What To Look Out For When Levelling a New Alt

It always surprises me how quickly Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival rolls around. This month the topic fits in very nicely with my two ongoing subjects - Project Shoofly (levelling like a newbie gold maker) & my farming series. So June's topic is:

What Are Some Things You Recommend Players Look Out For While Leveling A New Character In WoW?

This is actually quite a wide ranging subject & my answer depends very much on what type of player is leveling the new character. I won't go into the very basics for a really new player or even touch on stuff for a very experienced gold-making one. I'm aiming this post at the mid-range player - someone who has a few characters already, has a few professions underway (maybe maxed) & knows what kind of things they may come across whilst leveling.

Profession Bottlenecks

Talking of professions - there's your first hint of what to watch out for. Remember when you settled down to level 30 or 40 points on your professions one evening because you had everything you needed? Yup, me too & then there's that one recipe/pattern that you missed & you are one 'gidget' short but when you go to the Auction House, there are no 'gidgets' for sale or they are at really stupid high prices but you buy it anyway because it's just one bit & you're on a roll & want to keep those skill points rising?

Yup - those are some of the items to watch out for whilst leveling - most notable ones for me are :-

• Hides of all types for leatherwork or blacksmith, especially heavy hide & rugged hide
• Certain herbs are reknowned for being difficult - think goldthorn, briarthorn or netherbloom for example  
• Certain ores like gold ore, truesilver ore or of course, the ever expensive khorium ore
• Gems - golden draenite is always in demand but don't forget citrine, jade & large opals too
• For tailors, I think wool is often the cloth that I find hardest to accumulate until much higher levels when frostweave & embersilk just seem to take forever to gather
• Ghost Dye is used in several tailoring recipes & uses Ghost Mushrooms - I've never had problems selling either the dye or the mushrooms for decent gold although technically it's not a bottleneck for leveling your tailoring. 

Money Making Crafted Items

These tend to be rare or 'blue' quality items that crafters can make. The materials are often wide ranging & may require some farming or Auction House watching. I've covered a few of these types of items in the past :-

• My recent post on Farming Large Fangs for Barbaric Bracers
• Another recent post on Farming Spider's Silk for Spidersilk Boots & Toughened Leather Gloves
• An old post on Farming Essence of Air for the Enchant Weapon - Agility
• Engineering crafted pets - these require a multitude of odd bits - Globe of Water, Living Essence & Core of Earth spring to mind
• Felcloth is another item on my watch list - I use it to make the Mooncloth Robe - such a pretty dress & nice if your server has a good transmog market.

Regular High Value Drops & Finds

Some items that drop off mobs or you find whilst out questing just maintain their value in general. Every server is different though so do check your own Auction House for prices and volumes.

• Embersilk Cloth - used by tailors in huge amounts when leveling
• Frostweave Cloth - ditto!
• Cobalt Ore - used by blacksmiths in large quantities for leveling & a pain to farm, check the price of Cobalt Bars too before you list on Auction House
• Pearls - Small Lustrous, Iridescent & Golden pearls all have a regularly high price on my server
• Gromsblood - this surprised me recently & I'm still testing the market but worth a look

So there you go - some of the stuff I look for when leveling a new alt but to be honest, I only vendor grey items, almost everything else goes to my banker or one of my crafting alts for later use. I'm a self-medicated packrat in game which means I can powerlevel 50 points on a profession without spending a copper sometimes :)