An old friend I met in Vanilla recently returned to WoW, and I decided to send him a bit of a guide to help him get up to speed as quickly as he wanted once he hit level 90.
He loved it, and said I should post this somewhere, and I remembered that I'd started this Blog a while back, and left it to waste away.
So, here's some help to anyone who's hit 90, perhaps a boost and looking for a fairly efficient way to get into LFR of the Siege of Orgrimmar. This is based on an alliance toon, but the same quests are available to both sides, just the names of the quest givers are different around the shrines. The locations are the same, however.
1. Once you ding 90, head to the shrine. Where the innkeeper is, there'll be a dude standing there with a quest, called Stranger in a Strange Land http://www.wowhead.com/quest=
2. There's a dude on a floating dragon near the FP at the shrine, he'll sell you Pandarian Flying for 2500 gold. Buy it right away, you'll need it.
3. Under the shrine's FP are some blue ! marks. Look for the Elder Lin who has the quest called Warforged Seals http://www.wowhead.com/quest=
4. On the ground in front of the Shrine is Lyalia with a yellow !. She has 2 quests for you:
Meet the Scout,
and
Thunder Calls
Take both of these quests, as you'll want them to supplement your gear.
5. Queue for the Scenario: Arena of Annihilation. It's a non-heroic (regular) 3 man 'instance' that will pop quickly, and it'll take about 10 minutes to run. Grab the quest inside, the dude near the gong, and it'll give you a 450 dagger at the end.
6. Go and see Chromie, she'll give you the quest Journey to the Timeless Isle http://www.wowhead.com/quest=
Timeless Isle
There's a few things to know about going into Timeless Isle. The important things you're looking for here are Gear Tokens, they will come from just about anything you do on the isle. These tokens will transform into ilvl 496 gear, with the ability to be upgraded 4 times for 4 ilvls each, 16 in total (at 250 VP each upgrade). Timekeeper Kairoz gave you 2 quests. Completing both will open up the 1 daily and 2 weekly quests.
The isle has chests all over the place. Some are one time use only, some are repeatable every week. Every chest will have some Timeless Coins in them, from 5 to 400. Each chest has a chance to have a gear token in them, and there's a few chests that will absolutely have 2 tokens. They're one time use, they'll disappear when you click on them. There's a couple of mods that I use, based on the mod called Handy Notes. Install that first then install the Timeless Isle chests mod. The chests mod will show the locations of all chests on your minimap, and will make them disappear off the minimap as you discover them.
Handy Notes: http://www.curse.com/addons/
Timeless Isle Chests: http://www.curse.com/addons/
Handy Notes is awesome, you can make marks on your map like Carbonite, and if you use TomTom it'll turn them into waypoints if you want with a directional arrow and an ETA timer.
Mobs also have the same deal as the chests in terms of loot. They'll always drop some coins, and have a chance to drop the gear tokens. There's regular, elite, and rares, and World Bosses on the isle. The higher the level, the better chance of gear tokens, and the higher the amount of coins that'll drop from them.
So, when you hit the isle, you want to work on those 2 original quests, gathering 1,000 coins and exploring the isle. Do yourself a favour, DON'T start using the tokens when you find them. The quest that requires you to gather 1,000 coins and meet the 2 guys beside the Emperor will reward you with a random gear token. Complete that quest first, use that token, and then start using the gear tokens as you find them. Here's why... the random token from the quest will give you a random slot, everything but a weapon. So, if you start using the gear tokens, like gloves, or a cloak, then use the random one from the quest, you could end up with 2 sets of gloves... not much point.
The gear tokens are based on your current spec. You can check which spec your are in (in regards to loot, it DOESN'T have to be the one you're currently using) by right clicking your portrait then loot specialization. Now, for a rogue, it's not a big deal, but say you're on a druid and want Feral vs Resto... big difference.
Gear tokens that you find won't always be for your armor spec... i.e. you'll get cloth, mail and plate as well as leather. It's a higher chance for your armor spec, but you can still pick up tokens for other armor types. They are purely bind on account, so you can send them to any toon you own, alliance or horde, cross server no problem.
There's 4 strangely named tokens. One is a Lavalier, it's to make a necklace. Curio, will make a trinket. Signet makes a ring. The last is a Burden of Eternity.
Burden of Eternity is a gizmo that you apply to a Gear token, and instead of it making a 496 piece of gear, it'll make a 535 piece. Every piece of gear from Timeless Isle will allow you to upgrade it 4 times for 4 ilvls each (250 valor points to upgrade). You MUST use a Burden on a Token, not an already converted piece of gear. As you can guess, Burdens are extremely rare, but you can purchase them from a vendor (one of the guys beside the Emperor) for 50,000 coins. It takes me about 2 weeks to gather 50,000 coins on a toon, doing the dailies, the weeklies and killing stuff on the isle.
Coins will ALSO come from herbing, mining and skinning while on the isle.
There's one daily quest, and 2 weeklies. The daily quest is from the Emperor, he'll ask you to kill 20 elites. No biggie, takes about 30 minutes if you're not geared, about 15 if you are. The 2 weeklies, one to kill 5 rares, the other to gather 50 Epoch Stones. There is about 20 rares that spawn on the isle, and people will have mods that yell out sightings and co-ordinates. You'll get used to locations pretty quickly. The epoch stones can drop from any mob, the higher the mob, the better chance of a drop. You'll get 50 in no time, especially doing the daily Kill 20 Elites. Elites have about a 50% drop rate, rares about 90%. People group up to do dailies, or rep groups (a long grind for the Emperor Rep), so feel free to join in to anyone asking.
I use a Rare Elites mod, again from Handy Notes, shows you locations on your minimap while on Timeless Isle: http://www.curse.com/addons/
Timeless Coins can be used to buy 489 weapons (10,000 for a 1h, 20,000 for a 2h), shields (10,000), trinkets (50,000 for a 535, and 7,500 for a 496...but the 496 requires honored with the Emperor). Don't waste your coins on weapons, they can only go up to 504 with upgrades, and you're wasting 20,000 coins plus 2,000 valor to do that. Go the pvp route for the 522 pvp weapons and work on the 528 drops from LFR.
So, you've run around the island a few times, you've picked up all the chests, and killed stuff... but you're still short some gear. Probably a trinket or two, a ring or two.... here's where you work on opening up 2 other quartermasters that'll sell you 496 gear for JP's, or 522 gear for VP.
Remember step # 4, the 2 quests for Meet the Scout and Thunder Calls? Time to open up those areas. Do Meet the Scout first. The scout is located in Kasarang Wilds. Follow that quest chain until you see the cutscene with the alliance ships landing at the beachead. Once the cutscene is over you'll be standing in front of the Operation Shieldwall Quartermaster, who sells the 496 gear for JP. 1750 for a trinket, 1250 for a ring, and usually a belt or boots, or something like that. JP stuff is available at Neutral or Friendly, whatever you're at as soon as you open it up. Total time to open up this area is like 15 minutes.
Next, head up to Townlong Steppes and start the Thunder Calls quest chain. After arriving on the ship at Thunder Isle, you'll do 4 One Man scenarios. Each Scenario is about 15-20 minutes in length, not hard for most classes to do, and once you have them complete, you've opened up the dailies on the isle. Here's where you can choose to do PVE dailies, or PVP dailies, chosen each day. My suggestion is to go the PVP route, as the island isn't populated with people doing dailies anymore, and won't molest you when you're flagged. You're working on your 522 PVP Weapons (and gear) so collect your roughtly 600 Honor Points each day and work on getting your weapons. Doing the 6 or 7 daily pvp quests on the isle takes about 15 minutes.
There is also a Shadow Pan Assault quartermaster (different from the Shadow Pan rep). You can buy a 522 necklace at neutral for 835 valor. The rest of the 522 gear can be bought at friendly. You want to queue for the Throne of Thunder LFR, run ONE wing, and you'll come out almost honoured. This quartermaster is located across the bridge from the portal to the Isle of Thunder, at the northwest part of Townlong Steppes. The quest for Thunder Calls takes you up there, so you'll recognize the area quickly. I can't remember what ilvl you need for the Throne of Thunder LFR but if you've gone to Timeless Isle and gathered the 496 stuff from there you'll be fine.
Finally... to WEAPONS.
PvP gear vs PvE gear... there's no penalty for using pvp stuff in pve, the itemization is just a pvp power tacked on to regular pve gear. You can gain honor by doing bg's and arenas, and you can do it by converting JP's to HP's at a 50% loss. The vendor is in the ground floor of the Warrior's Guild in Stormwind, near the Heirloom Vendor. He'll sell you 250 HP tokens for 500 JP.
Here's your goal, should you choose to accept it:
To buy any PVP weapons, you MUST get a season total of 7125 honor. Here's the quickest way to do it:
For 2 x 1h:
Buy 2 x 2250 HP pieces (chest, legs, head). These are 522 gear, so don't worry about scrubbing your 496 stuff from Timeless Isle Gear Tokens. This will give you a 2 piece bonus as...well, a bonus :D Btw, honor is capped at 4000 before you have to buy something, so buy one at 2250, get another 2250 and buy the 2nd piece.
So, now you're at 4500 on your season total. Now, save up 2625 (making your season total 7125) and buy your 1st 1h for 1750. If you need another one, save another 875 honor and you've got your 2 x 1h.
For 1 x 2h:
Buy 1 x 2250 HP piece (chest, legs, head). Next, buy a 1750 HP piece. You're at a season total of 4,000 HP. Next, go all the way and save up your 3500 for your 2h weapon. You'll be a bit over the 7125 mark (7500 total) but you've got 2 decent pieces of 522 pvp gear and your weapon. You -can- go with a 2250 and a 1250, but you'd be at 3500 and needing 3625 more jp anyway. Your choice.
JP's are easy to get, just run heroics and you'll average about 480 per run. As soon as you get near any multiple of 500 convert them over to HP. Remember not to enter a heroic at above 3500 JP in your total, or you'll be capping out at 4000 if you hit a 5 boss instance worth 600 jp.
Somewhere in all this advice you'll find yourself hitting 496, and you'll be able to queue for the LFR version of Siege of Orgrimmar. My guess is that it'd take you about 5 hours play time to get there, depending on what tokens drop for you on the Isle.
Good luck, and hope this guide takes some of the head-scratching you're doing trying to weed through websites and blogs and other information to get you up to speed.
Wylset
