Show Notes

[twoolley61]

STUFF I MISSED IN SHOW #2
I wanted to clarify the Character Creation process we talked about in our last show. When you are looking at the Character Creation screen you will notice that Blizzard has placed the Race Avatars above the Class Buttons. This might be a tad bit confusing considering that I recommend that you choose your class first then your race. My hope is that you will take the information we discussed in our last show and go through the steps we outlined to determine what race and class combination are best BEFORE you log into the game and begin creating your character.

GUI TALK

• Start at the bottom going from left to right the first thing your see are
  
• An Action Bar that has 12 Action Buttons.
  
• Each Action Button can be activated by pressing a key on your keyboard. This means that the Action Button is KEYBOUND.
  
• The 12 action button you see on your screen are bound to the One through the Equal Sign key on your keyboard
  
• You have 6 banks of action buttons that you can view by using the scroll bar on the right side of the Action Bar or you can hold the SHIFT key down and press the corresponding number on your keyboard to display each Hot Bar.
  
• As each Action Bar is displayed it becomes the PRIMARY Action Bar.
• This means that the Action Buttons can be activated by pressing the
• One through Equal Sign keys on your keyboard.
  
• But this is not the most efficient way to use your Action Buttons and I’m going to show you a better way to use your Action Bars in just a few minutes.
  
• Finally, Action Buttons are often referred to in game as Hot Buttons and Action Bars are referred to as Hot Bars, so from this point forward we’ll use those terms.
  
• To the right of the Hot Bars is the Interface Panel.
  
  

TIP
I promised you that I would provide a helpful tip that will make using your Hot Bars more usable.

1. You will first click on the Options menu button, the little computer, or press the ESC key, to bring up the menu.
   
2. Choose Interface from the menu
   
3. In the Interface screen choose Action Bars.
   
4. Place a check mark in “Bottom Left”, “Bottom Right”, “Right Bar” and “Right Bar 2”.
   
5. Click OK
   
6. Click Return To The Game on the Options Menu

You will now see all your Hot Bars displayed on your screen.

GUI TALK (con't)

• To the right of the Interface Panel is the Latency Bar. This shows the status of your connection to the game server and your frame rate.
  
• If the bar is green your game is functioning at the optimal level.
  
• If the bar is yellow the game is performing a bit slow and you may experience some lag.
  
• Lag – When you press a key or perform a function and there is a delay before you see that command performed on your screen.
  
• If the bar is red you latency is VERY high and the game may freeze up, have sever lag or you may even be disconnected from the server.
  

• To the right of the Latency Bar SHOULD be a Key Ring
  
• The button will look like an old fashion golden key.
  
• By default there is no short cut key assigned to your key ring so you have to click on it to see the keys you will acquire over time.
  
• Since you do not have any keys yet you will not see the Key Ring just yet. But once you obtain your first key it will appear in this location.
  
• To the right of the Key Ring that is not there, are your Container Slots also known as your Bag Slots
  
• Right now the first four slots do not have any bags or backpacks in them.
  
• Bags and backpacks mean the exact same thing in the game.
  
• Blizzard gives you one backpack at the start of the game.
  
• That backpack is located in the last slow on the right.
  
• Backpacks or bags have slots into which you will place the items you find in the game.
  
• The backpack you have right now has 16 slots.
  
• There are several ways of acquiring additional bags to fill your empty bag slots.
  
• You will find them as you are playing the game. When you kill something you will loot the corpse, which we’ll talk about in our next segment, and a bag may be part of the loot.
  
• You can choose to learn Tailoring as a tradeskill (we’ll be talking about tradeskills in show 7) which allow you to make your own bags.
  
• You can purchase bags on the Auction House (we’ll be talking about the Auction House in show #7) which are made by other players who are Tailors.
  
• There are several ways to open your bags
  
• F8 – F12 will open the bags from left to right.
  Shift B will open all your bags
  
• B will open all your bags and your bank bags when you have the banker window open (we’ll be talking about your Bank in show #7)
  
• To pick up an item in your bags left click it and it will attach to your mouse pointer.
  
• If you want to place it in a different location in the bag simply hover over the empty slot and left click again to drop the item that new location.
  
• You can also click and drag items from one location to another.
  
• Both of these methods work when you want to move an item from one bag to another bag or if you want to move an item from your bags to your bank (we’ll be talking about your bank in show #7).
  
• Inside your bag your will find a couple of items.
  
• Water – which can be used to regen mana
  
• Food – which can be used to regen health
  
• You can place like items into the same slot up to 20. However there are some items in the game that will only stack up to 5.
  
• Items that can be stacked together will automatically stack when you pick them up.
  
• When you hold your mouse pointer over an item a pop up window will appear and display the name of the item and, in the case of our food and water, you will see green text that describe the USE of the item.
  
• Anytime you see the word USE followed by a description you can either right click the item in your bag to use the item.
  
• Or you can actually attach the item to a hot button and simply left click that button to use the item.
  
• When you attach an item to a Hot Button you don’t actually move the item out of your bag you are simply creating a shortcut to that item.
  
• To attach the item to a Hot Button, you can either left click the item to attach it to your mouse pointer and then hover over the Hot Button and left click again on the Hot Button to drop the short cut onto the selected button.
  
• Or you can click and drag the item to the desired Hot Button.
  
• The other item you see in your bag is a round, white object with a blue sigil on the top. This is your Hearthstone.
  
• You will notice that when you hold your mouse pointer over the hearthstone a pop up windows appears that tells you about your
• Hearthstone the most important of which is the name of your HOME LOCATION.
  
• When the Hearthstone is in your bag you right click it to return to your home location.
  
• Your home location can reset by any innkeeper throughout the world by just talking to them and choosing the option to make that inn your new home.
  
• There is a one hour cool down period before you can use your Hearthstone again.
  
• If you accidently destroy your hearthstone, speak to an inn keeper and they’ll give you another.
  
• It is considered polite, when in a group with other players, to tell them that you are going to use your Hearthstone. Players will often say
• “Hearthing” meaning they are using their Hearthstone to leave the current location.

• Above the Hot Bar, Interface Panel and Bag Slots is your Experience Bar
  
• This bar shows two numbers in the middle represented as 0/400. The first number is the amount of experience you gained so far and the second number is the amount of experience you need to reach the next level.
  
• Experience is also called XP for short
  
• There are a couple of ways of gaining experience
  
• When you complete a quest
  
• When you kill things that are at a high enough level to actually give you experience, which we’ll talk about in our next segment.
  
• If you die before the thing you’re killing dies you don’t get any experience.

Rest Bonus (As Explained on the WOW Site)
“As players kill monsters and gain experience points, they become increasingly tired. Their rest level reflects this tiredness in two tiers:

1. Normal = 100%
   
2. Rested = 200% experience

Players will all start in the normal tier. When a player rests in a city or at an inn they will gain rest bonus.

Eight hours of rest will be needed for a player to gain one "bubble" of rest bonus.

At any given time, players will be able to accumulate a maximum of 30 "bubbles" worth of rest bonus which translates into approximately 1.5 levels worth of rested play (before your character returns to normal rest state).

Rested players receive bonus experience points for killing monsters. Normal players receive no bonus experience points for killing monsters.

To become rested and start earning bonus experience from killing monsters again, players must rest for many hours.

Players have the ability to rest anywhere in the world. This helps players who forget or choose not to log off at an Inn. Resting at an Inn or City is still the preferred method, as rest credit will accumulate four times faster for players logged off inside of an Inn or City.

Players who log out anywhere else in the world will earn rest credit four times slower.

Note that while your character is resting at an Inn, you can play other characters on your account. The Rest State is per character only.

There is no penalty for leaving an Inn early. You are constantly accumulating bonus experience while in an Inn or City. If you leave and come back, the only time lost is the time you were outside. “

Since you are still in your Starting Zone there is nowhere for you to log out to gain rest bonus. Under normal circumstances you would log in, play your character to level 5 and move on to your next zone where you would find an inn. But since we’re all learning as we go it seems like this takes a long time but it will really only take about an hour or so to get to level 5 and head toward an inn.

GUI TALK (con't)

• Above the Experience Bar on the left side of the screen is the Chat Window.
  
• There are two tabs at the top of the window
  
• General contains all the communication from the channels we described when we talked about the Socials window a little while ago.
  
• The Combat Log shows things such as damage taken when fighting, damage done, etc.
  
• To speak in the General window you
  
• Press the enter key, which opens a text entry box where you will see a flashing cursor.
  
• When we discussed the Socials window we looked at the Chat window and each channel was assigned a specific number. You will use this number to direct your comments to the appropriate channel.
  
• For example, if I want to speak in general chat I would type “/1 space and I will see the channel name populated followed by a colon. I can not continue typing my comment and then press the enter key to see my comments reflected in general chat.
  
• If you change your mind you can simply use your backspace key to remove the text then press the enter key to close the text entry box.
  
• We’ll discuss game chat in detail in show 6 but this should be enough to get your started.