Boosting a character in Burning Crusade Classic? Here’s everything you need to know

Boosted characters have arrived for testing on the Burning Crusade Classic beta servers. Given the paucity of details we got from BlizzConline, we can now start filling in some of the unknowns. Here’s everything you need to know — but might be afraid to ask — about boosting a character to play in Burning Crusade Classic.

The basics of boosting

When you first log in, you’ll be standing in front of your class trainer in one of three places: Stormwind if you’re Alliance, Orgrimmar if you’re Horde, or Thunder Bluff if you’re a Tauren Druid, just because there are no Druid trainers in Orgrimmar. You’re level 58, but half the experience bar to 59 is already filled and you have full rested experience.

You’ll have an active quest to talk to your trainer. They will give an Azeroth Survival Kit. Inside you’ll find a 60% speed mount, weapons appropriate to each of your class’s specializations, some food, and some water if you’re a mana-based class. Equip one of the weapons from the Azeroth Survival Kit to complete the quest.

The follow-up quest is an introduction to the Burning Crusade era talent trees. It walks you through opening the Talent interface and placing a point. The quest completes when you place the first Talent point, but you have 46 Talent points at level 58. You should place all of them.

Where should you put that talent point?

Burning Crusade era talent trees can be overwhelming at first. There are so many options. Like our Soulbinds in Shadowlands, you have to put points into the tree to open up further options.

Note that some of your spells are accessed through the talent tree, like Crusader’s Strike, Stormstrike, Holy Shock, Shadow Form, Vampric Touch, Mangle, etc. When you learn the spell by taking the Talent, you learn the Rank 1 version, and you’ll need to train its higher ranks from the class trainer. Don’t boogie down into Hellfire Peninsula with Rank 1 Stormstrike!

Here are some suggested builds for leveling your boosted character. I’m not an expert on every class so if you have any suggestions for improvements or alternatives, please feel free to discuss them in the comments section.

• Druid: Feral
• Hunter: Beast Mastery
• Mage: Frost
• Paladin: Retribution
• Priest: Shadow
• Rogue: Combat Swords
• Shaman: Enhancement — points in Convection and Concussion can be switched around. You’ll want 5/5 in each as you level from 58 to 70
• Warlock: Affliction — Affliction is less gear-dependent than Demonology.
• Warrior: Dual Wield Fury

Next, an introduction to Burning Crusade-style questing

The next quest asks you to visit key locations around the city: a specific Innkeeper, a specific Banker, and the Guild Master. This is an excellent introduction to Burning Crusade Classic leveling, whether you’re new to the game or a veteran — especially if you’re used to retail-style questing. You’re only provided a vague location like the Trade District or the Valley of Strength. There’s no indicator on your map of where you should go. There’s no ? over the head of the appropriate NPC. You have to find the named NPC and talk to them. At that point, there’s a dialog option that says, “I have a package for you.”

This is bound to be a bit of an adjustment to people who are new to the Classic game. If you’d like a more modern questing feel, there’s an addon called Questie. It’s available for WoW Classic and there’s already a working version for Burning Crusade Classic.

The final step in the quest is to speak to your leader: Thrall, Cairne Bloodhoof, or Highlord Bolvar Fordragon. They give you a quest to venture to the Blasted Lands and through the Dark Portal — but there are a few other stops to make and errands to run before you begin your adventure in the Outlands.

You’re broke, have a slow mount, your professions aren’t trained, and you’re underpowered

Your boosted character has a slow mount, not much gold, no profession and is underpowered to fight the mobs in Outland. Let’s look at how to solve your problems.

Before you get moving, you’ll want to comb through your spellbook a bit. In order to cast certain spells in Burning Crusade Classic, you’ll need a reagent — this is an item in your inventory. Most can be purchased from a reagent vendor, farmed in the open world, or bought from another player on the Auction House. Our reagent guide will provide you with a list of all the spells that need reagents plus where to get them. You should buy a stack or two of the relevant reagents for your class.

When the opener leaves off, you have the Apprentice Riding Skill (60% speed skill) and a Rare mount (60% speed mount). You will have whatever amount of gold you had prior to the boost. On beta, you’re given 25 gold. That isn’t much.

Journeyman Riding (100% speed skill) cost 540 gold and Epic mounts (100% speed mount) are another 90 gold. Maybe you’re an Auction House wiz, or maybe you have a guild or friend that can spot you 630 gold. If so, awesome. If not, you’re going to need to make some gold in a hurry. You can put this off and just ride the slow mount until you’re closer to 70, but you’re multiplying the time it’ll take you to reach max level. Any time you travel, the slow mount is going to be a hindrance. Plus, you’ll be that much further behind on saving up for your flying mount.

One way to make some gold is with your profession. The boost doesn’t do anything to level your professions: you’ll have the professions you had at whatever skill level they were at prior to the boost. If you had 20 skill points in Mining before you boost, you’ll have 20 skill points in mining after the boost. You might want to think about making your character in the prepatch if for no other reason than to get a head start on professions.

Gathering professions in Burning Crusade Classic don’t work like they do in Shadowlands. You can’t head out to Hellfire and start mining Fel Iron with 1 skill point in Mining or skin Helboars with 1 point in Skinning. You need 300 in the appropriate skill, plus a visit to the trainer for the next skill level, before you can gather in Outland. If you want to level professions, you’ll need to go through the old world and level up your professions. You can either keep the materials for leveling up your chosen production profession — or sell them to make some gold.

Even if you ignore professions and your mount until 70, you can’t ignore how weak your boosted character is.

Level 58 boosted characters are going to struggle in Outland

There’s no way around this — the gear your boosted character receives in the Azeroth Survival Kit is terrible. It’s a set of ilevel 52 greens of the appropriate armor type for your class. It’s essentially level 47 BOE random enhancement greens where they made sure the enhancement — like “of Strength” or “of the Bear” — is appropriate for your class and specialization. For comparison, Level 60 Dungeon blues like the Deathbone Chestplate from Scholomance are ilevel 62. Tier 2’s Breastplate of Wrath is ilevel 76!

Yes, the players decked out in Tier 2 and Tier 3 are going to tear through the mobs in Hellfire Peninsula without any problem. Your boosted character is not.

But you aren’t without options.

Try to level in a group

The quest rewards from the first few quests in Hellfire Peninsula are fantastic. One of the early quests you’ll complete awards an ilevel 81 chest, legs, or helm. But it’s going to take you much longer to get through them with a boosted character. Every single mob will feel like an Elite, and you’re going to die several times. Try to group up with some other people to get those first few quests done. A second or third character — even if they’re another crummy boosted toon like you — will help the quests go faster. Even better, try to get one of those T2 / T3 geared murder machines in your group.

You shouldn’t be lacking for potential group members. If you remember the early days of WoW Classic, the starter zones were overflowing with characters. Players lined up to kill named quest mobs, and that was with the player base spread over several different starting zones on two different continents. With Burning Crusade Classic, the entire player base is funneled into a single zone. It’s going to be nuts.

But maybe you want to get away from the crowds and deal with some easier mobs on your own. Azeroth is there for you.

Do some old world questing

If you can’t find a group and don’t want to slowly slog through the initial quests, you can return to the WoW Classic end game zones like Winterfall and Eastern Plaguelands. Even with the starter gear, you’ll be able to take down the mobs much quicker than the boars and Orcs in Outland.

Winterfall Firewater leads to a quest that will provide an upgrade for boosted cloth, leather, and mail wearers. Tormented by the Past in Eastern Plaugelands leads to a quest that will provide an upgrade for boosted cloth, leather, and plate wearers. You’ll get experience along the way. Entering the Dark Portal at 60 rather than 58 will mean you miss less, get resisted less, and mobs won’t be crtting you as much. It will make those early Hellfire quests a bit easier.

Another option — to both get away from the crowds and get gear, gold, and experience points — is the Hellfire Peninsula 5-man dungeons.

Run some Burning Crusade 5-mans

Repeatedly running the early Burning Crusade Classic dungeons like Hellfire Ramparts is a great way to start your BCC experience. In addition to gold, gear, and experience, you’ll increase your reputation with either Honor Hold or Thrallmar depending on your faction. This provides a jump start on getting to Revered which you’ll need for your important Heroic dungeon key.

Even if you intend to be a dedicated tank or healer, consider doing your first runs as a DPS spec. Let those guys decked out in Tier 2 and Tier 3 handle the heavy lifting until you get a bit of gear yourself. You’ll have to pay for a talent respec to switch to healing or tanking if that’s the role you want to fill later, but it should only cost a few silver your first time. Groups for Hellfire Ramparts should be plentiful as players make their initial push into Burning Crusade Classic content.

Follow the advice in this guide and you’ll be rocking on your way to 70 in no time. Once you get into the mid-to-late Burning Crusade Classic zones, any advantage even a T3 raider had at the beginning of your journey will have all but vanished.

Are you planning on playing Burning Crusade Classic? Will you be using the boost service?