first three zones in Northrend. Now it's the Horde's turn.

Once you've gotten to Northrend and possibly taken an awesome turtle boat to your choice of starting zone, you'll be mostly getting around by Wind Rider (flying mounts, of course, don't work in Northrend until level 77).

Note that there will be zone-specific information and maps after the cut; if you don't want to see anything about Northrend before you go there, don't click.

In about nine short hours, we'll all be storming the (figurative) gates of Northrend, in one of two zones: Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord (I'll be Fjording first, in case you were wondering). The zones are pretty large, but fortunately, they're replete with flight paths. And one of the questions I can promise you are going to see for the first week or so in /1 is: "Where is the FP?" But you, gentle reader, will not be asking this question, because I'm going to tell you where all the flight paths are (Horde-side friends, your version of this post is coming soon).

First off, you'll need to know how to get to Northrend in the first place. Fortunately, we've got your back. And once you do get there, you may want to shuttle from one starting zone to the other. Turtle boats to the rescue!

Now once you've picked a zone, how do you get around within it? Note that there will be zone-specific information and maps after the cut; if you don't want to see anything about Northrend before you go there, don't click.

We at WoW Insider delved deep into the frigid steppes of Northrend during beta to bring you, the loyal reader, shiny pictures. Lots of shiny pictures. With the realms down and no ship sailing for the lands of Arthas until Thursday, we wanted to give you something to tide you over. Below are screenshot guides covering many of the initial zones you'll experience in Wrath. Click through and enjoy until the real thing can be yours tomorrow at midnight.

One of the questions frequently asked is which zone will you be leveling in first? A large majority of players will pick Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord.

Why not both?

Not to worry, there's a far easier way of getting from the Tundra to the Fjord and back again. You don't necessarily have to go back to your capital city zones and then transfer to a different zeppelin or boat. Our new walrusian friends the Tuskarr will be supplying the main modes of transportation with really big turtles. Those Goblin turtle mounts are no match for these behemoths.

These carrot powered turtles will shuttle players from Borean Tundra to Dragonblight where they can then hop off and switch turtles in order to resume their journey to Howling Fjord. Don't worry, trips are free.

Note that all of the Tuskarr ports have flight paths for both factions for easy access to and from.

Here at WoW Insider sometimes we go a little nuts around big news events due to sleep deprivation or sensory overload in conjunction with large hits of caffeine. When that happens while we are writing "Ask A Beta Tester," occasionally we ask ourselves questions ("Why am I not in bed?") that we later realize might actually be useful.

As Wrath of the Lich King's release date creeps up and the beta becomes more and more deserted (seriously: Dalaran is a ghost town these days, not that my computer's wheezing hardware doesn't appreciate it), I find myself turning to a few topics that readers generally never asked about, but wound up being game-defining experiences in the beta. By necessity, most of them are a little more general -- overall impressions, things you wouldn't necessarily think to ask about unless you were a fresh arrival in Northrend and noticed the differences -- but I've included a few specific things that I hope people will find interesting. Unlike --

Why are you not in bed?

What makes you think I'm not?

I ran into two common questions last night on the Dalaran coin post, so I thought I'd start off by answering those here. I apologize if we haven't yet gotten to everyone's questions; most of them, like Gurluas' question concerning The Missing Diplomat and the high elves in Northrend, we're just not 100% sure of the answer to yet, but I'll keep trying.

Keyra asks...

Just curious...the gold coins all have "Use: Throw this coin back into the Dalaran fountain", yet I've seen people commenting (as well as the author) that they'll carry the coin in their packs. What happens when/if you throw the coin back in?

When you toss a gold coin back into the fountain, you gain the "Lucky" buff for 2 minutes, increasing your chance to fish up any and all coins from the fountain (rather than fishing hooks or goldfish). You don't have to toss them back in if you don't want to, in which case they'll just occupy a bag slot like anything else, or you can sell them to a vendor (not for much). But most people throw the coin/s back in because fishing the coin up is enough to give you the Achievement for getting it. Particular coins would be carried solely for personal or sentimental reasons, i.e. I can definitely appreciate the irony and RP value of grimly hunting Arthas down like a dog while carrying a symbol of Sylvanas' wasted hopes.

Rexigar asks...

Question though, do we have to keep the coins for the achievement or does it count when we throw it back in?

It counts as of the moment you've fished it up. No matter what you do with it afterwards, the Achievement's yours. The same mechanic is true of everything else; once the game "knows" you've done something and an Achievement's gained, nothing can take it away.

Just this morning, a good friend of mine asked me a pretty fun question: If you were a quest NPC in WoW, what kind of quests would you give? What about if your guild was a faction like Honor Hold or the Cenarion Expedition, what would their purpose be? What kind of daily quests would 'your' faction offer?

I actually really enjoy this question, because it's one of those things that you can let your mind soar with if you're a roleplayer. My main (and my guild) are very anti-Scourge and pro-reclaiming (and colonizing) Northrend, so Wrath is a fun time, and perfect for envisioning my guild in that sort of position. My character would probably do something dungeon-related, maybe in Icecrown, where the Scourge population is thickest. I could definitely see an escort-style quest, where my usual 5-man group in NPC form fought alongside a 5-man group of players in a Zul'farrak style encounter, fighting off waves of undead. After that encounter, those NPCs would 'hold off' more Scourge while the main party forges ahead to take out the boss and save the day.

If you tend to be a strictly weekend-centric WoW Insider reader, you may have missed some of the best stuff to come out of the Wrath beta thus far: the eye candy! Class updates, mechanics changes, pfft, who needs that stuff? No no my friends, me, I'm all about the shinies. Okay, and I like all of that other stuff, too. Luckily, we have a little bit of everything, and in case you did miss our eye candy, let's take a look back at some of it, shall we? Be warned, however, that most of these galleries contain some minor spoilers. If you don't want to be spoiled, be careful!

	The Borean Tundra The Borean Tundra, accessed from either the Orgrimmar zeppelin tower or the Stormwind Harbor, is one of two starter zones in Northrend. The Tundra houses Valiance Keep, Warsong Hold, D.E.H.T.A. the Coldarra (home of the Blue Dragonflight) and much more.
	The Howling Fjord The Howling Fjord is the second of the two Northrend starter zones, accessed via Menethil Harbor or the Tirisfal zeppelin towers. The Howling Fjord is home to Valgarde, the Forsaken's Vengeance Landing, the Vrykul fortress Utgarde, and the Ember Clutch.

(Viewers be warned that this video contains spoilers for the Wrath of the Lich King beta.)

Muffins did a great job with her most recent exploration video. If you're looking for another artistic take on the new locations available in WotLK, this is the movie for you. The areas that she visits include Howling Fjord, Borelean Tundra, The Nexus (Instance), Utgarde Keep (Instance), Crystalsong Forest, Dragonblight, Stone Halls (Instance), Drak'tharon Keep (Instance), Zul'Drak, Dalaran, Sholazar Basin, and Grizzly Hills.

The other day, I mentioned that Razzik may have had his exploration video removed from Vimeo. While I have yet to confirm it with him, there is a comment on Muffins' WCM page saying that they removed hers. I'll be weighing in on this shortly with some additional news from other sites, as well as recommendations for where to keep your machinima safe.

[Via Warcraftmovies.com]

If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.

Previously on Moviewatch ...

Continuing the series of Wrath of the Lich King zone galleries that we started with the Howling Fjord, I present to you... the Dragonblight! The Dragonblight is home to Wyrmrest Temple, sacred temple of the Dragonflights, as well as many more fun and exciting locations. This is another one of my favorite zones, though it isn't quite as photogenic as the Fjord was. A lot of what makes it awesome doesn't translate well to pictures, such as the lore and the things that make it feel alive, like the aerial dragon battles that take place overhead.

The gallery contains some minor spoilers, such as locations you may not have expected or really freaking cool looking locations you may have wanted to see for the first time in person, but I tried to avoid major plot spoilers. Nothing inside will ruin your enjoyment of the zone, I assure you. Go on, check it out. You know you wanna. Oh, by the way, it shows a small version of the pictures by default, but if you want to see them bigger you can click the Hi Res button in the upper right corner.

I know. I'm not in Beta, and yet I'm as giddy as a greedy little boy who just got hold of a cookie jar with every bit of Wrath of the Lich King information. We've seen the breathtaking Howling Fjord, bits of the Borean Tundra, and even glimpses into the lush forests of Sholazar Basin. I don't think I could be excited enough for Lake Wintergrasp, even though there's just so little information about it. Elizabeth Harper, who's playing around in the Beta, has said that Dragonblight is her favorite zone.

From what we've seen so far, it really looks like Wrath of the Lich King is going to be one hell of a game. Each of the zones -- as has been the trend throughout World of Warcraft -- has its own personality. Blizzard has said that it won't all be ice and snow, and the diversity that's been revealed up to this point seems to attest to that. What zone are you most excited to see and most eager to explore when you get to Northrend?

Elizabeth is off having grand adventures at the airport today, so I'll be filling in for her on Ask a Beta Tester today. You may know me from such WoW Insider features as Know Your Lore, Ask a Lore Nerd, Hybrid Theory, and Bad Pop Culture References. Hm, wait, I think I imagined that last one... Anyway! I'll be fielding your questions today, and I apologize if I didn't get to yours. I had to pick and choose questions I actually knew a thing or two about, so I couldn't really answer class questions about classes I don't play or don't know very well.

If I didn't get to your question today, go ahead and ask it again today, and hopefully one of the other WoW Insider staff in the Wrath Beta will be able to answer it for you. Thanks, everyone!

juicyjuice asked: As I understand it, the Argent Dawn is making a reappearance in WotLK. Will players who spent a lot of time with the Argent Dawn pre-BC have a significant advantage over people who may not have much or any Argent Dawn rep when WotLK hits?

The Argent Dawn and parts of the Silver Hand are now operating as the Argent Crusade. I won't elaborate on that so we can avoid any spoilers on the front page here. So no, high Argent Dawn rep from WoW Classic will not give you any advantage in Wrath of the Lich King. However, it will probably play a role in an achievement or two, though it is a bit too early to say for sure whether that will be the case when Wrath hits retail.

Here's a heads-up to all our North American night owls early risers and Oceanic readers: It's Tuesday morning, and that means maintenance. Luckily, it's a short one today. Bornakk has said that they expect most servers to only be down a half hour, starting at 5AM PDT and ending a 5:30AM PDT. There are some extra servers that will be down slightly longer, until 6:30AM PDT. Those servers will be listed after the break. Aussies can rejoice as well, as any Oceanic servers not on this list won't be taken down until 5AM AEST (Which is noon over here on the American west coast).

For the list of servers that will have a longer downtime, read on: