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A Gnome Warlock – The Early Years 3.0 (UPDATED for 3.1.1)

OR Starting a new Gnock after 10/14/2008 (UPDATED as of 18 May 2009)

(There’s really not that much different in 3.1.1 as opposed to 3.0 as far as this guide is concerned. I clarified a few things and corrected some omissions, but it’s still pretty much the same.)

What I’m doing for this guide is taking a fresh new character and walking it through leveling the first several levels. This part of the guide covers the starting area, Coldridge Valley, and gets you all the way to Kharanos. You may disagree with some of my decisions, you may think I’m an idiot, you may think I’m a n00b, you may think I’m unqualified, but … well, I sat down and wrote a guide and you didn’t. I directed it to the beginning player, somebody who understands the basics of the game but might not be all that familiar with Warlocks or some other aspects of WoW, so it may be simplistic in places to some of you. I’m not claiming that this is the ‘best’ or ‘easiest’ or ‘most fun’ or whatever way to get a gnome warlock started. However, it’s MY way, so feel free to comment, criticize, praise, or whatever. Personal attacks should be directed to /dev/null.

Why play a Gnock?

Cute, harmless-seeming, happy-go-luck creatures of the earth. Idols of us decorate backyards throughout suburbia. Children love us. But beneath that saccharine exterior lies a heart of purest blackness, just waiting to unleash the demons of hell upon an unsuspecting world. Usually upon their enemies, but hey, sometimes things go wrong …!

I chose a warlock because I like warlocks, they’re fun to play. I chose a gnome because it just strikes me as hilarious to have a cheery little head-bobbing piece of sunlight and happiness as a dealer in powers from beyond the void. And everybody seems to HATE gnome warlocks. Well, isn’t that how people are SUPPOSED to feel about warlocks? They hate us … because they fear us.

In game terms, a Gnome has the racial ability of Expansive Mind, meaning their intellect is increased by five percent. Always a bonus to a caster, as more intellect means more mana and spell crit chance. They also have the Escape Artist racial, meaning that they can get out of any traps, slows, freezes, whatever. This can be important when you are running around DOTting up your enemies. Bottom line, if you want to be an Alliance Warlock, play a Gnock.

Starting Area (1-6)

You start on a windswept, snow-covered field. You are in Coldridge Valley. Straight ahead of you is a guy with a yellow exclamation point above his head, your first quest giver, Sten Stoutarm, with your first quest, “Dwarven Outfitters.” Like most early quests, this calls for you to kill a certain number of mobs (monsters, beasts, whatever).

So Sten wants you to bring him some wolf meat, and the most likely source of this is the plethora of Ragged Young Wolves wandering about in the field behind you. However, let’s put that quest on hold for a moment and get another quest first.

Go off to your left and follow the road up into the big building: Anvilmar. Go all the way into the back to the second room and then go up the stairs to the right. Up there you will find the Warlock Trainer, Alamar Grimm. He also has a quest for you: “Beginnings.”

This is the quest I recommend you do right away. It’s not the easiest quest, but c’mon, this is a starting zone, nothing is that hard. The rewards from this quest will be your first minion, the Imp, which will make everything else just child’s play.

So Alamar wants you to go and get three Feather Charms from Frostmane Novices. You’re level 1; they’re level 4. Not a fair fight, but you’re a warlock, you can do it.

Pull up your map (hit “M”). Almost directly south of you and ever-so-slightly to the west you will see a cave. It’s the only cave there. That’s where you need to go. So back track out of the building and walk south. Interestingly, south is the direction of all those wolves, so kill a bunch of them along the way, hopefully enough to get the 8 pieces of wolf meat that you need for the quest and enough to get you to 2nd level before you enter the cave.

Before you head right out, though, let’s make sure that you understand your starting spells. First you get Demon Skin. This has been altered slightly from previous versions, it no longer automatically regenerates more health, but if you are healed in some way it will amplify that. Also it acts like armor and absorbs damage. Bottom line, keep this up at all times. It’s a good thing.

You also get Shadow Bolt. This is your only damage spell. You will be using it a lot. So get your favorite finger over the key it’s assigned to and head south!

Battles with monsters at this stage are depressingly easy. Start out a fair distance from the mob you want to kill, and then keep hitting the Shadow Bolt until the mob is either dead or has less than 10 or 15 HP left. At that point you can stop casting and just finish them off with your dagger. Go south, kill wolves, get wolf meat, reach 2nd level before you get to the caves. Of course, you can kill things other than wolves, and you will get experience for killing them, so kill pretty much anything you want but eventually make your way to the cave. Collect whatever loot drops, but make sure to keep one bag slot open for the Feather Charms.

A hint on looting: if a piece of armor like gloves or pants or something drops from a monster, and you can’t use it, take it anyway. You can sell it for a few copper at least. However, these items take up space in your bag and are worth very little. It’s better to get something stackable, where you can have several of the same item in one bag slot, so as to maximize your cash flow. So it’s usually better to get rid of an armor item (cloth is worth least, then leather, and mail is worth the most – but still a lot less than a stack of pelts or claws) if you have to make space.

When mana is low, you need to stop. Sit down (hit “X”) and rest until your mana bar reaches full. At this point, it shouldn’t take more than three or four bolts to take down a mob – that’s about 80 mana points. If they only have 10 or so hit points left, and you are at full or almost-full health, use your dagger. This will allow your mana to regenerate so your down-time will be less. Learning to balance health and mana will be good practice for when you learn Life Tap (more on that later).

As you approach the cave, there will be mobs wandering around outside, most likely the Frostmane Troll Whelps. Kill as many of these as you need to in order to get into the cave. Note that these mobs are unlike the wolves and other beasties in that they will attack you if you get too close. You can tell because their names appear in red instead of yellow. Yellow-named mobs will only attack if you attack them; red-named mobs will attack if they notice you. They will notice you if
you either attack them or get too close. So keep your distance unless you want to fight.

Most of these trolls are spaced out pretty well and you’ll only have to fight one at a time. That should be easy. Keep in mind that if another mob wanders too close to your battle, they’ll pitch in and you may die – depending on how quickly you take out the first mob. Also, if you miss too much on your spells, you may die. If you die, no problem, you can just run your spirit back to your corpse (where you died) and resurrect. Make sure that no mobs are around when you do! You will be low on health and mana, so sit down and rest until you’re back up to full strength.

Anyhow, once you’re in the cave, follow it back into the main area. There are a few different paths leading forward; take the one to the right. This is where the Novices (as opposed to the Whelps) are easiest to get to.

On my server, there was one Novice off to the left all by his lonesome and then a group of three more off to the right, two Whelps and one Novice. The Whelps can are standing reasonably close together, but can be pulled separately. Make sure that you always check to your rear before starting a fight; another mob attacking you from behind is not what you want.

The mobs respawn (reappear after you kill them) fairly quickly, so what I did is take out the lone Novice first, get his Charm, then go over and take out the Whelps one at a time and then the Novice, and then get the second Charm. By that time the first (lone) Novice had respawned, so I went over and killed him, got the last Charm, and used my hearthstone to get back to where I started.

I made 3rd level during this quest. If you don’t, you almost certainly will when you turn in the quests. First, if you’ve finished getting the wolf meat, turn in the quest to Sten and get a nice pair of gloves in return. If you haven't finished getting the meat, kill wolves until you do. He’ll also have two more quests for you: “Tainted Memorandum” and “Coldridge Valley Mail Delivery.” Just to the left of him is Balir Frosthammer, who has a quest to kill some troggs. Get that, then go inside to Alamar and turn in both the “Beginnings” quest and the “Tainted Memorandum” quest, so that you can learn to summon your imp!

Now, the imp is a useful and fun little minion. He casts fireballs. At this level, that’s ALL he does. He’s more than a match for a most starting-area mobs by himself. It goes faster if you help out though.

You can also learn a new spell at this point, Immolate. This burns the target for 9 to 10 damage then does an additional 20 over the next 15 seconds. Most of your fights won’t last that long, but it will still do slightly more damage than your Shadow Bolt if it goes beyond a few seconds.
On your way back out, you can pick up another quest from Felix Whindlebolt, “A Refugee’s Quandary.” Seems that the trolls (the same ones you just killed) have stolen some tools of his, and he wants you to get them back. Take the quest, then head out.

Go south, past the wolves (you can kill some more if you want) to find the troggs. Kill them. You should first target a mob from a distance (either right-click on it or hit “T” to target the nearest mob that is in front of you). Then hit Shift-T to tell the imp to attack, and then cast your Immolate. Your spells should go off about the same time. As soon as they go off, cast Shadow Bolt. One should be all you need for 1st and 2nd level mobs. If the mob doesn’t die by the time he reaches you, a few more dagger hits and fireballs will take care of him. Alternately, you can just cast two Shadow Bolts. This should be good enough for 1st and 2nd level mobs since they die in the first few seconds – before Immolate has a chance to really ‘tick’ long enough. Higher-level mobs will last longer and allow Immolate to do more damage, so you might want to get used to this sequence early. Or if you want to save on mana (but take a little longer), just cast either Immolate or Shadow Bolt and wait for the mob to get to you. On a 1st or 2nd level mob, you’ll still kill them before they kill you.

Kill whatever you can until you reach 6 Burly Rockjaw Troggs and 6 Rockjaw Troggs. When you’re done, you should be closing in on 4th level. (I was 2 bars away on the first character, almost 7 on the second one.) So, to save time, go and do the Mail quest. Head essentially west or northwest, to the middle of the curve in the road. You may see another quest giver at the end of the road; do NOT take that quest yet. Go and find Talin Keeneye, who will show up as a yellow question mark on your minimap. You may want to zoom out your minimap (hit the little minus sign in the lower right-hand corner of the minimap until it goes gray).

Turn in the quest to him, and get the follow-up quest to deliver some mail to another guy. He’ll also give you another quest, “The Boar Hunter,” where you need to kill 12 of those 3rd-level boars wandering all about the area. Don’t do that now. NOW you can follow the road back south to where the other quest-giver was.

Turn in the quest to Grelin Whitebeard first, and get the quest he offers: “The Troll Cave.” Yes, it’s the same one you got your imp at, so you know where it is. However, although the title is “The Troll Cave,” you can kill the trolls anywhere – including the ones outside the caves at the camps, which we’ll get to later. Only then go to the other quest giver, Nori Pridedrift, and get the “Scalding Morningbrew Delivery” quest. This asks you to take a mug of hot morningbrew back to a guy in Anvilmar, who is in the back room on the lower level (kind of in front and under the warlock trainer). You have five minutes, which is more than enough time, so if you need to kill some more mobs to make it to 4th, you have time. If you follow the road back and walk down the stairs, you’ll still make it in less than 2 minutes.

At some point in this sequence, hopefully before you get back to Anvilmar, you’ll make 4th level. When you do, your imp advances to 4th level too and learns a special talent all his own: Blood Pact. This ability gives you 20 extra health – always a good thing. Remember though, if your imp dies, you lose the 20 health. Note that you don’t have to do anything for your imp to get this ability; before the 3.0 patch, you had to go to a demon trainer and buy a Grimoire and teach your pet the ability. All that is gone now, you don’t even have to think about it.

Anyhow, after you give the morningbrew to Durnan Furcutter and get 230xp, then get the follow-up quest to return the mug. Then, sell your extra loot and repair your equipment. You can then go up to the warlock trainer and learn your 4th-level spells: Corruption and Curse of Weakness. If you don’t have the money to train them both, definitely train Corruption; the Curse is much less useful.

Corruption has changed in the patch. It used to be a two-second cast, now it’s instant-cast and invokes the GCD (that’s global cool-down, which means you have to wait briefly – 1 second – after casting that spell before you can cast another one). This makes it a bit more useful for everybody; previously, you could get it down to an instant cast only by investing five of your talent points. You don’t get talent points until 10th level, and then only one per level, so Corruption wasn’t instant-cast before 14th level and then only if you took that talent.
Corruption does 40 damage over 12 seconds. This starts two seconds AFTER you cast it, even though the mob you cast it on knows it immediately and starts coming to attack you. Immolate does an immediate 9 to 10 plus 20 over the next 15 seconds. The timed aspect looks like it starts two seconds after you cast it as well. Plus, Immolate has a 2 second cast time, so the ‘instant’ damage is two seconds after you press the key to cast it anyhow – though it doesn’t invoke the GCD.

What this means in practical terms is that Immolate is better if the mob (a) isn’t attacking you and (b) doesn’t live more than 3 seconds, but Corruption is better otherwise. By “better,” of course, I mean “does more damage.” Now, if the mob IS attacking you, Immolate is even worse because if the mob hits you that causes “pushback” – meaning you lose a little casting time. Corruption doesn’t have that problem.

Fights with a warlock will rarely go less than 3 seconds. Sorry, it’s just the way that our class works. We do damage-over-time spells (DOTs). So the best way to approach this is to have several DOTs up and then cast your direct damage spells (DDs).

Shadow Bolt is a 1.7 sec cast for 13-18 instant damage. Immolate has to tick twice (that is, 4 seconds after it is cast) before it does more damage than SB. In that time, you can cast another SB. Not generally worth it here.

Boiling it down, the sequence of spells that you cast on a mob is first Corruption (COR) then just cast Shadow Bolt (SB) until the mob is dead or low enough on hit points to melee. (One SB is usually all that’s necessary in the starter area.) The imp will start attacking as soon as you cast COR (nice addition to this patch; previously, you had to tell minion to attack or it would only attack if you were hit). HOWEVER, if it’s a strong mob that you feel may take a while, cast COR first, then Immolate (IMM) and only then start casting SB ‘til dead. There’s one mob in the starting area you might want to do that with, he’s the boss of the troll caves, and we’ll get to him in a bit.

Also note that all of this is based on these ranks of the spells. When you get a new rank of any of the spells, you’ll need to re-evaluate their damage and usefulness.

Curse of Weakness (COW) is an interesting spell, it reduces an enemy’s attack power – meaning that he does less damage. How much less? At this level, a little less than 1 DPS (damage per second, meaning hit point per second) from a mob. So in an average five-to-seven second fight (which is what they average at this level) that’s maybe seven less damage you take. Not really worth it…

UNLESS. Where COW comes in handy is when you get an add – that’s an additional mob in the fight other than the one you’re targeting. You can quickly switch targets, cast COW on it, then switch back to the primary target. Note that while many spells require you to be facing the target that you’re casting on, COW does not, making it handy for a target behind you. This can be done for an add attacking either you or the imp.

So, enough theory; let’s kill some mobs! Head out of Anvilmar and turn in the trogg quest at Balir Frosthammer. The boots are probably your best reward, since you will probably find (or maybe already have found) a cape just as good. Remember to equip your new boots and follow the road back to the camp where Talin Keeneye is. There are a lot of boars around there, so kill as many as you need for “The Boar Hunter”, then turn in the quest to Talin. With the boars, you will want to cast COR, then SB, then just melee while your imp casts fireballs. You may take a few hits, maybe 10 points of damage at the most – usually much less. You’ll want to get to around 5th level with this quest, or kill some extra mobs to get you there.

Just southwest of Talin’s camp, there is a troll camp in which you’ll find one of Felix’s tools, Felix’s Box. Go there, pull the mobs away from the camp with COR and kill them. Follow the mountains toward the south, find another troll camp, repeat the process to get Felix’s Chest. Keep following the mountains around toward the east, you’ll come back to the original troll cave, and outside is Felix’s Bucket of Bolts. If you’ve reached 14 trolls killed, the number of trolls that you need to kill for the “Troll Cave” quest, great! If not, keep killing until you do. (You can check your quest log – hit “L” – to see how close you are if it’s not displayed on the screen.)

At this point, head back to the camp at the end of the road to turn in two of your quests, “The Troll Cave” and finally (!) “Bring Back the Mug.” Grelin will also give you the last real quest in the starter area, “The Stolen Journal.” This is where you face the starter area boss, Grik’nir the Cold.

You’ll want to be 6th level before you go into the caves, and you should be pretty close now. So head back to Anvilmar, killing mobs along the way. At this level everything is worth experience points (except critters, like squirrels) – for the first 20 levels or so, everything up to 5 levels below you is worth experience. Anything lower than that isn’t worth experience. So, go on a killing spree! If you cast COR, one SB, then melee the mobs while your imp fights, you should have almost no downtime at all. (Downtime means time you have to spend resting and eating and/or drinking because you’re low on health or mana.)

Note that you might be having some problems with bag space and money. You’re going to need almost 2sp to train 6th level spells. If you don’t have that much, you might want to grind on the Rockjaw Troggs we killed earlier; they generally drop a few copper each, and it adds up without taking up bag space.

Go back to Anvilmar, make sure you are 6th level or within 200xp of leveling. Turn in the “Refugee’s Quandary” quest for another 250xp, then go train at the Warlock Trainer after selling your stuff and repairing. You’ll learn two new spells: Life Tap and Shadow Bolt (Rank 2).

Shadow Bolt now does 23 to 26 points of damage. It’s not really going to affect your casting sequence, though, just make it more devastating to opponents! Life Tap … is an interesting spell. Basically, it’s a reverse healing spell. With a healing spell, you spend mana to gain health. With Life Tap, you spend health to regain mana. You can use it if your mana is low and your health is good. At this point, using it in combat usually isn’t wise. You’ll want to use it after combat to even out your health and mana bars so that both of them are regenerating at the same time. That’ll get you back up to full health and mana faster than letting only one regenerate. Also, after you learn First Aid, you’ll be able to use Life Tap and then use Bandages to quickly get to full.

Now that you’ve cleared out your bags and turned in your quests, time to head to the Troll Cave! This will be simple, but don’t get careless. Just wipe out everything you come across, trying to make sure you pull one at a time. If you pull two, do COW on the extra one and then blast the first one to death (don’t waste time on melee in this case), then finish off the add.

When you enter the cave, instead of heading to the right, head over to the left. Go all the way back, Grik’nir is well-protected and you’ll probably have to kill 10 or more trolls to get to him. When you get to him, take him out first then whatever other adds. He’ll almost definitely have one add, possibly two. Shouldn’t take you that long or be all that difficult. Cast COR, then IMM, then SB; if you have an add, cast COW on it, then go back to SB on Grik’nir until dead. Then you can finish off the add with COR and SB.

One thing to remember is that in the cave where Grik’nir is, there is a depression in the middle. Do not jump down into it. Your imp will not jump down; he will cheerfully walk all the way around, right past Grik’nir, to get to you. It’s a given that they’re going to attack him. To help him, you have to get to him, which usually means getting past two other mobs of your own. You may wonder how I know this so well.

When you’re done, go back to the camp and talk to Grelin. You’ll finish this quest and get your transitional quest, “Senir’s Observations.” This will require you to talk to Mountaineer Thalos, who will send you on to Kharanos. Thalos is on the road leading out of Coldridge Valley, to the east of Anvilmar. There’s another guy there, just to the right of the road, Hands Springsprocket, with another quest, this time to deliver some items to Kharanos. Take both quests since you’re headed that way anyhow.

First you make it through the pass. There are mobs there, but they’re no harder than the ones you faced in the troll cave. Just kill them, loot them, and move on. Once you get through the pass, keep following the road to Tannok Frosthammer in Kharanos. Along the road you may see some Small Crag Boars. Kill the ones you see, since you can loot them for Crag Boar Ribs, which are some things you’ll be looking for in a bit anyhow.

Once you make it into Kharanos, Senir Whitebeard will be right there on the side of the road to the right. Talk to him to complete your quest, then you should go a bit north to the inn on the right, Thunderbrew Distillery. Inside is Tannok, and you can complete your delivery to him. Also remember to talk to Innkeeper Belm to make this inn your home so that your hearthstone will bring you back here instead of to Coldridge Valley.

** This completes the starting area for a Gnome Warlock. Hope you enjoyed the trip!