Posts with tag tips

With a hefty 200+ tips and more still rolling in, our recent call for helpful gameplay tips and tricks is ready for your perusal. This outpouring of advice goes way beyond pointing out that you can eat and drink in game at the same time. (That little trick's become a default example of a handy tip -- so you've heard that here and you knew it already, right?) Readers are sharing advice on how to escape Gilneas with a level 1 character, confidence- and skill-building tips for new tanks and healers, recommendations for favorite addons, and even tricks for efficient garden weeding.

Who doesn't love a good efficiency tweak? Seriously, go bask in the golden rays of knowledge warming the comments of this post. You'll wonder how you ever got by without knowing this stuff!

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One of the most enjoyable things about playing an MMO like WoW over the long haul is the way you can continue to pick up handy little tips and tricks that streamline your playing. Sometimes they're significant pointers that help you make headway in a particular raid, like the advice from Adam's two-part tips and tricks feature for hunters in Siege of Orgrimmar. But sometimes the wisdom you glean is much more basic -- like realizing you can eat and drink at the same time.

Pull up a chair and a big, thirsty cup of something to drink, and let's share some of the light bulb moments from our own games recently. What neat trick of the trade did you most recently discover in game? Do you have any advice, tips, or tactics on current raids or quest lines worth sharing? Let's talk!

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Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. This week, your host Adam Koebel, aka Bendak will be discussing the finer points of pew pewing in The Underhold and Downfall wings of Siege of Orgrimmar.

Some of you have been waiting 6 weeks for the Downfall wing to unlock, but now all hunters will get their opportunity to turn Garrosh Hellscream into their own personal pin cushion. If you missed the column from a few weeks ago, you can go check out part 1 of the Siege tips and tricks, covering Vale of Eternal Sorrows and Gates of Retribution.

The fights in the latter half of the raid range from purely single target, such as Malkorok, to complete AoE binges like Spoils of Pandaria. In this guide we'll be focusing on mechanics in flexible and normal mode, but some of this can apply to raid finder difficulty. Keep in mind that a lot of the forthcoming tips are simply suggestions and that your mileage may vary. What works for me may not work for you, but this will give you an idea of how our abilities can be utilized on the final six bosses. Stock up on some Tomes of the Clear Mind and let's get started.

Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. This week, your host Adam Koebel, aka Bendak will be discussing the finer points of pew pewing in Vale of Eternal Sorrows and Gates of Retribution.

With the September 23 hotfixes, all three hunter specs have been brought up to relevance. In simulations, they are all within a couple percent of each other, but the real question is how do they perform for you in a real world setting? After an expansion of beast mastery and survival (which play very similarly), the jump to marksmanship will be tough for some hunters.

This week, for my very first hunter column, we're going to look at how you can maximize your damage and survivability in the first two wings of Siege of Orgrimmar. Keep in mind that a lot of these are simply suggestions and that your mileage may vary. What works for me may not work for you, but this will give you an idea of how our abilities can be utilized on the first eight bosses. Stock up on some Tomes of the Clear Mind and let's get started.

It's frustrating to lose time when you need to fill those last few raid spots, yet the Raid Finder isn't coming up with the players you need. Or maybe you're the one who's seeking a raid group, but nothing seems to be shaking loose that night. In a recent Breakfast Topic on in-game help tools, WoW Insider reader PaulLloyd offered up a strikingly simple suggestion that gives both types of seekers one more avenue of hope: the old-school Raid browser.

The wha...? PaulLloyd's not referring to the Raid Finder tab in the contemporary Dungeon Finder feature. This relic of olden raiding days, folks, is the previous system found tucked inside the Social tab. Writes PaulLloyd:

This is the "find a raid" system that pre-dates LFR. You would list your interest in a certain raid, and when a raid group is looking for a certain role to be filled, they would look them up on this list. It would've saved me cancelling many raids if people would use it. Sadly, it is hidden away, forcing RLs to use trade chat for missing slots, which relies on people sitting around a city and watching trade chat, which means a huge number of people missing the message.

For those wondering "what the hell is the raid browser?" Open the social tab (default 'O'). Select 'Raid' tab. Click 'Other Raids' Button. If you're announcing your availability to a raid, use the 'Choose Raid' tab. If you're looking for people, use the 'Browse' tab.

While nobody's advocating using this older system as a replacement for the Raid Finder, it makes a fine adjunct tool that could come through if enough players and raid leaders give it a try. PaulLloyd observes that the system is fairly useless on his realm because players simply don't use it, but other players seem hopeful that it could offer a helpful backup method of finding raiders and raids. What do you think? Seems worth a try!

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Break time? Tilt the screen away from your boss's line of fire, fire up a fresh playlist with your earbuds, and pull up some WoW Insider. (Much healthier than something out of the vending machine, am I right?) How about a behind-the-scenes interview? Who would you like to read more about? Tell us!

Who's doing something useful for other players or playing the game in a way that makes you say, "Wow, that sounds cool!"? Let us know what they're up to.

• Send us your nominations! While an interview with 15 Minutes of Fame isn't exactly designed to be an achievement award for good behavior or service to the gaming community, we'd love to talk with anyone out there who's doing good stuff. (Examples: A guild for players with social anxiety, the quadriplegic player compiling resources for other disabled players, the raider who plays "guide dog" to a blind guildmate.) Know anyone out there who's doing it right?
• Send us your requests! Who's the Mr. Nice Guy behind that warrior on your realm that everyone seems to know and like? Who's the gnome behind the WoW-themed crochet patterns you download as quickly as can post them? Who's the savvy player behind your favorite resource site? We'll find out.

Tip me at lisa@wowinsider.com or @lisapoisso on Twitter.

Azeroth's Most Wanted List We're betting you know where the interesting folks are hiding. Check out our Most Wanted List after the break.

Did you know you could do this? We crowdsourced readers' favorite advice for Mists of Pandaria and patch 5.1, to show you all the little inside tidbits you just might have been missing. Included is an entire section of tips for streamlining your dailies -- don't miss 'em!

Let's rev up first with a few of our most recent tips and tricks posts:

• While there are limits to how far you can progress, you can start your farm as soon as you get to Pandaria -- no need to wait for level 90.
• Get exalted with Lorewalkers in an hour or less; collect all the lore objects for each "story" in a single, enjoyable session, or simply make sure you don't miss any nearby items while you're leveling.
• Murder this innocent creature, win fabulous prizes.
• Riding the Darkmoon carousel gives you a buff to XP and rep gains.
• I can turn into what? A baby panda?
• Tip: How to see if your Grand Commendation is active.
• Tip: Where to get new pets in old dungeons.
• Blingtron now helps you become a natty dresser.
• If you're a treant, here's how to become hot stuff.

Down your dailies and discover hidden delights with our collection of reader discoveries and advice, collected after the break.

Hear that cacophony of clacking and tapping? That's the sound of your fellow readers banging away at their keyboards to help us crowdsource the best tips, tricks, and pointers for Mists of Pandaria and patch 5.1. Let's tip off all our friends who never hit that one area of that zone over there. Or the ones trying the other faction for the first time in Mists. Or that dude who didn't catch what happens if you go over here and try this.

I wish I'd known about ...

Oh, WOW! Look what I just discovered ...

Heyyy! I didn't know you could ...

If your tip elicits that kind of response, it's the kind of pointer we're looking for. Need more inspiration? Check out our tips for doing those pesky daily quests or finding sweet little hidden quests. If we get enough good pointers, I'll compile them all up in one fat "just so's ya know" post.

So what hot tips would you be most hot to pass on to a friend who was just heading into Mists? What's your favorite don't-miss discovery or most sage piece of advice?

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Are you tired of hearing the same questions repeated while starting a new pandaren? Or are you one of those asking the questions? WoW Insider is here to help.

You begin your pandaren on the Wandering Isle. Its location -- and even its existence -- is unknown to the rest of Azeroth when you begin. This added to the fact that pandaren start out as neutral means you will encounter differences from your previous new character experiences. Here is a list of some of those differences as well as answers to other pandaren questions you may have:

• The Wandering Isle has no mailboxes. You cannot receive or send mail until you choose your faction and leave. So no, you can't send heirlooms to your baby pandaren.
• You cannot speak to anyone who is not on the Wandering Isle. No whispers. No global chat channels. There is one exception: Battletag and Real ID friends are still accessible for whispers.

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available from No Starch Press.

Amazingly enough, exactly five years ago today -- at 11:15 a.m. on May 7, 2007 -- the very first Officers' Quarters went live on WoW Insider. It was so long ago that I actually used Thottbot links. Since then, yours truly has composed more than 250 OQs. At about 1,000 words per column, I've written enough words on the topic of guild leadership to fill up a large fantasy novel. (Of course, I've also written an actual book on the topic.)

For this column, I briefly thought about pulling out the best and worst of OQ to share my personal favorites (and my shame) from the past five years. I decided against it. Maybe some day I'll do that -- maybe right before I hang up my WoW Insider columnist sash -- but that day is not today.

Rather, I thought I'd do something more personal. OQ has always been about learning how to do a better job as an officer and a guild leader, both for your members and yourself. During the past five years, I've done my best to give advice on exactly that.

However, I've never claimed to have it all figured out. I've also learned a lot, too. On this anniversary, I'd like to share four things that I've learned over the past five years. (Five would have been better, but I'm long-winded.)

So you finally got into the Mists of Pandaria beta, along with all of the Annual Pass holders. You now have a chance to impact the final product, at least reducing the number of bugs it gets released with. But how do you do that, and what can you expect? We've got you covered in our Beta Testing 101 series.

• 5 things you should always report
• How to write a good bug report on the forums
• What to, and what not to, expect from the MoP beta
• Addons and the Mists of Pandaria beta
• Good group etiquette
• How to stream your beta sessions

If you have further questions not answered in the above posts, you can always try The Queue. Or you can let us know in the comments what other beta guides you'd like to see.

See you in the Wandering Isle!

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

Gold making is one of those games you can play without much cooperative interaction with other players. If I hadn't been set straight about how to raid by cooperative guildies when I started, I'd still be as bad as I was when I started, minus any progress I'd have made myself. This type of environment is a breeding ground for less-than-optimal gold making strategies, so here are five myths about gold making that continue to require banishment.

1. Mats are free if you don't pay gold for them. It doesn't matter whether you picked up a gem from a Satchel of Exotic Mystery, farmed a stack of herbs, procced a bonus somehow, or mugged someone. If you figure your cost on the mats for whatever you're selling as what you actually paid for it, you're doing it wrong. The value of crafting mats is what you could sell them for.

I think we all like to save time in game when doing mundane things so that we can get back to the fun stuff. I also find that World of Warcraft is unable to read my mind and know that I really meant "armor" when I typoed "amror." So out of necessity, I've discovered some tricks to let WoW know what I really mean in a timely fashion.

• Shift-clicking a crafting material in your inventory with the appropriate craft box open will search for patterns that include that mat. I can never remember if my jewelcrafter has already leveled past some gem or other, but with this trick I can easily check. Also, if I pick up some meat and don't know if I have a recipe for it, shift-click searching lets me know. You probably already use this trick for searching in the Auction House, as well.
• Shift-clicking the icon for a letter in your mailbox will put all items from that letter into your inventory. I find this invaluable for sending items to my bank alt. Note: This will delete the letter from your mailbox if there is nothing written in the letter itself.

Looking for the best approach to a certain boss? How about gearing guides for all flavors of 85s, whether you just hit the level cap, are working your way through rep rewards and heroics, or are already digging into raiding? What if you're just getting around to figuring out best practices for your newly 85 alt?

WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm has you covered! We add fresh links every week to keep you up to date with the latest tips, tricks and strategies for the Cataclysm era. Here's what's new from the most recent weeks:

Best class tips

• Cataclysm tanking for warriors, part 1 / part 2 / part 3 / part 4
• Blood DK Tanking 101
• Protection Paladin 101
• Shadow Priest 101

Best gear

• Pre-raid gear for resto shaman
• Gear your tankadin for heroics
• Gear your tankadin for raids
• Raid-level gear for DKs

Best raid tactics

• Raiding Blackwing Descent as a shadow priest, part 1 / part 2 / part 3
• Raiding strategies for feral cats, part 1 / part 2 / part 3
• Priest healing strategies
  • Ascendant Council
  • Cho'gall
  • Maloriak and Nefarian
  • Chimaeron and Atramedes
• Holy paladin healing strategies for Bastion of Twilight, part 1 / part 2
• The enhancement shaman guide to Nefarian
• Best practices for healing heroic Chimaeron
• A Blackwing Descent healing playbook
• Healing heroic Halfus

More

• Blackwing Descent and the Prestor legacy

There's much, much more where this came from -- get the whole scoop on WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm!

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.

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