Molten Front / Firelands Dailies Guide and Tips

How to get to Firelands Entrance
Firelands Dailies Guide
Review of Firelands Dailies Plus Some Inspiration
Shadow Wardens vs. Druids of the Talon - Which one Do I Choose?
Calling the Ancients, Filling the Moonwell, or Additional Armaments: Which to choose?

So, it's day 3 (or 33) of running Firelands prequest dailies in World of Warcraft's patch 4.2 and you've finally acquired 20 Mark of the World Tree to open the portal into Firelands, or you've collected your 300th and you are well toasted from the copious time spent in the inferno. (Note: If you are looking for info on how to get to firelands, follow this link.)  In order to confirm that you've actually reached the Firelands, follow these steps:

1. Look carefully at your surroundings.  Is everything either on fire or recently charred? 

If you answered yes to question 1, it is very likely that you've reached the Molten Front of the Firelands WoW 4.2 patch and that you are on your way with the dailies grind.  Click here to read a Review of Firelands Dailies and an Inspirational Message .

A few quick tips:

• Be sure to check the vendor in the little cave at the beginning.  There are some level 365 epic items for sale on it from day one.
• Note that the portal to Mount Hyjal is two-way, meaning you can come and go as you please.
• Be sure to check the Regrowth area of Mount Hyjal and the Molten Front of Firelands for daily quests each day.  After the first day of adventuring in the Firelands, you should have 25 Mark of the World Tree.  After the second day adventuring in the Firelands, you should have 39 Mark of the World Tree. So, you'll be accumulating 14 Mark of the World Tree daily while you are grinding your first 150 Marks.
• When you finally accumulate 150 and choose to help either Shadow Wardens (recommended) or Druids of the Talon, you'll be accumulating 25 marks of the world tree daily on your way to completing the next 150 marks you need to get.
• Be sure to stay hydrated.  Spending a lot of time in a dry environment such as the Firelands will quickly dehydrate you.  Water is typically your best alternative.  
• When completing quests, be as cutthroat as possible.  If you see someone fighting near a quest objective, quickly sidle in while they have the mob occupied and complete your quest.  If someone tries to do this to you, natural instinct would be to berate the other player.  From a time-management standpoint, this doesn't make sense.  Simply move on and try to be smarter about letting others do the work for you.
• If after a week or two of grinding dailies you are starting to feel burned out, don't worry about it.  You are in the Firelands after all, you are supposed to feel a little singed.  If, on the other hand you are feeling burned out in the World of Warcraft experience, don't sweat it.  Turn off the computer for a few days.  It isn't going anywhere.

How to get to Firelands Entrance - World of Warcraft patch 4.2

In order to access Firelands / Molten Front content in World of Warcraft's patch 4.2, you want to pick up the  quest at the main portal area in your capital city before going through the portal into Mount Hyjal and you'll want to check the Stormwind/Orgrimmar quest board.   When you arrive in Mount Hyjal, find Thrall (he's near nordrassil) and turn in the quest you picked up before entering the portal from your home city.  You are now on one of the quest chains, which is kind of lengthy and involves protecting Thrall and his lady-friend from various evil elementals.  A little tip on completing these quests: work with other players...all you need to do is put a few points of damage on the creature to get credit for it.  So if you are a healer, get out an insta-cast damage spell and tag them.  When you've completed that quest chain,  go to the Sanctuary of Malorne (as prompted by the quest you pulled off of your city's quest board) in Mount Hyjal to begin the next set of pre-quests, or you may need to do more questing before actually accessing the Firelands prequest dailies.  See below for details.  If you'd like to read a Review of Firelands Dailies and an Inspirational Message, you should click here.  It may be just the sort of encouragement you need.

Special Note:  If you are just looking for the Raid Entrance to Firelands, simply go to the portal on the north side of Sulforon Spire in Mount Hyjal.  You need to be in a raid to enter here.

Less Special Note:  If you've arrived in the Molten Front of the Firelands already, you may want to check out the Firelands Dailies Guide

Quest board location in Org

If you did not complete most of the Mount Hyjal quests when you were leveling, you are going to need to go back and complete them.  The quest you picked up from your city's quest board should tell you who you need to "protect" in order to Reclaim the Regrowth and gain access to the firelands prequest dailies.   You need approximately 84/115 quests completed when you check your achievement pane for Mount Hyjal.  If you didn't make it that far, you will need to go back and do those quests in order to complete the quest (found on your city's quest board) that allows you to do Firelands dailies.  The areas that you'll need to complete will be:  Shrine of Goldrinn, Shrine of Aviana, The Regrowth, and Grove of Aessina, each corresponding to one of the Guardians that you need to "protect" in order to complete the prerequisite for the Firelands dailies.

Quest Board location in Stormwind

When you finally do get to the dailies in Mount Hyjal, they are located in the area of Hyjal called "Sanctuary of Malorne" in the SW of the map.  It looks like you will need to accrue 20 Marks of the World Tree before you can enter Firelands / Molten Front, which will take a few days of running the dailies there.  The first day you should be able to accrue 12 marks, and each subsequent day you will get 4 marks.  On the third day after you begin the Firelands pre-quest dailies, you will have accumulated 20 marks and will be able to complete the quest that leads to progress into the next phase of the Firelands quest chain.  At the end of day 3 after you've done all the dailies in the Firelands and at the Sanctuary of Malorne, you should have 25 marks of the World Tree.  Take a look at the Firelands Dailies Guide when you've finally made it. And the World of Warcraft tumbles onward.



So, to summarize your World of Warcraft patch 4.2 Firelands pre-quest experience, the quest that you pick up near the portals can be done without having completed the necessary original quests in Mount Hyjal.  However, to ultimately be granted access to the Firelands, you will need the original quest line up to Reclaiming the Regrowth.  This will take approximately 84 quests completed in Mount Hyjal (it actually only takes about 3 hours to run through at level 85, so it isn't too daunting).

Once you get to Firelands, Daily quests will open slowly as you collect Mark of the Worldtree currency from the initial daily quests that are available to you.  Just like other faction/currency grinds, you will eventually gain access to lots of great gear and toys.  The reported difference between the Firelands daily quest grind and previous such grinds is that you will use your currency to open new quest hubs and that you will actually use gold to purchase items when they become available to you.  This is a better balance toward allowing players to do what they want after they've completed the initial reputation/mark of the worldtree grind instead of forcing them to run the dailies ad nauseum to continue to accrue the specific currency needed.  Though, calculations on message boards and forums are showing that it will take well over a month of daily grinding to gain access to all items offered at the pre-raid vendor level in Firelands.

How to get to Firelands Entrance
Firelands Dailies Guide
Review of Firelands Dailies Plus Some Inspiration
Shadow Wardens vs. Druids of the Talon - Which one Do I Choose?
Calling the Ancients, Filling the Moonwell, or Additional Armaments: Which to choose?

How to get to Deadmines Entrance in World of Warcraft

Deadmines is a great low and high level instance, but it can be a little tricky to find if you aren't using the dungeon-finder tool to automatically teleport you there. If you are interested in farming the instance solo, or perhaps helping an alt or low level friend get the gear that they want, follow these steps to safely and quickly arrive at the Deadmines entrance in World of Warcraft:

1. Get to the Southwest area of Westfall.  Deadmines is labeled clearly on the in-game map for you.
2. Find the following building and enter the small door that the red arrow points to:

Entrance to Deadmines in Moonbrook

 3. When you enter into the main room in this building, take the staircase up to the second floor.  You'll find the entrance to the shaft which eventually leads to the portal entrance.

4. Wind down the mining shaft.  Stay on the main trail until you reach the first multi-way intersection.  There are a few side-shafts that sprout off the main shaft before you get to this point, but you shouldn't follow them.  Look for this:

Follow the Train tracks to the right when you get to this first big intersection.

 5. The secret tip that will save you headaches trying to find the entrance through the labyrinth of tunnels down here:  simply follow the train tracks to the right when you get to the point in the above picture and you will see the entrance eventually.



Don't be one of the the thousands of World of Warcraft players who always gets lost in these tunnels and enjoy one of the game's great dungeons!

World of Warcraft Gold Challenge Summary

Alpha Competition experience: Completed December, 2010:

In a nutshell, this was a competition to see how quickly I could gain 10,000 gold on a random server by simply using the auction house in World of Warcraft.  The Recap at the end is a good place to start if you just want the basics.  If you want to see a lot more of the thought process and experiment, start at the beginning and read through.  Please note that this experiment took place before Cataclysm Expansion launched, so the gold per hour was fairly impressive for the time period.  I intend to do a beta competition in the near future in the post-Cataclysm economy.

Rules
Prelude
Hour 1
Hour 2
Hour 3
Hour 4
Hour 5
Hour 6
Hour 7
Hour 8
Hour 9
Hour 10
Hour 11
Hour 12
Hour 13
Hour 14
Hour 15
Hour 16
Hour 17
Hour 18
Hour 19
Hour 20
Hour 21
Hour 22
Hour 23
Hour 24
Hour 25
Inclusive Recap