Hearthstone

A Hearthstone is a device used to teleport the player to their home location, such as an inn. All characters receive a Hearthstone upon creation that returns them to their starting area. Asking an innkeeper to “make this inn your home” will set that as your new home location. Should the player destroy their hearthstone, they can recreate one for free by speaking to an innkeeper.

Recommended home locations


Dalaran was once the best home location for all level players because it had portals leading to every capital on Azeroth as well as Shattrath City. However, they were removed.

Now the home is usually set to a convenient location bearing in mind the zones in which the player will be questing and the instances they might be going to. They will likely look like the following:

For the Alliance
 * Levels 5-10: Goldshire (human), Dolanaar (night elf), Azure Watch (draenei), Kharanos (dwarf & gnome)
 * Levels 10-20: Sentinel Hill (human), Auberdine (night elf), Blood Watch (draenei), Thelsamar (dwarf & gnome)
 * Levels 20-58: Ironforge, Stormwind or Theramore
 * Levels 58-68: Shattrath City
 * Levels 68-74: Valiance Keep or Valgarde
 * Levels 74-80: Dalaran
 * Levels 80-85: Stormwind (for the Cataclysm zone portals)

For the Horde
 * Levels 5-10: Razor Hill (orc & troll), Brill (undead), Bloodhoof Village (tauren), Falconwing Square/Fairbreeze Village (blood elf)
 * Levels 10-20: Crossroads (tauren, orc & troll), The Sepulcher (undead), Tranquillien (blood elf)
 * Levels 20-58: Orgrimmar, Undercity or Grom'gol Base Camp
 * Levels 58-68: Shattrath City
 * Levels 68-74: Warsong Hold or Vengeance Landing
 * Levels 74-80: Dalaran
 * Levels 80-85: Orgrimmar (for the Cataclysm zone portals)

Ghetto hearthing
As of patch 3.1.0, ghetto hearthing has been removed from the game. Instead of returning to the home location, the character will be transported to the nearest graveyard. The cooldown of a hearthstone was also lowered to 30 minutes.

This trick involved creating a group for an easily accessible instance (such as the Stockade), zoning in, then passing lead to the other person and leaving the group, thus forcing the system to teleport you to your hearthstone point.

Hearthstones in Lore
In the novel Stormrage, hearthstones are depicted as very rare objects. King Varian believes them to be only a legend. "Things heard only in stories concerning magi... or elves." A hearthstone owned by the night elf ambassador to Stormwind was the goal of Tyrande, Broll Bearmantle, and Thura. They intended to use it to return to Darnassus when Stormwind was attacked by the Emerald Nightmare. In the end, the group was ambushed and only Broll made it back.

In The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm, Jaina Proudmoore gives Anduin Wrynn a hearthstone set to Jaina's tower in Theramore so that he could get away whenever Varian is in one of his Lo'Gosh moods. She explains that it would bring Anduin straight to her hearth. The rune on the hearthstone means "home". It also has runes that refer to the location it is set to. Anduin later used the hearthstone to escape Ironforge when it fell under the control of the Dark Iron clan.

Both the Alliance and Horde have lent hearthstones to heroes to allow speedy relocation to areas in need of help.

The paladin Gidwin Goldbraids lends the player his hearthstone so that they can return to Light's Hope Chapel.

Legend suggests that warlocks may be able to create hearthstones from living beings. Such apparently happened to Keelin Stonekeeper, The Innkeeper's Daughter.