WoW Forever beta tips and tricks: 40 things to know before you log in

Four days into the WoW Forever beta, the forums are full of things players wish they had known on day one. We read through more than a hundred threads and the guides that allow it, kept what several players or Blizzard confirm, and marked what is still one person’s report. Everything here is for the current beta: level cap 20, build 1.60.1.69913.

Leveling faster

1. Dungeons are a one-time quest run now. Mob experience in dungeons drops sharply after your first clear, but the quests pay a lot: one player got almost three levels from the six Ruins of Lordaeron quests. Collect every quest before you zone in — our dungeon quest prep pages list them by faction, and the addon’s Quest helper shows them next to the group finder.
2. Solo questing is the fastest route to 20. Tanks and healers are scarce, and one Rogue waited three hours for a Deadmines group. If you want dungeons, bring friends or play the tank.
3. Summoning stones are disabled. Everyone walks to the instance, so plan the trip before you form the group.
4. Mob tags are not shared. Crowded quest spots turn into queues; group up or come back off-peak.
5. Take the quest, then invite. Sending or accepting a party invite in the open world can move you to another layer, and players have lost escort NPCs and rare spawns that way.
6. Mind the World Refresh timer. Layers swap on a countdown every few minutes. Do not start a pull or open a chest while it runs: one Mage died when an empty cave refilled after the swap. The “Refresh now” button does not seem to speed it up.
7. Zone chat only covers your layer, so a quiet General channel does not mean an empty zone.
8. On Zephras Isle, run through the tornadoes. Blessing of Zephras gives 40% run speed for five minutes and only ends when you attack something.
9. Resurrection sickness is too long at low level — ten minutes at level 10. Blizzard lists it as a bug, so run back to your corpse instead of using the spirit healer.

Your class

10. Warriors: rage now comes from weapon speed, and crits give no extra — what that means for your build. Queueing Heroic Strike, Cleave or Raptor Strike also switches off your spell queue window (known bug).
11. Druids: Bear Form comes at 10 but Cat Form not until 20, so you level in Bear. Our Feral level 20 guide is rebuilt around that.
12. Casters: wands scale with spell power now, and early on they hit about as hard as your spells for no mana. Get one by level 10.
13. Hunters: pets can lose their abilities after a relog. If Beast Training says “You can’t do that”, release the pet and tame a new one.
14. Paladins: Judgement no longer uses up your Seal, so keep the Seal refreshed and press Judgement and Holy Strike on cooldown.
15. Priests: Holy Fire is a level 20 spell, so talents that improve it do nothing before then.

Every class has an updated level 20 guide — start from our leveling guides.

Crates, Legacy and the new systems

16. Keep your Waylaid Crates. They are rare, and each one accepts one of several material sets — check every option before you farm. Players who deleted theirs regret it. Two crate bugs are already fixed for the next build.
17. Turn crates in for Merchant’s Favor. It buys bind-on-pickup profession recipes that players call very strong at 20.
18. The Legacy window opens with Y, but tabs throw errors before level 25, and class Legacy points come at 25, 45 and 60 — so there is nothing to spend at the beta cap. The Legacy planner shows the full tree.
19. A Craftsman’s Writ from a level 15 mob turned out to be a timed level 60 quest for one player. Do not count on it at 20.
20. Respecs get expensive fast: about 1 gold, then 5. Plan your talents in the talent calculator before you pay.
21. Guild charters can be handed in with no signatures for now, because signing them was broken.
22. You can hide your helm and cloak at a transmogrifier even with transmog turned off.
23. Travel: there is a permanent Stormwind–Dalaran portal, but Dalaran has no auction house, bank or flight path.

Professions and gold

24. Every character wants First Aid. Healing potions moved from Alchemy to First Aid, and bandages are the only healing many classes have before 20.
25. Fishing is not in your spellbook. Open the professions window with K and drag Fishing onto your bar.
26. Casters: Tailoring or Enchanting pay off early. Spell power greens, wands and oils beat what Herbalism and Alchemy give you before 20.
27. Mining nodes take several taps, and a groupmate can share them. There is no area loot, so every corpse is looted one by one.
28. Early gold: skip trainer ranks you will not use, sell bind-on-equip drops and crafted greens, and take two gathering professions for auction house money.
29. Do not mail alts with the same first name — you get “You cannot mail items to yourself”. Give alts different first names.

Settings that save your evening

30. Crashing on login, especially on AMD cards? At character select, set Secondary Lighting to Fair or Low. More fixes on our crash and freeze page.
31. Missing the new fog and god rays? They only show with Shadow Quality at Low or Fair; at higher settings they switch off.
32. Eye strain from the fog: lower Bloom, or zoom the camera further out with /console cameraDistanceMaxZoomFactor 2.6.
33. FPS dropping over a session looks like a memory leak. Log out to character select and back in, and clear your cache folder if it keeps happening.
34. Addon settings do not stick. Settings are written but not read back on the next launch. There is no real fix yet — deleting the WTF folder only helps until you fully exit — so expect to set up your addons again after a restart.
35. Gamepad support is on by default and can clash with remapping software. /console GamePadEnable 0 turns it off for the session.
36. Can’t invite a friend? Names have two parts now: use /invite Firstname Lastname, or find them with /who.
37. Quest text is instant, and there is no option to bring the scrolling text back.

Dungeons at 20

38. Hall of Thanes is under Ironforge, through the web-covered corridor on the left in Magni’s throne room. One of its quests, “Old Ironforge Incursion”, only starts from a Dark Iron Map dropped by Dark Iron Spies in Dun Morogh.
39. Healers: warrior and bear threat is weak at this level, so expect loose mobs.
40. A possible healing bug: one Priest measured 25–30% less healing on a groupmate a level above them. Unconfirmed, but worth watching if your numbers look low.

Believed, but wrong or unproven

• “Beta characters or Legacy points carry over.” Nothing supports it; everyone starts at level 1 on November 4.
• “Deleting WTF fixes addon settings.” Only until the next full exit.
• “Ten minutes of res sickness at level 10 is Classic design.” Blizzard lists it as a bug.
• “Refresh now forces a layer swap.” Players report it waits for the timer anyway.
• “Wands are meant to be best in slot for raids.” One player’s claim; the spell power scaling is real, the rest is not.

We will update this list as the next build lands and the level 30 phase opens.