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Catching up on Alts with Patch 8.3 | World of Warcraft

 

Warcraft

 

Earlier this week, Blizzard announced that they would be introducing a 100% XP bonus in World of Warcraft. I hadn’t logged into the game for weeks and, honestly, still had little desire to do so. But being between RPG sessions, and being on COVID lockdown, I thought I’d give the game a try once again. Even if it was just to toss some Hexweave Bags onto the AH for easy gold.

First, Hexweave Bags have tanked. I make more money on the barns used to produce the furs to turn to cloth to MAKE the damn bags. So, fun.

Second, I had moved some alts around which gave me fewer 120 alts to run the 2000gp World Quests on. Maybe I would grudgingly take advantage of the XP boost to get at least one leveled up and geared to run World Quests.

Sure, the leveling part is… leveling. But is there a quick way to get reasonably geared once you reach 120? Kelani produced this great video which dives into that very question. So check it out won’t you?

WoW 8.2 Leveling Guide

Marcelian (@MarcelianOnline on Twitter) put together what can best be described as a pretty damn cool leveling guide for Patch 8.2 in World of Warcraft! If you are looking to level up a new character to unlock the heritage items, or just want to try leveling without going back to Classic WoW because…

classic

 

… this is the video for you!

The complete 8.2 leveling guide is here! Learn powerful 1-120 wow leveling tips and all the information you need for 8.2 leveling such as optimal zones, useful leveling addons, best items, optimal quests, heirlooms and consumables and many more tips and tricks. Patch 8.2 BFA is a bit unfriendly with alts but our world of warcraft leveling guide will make it easier if you are starting from scratch because everybody wants 8.2 leveling fast 🙂

 

Level 110 Class Trial

ardura

 

Okay, so a bit of a hiccup in my random gold-making challenge.

I’d just gathered my gold from the mailbox and hearthed back to start farming when “poof”, I was booted to the character selection screen. No warning, nothing.

WTF?

A quick Google search told me what I needed to know.

If your World of Warcraft account is upgraded to the newest expansion, you can take advantage of the new Level 110 Class Trial. You can use this feature to take a character for a test drive before you decide to use a Level 110 Character Boost.

To start a new Class Trial, click the Level 110 Class Trial button while creating a new character.

Your new trial character is playable for three hours, or until you select a zone from the Scouting Map. After the trial is over, your character is locked from further play. You can purchase and use a Character Boost to permanently unlock your trial character.

Note: You cannot enter raids or low-level dungeons while on a Class Trial.

 

Guess I timed out on the Class Trial Demon Hunter. It would have been nice to at least have been given a countdown or something.

It sucks that thousands of gold were locked away and eventually deleted. But at least I can start over, using an alt this time.

Grinding Levels for Gold

 

Ding. Another 110.

Congratulations.

Yep, got another Death Knight to 110.

Uh, what? Don’t you have, like, six DK’s at 110 already? And most of them on the same server?

Okay first, I only have five Death Knights at 110. Second, I just leveled him up for the gold.

Again, I ask – uh, what?

Like in Warlords of Draenor, I strive to make gold with minimal time investment. This means having many alts set up in such a way that each can earn a bit of gold quickly, rather than one or two characters grinding for longer periods of time to earn gold. It all adds up, in both time and gold, and both are valuable.

In Legion, I feel like I’ve found the best way to make gold with minimal time investment. How? A mix of professions, World Quests, and Class Hall qualifications. Let me explain. No, that would take too long. Let me sum up. For each character –

  • Cooking at 100 – World Quests with Bacon rewards. Bacon sells well.
  • Gathering Profession (specifically Skinning, Herbalism, and Mining) – World Quest with a rare drop reward. This usually involves killing only one mob to get 1-5 of those rare mats. Those mats also sell well.
  • Tailoring Profession – Make Hexweave Bags every three days. It’s like a recipe for printing gold.
  • Enchanting Profession – Complete a World Quest with a purple drop. Disenchant drop, sell Chaos Crystal for muchos gold.
  • Order Hall – Class Upgrade that allows for the ability to auto-kill one World Quest every 18 hours. Use that nuke to gain Blood of Sargeras, Resources, or Professions rewards (see above). Not all classes have class halls that provide this. Death Knights do, as do Warriors (AKA my two main groups of alts).

If I manage to get all of that done on a character, it can take about five minutes and net me mats that will sell for a grand or so in gold. Repeat every day, and that’s seven thousand gold a week, twenty-eight thousand a month. Multiply that by four and I’m damn near buying a token a month with not all that much time investment, all things considered. That’s all above and beyond what I earn just by playing World of Warcraft on my main.

While poking around on one of the servers I had an army of alts on but no longer really play, I found a DK with some potential. He was level 100, with maxed Herbalism. His garrison was also sound – Level 3 with enough followers to generate resources and the Pleasure-Bot for buffing my Tailoring Emporium. Coincidentally, I had just bought a couple of tokens and was flush(?) with Blizzard Bucks. So I thought, what the Hell. Level another toon up, transfer him somewhere I may be more active and plug him into the gold making routine.

So like I said at the beginning of this post – Ding 110. I’ve just unlocked World Quests, and finished the Broken Shore scenario on my latest addition to the family. Once I get him a little further along (geared to the point where he can survive the necessary World Quests), he’ll be yet another cog in the production wheel.

Only that wheel’s got some golden hubcaps, playa.

Addendum – I swear, being a shift worker messes with your concept of time. I had no idea it had been so long since I posted. Seems like only a week or two, rather than a month.

Gearing Alts in Patch 7.2

 

I don’t usually pay much attention to patch notes. Just put the content in the game, and I’ll play it if I can. If there’s changes, fine. I’ll deal. I’m a grown-ass man playing a video game. It’s fine.

However, I will admit that Patch 7.2 has had some pleasant surprises for this grown-ass man. It’s taken an expansion and turned it from being very alt-unfriendly to busting out some very forgiving catch-up mechanics for alts.

Captain Fun had just reached 110, and I’d been wondering how long it would take for him to be, well, not so far behind everybody else on my character roster. Luckily for me, Bellular had recently released a video that addressed that very issue. In fact, it’s this video right here!

HERE!

 

It’s a great step by step process in setting an alt up for success in a Patch 7.2 world. For example –

Artifact Knowledge

  • Get the compendium from main that boosts alt to AK 20.
  • Do five quests that the AK guy will have for you @ 500 resources a pop, and voila AK 25!
  • Do not do any Artifact Power quests yet, tiger!
  • Now go ye forth and do the Broken Shore scenario. Follow the breadcrumb quests. Khadgar will have a quest to use a tome in three different locations. Continue on the quests until they send you back to your Order Hall. Hand in your quest and be rewarded with a tome that will bump you up to Artifact Knowledge 26 (100k% bonus to AP, as opposed to the 25k% at AP 25).

Gearing Up

  • Either pick up the crafted gear (which now starts off at an iLevel of 835 rather than 815)  or run some Normal/Heroic dungeons.
  • Run through the Broken Shore, kill rares & farm Sentinax and get some Dauntless tokens.
  • Khadgar will give you a quest for the new dungeon, Cathedral of Eternal Night, which rewards a nice relic.
  • World Quest gear scales from your current iLevel, and should reward gear at around 855-865.
  • World Quest Dungeons rewards 865 gear.
  • Nighthold LFR should fill in any slots that are lacking.

 

Artifact Power

  • Three Emissary caches and dungeons should be enough to get your Artifact weapon to Rank 35.

 

And did it work? Well, Captain Fun went from an iLevel of around 780, to running Heroic dungeons (iLevel 825 needed) with his Artifact weapon at Rank 34. Total run time, maybe four hours.

Well played, Blizz. Well played.