Countdown: 50 Facts for WoD

I’ll be sharing a fact a day as I gather information on my fact finding missions for Warlords of Draenor. Days left to launch of WoD: HOURS! live countdown

Fact #1: Launch! No need to log out when WoD launches. IF your account is already upgraded, you’ll be ready to play 🙂
Fact #2: Quest mobs: most quest mobs share tags in WoD, so no fighting over them anymore (with a few exceptions). Thanks @Malvenue for the tip.
Fact #3: First quest in WoD: if too many people are on the quest give, use a macro!
/tar Archmage Khadgar
/click StaticPopup1Button1
Fact #4: Realm first achievements are gone. So go ahead and enjoy your leveling 🙂
Fact #5: Dungeon strats. Here’s some text that is ready to paste in the party chat when grouping for a dungeon. From two wow chicks.
Fact #6: Items named after fans / mini-celebrities seem to all drop from world bosses. Keep an eye out for OpenRaid events to farm world bosses for named items 🙂
Fact #7: The legendary item in WoD: Rings!
Fact #8: Tier tokens will convert into the right item, skipping the vendor part (so they work like Timeless Isle tokens). Also, once you use the token, there’s a chance for the item to have a gem socket, be warforged, and/or have a tertiary stat. From Blizzard:
- Tier tokens will convert to an item just like the Timeless Isle tokens, this removes one of the steps.
Fact #9: Healing. From Blizzard:
- In Warlords, players have double the effective health, giving you longer to think and target your heals.
- In Warlords, smart heals aren’t as smart. They just heal anyone who is injured rather than the most injured.
- In Warlords, healers will have enough mana even at lower item levels.
- In Warlords, Spirit is now on less slots, so you can’t trivialize mana anymore.
Fact #10: Garrisons & Achievements: many level 3 garrison buildings are unlocked by achievements, like this one. For a list of achievements, visit The Grumpy Elf’s post.
Fact #11: Gathering professions. No need to go to a trainer to increase your level cap, you’ll get a drop that increases it, like this. You can also mine/herb/skin any node at any level. IF your level is low, you get pieces that you can combine to turn into the real ore/herbs, like these mining nuggets.
Fact #12: Garrison Infographic
Fact #13: Highmaul raid schedule: launches Dec 2 for normal / heroic. Mythic and LFR are on Dec 9. Blackrock Foundry is ‘several weeks’ later.
Fact #14: Warforged, gem sockets, tertiary stats: dungeon and raid level items, in general, are eligible to have an extra modification on it. They can have just 1 thing (like a gem socket) or all 3.
Fact #15: Items can only have 1 tertiary stat (if they have more, it’s a bug)
Fact #16: Friends & Garrisons: your friend can visit your garrison (and pick herbs and ore off your nodes, ha!). They can come in and DE stuff if you have the enchanter building. And you can group and do some garrison invasion defending!
Fact #17: Goblin Gliders = secret stuff! There are various goblins around in each zone that let you get on gliders to reach secret spots with treasure chests and stuff. You can get a map for the treasure chests in that zone a few different ways (reported by fans). A garrison quest reward, a reward for completing the quest achievement for a zone, and from a vendor in your WoD faction zone (after completing the story line for each zone). Here’s a YouTube video of one of these glider spots.
Fact #18: Mythic raid lockouts The mythic lockouts work differently that normal/heroic. In normal/heroic you can run whatever you want, as often as you want, you just don’t get more than 1 chance at gear. Mythic however, works like the ‘old’ lockouts – once you kill a boss, you’re tied to THAT RAID ID. You cannot go into someone else’s mythic raid until it resets each week.
Fact #19: Getting gear from your garrison From a blue post: Once you have followers at ilvl 615, the second tier of level 100 missions unlocks, at 630 the third tier unlocks (includes missions with ilvl 645 gear for your character), and when you have followers at ilvl 645 the fourth tier unlocks.

The fourth tier is special in that they show up rarely, but they’re raid missions for your followers that reward your character with raid quality loot of a tier higher than you’re currently running. If you’re doing LFR, you’ll get normal quality raid loot, if you’re running normal raids you’ll get heroic quality loot, and heroic raiders will get mythic quality loot. Mythic raiders will get mythic loot and 1k gold.

These missions show up rarely enough that you won’t be able to deck out your character in these items before the next raid zone shows up, but having a handful of them will give you a nice edge.The level you’re currently running will be roughly determined by having ‘weeks’ of experience in a zone at that difficulty, Get more info on the followup blue post.
Fact #20: Blackrock Foundry There are 3 wings in the Blackrock Foundry raid, and you can do the wings in any order. Then you can kill the end boss. There’s also a quest that takes several weeks to complete, rewarding you with a key to skip most of the bosses and go right to the last ones. (We’re still tracking down the official source on that, though it seems to be legit). This makes loot choices interesting.
Fact #21: Professions & Garrisons This one comes from a tip in the comments section, thank you! Once you learn the scroll that takes your crafting profession cap to 700 (you get 1 from a quest on your faction’s initial zone and if you have more than 1 crafting profession or change professions you can get them from a quest item dropped by mobs) you will be able to purchase your profession’s crafting recipes from a vendor in Ashran (On your faction’s hub). These recipes are purchased with a special currency appropriate to each crafting profession and you can get them from a daily cooldown (like “Secret of Draenor Blacksmithing”).While having a small garrison building that matches your professions will give you access to more cooldown-based ingredients (like “Truesteel Ingot” for blacksmiths) and ease of access to the professions recipe vendor within your garrison, you can still learn all the recipes and craft all the items if you build different garrison buildings or if you don’t use your garrison at all.Having a small garrison building for a profession you do not have will give you access to work orders to make that professions crafting materials and to most of the Draenor items crafted by that profession, depending on the level of your building. However, the best items each profession can craft are still restricted to heroes with the corresponding professions (like items to improve weapons and armors or the best enchants)
Fact #22: Skipping Bosses in WoD There are several bosses you can skip and still kill the end boss. After killing the end boss, if you want to go back and kill the ones you skipped, you can. (source)
Fact #23: No gate for Mythic You will not need to clear Heroic in order to run mythic raids on WoD. (source)
Fact #24: Ordos Ordos will continue to require a legendary cloak to access. Thanks to our comment section for catching this for me!
Fact #25: Loot based lockouts Patch 6.0.2 launched a different boss/raid lockout system. Instead of locking you out because you already killed a boss, you can now enter and help your friends kill any boss they want (regardless of if you’ve already killed it). Instead, the lockout is loot-based: you can kill any boss again (and again) in the same week, you just won’t get loot from it.
Fact #26: Hallows End: Upgraded Loot! Hallows End drops have been upgraded to iLevel 540. There are new pets. AND… you can get a Lich King costume (for Tricky Treats from a vendor), that has 50 charges.
Fact #27: Garrison mission spreadsheet It details required level & item levels, duration, if it’s rare, and more.
Fact #28:Garrison Build Order Guide A post by Denizly from MMO-C is a really excellent guide for Garrisons, including suggested build orders based on your play style. For example, the guide outlines the best build order for leveling up, raiding, gold making and altoholics. And there’s also a garrison guide for pet collectors over at warcraftpets.com.
Fact #29: Garrison followers: Bodyguards Some of your followers can be bodyguards – they follow you into battle (not instances though) and help you fight. As you gain reputation with them, they get stronger and get more abilities (like CC). And level 3 gives them special perks, like opening a portal to your garrison no matter where you are, or giving you access to mission table from anywhere, or even REPAIRS! (battle.net post)
Fact #30: Normal & Heroic raids scale to 30 in WoD Remember, Normal is the new Flex, and Heroic is the new normal!
Fact # 31: Garrosh Heirlooms They will scale as you level up from 90 to 100, ending at item Level 620. And note, all versions (LFR, Normal, etc) converge at level 620 (thanks to @lumpythegnome for the tip!)
Fact #32: Dungeons There will be 8 dungeons on launch. 4 are tuned to various levels between 90 and 99. The other 4 are tuned for level 100. To queue for heroic difficulty of dungeons in the group finder, you will need a silver medal from the Proving Grounds.
Fact #33: Guild leveling is gone & perks changed Courtesy of @Medros from AllThingsAzeroth Patch 6.0.2 removed the guild levelling system, and all guilds will essentially be the equivalent of a level 25 guild. Regarding perks we have now, some will be going away including the very profitable cash flow, as it was being abused by some people, and others will be built into the game, such as Flight path taxis just inherently moving 25% faster instead of requiring “Ride Like the Wind”; and Honor rewards and item costs can be balanced as if you had “Honorable Mention”. The perks that will remain, and be automatic upon the guild’s creation, are Mount Up, Hasty Hearth, Mobile Banking, The Quick and the Dead, Guild Mail, Mass Resurrection.
Fact #34: Apexis crystals The popular comparison is that “Apexis Crystals are the new Valor.” You can buy gear with them, as well as bonus rolls (more on that soon), and a few other misc things. – iLevel 630 gear costs 3,000-5000 crystals (depending on slot) (same iLevel as heroic dungeons) – iLevel 645 costs an additional 9000-11500 plus a turnin of the 630 item (slightly better than LFR Highmaul, which is iLEvel 640) – iLevel 655 costs and additional 14,500 – 20,000 plus a turnin of the 645 item (same iLevel as Normal (old Flex difficulty) Highmaul) How fast do you get them? You can choose between 1 of 2 Garrison daily quests: one gives 800 apexis crystals, another quest (group or pvp) gives 1000 crystals. There are other sources that drop much less (like rare spawns, at about 30 or less). Watch Asmongold’s video on Apexis Crystals.
Fact #35: Banks & Crafting When 6.0.2 hits, you will be able to visit your bank and unlock a special reagent storage area. This allows you to access your crafting materials from anywhere, so you can craft on the go! – Costs 100 gold to unlock the reagent bank (pic) – There’s a handy button to to deposit all reagents! – It has 98 slots (14×7) (pic)
Fact #36: Upper Blackrock Spire When 6.0.2 hits, for a limited time, you will be able to run a redesigned UBRS appropriate for level 90 characters. And it drops level 550 gear.
Fact #37: Reforged Gear All gear will be reverted to its pre-reforged state once 6.0.2 hits. That means reforges will be reset. And in case anyone has been completely out of the news, reforging is gone! (video from vittoriya)
Fact #38: Flying Mounts There is no flying in WoD. All flying mounts can be used on the ground where flying isn’t allowed.
Fact #39: Bonus Rolls The new bonus roll currency is “Seal of Tempered Fate.” You can get 3 a week and they can be obtained 4 different ways. However there’s a catch: each way you obtain it gets more expensive on the 2nd and 3rd ‘purchase’ for that week. For example, you can buy them with gold. 500 gold for the first purchase, 1,000 for the second, and 2,000 for the third. So the optimal way to obtain them is 1 of each currency each week. -Gold -Honor -Apexis Crystals -Garrison resources (although, these are precious early on and you might not want to use them) Thanks to asmongold for his youtube video on this subject.
Fact #40: Resurrection charges From the patch notes: “Upon engaging a boss, all combat resurrection spells will have their cooldowns reset and begin with 1 charge. Charges will accumulate at a rate of 1 per (90/RaidSize) minutes.” This will affect those last minute rezzes you might want right before enrage timers. If anyone knows WoD enrage timers, leave a comment. I’ll add them to this fact and give you a shout out! Below is a list of how often you accumulate a rez charge: 10 players: 9 minutes 11 players: 8:11 minutes 12 players: 7:30 minutes 13 players: 6:55 minutes 14 players: 6:26 minutes 15 players: 6 minutes 16 players: 5:38 minutes 17 players: 5:18 minutes 18 players: 5 minutes 19 players: 4:44 minutes 20 players: 4:30 minutes 21 players: 4:17 minutes 22 players: 4:05 minutes 23 players: 3:55 minutes 24 players: 3:45 minutes 25 players: 3:36 minutes
Fact #41: Enchants You can only enchant 4 slots for WoD gear: rings, neck, cloak and weapons. Weapon enchant appearances can be changed (cosmetic) – a nice option for those of us who like to transmog and have a cool look 🙂 Old MoP enchants can’t be applied to gear above iLevel 600.
Fact #42: Crafted Gear The upgrade-able crafted gear that you can get in WoD has a unique-equip constraint: you can only have 3 of those crafted items on at a time. And this spans across professions. Here’s an example of one of those items (and its upgrades): Truesteel Helm starts at 640 and upgrade to 655 and 665. Note the tooltip that says “Unique-Equipped: Warlords Crafted (3).” We verified this in game, thanks to @TheOneOnDruryLane, a developer on the TradeSkillMaster addon.
Fact #43: PERKS! As you level up from 92-98 you get a new thing called, Perks. They modify existing abilities (they aren’t new abilities). They are different for each class specialization, and you get one at level 92, 94, 96, and 98. However, the one you actually get at each level is randomized. For a list of perks, choose the perk tab at the bottom right section of this WoWhead guide.
Fact #44: Inventory The default UI will allow you to sort your bags, and will color code items based on quality (epic items have a purple border, for example).
Fact #45: Garrisons & crafted gear Several garrison buildings will be able to craft both the rare and epic quality gear that professions can craft (see fact #47). They will not be able to craft the things you need (like Greater Truesteel essense) to upgrade them, however.
Fact #46: Cooking Cooking has changed a bit. The number of servings you get from food & feasts increases with your cooking skill.
Fact #47: Crafted gear Each profession that can make gear, can make upgrade-able BoE items that are as good at Normal Mode iLevels for both Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry. Recall WoD normal mode is the same as MoP Flex mode. An example item, the Steelforged Dagger starts at level 630 and can be upgraded to 645 and 655. And epic craftable items like Truesteel Helm start at 640 and upgrade to 655 and 665 by using Truesteel Essence and Greater TrueSteel Essence.
Fact #48: Gear enchancements Gems, enchants, food, etc all affect secondary stats only (not primary). With 1 exception: flasks will give you +200 / +250 (normal, greater) to a primary stat.
Fact #49: Item levels Highmaul is the first raid, followed by Blackrock Foundry. Item levels on gear from those raids are below. Highmaul | Blackrock Foundry LFR – 640 | 650 Normal – 655 | 665 Heroic – 670 | 680 Mythic – 685 | 695
Fact #50: Hit & Expertise All Hit & Expertise will be gone with Patch 6.0.2. Hit is replaced with Crit and Expertise is replaced with Haste. For example, Rigid River’s Heart is now +20 Crit (instead of +20 Hit).

Have a lesser-known fact you want to share? Leave it in the comment and if I use it, I’ll give you credit 🙂