Okay, here’s a few tips for you new players and new 80′s. First, let’s start with the lowbie tips!
Click Alt+Z to hide your interface when taking screen shots. Just don’t forget to turn it back on again when you start playing afterward. You can also hide or add in your nameplate, pet nameplates, and player nameplates to customize what people seen in your screen shots.
Cycle through nameplates with the ‘V’ and ‘Ctrl+V’ keys. ‘V’ toggles the life bars above the mobs on and off. This can be useful for seeing who is going down fast or who has enough health to survive your diseases plus pestilence! ‘Ctrl+V’ includes friendly health bars, too, which is useful for seeing how your allies are doing. While I don’t usually keep this on, there are some specific cases where it really shines.
When questing solo or with friends, don’t forget about the /follow and autorun commands! When my fiancée, her favorite command was /follow. She even went so far as to bind her ‘B’ key to follow. When trying out refer-a-friend, my little brother made a macro with two lines, “/target Kvn” and “/follow”. Then he’d go get a drink or take a nap while I’d run us around. Well, you know, when he wasn’t riding in my motorcycle’s sidecar. /follow isn’t perfect, though, so be careful or you will get stuck on objects or be run off of cliffs. And for you solo folks, don’t forget Autorun! This command revolutionized my time as a little beta druid on Test 19 in Ashenvale Forest. I’d say the only real downside is if you forget you’re autorunning and go away from the computer. This happened to me a lot when I purchased a gryphon mount, since I’d forget it wasn’t a taxi. Oops!
Preview Talent Changes allows you to preview your talents without them being immediately spent. Some people just want to spend the points, but I know as I level I forget until I get several points and I want to see where they go. This is also handy when respeccing. You can turn this feature on by going to Game Menu (ESC) -> Interface -> Features -> Check “Preview Talent Changes.” Easy, right? Just don’t forget to commit them once you’re sure you like where they are!
And now, for the Big Kid tips.
Don’t forget about dual spec. You don’t really need to wait until 80 for this now that the new Dungeon Finder system allows you to level as a tank or healer, but I still think of this as a Big Kid thing in my mind. For the cost of 1,000g you can have two talent specs, each with their own set of glyphs. While the usefulness of this for hybrid classes is fairly apparent (instant queues for tanks and sometimes healers, having a dps spec for soloing and another for instancing), don’t write this off for other classes. A few common uses for this are to have a PvE and PvP spec, a strong solo spec (like Beast Mastery) and a strong group spec (Marksmanship), a spec with Replenishment (Destruction) and a spec for bosses (Affliction), or even a dps spec for trash (AoE-Strong) and a dps spec for bosses (single-target-strong). There are a lot of options, be creative! At one point I had a dps spec solely for the Lich King and one for everything else. Oh yeah, I’m hardcore like that.
Equipment Manager really makes dual specs a lot easier. Game Menu (ESC) -> Interface -> Features -> Check Use Equipment Manager. Considering that Equipment Manager and Preview Talent Changes are the only “Features” in the Interface Menu, you’re probably already familiar with this. While there are mods that do the same thing, I’m a big fan of using the in-game interface when it does everything I want.
Ever needed your bank or a mailbox while in the middle of nowhere? Argent Squire can help! This tip is a bit more involved. The Argent Tournament is large enough that it really deserves its own article, but one big item from there that new 80′s have no clue about is the Pony Bridle. In a nutshell, as you progress through the tournament you go from Aspirant to Valiant to Champion to Crusader. When you become a Champion, you receive the Argent Squire, a little kid who runs behind you (small pet) and will hold up the banner of the various cities you can champion. Fun, but fairly useless, right? Once you become a Crusader another quartermaster opens up and sells you a Pony Bridle using the tournament tokens which upgrades your squire, which people jokingly refer to as the “Super Squire Upgrade.” What the Pony Bridle does is gives you several new options when you talk to your squire. You can choose to repair, use him as a mailbox, or access your bank. Once you make your selection you have a few minutes where the squire will do that for you, then he runs away and is on cooldown for a few hours. While the long cooldown prohibits you from using him all the time, he can be a real life-saver. The only time you may not want to worry about him is if you’re an engineering. Jeeves the robot butler can repair/bank for you, MOLL-E is a portable mailbox, and Wormhole Generator: Northrend can teleport you to most sections of Northrend. Oh, did I forget to mention? That same Crusader Quartermaster also sells the Argent Crusader’s Tabard which teleports you to the Argent Tournament grounds once per 30 minutes. Considering the long cooldown on the Wormhole Generator, Crusaders may trump Engineers there. Of course, these aren’t mutually exclusive — there’s nothing stopping you from having all the Engineering toys and all of the Crusader Quartermaster fun items.
Get all of your level 68 or higher alts a Tome of Cold Weather Flight! I cannot stress this enough. Earlier we talked about both heirlooms and what enchants to put on them, but don’t miss that Hira Snowdawn at Krasus Landing in Dalaran will sell you a Bind on Account version of Cold Weather Flight that you can mail to your level 68 or higher alts. You only have to walk through Northrend once, friend. Cold Weather Flight works with both 225 and 300 flying, and if you learn it at 225 and upgrade to 300 you do not have to learn it again.
Create your own Vanity Guild! My soon-to-be-wife and I are always sending items back and forth. She is exceptionally good at selling items on the auction house, and so I try to send her anything I can find that I think she can sell. After awhile of doing this, mailboxes get flooded and it’s just messy. Characters are stuck with those BoP Brewfest Mugs you just can’t bring yourself to get rid of, but what do you do with those million glyphs you skilled up on that you’re sure will sell “someday?” Well, the answer to all of these questions is: create a vanity guild. If you’ve never run a guild you may not be familiar with the concept of a guild bank. For ten gold and nine signatures you can create your own guild (be sure to kick out the people who don’t belong after forming it). Then, go to the bank and you’ll notice that near the bankers in a major city will be a guild vault. For a small sum (that grows larger each time you pay it…) you can purchase a guild bank tab. A guild bank tab contains 98 slots. In general, you can get maybe four tabs without paying too much money, and then put all of your banker alts in that guild and they all have access to this pool of items. You can do this with friends or loved ones if you trust them enough, too. Hey, there’s also nothing stopping you from having a few of these — each of my bankers has his own guild bank that he shares with one of Rathakk’s bankers.
