gnomeDK – Your Pink Haired Guide to All Things Death Knight

Preparing For Your Death Knight is for those players planning to switch their mains to a death knight and are willing to go the extra mile before expansion to help speed up their death knight’s development after expansion launches. These steps are by no means required if you want to level a death knight, but they do help speed up the leveling process.

For the most part I plan to skip Azeroth and Outland reputation grinds, at least until after I’m level 80 and bored. The most relevant factions after expansion are in Northrend and we’ll deal with those when we get there. However there are two factions in Outland which can help boost your leveling: Cenarion Expedition and The Aldor.

Cenarion Expedition

Materials:

• [Unidentified Plant Parts] x360

Cenarion Expedition has the [glyph of ferocity]. Nothing beats a +hit enchant for an up and leveling melee DPS class. The bad news is you need to be revered with CE to be able to buy the item. The good news is CE is the only major Outland faction you can get to revered with sans instances.

1. Plants of Zangarmarsh – Cenarion Refuge, Zangarmarsh

Unidentified Plant Parts are tradable items so you can farm or buy what you need now. This is a repeatable turn in quest so if you have your plant parts in advance you can go immediately to honored. It is available at level 60 and you should do it as soon as you ding, completing CE quests before this one (there are 10 lurking in Hellfire Peninsula) will hurt you.

You may receive some [Uncatalogued Species] from the turn-ins. Hold on to them.

2. Uncatalogued Species – Cenarion Refuge, Zangarmarsh

Turn in any Uncatalogued Species you’ve received from the previous turn ins. Don’t worry if you only got a few, or none at all. This part isn’t critical to hitting revered, it just eases things a bit.

3. Quest To Revered

• Expedition Point, Hellfire Peninsula: 10 Quests
• Cenarion Refuge and Cenarion Watchpost, Zangarmarsh: ~25 Quests
• Cenarion Thicket, Terokkar Forest: 7 Quests
• Ruuan Weald, Blade’s Edge Mountains: 21 Quests
• Stormspire, Netherstorm: 3 Quests

Depending on how many Uncatalogued Species you got you should hit revered before you are finished with the Blade’s Edge Mountains quests.

Once revered head back to Cenarion Refuge and pick up several Glyph of Ferocity. Use one at level 70 and bank the rest for later gear upgrades.

The Aldor

Materials:

• [Mark of Kil'jaeden] x220
• [Fel Armament] x2 for each enchant you want

I’m going with Aldor because a +attack power shoulder enchant is better than a +crit shoulder enchant for leveling. I also know their quests better, which helps with leveling faster. You could go with Scryer if you wish, the numbers are the same so just gather those tokens instead. For both factions require token turn ins, tokens which are available to you now so gather them in advance. For the lower rank tokens you can probably get a good deal on them through the auction house.

1. Marks of Kil’jaeden – Aldor Rise, Shattrath City

At level 62 head to Shattrath City and turn in all of your Marks of Kil’jaeden, it’ll get you to honored. If you are a Blood Elf going for Aldor (or Draenei going for Scryer) you’ll ned 340 marks/signets.

2. Fel Armaments – Aldor Rise, Shattrath City

At level 64 head back to Shattrath City and turn in your Fel Armaments. Take the resulting [Holy Dust] and get yourself several [Inscription of Vengeance].

Like with the Glyph of Ferocity turn in several Fel Armaments and get several Inscription of Vengeance to bank for later gear upgrades. Don’t worry about the exalted shoulder enchants, it really isn’t worth the steep jump in token cost and with the XP nerf you’ll likely be skipping Netherstorm all together, which is big for Aldor/Scryers rep grinds to exalted.