EU+US [8.1.5] The ultimate F2P starter guide

tedj

Veteran
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Hey all. I had never heard of F2P until a few weeks ago. I struggled to piece together data from multiple places and some of it had been changed this patch, so I decided I'd make my own guide after the fact.

The purpose of the guide is to help new players or existing ones understanding the secrets and hidden mechanics of F2P characters, and give further detail on stuff like gearing, what to do, etc.
F2P (free-to-play) means having a Blizzard account without a subscription, and in the XP-Off forums, it is generally used to refer exclusively to "Starter Edition" trial accounts. Blizzard allows accounts to play for free up to level 20 with some further restrictions.

A F2P account is considered Vet (veteran) when at some point it had a subscription in order to unlock some of the restrictions, but without actually leveling past level 20. Example: players do this to get better enchants.
A F2P account can also be distinguished between Pure and Linked for when you have a complete standalone account, or another account under a different email, respectively.

For the purest experience, you should create a pure account - a new one under a different email. This way, all your achievements, heirlooms and etc will not be available to you.
If you use Gmail, you can create a new Blizzard account under the same email with a "+" suffix:
The second account will send all emails to your main email "example@gmail.com" as well. This way you can host two completely separate accounts in the same email.
Personally I'm doing it for two reasons:
  1. Waiting for Classic release
  2. Because there is an end, a finite point at which I can no longer get any more upgrades
Sure, it will take time to get to that BiS place, but knowing there is that "end", like old WoW had on each patch, makes me motivated to do it, versus the current "RNG" based systems at max level where you can always get better stuff, if you get lucky.

Then there's also a whole different meta-game at level 20 - since you can't trade, you need to go out into the world and quest, farm mobs and gather materials, explore, travel a lot, and the gameplay feels generally a bit slower-paced. PvP is also fun!
F2P accounts are restricted in many ways, directly and indirectly:
  • Character max level is 20
  • Professions max level is 100
  • Gold capped at 10g
  • Can't sell items to vendors after capping on gold
  • Can't trade, mail or use the auction house
  • Can't invite players into groups
  • Can't whisper players unless they whisper first or have you in their friends list
  • Can't use/see/whisper Blizzard/RealID friends inside WoW
  • Can't use voice-chat
  • Can't use general/trade chat
  • Can't join (or create) guilds
  • Can't loot NPCs more than 10 levels above you
  • Environmental objects (portals, chests, etc) to/in high level zones are generally restricted
  • Can't participate in pet battles
  • Can't use any paid character service (realm transfer, faction change, etc)
  • Characters 10 levels above you will not see your /say and /party messages
  • Characters 10 levels above you also won't see your emotions
  • Restricted to 5 battlegrounds:
    • Warsong Gulch
    • Arathi Basin
    • Eye of the Storm
    • Alterac Valley
    • Isle of Conquest
  • Retricted to 6 dungeons:
    • Deadmines
    • Ragefire Chasm
    • Shadowfang Keep
    • Wailing Caverns
    • Blackfathom Deeps
    • Stormwind Stockade
This is one of the most important sections of the guide!

These are pointers that you should absolutely know before you start your F2P adventure. Some of them are things you cannot re-do unless you create a new character, so I'll prioritize those with a different color.

  • Don't do all quests before level 20: Quest gear is one of the few ways you can get item upgrades, just as you can do at level 120. They can upgrade to epic and it will be best-in-slot, but if you finish those quests at level 10, the item's stats even if upgraded, will be of a level 10. That said, not all gear is worth even if it rolls epic, due to lack of secondary stats. Here is a list of all quests that reward good gear and you should avoid doing before level 20.
  • Don't do dungeon quests that reward gear before level 20: This is the same as the above, but I just wanna re-say it. Some of the best epic upgrades are potentially from dungeon quests.
  • Do NOT let your bags get full and don't forget to loot: You cannot access your mail! This means if your bags are full and you forget to loot something (like a potentially epic upgrade) it will be lost in your mail box. You will see the mailbox icon in the minimap, but can't access the stuff there.
  • You can invite other people into groups with your main: If you want to play with friends, all you need is one of you with a main that has an active subscription. You can log on your main, invite your F2P, and your friend, and then leave the group. This allows you to queue for battlegrounds and dungeons together!
  • Some enchants/armor kits aren't working: Some enchants listed below are not working. You can enchant the gear, but once you do, your stats won't actually get affected. I still advise to stockpile them in case they eventually are fixed. The same happens with Armor Kits, where at the moment, Light Armor Kits show +1 armor but give zero, and Medium Armor Kits should give 2 armor but give 1.
  • F2P are not queued into twinks/locked experience battlegrounds: You will be playing with other F2P and normal levelers!
  • There are other ways to get epic item upgrades: Some unique item drops and from chests I believe. Here's a list of farmable items that can upgrade to epic quality. A notable example is https://www.wowhead.com/item=1405 (E) for casters.
  • Don't be afraid to use your gold: At level 20, one random dungeon will give you a full 10g gold cap, so don't be afraid to spend it on extra bank space or other things. However, this small gold cap means you can't purchase a lot of things, like bigger vender bags.
  • You will need to prioritize your professions: Because you can't trade, you need to do it all yourself, so you will need to prioritize your professions in order to get the best stuff. There's a section for thus further down.
  • You can go to other expansions: Unlike stated in the Blizzard Starter Account page, you can actually go to other expansions, such as Azuremyst Isle (TBC).
  • You can complete Blingtron daily quests: These badboys reward you with none other than https://www.wowhead.com/item=109076/goblin-glider-kit. Usable by all levels and in BGs, this is the only way to obtain them. Either use your main to get Blingtron down, or get lucky that someone spawned it.
Just play what you want! The point of F2P is simply to have fun and do whatever you want to do. Just beware that you will need to dedicate a lot of time to get a single character to have the best in slot gear and enchants.

Regardless, in short from my 2 week experience playing (super biased!):
  • Goblin jump is really good in F2P
  • All classes do good damage, some are better but it changes with every patch
  • The real advantage comes from great gear and the use of consumables

Here are a couple of decent class guides I've found on these forums:
I've decided to put this section before professions since professions will take a lot of bag space. Here are the noteworthy bags you can get:
Every main faction in the game can give you one of the last bags.
Alliance: 7 bags (Darnassus, Exodar, Gilneas, Gnomeregan, Ironforge, Stormwind, Pandaren)
Horde: 7 bags (Orgrimmar, Undercity, Darkspear Trolls, Silvermoon City, Thunder Bluff, Bilgewater Cartel, Pandaren)

Revered is also easy to get. You can either do it by questing in the respective areas (which you will eventually do to farm epic upgrades) or you can buy the respective faction tabard and do dungeons. You can get a tremendous amount of reputation from dungeons, and they will give you some small discounts that could otherwise exceed your gold cap.

You can get a total of 8x 16slot bags, including all factions and Darkmoon Faire, and you have a total of 7 bag slots, including bank, to use, for a maximum of 160 inventory spaces including normal bank.
Another super important part of this guide.

A lot of the professions have great use, even if you don't think so, but since you can't trade, you will need to level everything on your own, so it's good to have a fixed route. Some general points before we go in depth:
  • Enchanting is needed for gear, but limited gear means limited need for it
  • Tailoring is super good to level enchanting because you will get loads of cloth
  • Leatherworking gives you armor enchants which are significant at this level
  • Skinning is mandatory to level leatherworking
  • Alchemy gives you a huge advantage through elixirs and speed potions
  • Herbalism is mandatory for alchemy
  • Blacksmithing provides weapon grinding stones for melee
  • Mining is mandatory for blacksmithing
  • Jewelcrafting seems to be useless
  • Engineering is almost useless for F2P (not Vet) except for hunters (weapon scope enchant) and for gnomes to unlock the selfie camera for all characters
  • Cooking gives you +2 stamina +2 versatility food
  • Fishing is relaxing
  • Archaeology gives you cool toys
  • Some races give you extra profession points, that allow you to get better enchants/etc, such as Blood Elf enchanting +10
Given the above, your profession path as a F2P should probably be the following:
  1. Level up LW+Skinning while leveling
    • Save all your cloth (stacks to 200)
    • You will need level 100 in LW to craft https://www.wowhead.com/item=2313/medium-armor-kit
    • They can be applied to Chest, Legs, Hands, Feet and a total of 8 armor is quite a significant reduction (broken, read "important things to know" section)
    • You should craft around 60 of these kits and save them for level 20, that will be enough for all the gear you might get
  2. Level up Enchanting+Tailoring
  3. (Melee only) Level up BS+Mining
  4. (Hunters only) Level up Engineering before dropping Mining
    1. You only need level 60 to craft https://www.wowhead.com/spell=3977/crude-scope
    2. As long as you're here, you can also craft and stock on https://www.wowhead.com/spell=3923/rough-copper-bomb
    3. Bombs can be used as interrupt/movement stop, but they have a 1.5sec cast time so it's hard to get it done
  5. Level up (and say with) Alchemy+Herbalism while questing for upgrades at level 20
Parallel to this, you should be leveling cooking with all the meats that you find. At level 100 cooking, you can craft +2 stamina +2 versatility food which is pretty good:
There are many class specific gear guides going around, so instead of going through them all, I'll leave some pointers to "hidden" gear.

Like I've said above, some gear can upgrade to epic quality. AFAIK the only gear that can do so, is quest reward gear, and certain drops in the world. So once again, here's a list of farmable items that can upgrade into epic, and here is a list for all quest item rewards that can upgrade into epics.

Certain drops also include chests. These are a bit more complicated to understand, bu here's a great guide on farming them. Because epics can be such a big deal to new players, here's a great video by @Chops explaining upgrades in 8.1.5:


Other than that, noteworthy gear you can get is:
Throughout the year there are multiple world events in Azeroth. Recently, some have been made accessible for low levels, and some drop epic loot!

In previous years these holiday epics haven't been impressive, and are often worse/equal to dungeon/satchel gear. However, with the gear changes in 8.1.5 to epics, it's possible that this has changed. The Midsummer Fire Festival is coming soon and we'll be able to test this out.

Also worth mentioning some gear might be broken - an example is the Brewfest intellect trinket, that had it's equip level requirement lowered, but did not lower the level required for it's effect to proc. If they are ilevel 32, they will still be BiS.

A quick run through the epic loot tables, most if not all of them obtained through queueing to the event bosses in LFG:
  • Midsummer Fire Festival (21/06/2019 - 05/07/2019): Cloaks
  • Brewfest (20/09/2019 - 06/10/2019): Trinkets
  • Hallow's End (18/10/2019 - 01/11/2019): Rings
  • Love is in the Air (08/02/2020 - 22/02/2020): Necks
  • 9/6/2019 - Removed achievement heirlooms, can't be obtained through pure f2p
  • 9/6/2019 - Changed Authenticator 4 extra slots to SMS Protect
  • 9/6/2019 - Added Engineering for hunters because Ranged Scope enchant
  • 9/6/2019 - Added levels for Blacksmithing and Engineering
  • 9/6/2019 - Added Blacksmithign Silver Keys
  • 9/6/2019- Added Engineering bombs
  • 10/6/2019 - Added selfie camera
  • 11/6/2019 - Some enchants are broken, added which ones
  • 13/6/2019 - Cleaned up text after tips
  • 13/6/2019 - Added World Events and video from Chops
 
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FYI, engineering is useful, but only to hunters. There is a basic level scope they can make for a "weapon enchant". Nice for MM hunters especially.
 
Good stuff. Couple of comments from my read through:

  • F2P technically had whatever expansions Steve in the battle jest, which if I remember right is usually everything but the latest xpac. There are some guides/posts on various ways to get to certain expansions.
  • The Defending/Returning champiom trinkets don't just require 13 chests, it requires the full trinket and then one more chest. That's key because the trinkets are level locked - so pure f2p can't get them (or the heirlooms).
 
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just wanna point out
authenticator doesnt give 4 xtra bag slots
sms protect does
 
Thanks! Am I right to assume that pure F2P can't participate/get loot from events like Halloween bosses?
 
Coachdan said:
FYI, engineering is useful, but only to hunters. There is a basic level scope they can make for a "weapon enchant". Nice for MM hunters especially.
Click to expand...
Gnomes cn make the +2 scope as well, and u cn then do the selfie camera quest which opens it up to any alts (I lost my selfie cam, gimme another).
 
Coachdan said:
FYI, engineering is useful, but only to hunters. There is a basic level scope they can make for a "weapon enchant". Nice for MM hunters especially.
Click to expand...

for races other then gnome, +1 scope can be obtained from https://www.wowhead.com/object=19019/box-of-assorted-partsin dead mines 3rd boss area and 4 (1 up at a time) spawn location at bloodmyst isle. i used this recently on 3 hunters thru passive farming (bloodmyst), easier than mining/eng to obtain it. my rogue got a scope during a LFD DM, imo that would be the harder method to farm
 
@tyr3d nice! The selfie camera is a good one, will add.

toinkvar said:
https://xpoff.com/threads/enchant-profession-1-enchants-broken-to-level-33-only.88933/

unsure if these still actually work
below do not work, have been intentionally broken
Click to expand...

What do you mean by "do not work"? I currently have the Cloak +1 Armor enchant on my cloak (did it 2 days ago)
 
tedj said:
@tyr3d nice! The selfie camera is a good one, will add.



What do you mean by "do not work"? I currently have the Cloak +1 Armor enchant on my cloak (did it 2 days ago)
Click to expand...

look at armor on your cloak, mine probably has 2 armor has the +1 cloak armor enchant for a total of 3 armor. with all my gear on i have 161 armor, i remove the cloak i have 159 armor

do not work / broken
 
toinkvar said:
https://xpoff.com/threads/enchant-profession-1-enchants-broken-to-level-33-only.88933/

unsure if these still actually work
Click to expand...

These both work

tedj said:
What do you mean by "do not work"? I currently have the Cloak +1 Armor enchant on my cloak (did it 2 days ago)
Click to expand...

Some enchants (like the ones that he listed) don't actually give you the stats they say they do. You can apply it fine, but it doesn't actually increase your armor. Compare your armor total with and without the cloak and you'll see it the enchant doesn't actually do anything
 
Well shit, someone could have told me that Medium Armor Kits at level 20-29 give exactly 1 armor, the same as Light Armor Kits. Was leveling my druid now just to find this out LMAO.
 
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