Wow Mage Guide

[burners]

Alright, let’s get started now on raising your mage. Choose a race, Intellect and Spirit being something highly wanted, Gnome has the best of those on the alliance side. Go make your character and come back for your short, but effective lessons.



Now that you have finished making your character it’s time to learn how to navigate the game. Arrow keys move you, auto run is Numlock, and space bar is your jump button. To your top left is your picture with your life and mana bars extending outward from it.



On your far upper right you will see a map, this is very useful for navigating the world. As you travel grey arrows will appear on the map, those point to near by cities, left-click on the arrows to see the city names. An orange arrow points to your corpse when you die and a light yellow arrow points to your team mates should you be teamed but not close to each other. When you team mates are close they will be show as small dots with a yellow ring around them.



On the bottom left you will see three icons, the first is attack, the next is Fireball and the third is Frost Armor. The icon corresponds to the numbers 1-10 and – and +. Pressing one will draw your staff and pressing two will cause you to cast Fireball when you have a target.



Next on your right you will see another set of icons, these consist of game settings, quest log and character information, take a peek around. Done poking around? Cool, to your further right you will see an icon on the far bottom right, which is your backpack, right click to open it. In here you will see some heal items and a stone called a hearthstone.



Now the hearthstone is super nifty, just talk to your local Inn keeper and tell him you want to rest. Doing this makes it so that when you right-click the stone you are teleported straight to the last Inn you rested at. This is really nice when you want to return from a quest quickly or just want to skip on the long run from the middle of no where. You can only use it once per hour though so use wisely. There are also four other slots next to the backpack for further bags that you can find or buy later on.



Look around at the people near you, you should see a guy around you with an exclamation point above his head, talk to him, he has a quest for you.



Anyone you see with exclamation points above their heads has quests for you. After you complete the quest an orange question mark will appear over the NPC’s head showing that they are ready to give you a reward. Now, get your first quest and head out to start killing.



After you complete a quest or two you should been two or three and get a quest to see your trainer, lets go seem him. If you don’t have the quest look around for someone offering a quest, it should be there. After you have reached your trainer take a look at your skills, pretty straight forward. Here is some of what you should see.



• Conjure Water- This skill allows you to make water out of thin air. The water, when drunk, will restore mana to you, a very nice skill.

• Frost bolt- When you start a battle with this skill make sure you are at max distance from the monster, the number next to your attack icon will turn red when you are too far away. It does nice damage and causes the target to move slower for a short time allowing you to pelt it with more spells.

• Fireball- You should be aware of what this does, but there are higher ranks for more damage. You want to level this for sure.

• Polymorph- This could easily become your best skill for running away. Cast this on your enemy and he is transformed into a sheep for twenty seconds, plenty of time to run away! Attacking him will cancel the spell.

• Conjure Food- This allows you to make some food appear which you can eat to regenerate health. Man I wish I could conjure some McDonald’s right now….

• Frost Nova- This is a great spell, does some damage but also freezes target to the spot, giving you time to back up and cast some more spells.

• Dampen Magic- When you cast this on a party member they take less magic damage, very nice against spell casters.



Well, now you have seen some of the nice spells but there are many more, all of which are pretty easy to understand. At higher level you will gain a couple of nice teleport spells and other nifty tricks, problem is that it costs a lot of cash to get all the skills at that level. You had best save young mage.



Now, to kill effectively it’s best to open with Frost bolt from a distance then pelt the monster with Fireball, should be able to cast it twice before it reaches you. Next if the monster has low life, finish him with Fireball or Fire blast. If he has a lot cast Frost Nova and back off and repeat the cycle.



When you reach level ten you will open up talents which you will want to use. Now be careful, if you are still in open beta then you can reset them, it has been said that after launch you can’t so remember that when launch hits. Your talent points will be best spent on your fire and cold spells since you will be using them to kill mostly. Extend your freeze time and add a stun to the fire, you will find these both wise investments. After that sink into reducing cast time and increasing damage.



Well, there isn’t much more for me to say aside from remind you to stay on top of your quests and remember that intellect and spirit items are good for the mana increase, crit increase, and regain rate. When you get about 10 or so Westfall becomes the best place for alliance, can really say for horde as I haven’t played there yet.



Best of luck