gnomeDK – Your Pink Haired Guide to All Things Death Knight

Earlier I covered the gear your death knight starts with upon logging in. Here’s the list of your gear and items when you complete Ebon Hold and leave the death knight start area.

If you are planning to enchant your death knight’s start gear this is the stuff you want to enchant. The armor is on par with Outland quest greens and can last you to Northrend easily, especially if enchanted. Be sure to check with your local inscriber on getting some [Armor Vellum II] to save you from having to beg an enchant to come back from Northrend.

Plate Armor

Amulet, Rings, Trinkets, and Sigil

Greatsword of the Ebon Blade or Greataxe of the Ebon Blade

• The sword has better stats IMO, but both work. Orcs should definitely take the axe, humans the sword. Everyone else I say esthetics > stat differences.

Noth’s Special Brew

• Good stuff! You get it with a repeatable turn in quest in the start area.

You’ll also get Death Gate. It is a spell, not an item, but works like a death knight heartstone back to Ebon Hold so thought worth mentioning.

I think everyone knows death knights start with their own gear, but unless you played in the beta you may not know the details.

Here’s a list of the gear a death knight starts with upon login. I’ll go over the gear you end up with at the end of the start area later.

Acherus Knight Set

• Plate armor and cloak you start with. Yes, your manly death knight starts with a skirt.

Amulet and Rings

Runed Soulblade

• Technically you don’t start with it, but you’ll get it from your second quest.

Deathweave Bag x4

• These are 12 slot bags you’ll start with. They are enough to get through the start area with, but I would upgrade them after that.

You’ll also start with a hearthstone and half a stack of level appropriate, non-buffing food. There are food and general vendors in Ebon Hold, but you start with almost no cash. You can access a mailbox during your first series of combat based quests.

Your trinket and sigil (death knight range slot, like an idol or relic) slots are empty to start.

If you haven’t already you should reserve the name for your death knight. At this point you’ll probably have to go down a list of choices before you find one available. If you don’t have a name then try to come up with some now, rather than stressing out over it after your WotLK install.

To reserve a name just make a character with that name. While you are at it might I also suggest you go ahead and figure out what character features you want for your death knight. Some features will change with the death knight class: eyes glow so eye color doesn’t much matter and there are new skin shades and hair colors, but the more know you want in advance the sooner you’ll be chatting with the Lich King.

On launch day you’ll need to delete the character you created to reserve your name, then immediately create your death knight (see where knowing what you want it to look like in advance helps?). As soon as the character is deleted the name is released.

If your guild is anything like mine then you’ll probably have only a few players switching to death knight mains, but a lot of players looking forward to playing a death knight alt.

Playing as an alt will certainly be fun: starting a hero class at level 55 in a really cool zone you can only access with said alt. Get to play with an all new combat and spell resource system, but not have all the stress of trying to power level to keep up with guild mates starting expansion 15 levels ahead of you. Read more… »

I was hoping two handed weapon itemization from Northrend quests would change as beta testing progressed, but going by the info on Wowhead’s WotLK section it looks like the bigger weapons were itemized as intended when I went through the quests in beta. The itemization issue I ran into was two handed axes grossly out performed two handed swords for death knights. I prefer swords to axes (for esthetics) and I’ll be using swords through Outland. However the best quest reward weapons in Northrend are all axes, which puts a crimp in my esthetics. More importantly it means we all need to be prepared to change weapon types and that means being skilled up before Northrend. Read more… »

WoW Insider is reporting that the zombie plague will soon come to an end. Blizzard is ending the actual plague later today. The special bosses and necropoles will remain for now, but their removal in a matter of days from now as well according to Blizzard. This is all part of the planned story line leading up to WotLK, and more events will continue to happen.

I’ll miss the zombies, but I had my fill of zombie fun as well. I am liking the rapid pace of this event (for an MMO) and that none of its parts will get old. I also imagine things will continue to go bad before they get better, so just imagine what we’ll be facing next week.

The madness continued over the weekend, though the capital cities never became fully shut down like I expected. Oh they came close, with the infection time lowered to 1 minute, high level zombies spawning and entering capital cities, and most of the Argent Healers removed from the cities. Luckily the world attacks by floating necropolises have helped distract much of the player base away from the cities as well. Read more… »

MMO Champion is reporting the third phase of the zombie world event started overnight. There are now Plagued Resident mobs spawning outside the capital cities.

The plague roaches are spreading!

Visit Wowhead and look up anything you like. Then take a look at the top of the page’s frame.

In related news the infection time has been dropped from 10 minutes to 5 minutes.