Hey everyone, Cataclysm is finally here, and for the last few days, millions of players have returned to Classic to see what the fuss is all about regarding this expansion. Is it good, or is it really as bad as everyone thinks? Well, after playing it solidly for five days, reaching level 85, and getting most of my pre-BIS, I can tell you that me and millions of other players are really enjoying it so far. But throughout the last few days, I learned a lot of very useful tips and tricks that saved me a lot of time, made my character much stronger, and overall allowed me to have a much smoother journey through revamped Azeroth. Today, I’m going to share all these tips with you, so you can apply them too and benefit from them. So, without further ado, let’s get into it.

Understanding Item Level in Cataclysm

First, let’s talk about the concept of bag Item Level in Cataclysm . Currently, you need an average Item Level of 329 to access random heroic dungeons in the LFG tool. Later in the expansion, we’re going to get Titan Rune Dungeons, and the minimum average Item Level to access those will likely be raised. This tip should be useful throughout the expansion. An Item Level of 329 is decently easy to obtain; however, if you’re still missing those last elusive few items to reach that, there is a very easy way for you to boost this quite easily.

Boosting Your Item Level

You see, what the LFG tool is looking at to let you queue for random heroics isn’t actually the average Item Level of the gear you have equipped, but rather the average Item Level of every piece of gear you can equip that is in your bags.

I think you see where I’m going with this. Instead of waiting until you reach an average equipped Item Level of 329, you could, for example, go to a reputation vendor and start buying gear that you can equip, which will boost your average bag Item Level. Start with a gear slot that you have the lowest Item Level with and work your way up from there. For example, my second trinket currently is only Item Level 318; however, by following this strategy, you can raise your Item Level significantly.

Effective Use of Tanking Trinkets

I have this tanking trinket I got in a heroic dungeon that is Boosting my bag eye level for that slot by a decent amount. Of course, you don’t want to abuse this; don’t go Boosting your bag eye level and then try to tank a heroic dungeon, for example, as you’ll get steamrolled out of existence quite fast. But, keep this tip in mind for now and for the future.

The Importance of Reforging in Cataclysm

Next, to stay on the topic of gear, a lot of people, and me included until a couple of days ago, really neglect the power of Reforging in Cataclysm . Just like any expansion before it, many classes have what is known as stat caps. The most popular example of this is hit rating for melee; you need 8% hit to never miss against a boss. For casters, it’s 17%. But there’s also expertise for melee or haste rating for casters, which all have caps. Those stats are going to have a huge impact on your character’s power until you reach those caps, so you should really prioritize reaching them.

The good news is, unlike in Vanilla, TBC, or Wrath, reaching those caps is now way easier thanks to Reforging. Basically, you always want to reforge any secondary stat that doesn’t have a cap for your class into a secondary stat that does, until you reach that cap. For example, as an Arms Warrior, I need to reach the hit cap of 8% and the expertise cap of 6.82% to never miss or get any attacks dodged or parried. Until then, I’ll need to reforge any crit, haste, or mastery on my gear into either hit or expertise.

Choosing the Right Gear with Pawn

Lastly, regarding gearing, generally speaking, if an item has a higher Item Level, it’s probably an upgrade for you, but that’s not true 100% of the time. To know exactly and instantly if something is an upgrade for you when it drops, there’s a very solid add-on called Pawn. However, Pawn by default is not very useful, which is why you need to pair it with simming your gear.

Navigating Cataclysm Dungeons

Alright, let’s move on from gearing and look at some more general tips. First, let’s talk about dungeons in Cataclysm. Heroic dungeons are no pushover compared to Wrath, but they’re still relatively easy to go through for the most part. However, there are some bosses where you’ll pretty much need to know what to do in advance to not risk wiping everyone. Thinking about Cora in Black Rock Caverns, for example. Thankfully, Cataclysm has a tool that lets you do just that: the Dungeon Journal. With this, you’ll know exactly what every boss does and what you, as a player, are supposed to do. I suggest you go through this as you’re running to the next boss while doing a heroic dungeon. This will probably save you a run to the graveyard sometime.

Joining a Guild and Its Benefits

If you haven’t already, you should really join a Guild ASAP—any Guild, really. That’s because guilds have a lot of very useful perks and rewards that will be very useful for you all throughout your journey in Azeroth. One of these rewards is the Wrap of Unity. You unlock this at honored reputation with your Pawn, and what this does is it gives you a free teleport to your Capital City every 4 hours. This is very useful, of course, if your Hearthstone is on cooldown or if your Hearthstone is set to the zone you’re leveling in.

If you’re not yet honored with your Pawn, the fastest way to level your Pawn reputation is just to do quests, which is why it’s so important to join a Pawn before you start leveling. You’ll reach exalted way before you even make it to max level. But, if you’re max level and you’re still neutral with your Pawn, for whatever reason, go ahead and buy the tabard from the Pawn vendor in your capital city. This will increase how fast you get rep with them.

Resolving Quest NPC Visibility Issues

You’ll notice some quest givers or just NPCs related to quests straight up won’t appear. This happened to me in Uldum for the quest “Crisis Management.” The NPCs I needed to talk to wouldn’t appear, and I sat there for a solid 10 to 15 minutes trying to figure out what was going on. The tip here is to just fly out of the zone you’re currently in and go back to it. This should fix the phasing of the mobs. It only happened to me twice, and both times it was in Uldum, so I think this is only an Uldum bug. If something that’s meant to be there isn’t there, flying in and out of the zone might fix it.

Travel Tips for Reaching Uldum

Speaking of Uldum, the first time you need to go there, you’ll notice that you have a long journey ahead of you, especially if you’re Alliance in Stormwind. Uldum is a solid 10 minutes of flying and one boat ride away from Stormwind. Thankfully, there is a faster way to get there the first time, and that’s by going to Dalaran and taking the teleporter to the Caverns of Time in the big tower to the west of the city. Of course, Dalaran might be equally long to get to for you, so you can just ask a mage to port you there if you don’t have the ring.

Navigating High-Level Zones and Vashj’ir

Once you start questing in Uldum, and this goes for any high-level Cataclysm zone too, you’ll unlock portals to those zones straight from your capital city. If you decided to quest through Vashj’ir, you’ll notice that you will quickly get stuck in this zone with no way to go up out of it until you finish it if you moved your Hearthstone there. However, in reality, you’re not actually stuck. All you need to do is swim up to the surface, and you’ll go above the water. From there, equip your flying mount and go to the flight master on the little island at the surface and fly to wherever you want to go.

Exploring Tol Barad’s Additional Quest Hubs

Three days into the expansion, there’s actually a second quest hub for the Tol Barad dailies. The Baradin Wardens is a faction that sells very strong trinkets at exalted, and that will last you for quite a while, so you really want to get that rep to exalted ASAP. The fastest way to level their reputation up is through doing their dailies. However, as you teleport to Tol Barad, you’ll be put at the main quest hub, which contains six dailies.

But, and this is what I completely didn’t know about until a couple of days ago, if you go south to the second zone, there’s actually a second quest hub at Baradin Hold. If your faction controls Baradin Hold, which it probably does considering how one-sided servers are nowadays, you’ll get a further 12 quests to do. I guess I didn’t figure that out until someone told me because the map is a bit weird, and it doesn’t go to the southern part of Tol Barad if you click there where Baradin Hold is. The only way to see it is to use the menu at the top. But yeah, if you didn’t know, like me, there you go.

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