First of all, the pedigree here is pretty solid. The authors of the guides on Warcraft Formula are Brad Johnson (of Warcraft Millionaire fame) and T Dub Sanders (of PvP Bible and WotLK Secrets fame). The two are a great pair, bringing in gold making and PvP – the two most popular sources of information and guides for the game – and they pretty much have all the resources you could need to be effective in the game.

The premise of the site is pretty simple. You pay an upfront fee to get their Fast Track Action Plan – a guide that shows you how to put a solid account together. The guide is actually a lot more useful than it sounds at first look – it shows you how to pick a character but it also shows you which mods to get, how to join a guide, where to level and farm gold, and how to start in PvP and raiding. It’s a solid walkthrough of all the basics of the game for a beginner or a casual veteran.

After this, you get the actual product, a monthly newsletter that comes complete with details on PvP in the current month, new changes to the game, questions from readers and just about any kind of info on the game you can imagine from class changes to whatever else might come up. There are a ton of different topics already covered in the first four issues (with PvP covered in every issue).

In the end, you get a solid starter guide and brand new, time sensitive content each month from two of the best guide writers in WoW for a pretty low monthly price. It’s hard to believe, but this is a great deal and even better than my friends told me about. I’ll be subscribing to my own monthly membership, just to see where Brad and T Dub take it.

Glyphs were added to World of Warcraft with the expansion Wrath of the Lich King, well technically they were added before the expansion. They were included in the last major patch, Echoes of Doom, before WotLK was released. They are designed to enhance the spells and abilities of your characters, and will increase damage or time or range of certain spells or skills.

How do Glyphs Work?

In total you have are 3 major Glyph slots and 3 Minor Glyph slots but they are not all available until you reach level 80. Here is a break down of how many Major and Minor Glyphs slots will be available to you at what level

Level 1-14 - 0 Slots
Level 15-29 - 1 Major Slot, 1 Minor Slot
Level 30-49 - 2 Major Slots, 1 Minor Slot
Level 50-69 - 2 Major Slots, 2 Minor Slots
Level 70-79 - 2 Major Slots, 3 Minor Slots
Level 80 - 3 Major Slots, 3 Minor Slots

When ever you reach the required level you need to find a Lexicon of Power, always near an Inscription trainer, located in major cities. Standing next to the Lexicon of Power you can simply right click the Glyph from within your bag. If you have an available slot the glyph will simple transfer from your bag to the slot.

Who makes Glyphs?

Glyphs are the production of Inscription, who also make scrolls and other useful stuff! But by far the most useful things made by inscribers are the glyphs. At the moment on most server Glyphs are relatively cheap as the Auction House are usually full of just about every type available. If you are not already an inscriber then don’t bother leveling inscription there is nothing of great benefit yet to the inscriber only like there are to tailors, blacksmith or engineers.

The Difference between Major and Minor Glyphs

Major glyphs provide large improvements to skills such as modifying the mana cost, the cool down, the critical strike chance, the duration of effect, or add an effect to a spell or ability. Mminor glyphs offer small or cosmetic changes to your skills. With over 200 different Glyphs it is difficult to list them all and show you the difference so the best way to find the perfect Glyph for your class is to head over to the WoW Armory Glyh section and search all those available for your class.

I gave up after that and thought I’d wait until release day when everyone else was off to Northrend I’d ride about farming herbs for Inscription. While waiting though I wasn’t just twiddling my thumbs I actually did some work and watched the Auction House for cheap herbs.

Like all new professions I’ve never really consider making money from Inscription, it’s purely for my own characters and friends ofc. Anyway the best way to make money from any new recipe or trade is to sell the materials, people cba to go collect them, so I charge a hearty collectors fee for the most precious ones.

If you still want to take Inscription as one of your trade skills then you’d better consider leveling herbalism fast. The cost of herbs are high at the moment but as inscription starts to take off and more patterns are added those pesky little plants will become even more expensive. Whatever herbs you don’t use you can always sell but better be fast as there’s always someone willing to undercut you.

Inscription Leveling - Step 1 Training

Find an Inscription trainer!  All major city will have one of these, just asks a guard to mark your mini-map. Here’s a list of the major cities and the Inscription trainers located there:

Alliance Inscription Trainers

Ironforge: Elise Brightletter
Stormwind: Catarina Stanford
Darnassus: Feyden Darkin
Exodar: Thoth

Horde Inscription Trainers

Orgrimmar: Jo’mah
Silvermoon City: Zantasia
Thunder Bluff: Poshken Hardbinder
Undercity: Margaux Parchley

(src)

When you learn the Apprentice Scribe ability, you’re also given four recipes, the most important of these will be the ink. Without ink there will be no inscription, but more importantly they increase your Inscription level as they are created. Each new ink will increase your level by about 20 and this ink can then be used to make Glyphs and other stuff.

Inscription Leveling - Step 2 Making Ink

To get the ink you need to mill herbs and this is the cost will come into Inscription. Milling works exactly like prospecting by Jewel-crafters and disenchanting by enchanters. If you’re going to level inscription all at the same time it may be a good idea to put the Milling icon on your hot bar. Right click the icon the left click your pile of herbs and two or more pigments should be given in exchange for 5 of the same herb.

Inscription Leveling - Step 3 Collecting Herbs

This is a list of the type and amount herbs you’ll need to have if you plan to power level Inscription to 350 before getting to Northrend. The number of stacks is actually the number of 5 of the same type of herb you’ll need, give or take 5.

Type of Ink

25 Ivory Ink & 25 Moonglow Ink NEEDS 50 Peacebloom, Silverleaf or Earthroot

25 Midnight Ink NEEDS 30 Mageroyal, Briarthorn, Swiftthistle, Bruiseweed or Stranglekelp

60 Lion’s Ink NEEDS 75 Wild Steelbloom, Grave Moss, Kingsblood or Liferoot

70 Jadefire Ink NEEDS 90 Fadeleaf, Goldthorn, Khadgar’s Whisker or Wintersbite

70 Celestial Ink NEEDS 90 Firebloom, Purple Lotus, Arthas’ Tears, Sungrass, Blindweed, Ghost Mushroom or Gromsblood

75 Shimmering Ink NEEDS 95 Golden Sansam, Dreamfoil, Mountain Silversage, Plaguebloom or Icecap

70 Ethereal Ink NEEDS 90 Felweed, Ragveil, Terocone, Dreaming Glory, Ancient Lichen, Netherbloom, Nightmare Vine, Mana Thistle

Remember to Mill you need to have 5 of each herb so dot buy 27 Peacbloom and 23 Silverleaf, you’ll need to buy/collect them in bundles of 5-10-15-20. To try and make some gold while your doing this before you mill your last 2 stacks of herbs check to see how many pigments you have, sometimes you’ll get 3 instead of 2.

Inscription Leveling - Step 4 Power Leveling Inscription

So you’ve now collected or bought all the herbs you needed and milled them and your bags are bulging with pigments, time to get that pen out and start inscribing.

I found the best place to do this was standing right next to the trainer, this allowed me to get the next level of training as I needed it but more importantly I was also near a vendor who would have all the extra Inscriptions goods on him that you will need. Mainly you’ll be using the various parchments such as Light, Common, Heavy and Resilient Parchment as you level up. It makes sense really if you think about it, after you get the ink you something to write on.

This list is obviously one of many different ways of doing it. If you’ve found a better way then let us all into the secret and leave a comment below. The levels are on the left and what to make are on the right, but remember that inks are not good grinding recipes, they turn gray very quickly. However you will need much more ink than skill points, so don’t stop making the ink because it doesn’t give you anymore skill points, check your numbers!

Level 0-100

01-15 Ivory Ink
15-35 Scrolls
35-50 Moonglow Ink
50-75 Armor Vellum or Scroll of Recall (use first)
75-80 Midnight Ink
80-100 Class Glyphs*

Level 100-200

100-105 Lion’s Ink
105-125 Class Glyphs*
125-135 Lion’s Ink or Dawnstar Ink
130-150 Class Glyphs* (Strange Tarot if you have Dawnstar Ink)
150-155 Jadefire Ink
155-175 Class Glyphs*
175-180 Class Glyphs* (Royal Ink if you got pigment for it)
180-200 Class Glyphs* (Arcane Tarot if you have Royal Ink)

Level 200-300

200-205 Celestial Ink
205-210 Armor Vellum II or Class Glyphs*
210-225 Class Glyphs*
225-230 Fiery Ink
230-235 Class Glyphs* (Shadowy Tarot if you have Fiery Ink)
235-250 Weapon Vellum II or Class Glyphs*
250-255 Shimmering Ink
255-260 Scroll of Spirit V
260-275 Class Glyphs*
275-290 Class Glyphs* (Ink of the Sky if you got Sapphire Pigment)
290-300 All recipes start yellow at 290 and green at 295 (Good luck is need to get to 300 here without using too many herbs).

Level 300-350

300-305 Ethereal Ink
305-325 Class Glyphs*
325-330 Class Glyphs* (Darkflame Ink if you have Ebon Pigment)
330-350 Class Glyphs*
350+ OFF TO NORTHREND!!

*= mix it up a bit don’t just do the same class

Extra Points To Consider

I have read that making Glyph’s go from orange to yellow after only five skill points, this is what I mean by mix it up a little when making class glyphs. I didn’t seem to have any problems with this but it should be remembered. Easy way to do this is to learn a glyph that is orange and make 5, then learn another make 5 and so it goes.

Rare Inks

If you are lucky enough to get some nice rare inks from the random pigment drops, Dawnstar Ink, Royal Ink, Ink of the Sky, I would use it to make the appropriate leveled item and save some normal ink, helps it go further.

Inscription Items

Inscribers can make a variety of stuff not listed in the power leveling path, such as scrolls, trinkets, armor and weapon vellums and card decks. The glyph recipes are the cheapest way to level Inscription, but if you have any alts that would benefit from a few scrolls or a vellum I would make sure I made these first before following this inscription power leveling guide.

Benefits To Enchanters

Not really an extra point to consider but the main point why I got one of my alts to level Inscription. I have long been annoyed that I’ve had to pay others to enchant my weapon or my gear with an enchant my enchanter has, (he has a lot) but with the new vellum’s this will be a thing of the past. Not only will the Inscribing priest pass vellums to my enchanting warlock but the warlock will then put an enchant on the appropriate vellum and pass it back. An add bonus of this is also the ability to sell my enchants on the Auction House, no more will I waste Saturdays stand outside the major Auction houses and sell my wares I can just have a vellum sent over and enchant that, put it AH and join my friends in Utgarde Keep.

Finally

Anyway back to the list, before you go running off into the night to start your farming of this stuff have a look on the auction house first as much of it is usually put on there for a few silver. This will save you a load of time and if you’ve been farming gold like everyone has been then you should have enough to buy the lot, it it’s there that is.

Death Knight Shopping List

360 Unidentified Plant Parts
300 Runecloth
300 Mageweave
300 Silk
300 Wool
30 Core of Elements
30 Crypt Fiend Parts
30 Bone fragments
30 Savage Frond
30 Dark Iron Scraps
30 Arakkoa Feathers
14 Vulture Gizzard
11 Basilisk Brain
10 Mature Spore Sac
10 Glowcap Mushroom
10 Mark of Kiljaeden
10 Mark of Sargeras
10 Firewing Signet
10 Sunfury Signet
8 Hi-Explosive Bombs
8 Unstable Triggers
6 Blasted Boar Lung
6 Scorpok Pincer
6 Bog Lord Tendrils
6 Fertile Spores
5 Snickerfang Jowl
5 Sanguine Hibiscus
3 Ivory Tusks
2 Thorium Bar
1 Imperfect Draenethyst Fragment
1 Flawless Draenethyst Sphere
1 Golden Rod
1 Fel Armament
1 Arcane Tome

If your stuck where to find this stuff head over to wowhead and check out there database for the location and every item in Warcraft. Have fun shopping and happy Death Knight Leveling.

See you in Northrend

I’ve had some emails and comments on the WotLK Leveling Guide post about web sites that are offering you a chance to start reading about what quests to do and in the best order they should be done. I’ve gone to each of these sites and checked out what ones are the best and what ones are not so good and listed my favourite.

Before getting into that though I should point out that one down fall of the free WotLK leveling guides is that you will have to keep tabbing out of the game to check details. There is one way to avoid this and that would be to get a quest helper add-on. With these online leveling guides and the add on you should find you don’t have to tab out as much. If you head over to Curse you can find a whole load of them but for me the following one is the best.

Carbonite Quest

Carbonite - The first thing to note about this add on is that there is a paid version and an unpaid version. I’ve never used the paid one as the free one is so good and probably the best quest helper add on I’ve  used. Carbonite Quest adds two new windows to your UI, one is an improved list of quests and another minimap. Both of these are customisable to minimise or disappear when in battle but both fade out when you don’t have your mouse over them. At first these two new windows can be a little annoying but you soon get used to them being there especially if you take the time to customise them to what you want.

The improve quest window tracks quests that your on and shows you the top 6 that are closest to your present location. As you move about you will see the quests move up and down the list as you get closer or further away from the objective. The mini map window shows locations of single target objectives or shades areas where you may have to farm items or kills.

There is a 3rd item on your UI which is the directional arrow, showing you the way to your current tracked quest location. Again this is fully customisable from a simple arrow to one that includes distance and time to your destination. By default this arrow is in the middle of your screen but can be moved very easily.

Using only this add on I’ve managed to level a new character to 70 relatively fast as it Carbonite quest add on actually works out the path you should take to the next most logical target. The problem with this is that it assumes you have only picked up the most relevant quests to do and doesn’t take into consideration the crappy ones that take far too long or are group quests. It will still tell you to go do these even if solo, so this is where getting a leveling guide comes into its own, you will know what quests to avoid to help speed up your leveling in WotLK.

Other Quest Helper Add-Ons

If you head over to curse and do a search for free wotlk leveling guides or free quest helper it will return a lot of different choices but many of them are not really that god the following is a list of quest helper hat may be worth a look if you don’t like coarbonite or can’t get it working for some reason.

Get To The Point -Not really a quest helper but it speeds up your questing by auto skipping gossip, complete quests or accept quests. This saves you time scrolling through your quest log to find the completed ones.

Tom Tom _ I’ve heard great things about this but I had major problems when i tried it, it caused too much game lag to have fun so I skipped it.

QuestHelper _ Is by far the most popular add on for getting help with leveling in WoW. This add on tells you how to finish your quests in the easiest, fastest manner. It includes a database of quests, monsters, and items, telling you the exact location of each target item and to speed things up computes the fastest path to complete all your quests.

All these add ons have been developed by people who have used there time to get them to us if you can think about donating a $ or $$ to help them with their time costs.

Free WotLK Leveling Guide Website

A web site you should check out for your free wotlk leveling guide is wtbblue. I’ve had a look at what these guys have done and It is very comprehensive and complete.

The guide is split into two section one for horde and one for alliance. It’s split further into zones, starting at level68, then into simple step by step instructions on what quests to pick up. As a bonus they have even provide links to youtube videos of quests being done just in case you cba reading the stuff.

The videos are a mixed blessing as on one hand they are great to follow and open up in a lightbox that allows you to watch them from the page but for me many of the videos didn’t work. This could have been a problem with youtube at the time but I think it may also be to number of visitors this site is getting. I also found the web pages loaded slowly but the information on the pages is worth the wait even if you can’t get the videos to work.

When I say the “guys at this web site” I am assuming there is more than one person doing this as the amount of information that has been recorded and written would have been a lot for one person to do but I’m sure there are some people out there that do nothing else other than play World of Warcraft and write free WotLK leveling guides, unfortunately I’m not one, it’s the real world 9-5 for me

So far I’ve not come across anything as good as wtbblue for help with wotlk leveling but I’m keeping an eye on wowpro to see when he releases his stuff. Never the fastest at releasing warcraft leveling guides wowpro does have some good information, it can just take you a long time to find it.

If you come across any good add-ons or free WotLK leveling guides then post a comment below and let everyone in on the secret.