Sunday, August 29, 2010

Using Dungeons for Leveling in World of Warcraft with Dugi's WoW Guide

When World of Warcraft was released about 5 years ago, people didn't run many Dungeons. It was something that guilds did, but not something that general players got into. It was extremely difficult to find other players who were willing to party with you then travel half way across the world just to enter the Dungeon. Having a Warlock in your group was pretty much essential for teleporting people to the dungeon, otherwise your group would never get started.

There are so many awesome lower level dungeons but most players never get to see them because it is even harder to find lower level players to group with since everybody in the server was already level 80. But all that has changed now with the new Dungeon Finder system in Patch 3.3

If you hop into World of Warcraft right now and hit your button for the old Looking for Group window, you'll get the new 'Dungeon Finder' instead. It looks kind of close to how the old one was laid out. You've got your role selection at the top of tank, healer or DPS. You've also got the option to be the leader of the party.

The system will automatically find a group for you and then teleport everyone inside the dungeon to begin playing immediately, how cool is that!

If you ever follow the quest story line in World of Warcraft, you will know that eventually the story will lead you inside ….you guessed it Dungeons. It was frustrating back then to have these awesome quests sitting in your log book that you’re dying to complete, but can’t. Waiting until you’re a high enough level to solo it yourself pretty much takes the fun out and the rewards are no longer useful.

I saw the potential when Blizzard released their new dungeon finder and I knew this tool was going to help with my leveling A LOT. Now it is actually a common thing to do. So many players get to level 15 and then they do literally nothing but random dungeons until level 80…

While this is a legitimate strategy to leveling, I do find it somewhat boring only doing dungeons. It still feels like grinding to me, just killing monsters over and over again with no purpose. The original design by Blizzard of dungeons is that it would be the last place that you visit to complete your quest line, and that is exactly what I did.

I always collect all the quests required for the dungeon before entering a dungeon, there are always about 3-5 quests available per dungeon and some of them require you to complete a chain of solo quests first before you can get them.

Dungeons quests are considered more difficult and reward you with double experience points and rare (blue) quality items, it is amazing because completing 5 quests in a dungeon is like completing 10 quests solo.

The combination of the fast grinding experience in Dungeons plus the Dungeon quests gives you the fastest leveling ever. I often get about 1 full level just by turning in my quests. I would get about 1.5-2 levels completing the dungeon then get another 1-1.5 levels just by turning in quests and I will get rare (blue) quality items comparable and sometimes better than Heirloom items.

There are some resources out there such as wowhead and wowwiki to help you find and complete these dungeons, these were helpful until I stumbled upon Dugi’s Dungeon Leveling guide.

It is a step-by-step guide for Dungeons at every level, for example I’m level 15 and I want to complete the Ragefire Chasm dungeon with quests. I simply select the Ragefire Chasm guide and follow the step-by-step guide, which contains all the pre-requisite quests for Ragefire Chasm




The guide also instructs me when I should zone, queue and begin the dungeon, and once I have completed the dungeon. The guide automatically gives me full instructions as to where I should turn in the quests and how to get there.

Once I complete one dungeon I can move on to the next dungeon guide which is Wailing Caverns, and all this time I have leveled at a very fast rate. Having the guide viewable inside the game is a god send and it makes it is so simple and easy, I wish Blizzard had made something like this built in. I guess it would probably make the game too easy .

Dugi’s Dungeon Leveling Guide skips all the non-essential solo quests and get’s you to complete the pre-requisite dungeon quests. I noticed that Dugi sometimes adds in solo quests that aren’t necessary for a dungeon but that’s because I was going to be questing in that certain area anyway so it was definitely a good idea to complete the extra solo quests at the same time so I’m glad he added those in.

This was my level progress for my new Orc Shaman from using this guide, with the help of Dungeon Quests I steadily gain 2-3 levels per dungeon and I didn’t have to run each dungeon more than once which would have been boring.

Level 16 Ragefire Chasm
Level 18 Wailing Caverns
Level 20 Shadowfang Keep
Level 23 Blackfathom Deeps
Level 25 Razonfen Craul
Level 27 Gnomeregan
Level 29.5 Scarlet Monastery Graveyard
Level 31 Scarlet Monastery Library
Level 33 Razonfens Down
Level 35 Scarlet Monastery Armory
Level 37 Scarlet Monetary Cathedral (I actually ran this twice because I didn’t get the items that I wanted the first time)
Level 40 Uldaman
Level 43.5 Zul’Farrak
Level 46 Mauradon
Level 48.5 Sunken Temple
Level 53 Blackrock Depths Prison
Level 55 Sholomance
Level 57 Stratholme

At level 58 I could have just went straight to Outland but I didn’t want to abandon my group so I leveled to almost level 59 before I went to Outlands.

Well that is my progress so far, and I have been loving every minute of leveling. World of Warcraft felt like a brand new game. Some of the storylines in these Dungeons are truly epic, it’s hard to pick a favorite but Uldaman really stood out to me as my first Epic dungeon experience.

I hope blizzard would revamp these dungeons for Cataclysm because it would be a shame to lose them forever. I highly recommend you complete these Dungeons before Cataclysm comes, so you can truly experience the rich storyline in World of Warcraft.

I have also seen many players reaching level 80 and yet still don’t have a clue on how to play their class. Leveling in Dungeons is the best way to learn your class because as you level up, the dungeon gets harder and harder and you will gradually learn on how to play your class role so that once you reach level 80 you won’t get laughed at or kicked out of guilds and raids because you didn’t know how to play your class in dungeons.

If you’re interested with leveling faster than ever before then I highly recommend Dugi’s WoW Leveling Guides. Just click on the link below:

Dugi's Leveling Guide

Friday, August 27, 2010

Cataclysm Gold Secrets Guide!!

I received an email the other day about a new gold guide that just hit the market. It’s called Cataclysm Gold Secrets and it’s been released to help players prepare for the flux of new content that will come right before and during the Cataclysm launch. So, my big question today is, do we need a guide like that and how bad will the new batch of gold sinks be?

First up, do we need a guide to prep for Cataclysm. There are a lot of gold guides out there, and I personally have not needed any myself. That said, this guide looks pretty solid. It’s short, to the point, and presents a very detailed plan on how to make gold and work your way up in the game – that’s more than you can say for pretty much every other guide on the market.

Second up, how bad are these gold sinks going to be? I would guess pretty bad. Inflation has been crazy lately, and that means Blizzard wants to drain some coin before the game kicks up again. That only seems to make it worse, but hey, why not? It gets more interest out of the new expansion when it hits. Pretty much every upgrade we get seems to cost a lot of gold now adays, so it could be a bonanza of spending when the new expansion hits – from skill ups to gear to flying mount skills.

The final question then – do we need to be preparing for the new expansion and farming for a lot of gold in anticipation? I say yes. It’s going to be a massive, oversized launch that will blow everyone out of the water in terms of what we can expect out of the new content. That probably means we’ll need to pay for every second of it. I plan on having 100,000 gold on hand at launch. That’s a lot for some of you, so I’d start farming as soon as possible.

Check out the new Cataclysm Gold Secrets Guide at the link below:

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Game modeling tutorials coming soon!!

Hey all,

Thanks for all of you who have visited my blog, even know I don't have much up right now I promise to get more up in the future. As soon as I get a few followers I will begin to post tutorials on modeling Next Gen Game assets. I'm sure there are those of you who want to learn and maybe even some students that would love a tutorial on let's say an awesome Zbrushed wooden crate, barrel that I will projection map onto a low res mesh or even larger models like cars etc.

So as soon as I get a few followers I promise I will begin to create these videos and in the meantime if you want to e-mail me with any questions you might have on creating models please feel free to leave a comment and I will respond ASAP.

A small sample is shown below of some of my older artwork.

Till then thank you for reading my blog and check out the older posts if you enjoy Starcraft 2!!

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Next Starcraft guide review

Now I will move down the ladder a bit and talk about Joana's Starcraft 2 guide which can be found here - Joanas Starcraft 2 Guide

Joana's Starcraft 2 guide is created pretty well and has lot's of important information and walk through's on the campaign (well for the first 10 or so campaign levels) but it is lacking on updates. Since I joined Joana's Starcraft 2 guide the only updates have been on the campaign and it is still only on the first few levels and who knows when the next updates will arrive. Although he is lacking in updates this guide is still very good and contains strategies for every race and has helped me improve my game. I would rank it #2 out of the 3 guides that I am in and give it 3 out of 5 stars. More information on Joana's guide coming soon.

Info on which Starcraft 2 guide to purchase and which one is worth the money!!!

Hi there,


First of all let me give you a bit about my background. For the last 10 years I have been working in the video game industry as a 3D artist. I have worked for some of the biggest companies out there such as EA. I am an avid gamer and I routinely write blogs and reviews on games and guides that can help out on mastering these games. I want to start my blog off with reviews on Starcraft 2 guides. I have been playing Starcraft 2 since Beta and hold a platinum level in 1vs1 multi player from the help of these guides.This first post is information for others that want to purchase a Starcraft 2 guide but don't know which one to choose, after all why would someone want to pay $40 for 3 different guides. I however have purchased 3 different Starcraft 2 guides and will write a post on each one to give you guys sort of a review so that you know which one to pick up if interested just so you don't make the same mistake that I made.


I will start with the best guide that I picked up and work my way to the worse and explain why.


The first one I will review is Shokz Starcraft 2 guide which can be found here - Shokz Starcraft 2 Guide


Hands down the Shokz Starcraft 2 Guide is the best. I signed up not only for Shokz guide but for 2 other Starcraft guides as well. The difference between Shokz guide and the others is that he is up to date with all the missions, strategies and everything else you want to know about Starcraft 2. You can use his guide to not only gain experience but to level upto the diamond multiplayer level in no time. Other guides that I purchased never ran any updates and when they did it took them forever to add anything at all to their site to keep their members happy. Shokz ran updates all the time and kept you up to date with the latest Starcraft videos of the best players in the world as well as updated campaign tips and strategies. With the information that I received on Shokz guide I went from a level Bronze on 1v1 multi player to platinum level in a matter of a couple weeks and my last 100 games I am 90-10!! Not only does he give you up to date strategies against each race but he also guides you through the entire campaign which is hard to find since Starcraft 2 was just released.


Also Shokz Guide is a one time fee that comes with a lifetime membership along with continuous updates tot he site so you will never run out of information. I would rate this guide #1 out of the 3 guides and give it 5 out of 5 stars!!