And You Thought Durotar Was Orange: A First Look At Outlands

You're in Winterspring grinding those smelly yetis for their [Pristine Yeti Horn]s for the best and worst quest chain in the game (yes, it really is both at the same time), when all of the sudden....

DING!

Congratulations, you have just reached level 58!
Your agility has gone up by 2.
Your stamina is still in the gutter.
Your health is still laughable, but we'll give you a couple more points just for the heck of it.
What the heck, we'll even increase your mana so you now have enough to change aspects when all your other spells are blued out.
You can now kill things up to level 60 if you are lucky (more if you are a hunter, loser).
You have now graduated to big kid land! Grats!

All right, let's go get ganked!

Woah, waitaminute there, kiddo. Let's just see where we really are here.

First of all, ganked? Really? You should know better. It's not ganking when a 70 camps your corpse in Falcon Watch for a couple hours. It's a massacre. It's an exercize in futility. It's an art masterpiece of your corpses that spells "SOS." It's something we all do, so suck it up and learn to stop complaining. Unless it's a Night Elf druid. Please feel free to call in guildies for that one, cause more often than not it's gonna be a non-level-capped drood showing off their new flight form. Tadaa, I gank you from above!

Second of all, let's take a look at you. Your gear, no offense, sucks, so let's not be so hasty. We want to make sure everything else is up to snuff. The gear will fix itself.

Kay, you have some gold. That's good you'll get more. Your professions are getting there, good for you (don't do the Gal thing, where you waltz into Hellfire with now profs, first aid, or cooking, heheheh)! You can cook and clean. If you are a hunter your pet is—

What. the. crap.

What is that thing? A spider? dragonhawk? flamingo? crocolisk?! How could you?! Okay okay, some of those can be viable in certain cases.

(Not my crocolisk.)

But a crocolisk?

Step away from the portal and put your bow up in the air. Good. Now get your little butt back to Winterspring pronto. Next time I see you I want to see something a little more dignified next to you. Yes, a cat, owl, pig, or wolf would be great. Bear? Bears are for skinning. Ravager that has been sitting in your stable? Level him up! Even better.

Okay, that was a close one. Blizz should make it so people have to go through a noob inspection before passing Warlord Dar'toon. Just....kidding......

Anyways, next let's take a look at your build. I am totally okay with any of the three specs as long as they are built right. I know my way around MM cause I've been MM for a long time (I only repsecced to BM in my late forties, early fifties for Gal), and BM is pretty self-explanatory if you take BRK's cookie-cutter BM guide and customize it for your own play style. For SV I'd suggest you go take a look at Lienna's build, as she is the resident SV hunter around these parts. (One day I'll respec SV to see what she's always going on about.)

So let's look at what we've got so far:

1. 58. Check.
2. New spells. Check.
3. Profs around max. Check.
4. Viable pet. Check.
5. Viable spec. Check.
6. Money and a decent way to travel. Check.
7. Hearth set to Shatt you've probably had for a few levels now. Check.
8. Turned in as many Old World quests as you can. Check.

Now, I guess you are ready for Outland. In some cases I would suggest you wait to go to Hellfire until 60, but nowadays people are starting to grind in HF as early as level 56, so waiting isn't very realistic.

Let's hop on down to the Blasted Lands, nab Through the Dark Portal, and zone!



You get on the other side and LAG attack!! Tons of monsters, tons of NPCs, lots of pretty lights. Avoid those and head straight for the quest reciever and the flight path to Thrallmar. Believe me, if you run into the chaos down there you will get pummeled over and over.

Upon reaching Thrallmar, you should do a couple run-around-and-talk-to-people quests, stock up on some meat, ammo, and other consummables, and then hit the hay in the nearest inn for some rested. Believe me, you'll need it.

Hope you've enjoyed Part 1. Part 2 coming soon, with pictures!