I re-subbed for Classic this summer; but I have just re-installed Retail in order to give it a try.
I logged on yesterday on some of my characters that haven’t been logged since I stopped playing in 2009 or 2010. I had some emails converting Honor Points into gold, some old enchanting mats into “new” and admittedly, notice the quite strong graphic difference between Classic and Retail etc. But I am honestly very curious and excited about it.
Now, I must admit it is a bit intimidating to start off again with a max level of 120 and so much things that I don’t know or partly; while I have followed from afar what was happening in the World of Warcraft and I am aware of most “new” features, and part of the lore, I also have no idea what they are for (e.g. Islands of Expeditions, what are they for? Just cosmetics?).
What should I do once I reach max level to gear? I want to PvP and also do some M+/Raiding can I immediately go into it or do I need to “level” my heart of Azeroth first (and how do I do this?).
Are professions relevant to get gear and gold? Is engineering actually good in PvP like it used to be?
I guess I will need to farm gold to acquire gems, enchants and other stuff, what do you do to farm it, is it through daily quests the most efficient way?
My advice is to level up from 80. By the time you get to BfA you’ll have an understanding of the game systems and will be able to approach BfA with some level of confidence.
Once you hit 120 do the Nazjatar intro questline first and foremost to get a Heart of Azeroth boost to 35, then the new 8.3 one after that.
Enjoy the process. You’ll only get to be awestruck once.
Do all the dungeons at least a couple times. Every instance has a new mechanic you’ve never seen.
Gear up effectively with the catch up systems in Nazjatar and Mechagon and a heroic warfront.
Try to familiarise yourself with m+ 0 first and slowly build up when you eventually get there. People love to jump head first into a +5 if their gear permits it and then crash and burn. Just walk it step-by-step.
There have been some excellent suggestions so far! There are so many things that you can do while playing through.
Levelling is at the core of the game and will unlock so much more content and you have a many expansions worth of content freely available to you now since you last played, so that is definitely a good place to start!
Create a trial character of your class to get the hang of how the class / spec works in today’s WoW. There are a lot of zones and quests made after Wrath (obviously) so take your time to enjoy the scenery
Hey. Nice return. i did a return 5 years ago with a 6 year breake(kids) Anyway blizzard has made it easy to gear up item lvl when u reach 120. And PvP when u reach lvl 120 is a greath way to get gear fast And the gear will be fitted to the new patch so it will be high end gear. Then there is the artifact(aserite power) item…u should do that as @Aeula says…… do the questline…jump the pvp when u like it … then play final content
When you reach 120 I would get friendly with the 3 factions if you aren’t already before you reach 120 so you can unlock world quests (new daily quests kind of) which then unlocks nazjatar where your heart of azeroth necklace gets a level bump to 35.
Since you’ll probably be like 300 ilvl at 120 I would do some normal dungeons till you can do heroic dungeons and do those till you’re around 380-400 ilvl and then I would start on the newest content.
For gold, affording every day items you kinda just get passively by playing the game, there’s also a farmville esque minigame in WoW where you can send NPCs on missions for gold rewards from time to time too.
The island expeditions are mostly for cosmetics but they’re also a decent way to farm heart of azeroth levels but now with 8.3 the whole heart of azoerth is kind of a background thing so I wouldn’t focus on it too much to start with.
Seems some are saying to start level 1, some to play continue on the level 80. I am not interest in buying a boost as I have little to no idea how classes are being played right now so leveling them, even if starting at level 80 is a necessity I see to understand the rotations, the mechanics etc.
I am torn kinda want to pursue one my level 80, but then again it is true I have never played through Cataclysm so might be fun to compare directly Classic and Retail on that point.
What are the three factions? Thanks for the input, I will keep it in mind.
What about professions, is it of any interest to level them at the moment? If I reach level 120, will it be of any use to obtain gear?
There’s a mixture of good news and bad news, and I don’t even know which will be which for you, so here are several points in no particular order:
First item on your agenda will be to get to level 110 by any means you like: questing mostly, I guess, with dungeons to taste. Battlegrounds optional - they’re not great for XP, but if you enjoy them, that’s more important! Levelling is insanely fast compared to Classic.
What happens on the way to 120 is not important. Professions have been gutted, and character development while levelling is no longer relevant. You don’t build a character through choosing talents as you grow; you just flick takent switches on and off.
This means that you don’t have to worry about being sure to do X or Y along the way. Just keep taking every quest the game sends, and enjoy anything you like as you do.
OK, so you’re 110. Now you have to buy the BfA expansion from the Shop here to level to 120. It’s possible to remain at 110 if you want to, but it’s a pretty dry existence, since everyone is at cap.
OK, so you are 110 and now starting BfA. Follow the quests to get your Heart of Azeroth neck, get to Zandalar, and QUEST in all three zones, at least until you get Friendly with each of the three factions. This will save time later. You need rep with the three factions to open World Quests, like dailies but not, which you need to open the new zones.
Quest much more than dungeon or BG in the 110-120 bracket. You need to do all main quests in these zones for your BfA Flying, later.
So you are now 120. Open World Quests from a quest that you will be given on the Ship. This will be instant, since you already got Friendly while questing.
At 120, you can go into BGs immediately, but you will be weak until your gear has caught up. You can go into M+ and raids immediately as well, but people won’t take you when undergeared.
Gearing up: Catch-up has been taking its steroids. At 120, your first World Quests and/or Dungeons will be handing you item level 385 or 400 loot, and rising from there. Don’t worry about it. It will take a couple of weeks for you to be fully caught up, but you will make insane progress during that time. Here is a fuller guide:
And that’s you caught up!
Now a few other things.
Your Heart of Azeroth is infected by the steroidal catch-up bug. It will level very very fast once you are at 120. Almost everything you do will be feeding it Azerite Power to keep it levelling. It needs very little Azerite to level when it’s low-level, and only slows down when you’re around trhe same levels as everyone else. Don’t worry about that.
Island Expeditions are 3-man scenarios where the game generates a random island for your team to kill stuff and loot Azerite. You get Azerite Power from them, but beyond that, only cosmetics like mounts and pets. They will not form a huge part of your gameplay.
Professions are barely relevant any more. The devs have devoted the vast power of their hivemind to killing them, and are almost done. There is some benegit to Alchemy, and hence Herbs still bring in gold; however, you will be far behind the start-of-patch Gold Rush, since you will take weeks to earn Flying in BfA, so it won’t be a gold bonanza for you.
You can earn 40,000-50,000 gold each week per character soloing old raids, and I would suggest that you do, at least for the first couple of weeks, not only for the gold, but to see the raids you’ve missed. That will set you up with all the gold you actually need. (Now, when it comes to buying expensive mounts and transmog, that’s a different thing. )
You will also earn a couple/few thousand each week from World Quests. Don’ worry; you will be able to afford the necessities!
On the subject of where to start, I would say start with your level 80. Rogues are doing very, very well this expansion. (When don’t they? ) If you’ve been playing Classic, you know how to open your bags and repair your gear! Be patient with yourself, though, especially with travel, which is notably expanded since Wrath. A lot of things have changed. Here’s a list
My one caveat is your realm. It’s very, very low-pop now. This will bother you not at all on the way to 120, but may thereafter. However, since you can party up with other people across realms, it’s not the problem it was in Wrath, or Classic. Just be conscious of it. You can transfer realms, at a cost.
When you hit Zandalar at 110, you find 3 zones: Vol’dun, Nazmir, Zuldazar. Each zone contains a faction. You need to butter them all up just a bit, so they will give you World Quests when you are 120.
No point in levelling anything of them until 110. Professions are now broken into expansions, so you don’t need to do Cataclysm professions, Mists professions, etc to start BfA professions. You can happily start them at 110, when you have some clearer ideas about what you want, without having missed out while levelling.
Voldunai, Talanji’s Expedition and Zandalari Empire.
There’s some gear from professions but the good stuff takes some time to unlock and you often end up getting better gear before you can even make the gear from professions so it’s kind of up to you. The gear you can make from the get go is however not worth it anymore, it is about 100-150 ilvls behind current gear.
Familiarizing yourself with your character shouldn’t take too long so no need to start at level 1 imo. If you’re arms you should recognize most of the abilities.
One of the major things I would suggest strongly is take what’s offered here into account, but by way of building blocks to get a way forward that YOU are happy with; always remember that how you experience WoW is a personal journey & it’s very rare that any two players will have identical experiences (unless they do so as a team, ofc).
As Gráinne inferred/implied(?), a lot of reading would help to get you some way up to speed, but sooner or later you’re gonna need to get your boots on & start trekking.
Welcome back to the asylum this game can appear to be, these days; good luck… you may need it.
OP, you missed the whole Cataclysm revamp of Azeroth, so it would be nice to see it as you stopped playing during Wrath. I mean, it’s brand new to you, even if it happened 10 years ago.
After that, you can chose if you want to level in Outland or Northrend, as they both scale to level 80 now.
When you reach level 80 you can chose if you want to do the (then) max-level zones of Cataclysm or Pandaria (they both scale to 90) - I would suggest to do Cata on a character and maybe Pandaria on a Pandaren alt, so you can also see their starting zone.
After that you just level to 100 in Draenor and to 110 in Legion, no choices here.
So, if you want to experience a bit what happened in these 10 years my suggestion is:
Worgen if Alliance or Goblin if Horde >> Cataclysm zones 80-90
Thank you all for the valuable feedback and the links to the guides. I will definitely go through them.
This is a pity but good to know!! Hopefully next expansion (if I stay) will bring them back then.
How difficult is it to get into M+? I have heard also about this raider io, analysing player’s behavior and previous runs. As a new player, is this something that might be an issue for me considering there will be no experience?
Getting into higher keys, that’s where you will be blocked until you build up a record, or get some excessive item level.
On the first Mythic you do, you will get your own key, and you can then form your own group. Even without that, in low leys, say up to +4, there are not many people applying, and they don’t have great gear or records either. So getting in at those levels will be easy.
But then you need to do, say, a bunch of +4s to get a 300-400 RIO score, which, with decent gear, might get some people to invite you to a +6 or +7 on a slow day.
So as long as you are willing to start on the low keys and work your way up, there will be no problem. Or, alternatively, make your own groups and push your own key up through the levels.
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