We’ve got the scoop on the lesser-known, but very important things about Mists of Pandaria. These are the types of things you find out after hitting level 90 and wish you would have known on launch! And of course – plenty of links to more resources!!
10. Little-known Facts about your Professions
9. Named Rare Spawns Drop GOODIES!
8. There is a Black Market Auction House
7. New Achievement Series (Lost and Found)
6. Info to Help Pick Your Factions (with a special Valor Points note)
5. Building Your Farm(ville) – How to Start & Why You Should Do It!
4. OMG PET BATTLES!!!
3. Getting to Pandaria
2. Getting Started Tips & Other Fun Info
1. Mr. Robot will Optimize Your Gear!
10. Little-known Facts about your Professions
- All professions share 1 elemental: Spirit of Harmony. They are BoP so you won’t find them on the AH. You can get them from mob drops or your farm in Halfhill (songbell seeds). Read this Wowhead comment for a nice summary of the facts.
- You no longer need tools of the trade, like a skinning knife. Instead, any tools for your trade will reward you with +skill.
- Miners and Herbalists might want Mist-Piercing Goggles from their engineering friends to see extra nodes that are covered by mists. Mining also doesn’t give you a chance to get gems unless you have Ancient Mining Pick, found from the bottom floor of the Greenstone Quarry cave in the SW portion of the Jade Forest as part of the Lost & Found series. I’d suggest heading over there and getting one early to use while leveling up (and the mobs are only level 84-86).
- Skinners might want to keep an eye out for Blackhoof in the Valley of the Four Winds. He drops a Battle Horn that calls all nearby enemies to you. Great for mass skinning!
- Fishers should look for the Ghostly Pandaren Fisherman on the north side of Cattail Lake – he’s part of the Lost and Found series.. Talk to him to get an Ancient Pandaren Fishing Lure that gives you extra fish. Getting your reputation up with Nat Pagle allows you to buy a mount that can walk on water. (Full Pandaria fishing preview on Wowhead)
- All gatherers should keep an eye out for Korda Torros, a rare elite spawn in the Kun-Lai Summit. He drops Forager’s gloves, which substantially reduce your gathering time. Mining drops from 3.2 to 1.7, skinning and herbing from 2 to 0.5.
9. Named Rare Spawns Drop GOODIES!
- Rare spawns drop a lot of fun vanity items, like a crate of kidnapped puppies or a firework launcher. Get an overview here, and detailed info including maps here.
- Some useful items also drop from rare spawns, like the Battle Horn from Blackhoof that is useful for farming (and skinners).
8. There is a Black Market Auction House!
- Several NPCs around the world sell items for auction. They go to the highest bidder on your realm.
- You can bid on pets from the Trading Card Game (TCG), rare mounts, Tier 3 armor (good for transmogging), and more.
- For a full list of items and NPC locations, visit wowpedia.org.
7. New Achievement Series: Lost and Found
- You might run into random items lying around sparkling, waiting for you to pick them up. Those items are part of the Lost and Found achievement series.
- Some of the items you can pick up include weapons like Blade of the Prime or useful items like Ancient Mining Pick.
6. Info to Help Pick your Factions (Special Valor Points Note!!)
- Valor/Justice Point items are now sold by faction vendors, so you’ll need to meet the required reputation requirement with each faction, as well as having enough points. Four factions sell level 489 gear for Valor Points at
ReveredHonored (rep requirement changed on 10/2). Each vendor sells Valor gear for all classes, but for specific slots only.- Klaxxi: neck, waist, legs
- Shado-Pan: back, trinkets, head
- August Celestials: feet, wrists, hands
- The Golden Lotus: fingers, shoulders
- These factions also sell blue level 450 items for Justice Points, and several level 463 blue weapons for gold, and some mounts and other random things.
- Each profession has a faction they want to buddy up with:
- Blacksmithing: Klaxxi
- Enchanting: Shado-Pan for these recipes: dancing steel, jade spirit, river’s song. And August Celestials for these: exceptional strength, greater agility, super intellect.
- Tailoring: The Golden Lotus for armor, and August Celestials for the 28 slot bag.
- Leatherworking: The Golden Lotus
- 2 other factions sell mounts and other goodies, but no armor. Order of the Cloud Serpent sells mounts, including Jewelcrafting mount recipes (overview on wowhead). The Lorewalkers sell a flying mount and some archeology items. The Lorewalkers also work a bit differently – you gain faction by visiting monuments and talking to people (kinda cool!)
- Keep an eye out for Scritch, a rare elite spawn in Kun-Lai Summit. He drops a Hozen Peace Pipe that grants you +1000 reputation to most of the Pandaren factions.
5. Building your Farm(ville) – How to Start & Why You Should Do It!
- Your farm will be a major source of materials for cooking and believe it or not, crafting. View this comment on Wowhead for a summary of the crafting items you can eventually grow. Visit Mr. Robot’s blog post about the changes to cooking.
- Your farm is found in HalfHill, start by talking to Farmer Yoon (NW side of town). You can run over there at level 85 and get started with the first quest line (Up to Learn and Grow VI: Gina’s Vote). You can do the first quests very quickly, including harvesting the cabbage (wait about a minute to harvest). For the last quest in the line (planting scallions), you can come back and harvest them after midnight-ish. This quest line also gives you 709,000 XP (it takes 13,000,000 to get to level 86). After that quest line, you can tend to your garden, but you can’t increase your faction until level 90.
- You start with 4 plots and can get up to 16 through quests and friendship. Most plants are ready to harvest in one day (which seems to be around midnight or 1am server time), and yield a minimum of 5 crops (up to 8). If you have 16 plots and get 5 from each crop, you can get 80+ crops per day. Banquets (the new Feasts) take 50-100 vegetables (along with the right meat) to make.
- For more info on farming: guide on MMO-Champion, guide on wowhead, Getting started video, Tillers faction on Wowhead, El’s Angling guide on Farming, and one last quick start guide.
4. OMG PET BATTLES!
- Begin by talking to the pet trainer in your capital city.
- You’ll need to level up your pet (max level 25) in lowbie areas. Since the pets in the level 85+ Pandaria zones are level 23 or higher, you won’t be leveling up your pets there any time soon.
- You can capture pets in the wild, including very rare pets! You can also get pets from all sorts of places: crafting, fishing, questing, farming (Terrible Turnip), the auction house, the black market auction house… pretty much everywhere.
- If you’re on a PVP server, people can still attack you while you’re in a pet battle. However, you get a shield that absorbs damage for 3 seconds so you can exit your pet battle and fight. View the discussion about this on battle.net.
- Each pet has a type, and each type comes with strengths, weaknesses and special abilities. See the awesome chart – the icon highlighted in green means they deal extra damage to that type of pet, red means they are weak against that pet.
- Aquatic Beast Critter Dragonkin Elemental
- Flying Humanoid Magical Mechanical Undead
- Resources: Blizzard’s Official pet battle page, Blizzard Q&A from Sept 24, blue post updates on Pet Battles, introduction to Pet Battles & where to get started, a starter guide with pictures, find pets on PetBattleArena.com, get lots of details from wowpedia.org, and don’t forget about seasonality pets (pets you can only get with seasonal events like Brewfest and Hallow’s End) – find them on WarcraftPets.com
- And the one thing you’re all wondering… WHERE DO I FIND THESE PETS? Alludra’s got you covered. She also co-hosts a battle pet podcast.
3. Getting to Pandaria
- Getting to Pandaria:
- Alliance will talk to Grand Admiral Jes-Tereth in Stormwind Keep, then get on your flying mount and go to the gunship Skyfire. This sky-ship will take you to Pandaria.
- Horde will talk to General Nazgrim in Grommash Hold, then fly to the Zeppelin Hellscream’s Fist. This will then fly you to Pandaria.
- Too many people covering up the quest giver? No problem. Open your key bindings menu and bind “Interact With Target” to a key. Then /target the NPC’s name and they will become selected. The push that key, and viola!! You can talk to the npc.
- Get the midnight launch details here: Midnight PST for NA and Latin realms. Midnight CEST for EU. And if you’re waiting in line in New York, Minnesota, Colorado, or Irvine CA, WoW Insider has SWAG!
2. Getting Started Tips & Other Fun Info
- Want to know what happens with the starter quest, or how to race change? Read Olivia’s article on WoW Insider.
- Flying mounts are disabled in Pandaria while you level up… so get that ground mount on your hotbar again.
- You can level up with REAL ID friends from other realms with the new Cross Realm Zone (CRZ). Read the official Blue post explaining the system.
- Leveling a Monk? Visit WorldofMonkcraft to get you started.
- Update your mods! Gatherer, Bartender, Recount, and more.
- Challenge mode gear rewards have some really cool effects. Check out these effects for each class on MMO Champion’s Challenge Mode Gear Previews. Take a look at the T14 armor sets too.
- Get all the info you need for vanity items in MoP.
- Engineers get fun toys, as always. Including a gift-dispensing Blingtron 4000.
1. Mr. Robot will Optimize Your Gear!!
- His Optimizer will be up to date when MoP launches at Midnight… although you will be going through gear so fast you probably won’t be optimizing until level 90!
- He’s working on an in-game mod that will grab the gear you have in your bags and bank, and tell you which pieces are best to wear. This will be available sometime in October.
- His mobile app will be updated with the MoP launch too! As a reminder, you can get to it by going to the website from the browser on your mobile device (or tablet). Login, and he’ll take it from there.
- Gear changes he wants you to know about:
- Casters now get spell hit from expertise
- Hunters now need expertise
- Secondary-stat gems have twice the stat value as primary-stat gems. For example, in Cataclysm, you had a choice between a +50 Intellect or +50 Haste gem. In Mists of Pandaria you’ll have the choice between a +160 Intellect or +320 Haste gem. This means Mr. Robot might be recommending secondary gems instead of primary ones… it all depends on your stat weights of course.
- You can complete a legendary quest line to get a legendary gem, that can currently be placed in specific weapons. More info here.
- More detailed info and specific numbers can be found here.
Did I miss anything? Leave a comment and share your tips and resources.