Dragonflight F2P Baseline Guide

Another little tip for running multiple Iron Docks (or any dungeon) a little bit faster: Have a toon on a second account (as long as they can be in a party together, not sure with F2P), when you have killed the last boss, log out and use the toon on the second account to reset the instance. When you log back in with the toon you are using to run the dungeons, it will be back at the start of the instance and ready to go again.
 
Another little tip for running multiple Iron Docks (or any dungeon) a little bit faster: Have a toon on a second account (as long as they can be in a party together, not sure with F2P), when you have killed the last boss, log out and use the toon on the second account to reset the instance. When you log back in with the toon you are using to run the dungeons, it will be back at the start of the instance and ready to go again.
It's already in the guide :)
 
I will say that < 2 days played to get all WF+socket pieces does seem quite lucky, unless druids have it significantly easier than hunters with three distinct loot specs to choose from. It took my re-roll horde hunter just under 4 days /played to get all six slots (or about 2000 WoD boss kills), and even longer for Lofi. I think Shadowmoon Burial Grounds is faster for farming sockets after you get a decent speed set from Iron Docks (at least for hunters).
 
Get your Garrison to Level 2, and Build a Dwarven Bunker (increases the chance for quest reward upgrades), Lunarfall Inn (3 daily dungeon quests that reward a WoD dungeon item), Enchanter's Study (provides the ability to DE drops and stock up on mats even if you don't have enchanting as a current profession) and a Storehouse (really quick access to your bank). There are other buildings that have some niche use cases but you won't need anything else at the moment. More details can be found in the old F2P guide. At one point you may also want to collect more followers. A list of some easy-to-get ones can be found 17 Garrison Followers Under 2 Hours [17 Alliance/14 Horde], just keep in mind Nagrand and Spires of Arak do not scale to level 20 so you won't be able to get the listed followers from those zones.
I finished a quest for a visitor in Frostwall Tavern, but when I returned, the NPC had been replaced by a different visitor. Does anyone know what time (server time) the tavern visitors change out? I assumed it would be the standard 11 AM ET when dailies reset, but it seems to be in the evening from my observations.
 
whenever you hearthstone back, there’s a chance that you get new questgivers in the inn. So leave, wait 20 mins, hs back, and you may have new quests again.
 
With the current Welcome to Sanctuary event having a 50 % rep buff and stacking with DMF 10 % buff, a pure F2P that has not done any SL quests can theoretically acquire the Court of Harvesters Honored rep level, required for Design: Revitalizing Jewel Doublet. This would have been the biggest F2P news in a year if the price of the design was not 1350 gold (1215 gold with the 10 % Honored price discount / 1080 gold with the Goblin 20 % racial discount). It is still worth getting the rep (a filter with all the quests here: LIST) as there is not, and very well may not be another chance to do that in the near future. If someone tries, let us know how it went.
 
With the current Welcome to Sanctuary event having a 50 % rep buff and stacking with DMF 10 % buff, a pure F2P that has not done any SL quests can theoretically acquire the Court of Harvesters Honored rep level, required for Design: Revitalizing Jewel Doublet. This would have been the biggest F2P news in a year if the price of the design was not 1350 gold (1215 gold with the 10 % Honored price discount / 1080 gold with the Goblin 20 % racial discount). It is still worth getting the rep (a filter with all the quests here: LIST) as there is not, and very well may not be another chance to do that in the near future. If someone tries, let us know how it went.
Wait; my calculations may be off, but combining all the possible rep gain from quests (4375) with the Welcome to Sanctuary Buff, the DMF buff, and the human racial bonus (for a total of 70% extra rep earned) comes out to a total of 7437 rep, not enough to go from neutral to honored. Did I miss some other bonus? Or did I just calculate the base rep earned from quests wrong?
 
Wait; my calculations may be off, but combining all the possible rep gain from quests (4375) with the Welcome to Sanctuary Buff, the DMF buff, and the human racial bonus (for a total of 70% extra rep earned) comes out to a total of 7437 rep, not enough to go from neutral to honored. Did I miss some other bonus? Or did I just calculate the base rep earned from quests wrong?
Оh, the rep starts at Neutral, so we need 9000 to Honored, not 6000 :X Sorry, totally my fault, still unavailable then, ignore my previous comment.
 
Thank you for this guide, I didn't play for 6 years and this guide greatly helped me to get back into the game. There are some other things that I found out while playing f2p in Dragonflight that are not present in this guide:
1) BFA enchanting is very hard to level up. There are 3 different reagents:
- gloom dust -> disenchanting green items;
- umbra shards -> disenchanting blue items;
- purple crystals -> disenchanting purple items.
The number of blue and purple items needed for enchants is ridiculous. A good way to acquire these reagents that I found is to create blue and purple bracers with BFA tailoring. There are rank 2 and rank 3 patterns that make these bracers significantly cheaper, you can buy these patterns for marks of honor (PvP). Expulcom is acquired from scrap-o-matic by scraping items with around 15% chance. You can scrap green tailoring bracers as well as regular greens from dungeons, they all provide some resources back depending on item type and have a chance to produce expulcom. For example, if you scrap a green wand from a dungeon you get an umbra shard. Maybe this is common knowledge but if someone hasn't played BFA like me this whole system is hard to understand.
2) Horde BFA enchanting trainer is bugged and does not teach hoofplates. There are reports about this bug from 2 years ago so this seems unlikely to be fixed soon, so there is no reason to level up blacksmithing as Horde.
3) Until recently it used to be impossible to get to Shadowlands as a f2p without the help of someone with Chromie time. With the latest patch Chromie time is available to f2p so pick Shadowlands and you can go there.
After the f2p player arrives to Oribos, the capital city of Shadowlands, I highly recommend hearthstoning this city. Portals to Shadowlands from Orgrimmar and Stormwind require level 48 for some reason so I don't see any way to come back other than hearthstone.
I found another strange bug - after one of my f2p characters completed the quest chain to Shadowlands, another f2p character was offered an option to skip this chain. After I skipped the chain and arrived to Oribos the quests bugged and I can't get any new quests to continue the chain - there is no way to unlock the flymaster or portals. There are some reports on those quests requiring high level if you skip the intro chain so I advise not to skip it.
If you plan on leveling Shadowlands jewelcrafting keep in mind that without Chromie time ore deposits require level 48, so use Shadowlands Chromie time. Same for dungeons - you need Shadowlands Chromie time to enter them and have level 20 mobs.
If you want to farm the Ooze trinket you need to get to the second quest zone of Shadowlands. To get there you need to do quests in Bastion. After you complete Bastion quests you unlock the flymaster to the second zone. Ooze trinket doesn't drop for healing specs or plate wearers. It is not an easy dungeon to solo if you are undergeared. You can't skip any bosses there because the door to the last boss won't open if you do. It is good to be able to dispel diseases if your class has such an option.
The Totem trinket is available from De Other Side - you can get there through dungeon finder with Shadowlands Chromie time on. Plaguefall is not available through dungeon finder for some reason.
4) Shadowlands tailoring bags require expensive penumbra threads from vendors - be ready to spend 250-275 gold on threads for each bag you craft.
5) If you want to farm Circle of Flame keep in mind that the boss is easy to get to with the mole machine in the beginning of the entrance, but he is hard to solo if you are undergeared and don't have the Shadowlands trinket. Circle of Flame has an amazing mana regeneration ability that is great to use as a healer.
6) A good way to get gold is to complete daily garrison inn quests - you get about 100 gold per quest in addition to WOD items.
7) If you want to make some transmog items while leveling tailoring keep in mind that most shoes require leather to make, you don't have access to the auction house without an active subscription so you might want to pick skinning before tailoring.
8) If you do Darkmoon fair quests to level profession, keep in mind that they only give extra points for the "latest" expansion you learned. So if you need extra points for Northrend engineering and you learned Pandaria engineering, then Darkmoon fair quest will only give you extra points to Pandaria engineering.
9) Best food is the one that provides 10% extra health to all group members. Haven't seen anything better at least. As far as I understand you can buy these for marks of honor.
10) My WOD drops statistics:
Bosses defeated - 873
Daily quests completed (this is mostly inn) - 42
Purple items - 94
So the chance for purple seems to be around 10%.
Blue+socket - 32
Purple+socket - 6
Purple (can be socket) - 54
So the chance for socket seems to be around 6-7%.
Purple+speed - 4
Purple+leech - 3
Purple+avoidance - 3
Purple+indestructible - 0
So the chance for indestructible seems to be lower than other ones.
Purple+socket+tertiary - 1
Big luck I guess, got a purple+speed+socket ring.
 
After the f2p player arrives to Oribos, the capital city of Shadowlands, I highly recommend hearthstoning this city. Portals to Shadowlands from Orgrimmar and Stormwind require level 48 for some reason so I don't see any way to come back other than hearthstone.
If you set your Chromie Time to Shadowlands, then you can use the protal from Stormwind to Shadowlands without any level 48 restriction. If you use any other Chromie Time, then the portal to Shadowlands requires level 48.
 
fellaz, is there a way to soulbind high lvl stuff? (e.g. to use island expedition drops for transmog)

No, unless somebody knows a magic trick. The quickest way with a sub would be to make a class trial.

@DoByG I guess section 0. can be updated regarding Chromie Time, as of 10.1.5, Chromie Time is now available to F2P
 
fellaz, is there a way to soulbind high lvl stuff? (e.g. to use island expedition drops for transmog)
No, unless somebody knows a magic trick.
Time to do some magic :ez:

Some enchants / tinkers / armor kits makes item soulbound, but this alone does not make you learn the mog for some weird reason, so afterwards you also need to put the item in your void storage.

The different ilvls you can bind depend on slot and you can’t even bind all slots. This is what I wrote down back in SL so it’s outdated and havnt checked what ilvl it works to now.

Helm: Not possible
Shoulders: https://www.wowhead.com/item=144346/boon-of-the-zookeeper
Cloak: https://www.wowhead.com/spell=126392/goblin-glider
Chest: Not possible
Wrists: https://www.wowhead.com/spell=271433/cooled-hearthing
Gloves: Not possible
Belt: https://www.wowhead.com/spell=82200/spinal-healing-injector
Legs: https://www.wowhead.com/spell=124563/heavy-leg-reinforcements
Feet: Not possible
1H Weapons: Not possible
2H Weapons: Not possible
Offhands / Shields: Not possible
Ranged Weapons: https://www.wowhead.com/item=4407/accurate-scope
 
Hi! I'm a fairly new player to wow and have only ever done the free trial - I dabbled in it in high school and recently reinstalled it about 2 weeks ago. I've got to say, this guide has been the greatest resource of information I've ever stumbled upon for any niche endeavor in a video game, so thank you! All the guides on other websites, including wowhead, have contained wildly false information for f2ps, but this one has been extremely detailed and accurate.

There are, however, two things that I thought I'd ask about.
Firstly, with regards to the Shadowlands Intro, the guide says that at some times you have to group with someone in legion Chromie Time, but I haven't run into that yet. I think I'm about halfway through the Maldraxxus story line. Are the mentioned parts all after this?

Secondly, I only see three dungeons in the WoD dungeon finder. The one I'm missing is Auchindoun. While it may be the worst one to farm on, I still need to get my garrison inn quests done on it. Any clue why this might be happening?
 

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