Rogue helpFollow

Most of the itmes you'll get at low levels (below 20 for sure) will come from quests and/or items that you pick up from mobs you've killed. At level 11, chances are you won't have much to go with but should persevere with what you've got. Look out for any leather items or weapons you pick up that have their names in green - these are better quality than the white items such as the gladius and the militia dagger.

Also, look on this website, just below the Allakhazam title bar - the items menu will lead you to see weapons and armor that can be found.

The other thing to note is your playstyle. Rogues aren't meant to take on groups of mobs, they don't have heavy armor so pick your fights carefully. Trust me, it will get easier as you get more skills and more equipment. Oh and don't be surprised if you don't fill all your available equipment slots for a while. My current guy is a hunter, level 26, and he doesn't have a head item or any trinkets.

Shoulder items don't start showing up until level 18+ or so (there may be a couple of exceptions, but my last two toons didn't get 'decent' shoulder items until level 21). Head items take even longer...sometimes you won't find a decent one until the 25-30 stretch. It's all a part of the progression as you level your toon.

As far as gear guides...WoW isn't so straightforward with gear as FFXI was. In FFXI, there was a very limited amount of gear. If you had craft lists for the different professions and a list of NM drops, you were squared away. Quest rewards were also an option but the quest rewards in FFXI are night and day compared to WoW.

With WoW, you'll notice 4 general 'categories' of gear: crafted, quest rewards, world drops, and dungeon drops. The crafted and quest reward items are pretty straightforward static items. The dungeon drops are also static items...a given dungeon boss has specific loot in his main loot table from which the game selects one or two items at random. Anything above and beyond that is gravy.

World drops is where WoW itemization gets a level of depth and variety that you'll never see in FFXI. For starters, there *are* specific items that can drop from any mob in the world (which is to include dungeon mobs and not just specifically bosses) that have set names and stats. Then there are the randomly generated world drops. If you do a check on the auction house, you'll see all kinds of items that follow the same naming conventions [descriptor] [item type] of the [stat set]. (ie. Soldier's Gauntlets of the Bear or Magician's Gloves of the Owl).

Over time you get to recognize the descriptor as a vague reference to the minimum level to equip the item. The 'item type' references where you might expect to wear them, and the 'stat set' is what you want to focus on. For rogues, leather gear 'of the Monkey' is fantastic at early levels (agility and stamina)

If you're so inclined, do a little reading here to find out which stats benefit rogues the most and (very important) why they are a benefit to you. Then keep your eyes peeled for those stats on quest rewards and drops. (Keep in mind that some leather quest rewards are intended mainly for druids...don't be put off by leather quest rewards with intellect and +nature damage, for example).

As far as armor goes, don't be too put off if some of your gear falls many levels behind. My rogue just hit 27 tonight and I'm still wearing the level 13 (14?) gloves I bought on auction...I put a +7 agility enchant on them before I shipped them over to my rogue and there simply hasn't been anything better come my way. Avoid (see also: avoid) (aka: avoid) buying gear from auction. You've got other more important things to save for and buying gear from auction is never a necessity. Ever. It just so happens that I've got 2 other 70s Alliance side on my rogue's realm that can afford to buy gear, augment it a bit, and then forward it to my rogue for misuse and abuse.

Also, you didn't mention which professions you had chosen for yourself. Since this is your first WoW toon, you may do well for yourself to take up skinning and leatherworking. Don't fret...compared to FFXI, leveling a profession and getting usable items out of it is very viable in WoW. Skinning is one of the easiest gathering professions to level (you can skin pretty much any beast you kill) and if you ever find yourself lamenting the state of your gear, you can go out, kill some mobs, skin them, and in short order you'll have some swanky new gear to fill in the icky spots.

Since we're talking professions, make sure you haven't overlooked first aid. A rogue without bandages is a sad panda, indeed. First aid is something that I skill up on all of my toons, no question. It uses the cloth you get from killing most humanoids level 6 and above to make bandages. Don't expect to be able to bandage in combat, but it's a faster way to recover HP out of combat than sitting and eating or waiting for your health to come back up on its own.

Lastly, keep in mind the Westfall is a level 10-20 zone. Any melee class tends to be fairly gear dependent and Rogues are no exception. Take a look at the quest lists here on Alla and make sure you didn't miss out on any quests in Elwynn that would offer you a green dagger or one-handed sword/mace. Since your main abilities at your level are based on your weapon damage + modifier (ie. Sinister Strike, Backstab), having a little extra oomph in your main hand slot is very, very handy. Again, do not under any circumstances get in the habit of blowing your gold on gear from auction every other level, but if you can't turn up any Elwynn quests that would give you a decent upgrade, check the auction for a suitable green main-hand weapon...if you're persistant, you should be able to snag one for 25-50s. In this case, don't worry about any modifiers...it doesn't matter if the weapon has Spirit and/or Intellect on it...if the weapon damage alone is a good boost over what you've currently got, give it a shot until you get some quest rewards to fill in the gaps.

Finally, if Westfall is still getting you down, go back into Stormwind, head to the NE corner of the city (the Dwarven District) and go through the portal to the Deeprun Tram. Hop on the tram and it will take you to Ironforge. Check your map to find the exit from Ironforge (it'll be in the southern area of the map) and leave the city...follow the road out and watch the sign markers at each junction. You're looking for a place called "Kharanos". Go there. It's the dwarven equivalent to Goldshire and will have several quests you can do that will be fast and easy at your level. It'll give you a bit of a boost to xp, probably give you a couple more gear upgrades, and have you coming back to Westfall in the 12-13 range. Whenever possible, I like to be 2-3 levels above the quests I'm trying to do or the mobs I'm trying to kill...it's faster and safer kills which translates to faster xp in the long run.

Edited, Aug 24th 2008 9:19pm by AureliusSir

My advice for you is to pick up everything from everything you kill and sell it. That's how you make money until you can actually use your professions.

It also annoys me when either of my skinners is running around, and I see a lot of dead normally-skinnable mobs that I can't skin. You're wasting your own money, AND other people's money!

You'll be in leather. Find stuff with agility and stamina. Strength isn't bad, though.

You start skinning by buying it from a skinning trainer, then you must buy a skinning knife! Most beasts can then be skinned after you loot them.

You still have a few levels before you should get into your first instance, but you'll be invited to a group, summoned to the door, and then you just follow everyone inside. It's a separate part of the game with stronger mobs, requiring a group to beat them.

As for "spec", you should read the sticky. It has all information on the talent trees. Mostly, you want the Combat tree to level with.

And I suggest against joining a guild for a long time. I have never had any luck with a "leveling guild." Just a bunch of green spam in your chat box.

I'm sorry that FFXI has...broken you D:

You're brand new to the game and there's a learning curve. Leather armor with any combination of Agility, Stamina, and/or Strength is teh gewd. There's a ton of information online about professions including how and where to learn them, how to advance them, etc. The first easily accessible instance for Alliance players is Deadmines...it just so happens that it's in the SW corner of Westfall, but you'll want to be level 14-16 before you seriously start thinking about finding a group to try it out. A "run" is basically a group doing a dungeon. Someone who asks, "hey...you want to run Deadmines?" is the same as them asking, "hey...you want to join a group and go into Deadmines?"

At level 10, you will have gained access to your talent trees. The icon is next to your spellbook on your main UI action bar...looks kinda like an arrow sticking into the target. Also lots of information online about what talent trees are, and where you might want to spend your talent points to get the most bang for your buck while leveling. "Spec" is not something that really comes into play until at least level 50. At level 50, you will have earned enough talent points to reach the last tier in a talent tree if you so choose. Even then, you don't really hear too many people talking about specific specs until level 70 where your choice of spec determines to a greater or lesser degree how you would perform in a particular endeavor (ie. 5-man dungeons, raids, arena, etc.)

Why in God's name do you care what your character looks like?

If you care about your character's looks, go play Guild Wars or some other crappy MMO.

Better yet, go play Hello Kitty Island Adventure.

Just curious to see what the average high level rogue looks like. Anyway, what's considered a high amount of money in this game? I've made about 7 G today selling leather.

I'm not asking for anything. Just want to see what a high level rogue looks like and what amount of gold will take me far.

High level rogues fresh to 70, like most any other class, look like sh*t. It's not usually until you start getting into set gear from raids, battlegrounds/arena, or even D3 dungeon sets that you start to look anything remotely resembling 'cool'. Honestly, log into the game...stand around Stormwind and watch for a level 70 rogue to run buy...answer your own question. What do you really expect us to do beyond give you opinions? This isn't FFXI...you don't get artifact gear that makes everyone of the same class look the same. This game has...diversity...amazing, I know, but it's true.

As for gold, you will need the following:

Gold for class training. You can check what it will cost you by talking to your class trainer. It can get fairly pricey in the 60-70 stretch, but it's manageable.

Gold for mounts. 35g at 30 for training. 10g for the mount.
600g at 60 for training. 100g for the mount.

Note that for both your level 30 and 60 mounts, faction reputation discounts come into play. If you're exalted with the faction where you buy your mount, you'll pay 20% less.

At level 70, 800g will cover your basic riding training. 100g pays for your normal flying mount.
5000g pays for your epic riding training. 200g pays for your basic epic flying mount.

No faction discount can be applied to flight training/standard mounts.

So add that up and mounts alone (not accounting for faction discount) are going to cost you upwards of 6500g.

Start saving. That's why I mentioned earlier that buying gear from auction on a regular basis is a bad, bad idea.


Edited, Aug 25th 2008 9:32pm by AureliusSir

2g for a stack of Light Leather is fine. Each server's economy is slightly different but, yes, leathers will tend to go up in value as you skin higher level leathers of mobs. And don't worry about that scale of money so far - it will work well as a consistent money supply. At lower levels you won't need momentous amounts of gold since skills and repairs won't cost large amounts of money.

Just keep it up. Sounds like you're doing well :)

When you hit 70 you'll have a ton of dailies available for you to do, ranging from 7g each to almost 19g each. You can do them, well, daily, and make tons of cash if needed. If you did nothing but 2 hours of dailies every day you'd make upwards of 250g/day, just from dailies. So keep saving, don't buy gear off the AH, and you'll be fine when you get there.

I'm 32 right now with about 25hours played leveling. Solo, you should be able to get to 70 in 3-5 days played.


Run instances or keep your eyes out for any sword drop or quest reward.

I hate to tell you to buy the items, as they are usually pricey due to inflation.