Thinking about diving into World of Warcraft and need some basics to get started? This guide will walk you through the core aspects of the game, along with a bunch of tips on how to avoid the most common beginner mistakes.
Your Character
When creating a character, you’ll need to pick a faction, then a class, and finally a race.
A common beginner mistake is chasing the so-called “meta” and choosing whatever some streamer or guide says is the strongest at the moment. The problem is, the meta changes fast and only matters for the endgame content, which is something you won’t be touching for a long while. Much more important is whether you actually like the class, because if you don’t, you simply won’t enjoy playing it, no matter how powerful it is. So go with whatever you find the most fun. The only decisive factor should be the role you want to fill in groups: tank, healer, or damage dealer. Everything else is really just personal preference.
Skills and Talents
Once in-game, your character will get a set of basic abilities and then start unlocking new ones as you level up. On top of that, each class has specializations, which let you tailor your character to a specific role and playstyle. There are also talent trees for each class and spec where you’ll invest points to gain new perks, plus extra Hero Talents for even more customization.
You don’t need to stress about creating the “perfect” setup with the best possible talents from the get-go. Min-maxing only really matters for hardcore raiders or competitive PvP players. As a beginner, you should focus on learning your class and abilities and just enjoying the process. You can read about builds and try out different specs, but don’t turn chasing the best setup into your main goal, because it’ll simply ruin the fun.
Getting Into Activities
Once you’ve got your character rolling, it’s time to get into the game itself.
WoW offers tons of activities you can engage in:
- Quests: Tasks from NPCs that will send you all around the in-game world.
- Dungeons: 5-player instances where your team will fight mobs and bosses for rewards.
- Raids: Large-scale, multi-boss instances that require big groups and lots of prep.
- Delves: Smaller instances that you can tackle with a group or solo with an NPC companion.
- PvP activities: massive Battlegrounds with objectives and smaller-scale Arenas where you face off against enemy teams.
Don’t rush to get to the high-tier content. Take your time to explore and really get a feel for the game. Questing might feel slow at times, but it’s better not to replace it with leveling only through dungeons. Sure, dungeons give faster XP, but they also rob you of lore, exploration, and useful quest rewards. That’s why we highly recommend playing through the campaign at least on your first character and using dungeons only as an extra XP source. Let yourself enjoy the story; you’ll have plenty of dungeon spamming in the endgame.
Gearing
As you play, your character will constantly pick up loot from activities or defeated enemies. These rewards include currency, materials, consumables, and, of course, gear.
Every gear piece has an item level (ilvl), which measures its power. Items also come in different tiers (Explorer to Myth) with upgrade tracks: you can use Valorstones and crests to boost a piece up within its track.
The higher your overall ilvl, the stronger your character and the tougher activities you can handle. However, that stuff really matters only in the endgame when you’re already level 80. At that point, you’ll need a certain ilvl to do Heroic dungeons or start raiding, but while leveling, you shouldn’t really obsess over it. You’ll gear up just fine by doing quests and dungeons, and there’s no need to chase top-tier pieces until you’re ready for the endgame.
Gold
Gold is the universal currency you’ll use for almost everything in the game, including gear repairs, profession training, buying mounts and consumables, and tons of other stuff.
There are plenty of ways to earn gold:
- quest rewards
- selling loot to vendors
- farming and selling materials
- selling your crafts
- buying undervalued items on the Auction House and reselling them for profit
- buying cheap WoW gold on special platforms.
A trap many new players fall into is overspending early on. The Auction House is tempting, and vendors seem to always have that one shiny item calling your name, but almost every purchase in the early levels will end up being a waste of gold.
You don’t really need to buy gear while leveling, as it’ll naturally come through quests and dungeons. Consumables can be crafted with professions, and most basic materials are easy enough to farm yourself. By cutting unnecessary expenses, you’ll have enough gold for the stuff that really matters, like riding skills, mounts, or recipes you can’t get any other way.
Professions
Since we’ve mentioned professions, let’s talk about them in a bit more detail. Professions let you develop extra skills in two categories: primary (Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Mining, etc) and secondary (Cooking, Fishing, and Archaeology). With these skills, you’ll be able to craft gear, consumables, and other items or gather materials to sell or use yourself.
Primary professions have specializations with different trees where you invest Knowledge Points to unlock powerful bonuses. Specs massively boost your gold gains, making your professions more efficient, increasing skill stats, and sometimes even unlocking unique drops. That’s why you should always invest in your profession specs. If you’re unsure where to put your points, there are a lot of guides to point you in the right direction.
Social Connections
World of Warcraft has always been a social game. It’s still playable solo, but the best experiences usually happen when you share them with others.
Guilds are hands down the best way to dive into the social side of WoW, yet many new players stubbornly avoid them, which is a huge mistake, because a good guild can completely transform your journey. Not only will it give you a regular group for co-op content, but there will also be people who can guide you through the game, and most importantly, a like-minded community where you can just hang out and have fun.
