Gitr Knows WoW

Unlike your other World of Warcraft blogs. Quality over quantity, and a terrific community.

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Introducing BlizzCast – The Blizzard Podcast

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Blizzard has joined the rest of the community with their very own podcast today! The first episode features Samwise Didier, their Art Director and concept artist. They discuss what he loves about Warcraft and Starcraft. It’s a great listen and I look forward to many more episodes. Down with WoWpodcast, long live BlizzCast.

Check out the transcript if you are on a lame connection or download the 24MB mp3 file.

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Ding 69! Ten Hours to Go…

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This morning Gitr dinged 69 by completing a quest from Ruaan Weald, deep in the Wyrmcultist cave. Experience Fu is estimating that I have 10 hours of leveling to go to ding 70. Here is my plan for the week to get to 70 in good shape:

  • Go back to Shadowmoon Valley to complete many of those quests that I’ve neglected by doing Netherstorm instead.
  • Do frequent LFGs when I do get 2-3 hours to play to get into some instances for XP, rep, and loot.
  • Play the AH to get enough gold for my flying mount upon the big ding. Time to go get Auctioneer Classic again… Advanced is bugging the heck out of me.
  • Clear out all of my group/elite quests that are jamming my questlog.
  • Research the Protection spec I will be using for instances/raiding with Doom’s Assailants on Silvermoon (US-PvE).
  • Consider re-speccing now and simply instancing my way to 70 in really fine, fun fashion. Who wants to grind/quest anyway?

Preferred Methods of Improving Your Gear, Sub-70

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Since all of my toons are still sub-70s, none of them are eligible for the best crafted items or the heroic/end-game instance loot yet. That still leaves me with several options for getting better gear than the standard quest rewards. Let’s begin, shall we? Then we’ll discuss what is best.

  • Outlands provides a cornucopia of group quests at the end of long questlines that often reward you with blue, even some socketed, gear that is far superior to the regular AH greens.
  • PvP is an option all the way through the levels, with varying degrees of reward value. You could arguably save up all of your BG marks for level 70 and get some working man’s epics right out of the gate.
  • Rep rewards offer blues for Honored/Revered status throughout Outlands. The Hellfire Peninsula rewards for Honored will hold you over for several levels, so check out what the later rewards will get you and whether they are worth it to you, since those 5-mans only take 2 hours with a PuG or 30-60 minutes with well-geared guildies.
  • Lastly, who can resist socketed blue gear from the 5-man instances that you will need to master in order to do them in Heroic mode anyway? There is some dang fine gear in there that puts the old Tier 0.5 junk to shame.

Personally, I’ve been indulging myself in as many quests as possible and running them all the way to the final Elite group quests. When I have a bucketfull of them, I look for someone in the area or hop on the guild chat or LFG channel to knock a few out for massive XP and shiny rewards. Some faction quests take you to instances for super rewards, starting in Ramparts onward.

On the nights that I have the time and patience, I run the instances for Rep, XP, and loot… all in one. You should be able to get 15-20g, another 20-40g in greens and vendor trashing, and a considerable amount of rep if you haven’t done all of the quests in the zone yet.

My personal favorite when I wasn’t leveling as fast was to play the AH a tad harder than normal and just buy my way into blue and purple gear. I’m making about 150g per day by questing, vendor trashing, herbing, and selling greens on the AH. I haven’t even been playing the AH because I hate Auctioneer Advanced for that, so I’m going back to the regular version to play for my flying mount coming up in 26 bars.

OMG! 132% until 70! /shudder

Raiding for Dummies, Noobs, and Jabberwocks

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So I have started yet another toon, but this one will, perhaps, get to do something none of my other ones have: that is raid. He is my first Alliance character in over a year, so that in itself will take some getting used to. I know the Horde area like the back of my hand, but playing the Alliance feels like a whole new game.

I have done many 5-man instances, but honestly I still feel like a noob with every one I have done. So I need to not only level a new toon rather quickly, I need to practice and hopefully master my class. So I have a few questions to help me become a better player, so that when I do raid, I won’t be the weakest link.

  • What are some things one should be doing while leveling to prepare for instances?
  • Should I try pre-BC instances to better learn my class, or should I just get to 70 as fast as possible and maybe do run thrus of lower ones then?
  • What has someone done that made you pleasantly surprised in a PUG? What have you done that surprised people?
  • Now in my case, I am a Demon spec Warlock. I am going that way for leveling. When PUGing, should I automatically give everyone a Healthstone? If there isn’t a Priest who do I Soulstone? Should I offer to do crowd control or just ask which demon they want?
  • What are some of the worst things you have seen a Warlock do in an instance that I should avoid? What have you done in an instance that immediately made you smack your head with your palm?

Give a guy and hand and give me an education I won’t soon forget.

Gitr Goes Widescreen

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This Christmas, Gitr broke down and built a brand new system and got gift cards to buy a new LCD monitor. What transpired is nothing short of a gaming revolution. WoW is an all new experience now. If you are playing on an old computer, trust me, I feel you. I was running at 1024×768 resolution with the shortest vision and nearly everything turned off. Entering Ramparts, frame rates dropped to a measly 4fps, which makes both tanking and healing exceedingly difficult.

On Wednesday, the new computer got built with a fresh install of Windows XP on a new SATA drive and got all of the WoW patches loaded for some evening playtime. Here’s the current system build, resulting in 35-72fps (depending on the location and party size) with everything at max and my new 1680×1050 resolution:

  • 2.66MHz Intel Core2 Duo with 1033FSB
  • ASUS SLI-ready motherboard
  • 2GB 800 DDR2 RAM
  • 160GB Western Digital SATA HD
  • ASUS Silent nVidia GeForce 8600GT 512MB
  • Envision 22″ Widescreen LCD with DVI-D cable

I’ll move to SLI, 4GB RAM and additional hard drives when the time comes and then top out with a Core 2 Extreme when the prices match what I just paid for this chip. So… using my wife’s bonus, we got all of this stuff in time for my week off of work (don’t worry, I have money coming in this week to replenish her bonus), got a desk, rearranged the office, and took down all of the Christmas decorations. It’s been quite a week, so it’s time to start posting again. BTW, Ding 68!

Level 10 Blood Elf Warlock Questline Walkthrough

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Hello my name is Phil and I am here to today to walk you though the level 10 quest to get yourself the big blue fighting machine known as the Voidwalker.

The Voidwalker is the second summoned demon that you are able to get and the quest becomes available to you at level 10. The Voidwalker does minor melee damage, but is a formidable tank that has gotten me out of some really bad situations let me tell you.

Now I currently am using Cartographer as my map add-on, the coordinates I will be giving work with what ever add-on you will be using. I like Cartographer, however as pointed out by some of my guild mates; I have a really bad UI setup and really need to learn how to set up a better one.

So when you reach level 10 you will need to go to Murder Row in Silvermoon City and go in The Sanctum. (74, 45) It’s the last building on the right hand side before you enter the Court of the Sun. There you will find the Warlock Trainer named Talionia; she will give you a quest called The Stone, which requires you to obtain a Voidstone from the Dead Scar.

Now at this point I highly recommend you visit the Auction House and buy whatever upgrades you can afford. While the mobs in the area where you will be going are only 10-11, there are a lot of them ,so you will need all the help you can get. Also, I would suggest that you go to the inn in Murder Row (79, 57) and make that your home, just for ease of this quest’s completion.

This quest will require you to go into the Ghostlands so, unless you have the flight point, you will have to take the path all the way down. I hear the run is beautiful, especially this time of year! As soon as you cross the bridge going from Eversong Woods into the Ghostlands (48, 11) make a right and go down the river. You will see a small waterfall at 43, 13 and below there you will see a bunch little blue glowy things. Those are the Voidstones.


Once you acquire the Voidstone you will be presented with another quest: The Rune of Summoning. Where you will need to go to the Goldenmist Village, if you just follow the river all the way down to the west you will come to another, much larger waterfall (30, 9) just jump off and you are there.

The building in the center of town is where you will need to go, it is actually the first building you see on the left hand side when you swim to shore. The area is surrounded by the Quel’doei Wraith and Quel’dorei Ghosts and they are level 10-11 mobs.

You will need to fight your way up to the second floor of that building to a little room where the summoning circle is located (27, 15). Now if you die and you very well might I suggest that you try and see if you can rez up on the second floor it will make it much easier.

Now once you have cleared the area of all mobs you will need to stand in the summoning circle and right click on the Voidstone to summon the Voidwalker. You will have to fight him so ensure that you are at full health and mana. Once he is defeated the quest is complete. Now at this point you will need to go back to speak with Taliona again to turn in the quest. Now you can hearth back to the inn or what I recommend you do before that is go down to Tranquillien and get the flight point (45, 30). It will save you a trip later.

Once you turn in the quest with Talionia you will learn a new spell; Summon Voidwalker. He and all future Demons require a Soul Shard to summon.

So congratulations you have yourself a new Voidwalker, or VW for short, also known as the blueberry.

I hope you have better luck with the names than I have had: Juk’gak, Helkrast, and Makvhug.