WoW Cheats

   1. As with Outland, you’ll find a fairly steep difficulty curve increase here, especially if you’ve taken the advice I gave last week and come here at level 68. The monsters hit harder and have more health than their similarly leveled counterparts in Outland. The gap isn’t as drastic as it was when jumping from Azeroth to Outland at 58, but it still could prove a bit of a shock. Be prepared.
   2. You’ll find the quest design here to be improved even over that found in Outland. The hubs are all over the place, and multiple quests will send you to the same place. The quests themselves are largely a vast improvement, having relatively clear objectives and being routinely very fun to complete. Clear your quest logs of any leftovers from Outland so you can pick up anything and everything you come across here. Trust me.
   3. Quest upgrades are, as with the last expansion, by and large a pretty vast improvement over whatever you’ve got on from Nagrand or Blade’s Edge Mountains. Unless you overstayed your welcome in Outland and managed to get yourself some level 70 epics somehow, you’re going to find upgrades at every hub here. Have fun watching your spellpower, intellect, spirit, and stamina skyrocket. Also, you don’t have to worry about the whole “Hannah Montana back-up dancer” gear aesthetic we talked about last week rearing its hideous head here. Instead, you’ll soon find yourself dealing with the “awesome, now I look exactly like every other clothie on this continent” gear aesthetic. You’ll upgrade gear in Northrend only to discover that the only part of your appearance that has changed is that you’ve gone from one ugly shade of brown to another, slightly uglier shade of brown. Oh well. Maybe the gear reset will be more pleasing to the eye in the next expansion.
   4. Go to the instances early. Seriously, Northrend instances are short, fun, and simple. They reward excellent gear, and folks are always looking to group for them. Even DPS can find a group in Northrend, so don’t wait.
   5. And while we’re on the subject of instances, I have some sad news to relate: your sheeping services will no longer be needed. Seriously. Thanks to the preponderance of AoE tanking at this point in the game and the overall design of the instances found in Northrend, crowd control has sort of gone the way of the dodo, guys. Have fun pew pewing, though. Every once in awhile you’ll run into a group that requests an occasional Polymorph, in which case you can dust off your sheep hot-key, but most of the time you’ll find that you can just focus on burning things down while the Death Knight holds six different groups of mobs at once. Must be nice.
   6. Start raising your reputation with the various factions as soon as humanly possible. Though I won’t be spending much time talking about them in this leveling guide, the Northrend factions will prove to be of vital importance to you once you hit max-level, and a little time spent now completing their various quest lines will make things so much easier to top off at 80. Doing the occasional daily quest can be a nice experience boost as you go along, and the reputations rewards can be very nice gear-slot-fillers at the appropriate levels. So be nice and help those hideous seal-things mate or whatever. It sounds gross, but later on, you can buy a sweet fishing pole and a penguin.
   7. Oh, and one huge bummer: No flying mounts. That’s right, the mount you purchased a mere 8 levels ago and have been happily soaring around on through all of Outland is now grounded. To use it again, you’ll need to jump through one of two hoops. If this is your first character, you’ll have to wait until you hit level 77 and then purchase Cold Weather Flying from the trainer in Dalaran (or Sholozar Basin…or the Storm Peaks) for a cool 1,000g. Until then, you’re stuck with your land mount. If your mage is an alt, and you have a level 80 main, you can purchase an heirloom item called the Tome of Cold Weather Flight from the flight trainer in Dalaran for that same 1,000g cost. You can then mail it to your mage the moment he hits level 68, and viola, your mage can fly around to his or her heart’s content.

Choosing a Starting Zone

Northrend offers a choice of two zones to start out in. A lot of folks apparently agonize over this decision. Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord? For the love of god, which do I choose?

Here’s the answer: both. Pick one to do first. Do it. Then go do the other.

One will get you to level 70, and then the other will get you to 72ish, high enough to head to Dragonblight. You’ll want to have done both zones anyway by level 80, due to the faction rep to be gained in both places, so why not do them while the rewards and experience are still relevant? If you’re still having trouble selecting which zone to visit first, here’s how they break down:

    * Howling Fjord

Best quest rewards: Horn of the Herald, Strike of the Seas

Entry-level instance: Utgarde Keep

Aesthetic: gorgeous scenery, sweet celtic tunes

    * Borean Tundra

Best quest rewards: Tower of the Infinite Mind, Activist’s Signet of Blasting, Chain of Vigilant Thought, or its Alliance equivalent

Entry-level instance: The Nexus

Aesthetic: ugly scenery, bring music. Also, mechanized gnomes abound.

See? Now you want to visit both zones, right?

Level 70

New spells: Ritual of Refreshment, Spellsteal

68 and 69 should go extremely quickly, whichever zone you hit first. Just do the normal questing thing and put together a nice set of upgraded Northrend gear and you should be sitting pretty by the time you ding 70.

The new spells here are a bit underwhelming. Ritual of Refreshment will make you even more popular in instances, as it allows you to provide chow for everybody with one click. Convenient, to be sure, but not especially thrilling.

Spellsteal is more exciting in theory than it is in practice. I mean, look at that tooltip. Sounds pretty cool, right? Well, it is…and it isn’t. There are a lot of nifty effects you can swipe from folks with this spell. Imagine yoinking a Priest’s Power Word: Shield from them right when they’re counting on it to stop that incoming Pyroblast. Sexy, right? And in instances, there are a few truly impressive places to use the spell. Wowwiki has a list of the effects you can steal, and though it needs to be updated to reflect Wrath of the Lich King instances, you can certainly see the potential here.

The problem is threefold: first, the spell costs too much mana to cast as often as necessary to be a truly effective PvP spell. Second, the effect stolen is random, again hurting the spell’s PvP viability. And third, because its usefulness is so incredibly situational, chances are good that you’ll almost never remember to use it. Seriously, Spellsteal will probably end up sitting there on your action bar, one of those icons you remember being interesting enough to put on the bar, but overlook almost every time a good opportunity to use it arises. Still, you’ll hear stories of times this spell did something awesome for someone, and with a great deal of practice, it can indeed be very cool.

The big news at level 70, of course, is the ability to train in epic flight. This is just like regular flight, only epic-er. It’s incredibly fast, and will speed up every aspect of leveling so much it’s ridiculous. Of course, if this is your first character, epic flight won’t help you until you hit level 77 and can re-learn the ability to fly. Also, it costs a freaking bunch of money. I’m not even kidding. Epic flight will be your single biggest purchase yet. Without faction discounts applied, the cost is 5,000g. That honestly won’t take you long to earn in Northrend, where the mobs crap money, but it’s still probably more cash than you have on hand. If your mage is an alt, buy it ASAP. It’s totally worth the money. If your mage is your main, there’s no point in buying it until you can buy Cold Weather Flying also.

Level 71

New spell: Teleport: Dalaran

It’s time to take a short detour into Dragonblight. Completing a very simple quest there will earn you the ability to teleport to Dalaran, the capital city of Northrend, and the mage capital of the world. Seriously, this place is mage heaven. I’m suprised they don’t kill warlocks on sight here. In fact, I find deeply offensive that they don’t. Which is why, in 2010, I’ll be putting my name on the ballot for Mayor of Dalaran. I’m offcially announcing my candidacy here, and I hope I can count on your vote. Warlock extinction…yes we can!

Level 74

New spell: Portal: Dalran

By this point, you should be finishing up Dragonblight and heading off to Grizzly Hills, home of daily PvP quests and the soundtrack of Braveheart. Take a pit stop at Dalaran and snag your final portal spell (and the only one you’ll be casting at the end of instances from this point on).

Level 75

New spells: Frostfire Bolt, Conjure Refreshment

Oh baby, FFB. This little spell caused quite a stir when it popped onto the scene a year ago. It’s a spell that basically combines Fireball and Frostbolt into one giant ball of slush. The remarkable thing about it is that it benefits from every talent that applies to either Fire or Frost, opening up the potential for a fourth mage spec: the Elementalist, or Frostfire spec. In a nutshell, the spec entails building your mage around using Frostfire Bolt as your primary nuke, taking every talent you possibly can that the spell will benefit from, and spamming the crap out of it at every opportunity. There was a time when Frostfire was the premiere DPS spec in the game. Though deep Fire has since eclipsed it, the spec is still a viable top-tier build. And whether you use it or not, Frostfire Bolt looks pretty.

Also, mana pies. Mmmmm. Delicious mana. So tasty. This is cool, because you never again have to worry about hanging on to both a food and a water type. These mana pies will restore both health and mana, so get conjuring.

Levels 76-79

No new spells in this range, but this is a massive chunk of leveling to just gloss over. You should be spending your time here in Sholozar Basin and Zul’Drak. Though I probably should have mentioned it in the blurb for level 75, Zul’Drak is home to Northrend’s answer to the Ring of Blood questline from Nagrand we talked about last week. Gather a few friends (or just hang out in the zone for a minute and join up with whoever’s looking…there’s always somebody looking) and head to the Amphitheater of Anguish for a string of boss fights, a bunch of experience points, gold, potions, and a sweet, sweet staff. You won’t find better prior to level 80, so don’t wait.

Once you’re done with those two zones, you can advance to Icecrown and the Storm Peaks. Don’t forget to pick up Cold Weather Flying at 77, or you won’t be able to do anything in either of these zones, as the design of both assumes you are able to fly.

Your PvP options are also good in this range. You’re high enough to not be a massive liability in Wintergrasp, so feel free to spend some time gaining honor and experience there, or hit the Battlegrounds. You have the fun PvP daily quests in Grizzly Hills. The honor gain in Alterac Valley is still impressive, and though Eye of the Storm can be incredibly frustrating (because people are stupid, never forget that), it can still be a good experience-gainer, along with both of the other two old Battlegrounds. You have a lot of choice now, so switch things up, have some fun. PvP leveling doesn’t feel like so much of a grind now, and though it still isn’t on a par with pure, efficient questing, it is a perfectly viable way to reach 80.

Speaking of which…

Level 80

New spell: Mirror Image

So here we are. After eight columns, over 20,000 words, 79 levels of experience, a million or so quests, and hopefully more dead warlocks than you can wave a wand at, we’ve reached our goal. Congratulations! Now the game begins.

I’m not even kidding. If you’ve been here before, you know the drill: gear up, get your mage ready to raid, chain-run heroic dungeons, figure out how to play your class all over again…the end-game, in many respects, is the real game. If this is your first character, I have four words for you: Trial of the Champion. Get a group and go. Return with epics, or not at all.

Oh, and Mirror Image is neat. It’s more fluff than substance, to be honest, but is an effective threat management tool, slight DPS increase, and a truly splendid PvP spell. Plus, as I’ve said before: More mage is always good.

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Levels 41-49

Sadly, there are no new spells from 41-49, at least not the ones you can learn from trainers. Use this as an opportunity to perfect your mastery of the skills you already have, I guess.

Instances to run in this range include:

* Uldaman (out-of-the-way, but full of good lore, and to an improbably large lady)
* Zul’Farrak (desert trolls, good loot, loads of quests to complete, and on my server, at least, it’s one of the few old-world instances I still see people looking to group for…just be careful not to kill the goblin before he blows up the door to the last boss encounter)
* Maraudon (Incredibly long, and full of plants. Plants that want to eat you. I hate this place. But it does have some good loot.)

Level 50

New spells: Portal: Darnassus or Thunder Bluff

Mages hit several milestones at level 50. First, we get our second major glyph slot. There are a lot of good choices at this point to fill that slot, so take a look at what’s affordable in the auction house and pick something that you like.

Second, you can finally complete your collection of old-world portals by traveling to either Darnassus or Thunder Bluff and snagging the appropriate portal spell there.

And third, more mage quests.

I’ve written about Archmage Xylem before, on several occasions. He hangs out in a tower high in the mountains of western Azshara and just oozes wizardry. At level 50 he’ll hand out the first part in a quest chain to your mage that will eventually lead you to the depths of Sunken Temple, pit you against a pair of giant dragons, and reward you with your choice of a dagger, necklace, or trinket.

Every class gets a similar quest to kill the same dragon, so finding a group for Sunken Temple isn’t as hard as finding one for other dungeons in this range. It’s a difficult and lengthy instance, to be sure, but I’m of the opinion that doing this chain is an essential part of magehood. Plus, that trinket is nice. Don’t waste your reward on either of the other two items. You’ll be replacing them almost immediately. But that trinket…it’ll serve you into Outland and beyond. Unless you’re not a Fire mage, of course. In which case, the trinket sucks. Three cheers for old-world itemization!

Lastly, level 50 opens up the ninth tier of your chosen talent tree, and all of the awesome talents contained therein. Seriously, this tier is stacked.

Fire mages now have access to Dragon’s Breath, which is a fantastic short-range, instant AoE spell. It strikes everything in front of the mage in a cone and dazes them all, in addition to dealing rock-solid damage. Also opening up at this level are Hot Streak, which hands out instant Pyroblasts when you crit twice in a row, and Firestarter, which triggers an instant Flamestrike whenever you cast Blast Wave or Dragon’s Breath. All of these talents are sweet.

Frost Mages can learn to summon their big blue buddy. Summon Water Elemental becomes one of the hallmarks of the spec from this point on. He does damage, he freezes opponents at range, and he gives great back rubs. Brain Freeze is also fun, giving you a reason to put Fireball back on your action bar. Nothing says “Frost mage” like throwing out the occasional free, instant ball of flame.

But perhaps no spec benefits more from the ninth tier than Arcane mages. Slow is the ultimate kiting tool. Though its mana cost is a bit high, it’s one of the best PvP spells in the game, and once you start applying it to mobs effectively, you may never be hit by a melee attack again. Also, you get access to my single favorite talent in the game: Missile Barrage. Take a moment and soak in that tooltip. That’s right, starting now, your offensive spells give you a chance to fire out a mana-free, short-channel, super-cool-looking gatling missiles. Now, finally, being an Arcane mage starts to actually feel like a good thing.

Levels 56-57

New spell: Arcane Brilliance

Yes, you read that correctly: level 56 brings you the ability to summon a sentient, overly-wordy, weekly mage column that hates warlocks…wait…I’m being told that’s not what the tooltip actually says. What’s that? Oh, ok. It’s actually just a version of the Arcane Intellect buff that costs more mana, requires a reagent, lasts longer, and affects your entire party or raid. Well, that’s still nice, right? Convenient?

One final note: this level range is really the last gasp for the old world. Enjoy it while you can. See the zones you want to see, and visit the instances that appeal to you while they still hold some benefit for you. I always advise a trip to Blackrock Depths at this point if you can manage it. It’s really the last dungeon in the old-world in the pre-Burning Crusade level range. Those that follow it aren’t really feasible before you’re high-enough level to go to Outland, and the green-quality loot that drops off the first boar you kill there will absolutely crush almost anything that drops in them.

Plus, Blackrock Depths is one of my favorite instances. It’s a vast, Dungeons & Dragons-esque, old-school rpg experience, with a wide array of bosses, interesting mechanics, and excellent lore. Put together a like-minded group, or find a willing level 80 comrade to run you through. It’s worth the trip, and the loot will set you in good stead when you make the leap through the Dark Portal.

Level 58

This is it. Though you can stay in Azeroth for a few levels if you wish, you’re really best-served heading straight to Outland at this point. It’s actually much easier to get there in this enlightened age. The major capital cities now have portals situated near the portal trainers that deposit you about two feet from the Dark Portal. Once you step through, you’re in Outland. Start picking up quests and let the massive gear-upgrade parade begin.

Be wary, though. In your mismatched old-world gear, you’ll discover that the mobs in Hellfire Peninsula are fairly formidable. They have significantly more health and hit much harder than their similarly-leveled Azerothian counterparts. Be cautious, fight tactically, and be prepared to die a few times. And watch out for the Fel Reaver. He can be seen from much farther away now, but he can still be quite stealthy, which is somewhat improbable for a giant robot. If you hear that distinctive mechanical roar, drop everything and flee. Blink, go invisible, whatever you need to do. It’s no fun to be eaten by a giant, stealthy robot.

This drastic upswing in difficulty will even out rapidly as you complete quests and upgrade to Outland gear, but at first you may find yourself longing for the cupcakes you were blasting through in the old world.

Keep pressing forward, and get yourself to level 60. What’s so great about level 60, you ask? Two words: Flying Mounts.

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In celebration of our new-found competence, we’ll be changing the content of these leveling columns a bit. We’ll no longer be giving each two-level gap its own blurb. Instead, we’ll be covering each new spell as it comes, and every major milestone at the appropriate point. If that means that more than two levels go by without a specific shout-out in the text, so be it. Enough preamble. Read on and we’ll see how it goes. If it’s terrible, we all know I’ll just blame warlocks.

And the leveling parade continues! Your mage is level 30 and you’ve grown in your mastery of the magical arts. Your Fireballs are now significantly more likely to set your enemies aflame than they are to go off in your face, you now arrive at your teleport destinations with your extremities more or less intact, and small children no longer cry at the sight of the pastries you conjure.

Level 30 is the approximate point at which I believe the way you’ve been allocating your talent points begins to define you as a mage. You have 21 talent points under your flimsy cloth belt and (unless you’ve been employing some wacky and ill-advised hybrid scheme in which you feel it’s important to have both speedy Fireballs and uninterruptable Arcane Missiles) have access to the fifth tier of your chosen tree.

If you’ve chosen the path of the Fire mage, you now likely have fast-casting Fireballs, powerful Pyroblasts, large, meaty crits, and the fifth tier brings you Blast Wave, introducing you to your almost unparalleled ability to set multiple targets aflame at once. Fire mages are one of the truly premiere AoE class/specs in the game, and Blast Wave is a significant factor in that designation. It knocks enemies back and dazes them, all while causing a lot more damage than any Arcane Explosion ever could. Later, it will become the catalyst for many an instant Flamestrike, but for now, it’s merely a taste of AoE greatness to come. Pick it up as soon as possible, then head for Arathi Basin and use it to hurl members of the opposing faction to their deaths at the Lumber Mill flag.

Frost mages now have access to full on Shatter combos, and should be enjoying freezing everything in sight, critting the crap out of them with lightning fast Frostbolts, and then Frost Novaing them place and sprinting away cackling madly. Level 30 opens up a very important weapon in a Frost mage’s arsenal: Cold Snap. This wonderful spell instantly resets the cooldown on your Frost spells, meaning that if you need a second Ice Block, or repeat performance of Icy Veins is called for, or even if you just need an emergency Frost Nova, Cold Snap basically resets the fight for you. The cooldown is long, but don’t let that keep you from using Cold Snap when it’s called for. It’s too powerful to let languish on your action bar.

Arcane is finally starting to come into its own now, and though it still falls behind the other two specs as a standalone tree at this level range, speccing Arcane is no longer the horrible idea it once was. Your Arcane Missiles are a force to be reckoned with, you have the potential for high mana efficiency and return, incredible resistance to magic, and now level 30 opens up a signature Arcane ability in Presence of Mind. This grants you an instant spell of your choice. At this level, it’s probably wise to use it for a Fireball, or possibly a Frostbolt if a snare is called for. This is another spell that becomes more useful as you gain more powerful spells to cast with it, but for now it can still cause some major damage.

If you haven’t been putting all your talent points into a single tree, now is a good time to rethink that strategy. The talents in the fifth tier are too powerful to put off having access to, and believe me when I say that whatever the talents were that you couldn’t resist taking in another talent tree, you will be better off waiting to pick them up when you’ve already taken everything you want in your primary tree. Find a mage skill trainer and pay them to let you relearn your talents. You’ll be glad you did. Your dream of a master of elements who can cast both Fireballs and Frostbolts with ease is a fine one, but better put off until level 75 or so, when you get access to a little spell called Frostfire Bolt.

Level 30

I know we covered this last week, but I neglected to mention something (er…someone) important: Tabetha. Thanks are due to reader Brian for pointing this out in last week’s comments section, because in all likelihood, I would have forgot about good old Tabetha without the prodding.

And that would have been tragic.

Tabetha is a witch who lives in Dustwallow Marsh and hands out mage quests. Way back in the dark ages when I was leveling my first mage, her tiny hut was a million miles from anywhere and incredibly difficult to locate. Now, you just follow the road. You young whippersnappers don’t know how good you got it. In my day, we had to march uphill in soggy boots through miles of swamp, fending off crocolisks as best we could, hoping against hope that at some point, we’d find that stupid hut and our miserable sojourn would finally end. Now, you can just mount up, /wave to the crocolisks as you pass, and if you get tired along the way, Mudsprocket’s like 10 feet to the south. Damn kids.

The first of these quests is handed out at level 30, and can be picked up from the mage trainer in any of the major cities. The mobs in Dustwallow are a fair bit higher level than that, making the trip slightly more perilous than I may have let on a paragraph ago. But don’t let that dissuade you. The chain of quests this leads to have a very nice reward, namely your choice of three blue-quality wands. Hint: They’re identical except that this one is better. Do with that information what you will.

Down the road, at level 35, another small chain opens up that leads to a trip to Uldaman and eventually a choice between a frankly awesome off-hand item and a staff you’ll likely be replacing in like five minutes. Hint: take the off-hand frill. Chances are better than average you won’t be finding a better one until level 60ish.

I point out these quests for two reasons:

1. The rewards are nice.
2. Every mage should do the mage quests. This isn’t even remotely an opinion. It’s a fact. Doing the mage quests is part of being a mage, and I’ll hear no arguments on the matter.

Level 34

New spell: Mage Armor

Finally, a new armor spell. From this point forward, until you get a little spell called Molten Armor, this is your instance armor spell of choice. The extra armor and slowing effect of Ice Armor is probably still more useful for solo play, but when you’re in a group and have a meat-shield up front taking the beating for you and a healbot standing behind you keeping that meat-shield alive, the extra mana return Mage Armor gives you is far more important. It’s also handy for spots when you know you’ll be fighting enemy casters, as the extra spell resistance it grants will slow the rate at which you die to their spells.

Also, this is as good a time as any to mention an alternate method of farming experience several of you have pointed out in previous installments of this leveling guide. It’s not as optimal as it once was, due to all the streamlining traditional leveling methods have undergone of late, but it still holds a certain grindalicious appeal for some. I’m talking, of course, about Frost AoE grinding.

Here’s my patented in-depth instructions for how to do it:

1. Spec Frost.
2. Take Improved Blizzard.
3. Gather up as many mobs of an applicable level as you can, then kill them.
4. Repeat over and over until you begin to bleed from your eyes and your soul withers within you like a piece of rotted fruit.
5. Ding!

There’s a bit more to it than that, of course. Go do a Google search for “mage AoE frost grinding” or something similar and you’ll find a bunch of more complex explanations than I care to give. They will be complicated and use terms like “mob anchor radius,” list optimal grinding spots for each level, and argue the merits/drawbacks of taking Frostbite as part of a grinding build. Basically, this is a method of leveling that allows you to methodically and efficiently eliminate giant packs of mobs at once, using Improved Blizzard, Frost Nova, Blink, etc.

You can do this if you like. Go forth. Head over to the Dabyrie Farm in the Arathi Highlands. Slay. You’ll make it to level 80 eventually. I’m not sure what kind of fun you’ll have, but you’ll make it there.

The thing I don’t understand is why you’d want to. Anymore, this method isn’t noticeably faster than good, solid questing. I’m not opposed to it, mind you. I just think you’d be better served by leveling almost any other way. This method can be useful, especially if you’re coupling it with the type of quests that ask you to go to a place and kill “X” number of mobs there, or simply need to clear an area to get to an objective. Use it wisely, and sparsely. Just don’t grind unceasingly. Your eyeballs and your soul will thank you.

Level 35

New spells: Teleport: Stonard or Theramore, Portal: Stonard or Theramore

Yes, for some reason, your first portal spell is to either Theramore, a small dock town on the edge of a filthy swamp, or Stonard, an even smaller town in the middle of an even filthier swamp. Before these little portal/teleport spells were implemented last year, your first portal spells were to the major cities at level 40. Now you can get this one five levels early. I’m not sure what kind of sense that makes, but whatever. Though relatively out-of-the-way, both of these zones are fairly level-appropriate right now, so feel free to take a trip to the one that your faction favors, pick up your new spells, and stick around to quest a bit if you like. Dustwallow, especially, is a very high-quality place to spend 5-10 levels, what with the newish quest hubs introduced a few of patches back and the close proximity to Tabetha’s mage quests.

Level 40

New spells: Portal: Exodar, Stormwind, Ironforge, Orgrimmar, Undercity, Silvermoon

Portal spells are just like the teleport spells you’ve been using to whiz around Azeroth for some time now, only these conjure a portal that members of your party can also use to whiz around Azeroth. From now on, you will be conjuring one (or more!) of these at the end of every instance you ever run. Keep the reagents stocked, and have fun teleporting back to all of your faction’s capitals (except Thunder Bluff or Darnassus…apparently those places are much harder to port to) to pick these bad boys up.

But the big news about level 40 is, of course, that you can now upgrade your slow and pathetic mount to a shiny epic one. It’ll cost you 45g if you’ve managed to hit honored with your home faction (and by now, unless you’ve not been questing much at all, you should have) for the training, and 10g for the mount itself. If money’s a problem, spend a bit of time making some. For the love of god, don’t be the douche that hangs around in the bank in Orgrimmar, whispering everyone for gold to buy a mount. Just go out and skin a few things, or mine a bit, or herb…alize…something, and then sell that junk at the auction house. 55 gold shouldn’t take you that long to put together. And it’s totally worth your while. That fast mount speeds everything up enormously. Plus it’s epic.

At this point, your talent trees should be filling themselves out quite nicely. You’ve reached tier seven of your chosen tree, and even more of the eventual flavor of your spec should be starting to shine through.

Fire mages have access to several talents that increase the crit chance of their Fire spells, and should now be walloping their enemies with big explosive crits in grand fashion.

Frost mages can now pick up Ice Barrier, which is one of the best defensive spells in the game. It’s a shield spell, but unlike Mana Shield, it actually absorbs a healthy amount of damage and–even more importantly–doesn’t drain your mana to do so. Keep it up whenever you’re in a position to get smacked.

Arcane mages are finally getting to the good stuff in their tree, including several talents that flat out increase the damage of all your spells, and the awesomeness that is Arcane Power. If you’ve been secretly wishing to be an Arcane mage, now might be the time to respec.