Basic Quest Help
So, you’ve just entered Strangle Thorn Valley! You make your way down the road to Booty Bay. You pick up tons of quests, but have no idea where to go or what to do. Most of the guild is wrapped up in an instance, and you have no one else to ask for help. Do you give up? Never! Today I’m going to give a few tips to help you out!
Cartographer
First off, let’s get you set up with an add-on that will help you out tremendously, Cartographer. (Go to the Wiki for more information on the add-on.)
The two biggest features that will help you out are the coordinates, and Foglight. Coordinates are fairly universal now, and are usually incredibly accurate. Just like in the real world, think of coordinates like a GPS system for you to find your way to a location. When you pull up the map, you can usually see the coordinates in the lower, left-hand corner of the screen. When you move your cursor over the map, the coordinates are updated.
Foglight shows the areas on the map you haven’t yet explored, making it easier to quickly pin-down areas you might need to go to for a quest. (Also to avoid obstacles, enemy camps, etc.) I typically will have unexplored areas in purple, but transparent enough where I can see what’s there.
Detailed Quest Help
OK, so you now have an incredible add-on that overhauls your map. You now have coordinates, the ability to add notes/waypoints, and can uncover areas you haven’t yet been to. However, one thing Cartographer does not do, is pop-up the names of areas you haven’t been to yet. It also won’t tell you exactly where you need to go. For that, we’re going to use another resource on the web: Thottbot. (Alternatives: Wowhead, WoWDigger.)
Side Note: I use Thottbot because I have found it has more screen shots, and better methods of highlighting user comments that help with the quest. It may not be the best looking out of the bunch, but it’s quicker IMHO.
Using Thottbot is extremely easy. The front page looks a lot like Google. (Simple, straight-forward.) In most cases, just type the name of the quest and hit your ENTER key, or just hit the Go button. As an example, type the quest name ‘Pretty Boy Duncan’ (without the quotes). It should bring you to THIS page. It gives you a couple of options because there are two objects that match what you searched for: A creature, and a quest. The creature link will usually tell you where to find him/her/it, what it does/sells/etc. The quest helps with the task, and that’s the option we want. So, click on “Pretty Boy” Duncan under the quest portion of the page.
The quest page gives out all kinds of incredibly useful information. Up at the top, we see the appropriate level for the quest, the region, the quest text given when you first get the quest, and the text when you complete it. You’ll also find the possible rewards, where it starts/ends at, if it’s a part of a series, and any screenshots that have been included with this quest. After all of that, you have the comments that people have made on the quest. Generally, everything will have comments, and the ones to really look for, are the ones that are highlighted. They will frequently give you coordinates and other very helpful tips to get you through the quest. In this case, we find Duncan at the coordinates of 27,70.
Putting It All Together & Advanced Techniques
So, pull up your Cartographer map, and find the coordinates 27,70. (Should be a little north west-ish of the entrance to Booty Bay.) If you need to, CTRL+Right-Click to create a waypoint. Hopefully from Thottbot, you obtained a few tips on how to complete the quest. Now, you could always make a note on the map for future reference. For a lot of situations, using Cartographer in combination with Thottbot will save you a lot of time/frustration.
As you get better at using these tools, you’ll learn other techniques. For example: You’ve just emptied all of your bags, loaded up on all possible quests in the area. Do you just start at the top of the list? Or perhaps maybe take a few moments to plot out where you’re going to need to go for each quest? Zig-zagging takes up precious questing time. If you can do your quests in some sort of ‘loop,’ you’ll be a lot more efficient!
February 05 2008 08:27 am | Noob Help
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
