World of Warcraft Quest Guide

Introduction

World of Warcraft isn’t all about fighting the bad guys and levelling up. To draw you into the world’s story and encourage you to explore the vast continents, challenges can be accepted through a quest system. These can range from quick gathering quests to those that require you to complete a number of objectives to fully finish, to much lengthier endeavours requiring a group effort and many hours and days to complete.

Many of these quests offer coveted items and a good amount of experience points on completion. This will satisfy players with only a few hours free gaming time a week and those with considerably more free time to play.

To ensure that players always have something to do, something to explore, WoW ships with over 2000 quests for players to do, and all of these help to build up an engaging environment in the world of Azeroth. The game is set in a time about 5 years after the end of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, and hence many of the story and quest elements take off from there.

How to get Quests

All quests in the game cannot be accepted willy nilly, there are prerequisites needing to be met first. The level of your character, its reputation, race and class can play a part.

When walking into a town or area NPCs with quests for you will have a yellow exclamation mark above their head. Clicking on one of these NPCs will activate the quest window with a full description and brief overview and the rewards for completing the quest. There will be quests that list a selection of reward items so you can pick and choose which you prefer once you’ve completed the quest. Once you have accepted the quest, the full details will go into your Quest Log and you can refer to it at any time as you travel.

The table below details the different icons you can find above some NPCs heads and what they mean to your character.

There is a setting in Interface Options to set Instant Quest Text. This means when an NPC tells you the details of a quest it will pop into the window at once rather than slowly revealing the text.

Each quest log will give the title of the quest and a brief (usually 1 or 2 sentances) of what’s required of you listed as a bulleted list of each item/task if necessary. This will change as you complete the objectives. Below that is a more detailed description with a bit of back story. Lastly, the quest reward items and/or money will be listed. Any experience earned by completing the quest is not displayed but it will display in your chat window and middle of the screen when you hand in the quest.

When to do a Quest

Quests are a great way to explore the world and as all quests are level appropriate there’s no danger of finding yourself way out of your depth as far as opponents are concerned.

However, if you get a quest at an early level, say 10, and you don’t complete it until much later, say level 20, you will be rewarded the experience points of a level 10 character. The quests will not disappear from your Quest Log if you don’t do them. For example if you’re character level 33 you would best be adventuring in Desolace, Dustwallow Marsh, Alterac Mountains, Arathi Highlands and Stranglethorn Vale and picking up quests for Razorfen Kraul and Gnomeregan instances. Of course you can try higher level areas but take along a few friends if you do.

As with trade skill recipes quests are colour coded in your quest log in relation to your character level so you can determine which quests you should be doing now and which you should wait until you level up a little more.

• Gray – Trivial. You will get reduced experience for doing this quest because it will be so easy for your character. The longer you leave it the less xp you’ll get.
• Green – Easy for your character to complete.
• Yellow – Relatively easy for your character complete.
• Orange – Challenging.
• Red – Very challenging. Take a friend, actually take two.
• Dungeon – Instances such as Zul’Farrak, Deadmines, Scholomance or Maraudon.
• Elite – Requires a group to complete.
• Raid – Requires a large group.

Some quests can also be on a timer, the ‘race against time’ element adds some excitement. If you find yourself running out of time you can abandon the quest and re-request it again. The clock (as seen above) will sit just below your minimap until the time runs out or you complete the quest. It starts ticking down the moment you accept the quest from the NPC.

When you near an NPC who you are to hand a completed quest in and you’ve completed the quest a yellow marker will appear on the minimap. If you hover over this it will tell you the name of the NPC.

Tracking your Quests

You can track your quest through your Quest Log (Hotkey L) or you can track them in your game window. This means you don’t have to keep opening your Log to see where you are in a quest. There are also UIs that you can add to your WoW directory that further help you manage and monitor quests in WoW. None allow you to store more than 20 Quests in your log however.

There is a limit of 20 quests you can store in your quest log. Due to this, it is wise to try to complete all the quests in one area before moving on to the next one. Do not be afraid to abandon quests and go back to do them later, as you go along, you will learn how to manage your quests better, and obtain several quests involving the same monsters or region before doing them.

Types of Quests

There are so many different quests in WoW that this is actually a difficult question to answer. The most common ones involve killing certain enemies to collect certain items or simply to kill a certain number of some monsters. There are delivery quests that take you from place to place and lead you to new areas to explore, some of these are actually letters that you can read.

The more unusual quests include escorting NPCs from place to place, completing some objective within a time limit and finding a particular object or location in the world. There are quests to defend waves of enemy attacks and quests to infiltrate fortified areas and destroy some books and other things. There are even quests that make use of emotes, and some of the puzzle and riddle quests will have players scratching their heads.

Many players may decide to adventure together with the common objective of completing a single quest. WoW handles item collection quests in the following manner. If the collection quest is to collect from normal monsters, each player would have to get that amount individually. However, if the item to collect drops from a named boss or monster, each and every player will get to loot the quest item. The game will generate one quest item per party member for such bosses. No more boss camping in order to get a quest item for each person in the group. The whole group will also get credit for killing the boss and not just the person who performed the killing blow.

Additionally, players will be rewarded for paying attention to their game environment. Some quests actually start from objects on the floor, and many towns have “Wanted Posters” that also start quests to hunt down some criminal.

A few examples of quests types are:

• Strange Alliance – “Gain a Friendly reputation with the Gelkis, then speak with Uthek the Wise.”
• Compendium of the Fallen – ” Retrieve the Compendium of the Fallen from the Monastery in Tirisfal Glades and return to Sage Truthseeker in Thunder Bluff.”
• Troll Temper – “Bring 20 Vials of Troll Temper to Trenton Lighthammer in Gadgetzan.”
• Grim Message – “Gather Witherbark Skulls and place on Nimboya’s Pike. Place
• Nimboya’s Laden Pike at one of the Witherbark Villages in the Hinterlands, then return to Nimboya in Stranglethorn. “
• There are quests specific to class or profession, it’s highly advisable to do quests of this nature, they will help you progress your chosen class and the professions you’ve opted for. Also, Cooking, Fishing and First Aid require you to complete quests in order to gain Artisan rank.

Sharing Quests

A party can share quests between them if they meet the requirements. Simply stand nearby your party member, click on the quest in your log and hit ‘Share Quest’. If they meet the requirements the quest description will pop up on their screen and they can hit accept. This is great if your party member is out in the field and you don’t wish to wait for them to return to town to pick up the quest.

You can also see which people on your friends list or in your guild share the quests you have when you’re offline allowing you to co-ordinate efforts if you have particular quests you’d like to get complete that require more than one person to do so.

There are restrictions to quest sharing. Quests that activate or start from items cannot be shared since the other person does not have that item. Additionally, only the first part of a multi-part quest can be shared.

You can see if anyone in your party has the same quest as you by the number in brackets next to the quest name in your Quest Log.

Quest Rewards

Rewards are wide ranging, from equipment that is found nowhere else to useful items and potions, and even recipes for some tradeskills. All of these are also usually accompanied by a good amount of experience points and money. Other quests may have long term benefits to the player such as opening up new Gryphon routes making it easier to traverse the vast game world. Quests have other benefits by giving players new skills. For example, many of the classes have specific class quests in which players must complete in order to learn some of their more advanced skills.

To recap on Quests

• You do not need to do every quest in the game.
• Can abandon a quest and re-request it later.
• Quest log can hold a maximum of 20 quests.
• Can share quests with party members as long as they meet the requirements.
• Quest rewards are soulbound so no trading, sell what you don’t need to vendors.
• Quests are colour coded in relation to your current character level.
• Quest items will continue to drop as loot for as long as it takes all party members with that quest to collect what’s needed.
• Some quest-related items classed as ‘quest items’ can be traded with other players.
• You can improve your reputation with certain factions through questing.
• If a quest objective is to kill a boss and you are dead, on your way back to your corpse, and the boss is killed, you will be credited with the kill. If you have resurrected but haven’t made it back to the action and the boss is killed you will not be credited with the kill.
• If you need to free up space in your Quest Log abandon grey quests, by that stage the rewards won’t be desirable and the MoBs you will need to kill to complete the quest will award no XP anyway.

Download Quest Addon for WoW