Epics for casual players pre-Burning Crusade

This article is a guide to Epics for casual players.

Original source: WoW EU forums by Cyllvaynne of the Server:Burning Legion Europe Date 4/23/2006.

This post is meant to be a guide for casuals. Casuals in WoW are people who don't have the time to farm raid instances for epic items. Lots of people think this class of people is overlooked. However, casuals can still gain a deal of epic items, but it will require effort.

I explain it again: casuals will need to work hard for epic items. This means farming gold/items in the time they have. The real difference is that casuals won't farm for 8 hours straight for the drops they need. They will do it in spells of 1.5 hours or so. This means you will get your epic slower in calendar days, but about the same in /played.

Again: find yourself a neat farmplace, and farm gold until you die of boredom. Hardcore raiders do it too, and it is exactly what you will have to do to get the items you want.

Dungeon Set 2
The Dungeon Set 2 quest line is a way to get four class specific epic items without ever needing to be in a group larger than 10 people. The quest line itself is exceptionally difficult (involving the infamous Quest:Dead Man's Plea and Valthalak) but the entire quest line has been successfully PUGed on various servers. Because the quest line does not require raiding, nor does it require maintaining a regular play schedule, this quest line can be considered casual friendly, despite its exceptional difficulty. Each piece of the quest line can be completed in chunks of time totaling 2 hours or less.

The rewards are as follows:

Easy epics
Epic amulets and trinkets can be acquired from the Darkmoon Faire. The materials and gold for these items can be farmed in a few weeks. The options here include:
 * , a very good caster amulet
 * , a very good rogue or hunter amulet
 * , a trinket that provides healing during melee
 * , a trinket that allows mana regeneration during casting
 * , a trinket that adds melee damage
 * , a trinket that allows self-resurrection.

Hint : Try to find someone with a good crafting profession to optimize the ticket quests. You can use rugged leather, dense grinding stones, or white drops from Scorpids and Plaguelands bats.

Casters that are also Tailors can purchase patterns that have entirely farmable ingredient lists. These are:
 * for warlocks
 * for mages
 * for priests

These are all bind on pick up, so the caster must make the items for themselves.

World Item Crafted Epics
The craft professions all have some difficult and expensive recipes that produce epics. With focus, however, the materials can be gathered through farming or purchase on the auction house. These items are:

Blacksmithing:
 * , mail armor with defense bonuses and chance to confer invulnerability
 * , a superb plate melee DPS helm
 * , very good plate leggings for DPS warriors or paladins
 * , plate tanking gloves that provide immunity to disarm
 * , a one-hand mace with 46 DPS, hit and crit bonuses (Hammersmith)
 * , a one-hand sword with caster bonuses (Swordsmith)

Tailoring:
 * , cloth gloves for any caster
 * , cloth belt for any caster

Leatherworking:
 * , with good agility and dodge
 * , a very good cloak for healers
 * , with stamina, resists, and spell critical bonuses.

Alterac Valley
If you enjoy PvP you can also acquire reputation in Alterac Valley. With the recent changes, both sides gain reputation quite quickly. Getting to Exalted will take time and might require some dedicated days of PvP farming, but it can be done in 2–3 months with 1 dedicated day each week and some more in the evenings. At exalted, you receive immediate access to a range of items that are the equal of Molten Core-level items.

Alterac Valley Rewards epics:
 * , Healer Off-hand Item
 * , General Spell Power Off-hand Item
 * , Arcane Caster Off-hand Item
 * , Fire Caster Off-hand Item
 * , Shadow Caster Off-hand item
 * , 2-handed mace
 * , Shield
 * , Physical DPS Ring (Rogue, Hunter, Warrior)
 * , Offensive Caster Ring (excludes Druids, Paladins, and Shaman)
 * , Melee DPS Dagger
 * Alterac Valley Trinket becomes an epic trinket as part of the quest upgrades as you reach the highest tier of reputation (Exalted) 999/1000.

Instance Epics
Some epics drop in 5-man instances, or are quest rewards from items that drop in 5-man instances. This includes several classes of items. The first are items based on the, a rare skinning drop from UBRS. The components are expensive, but are all bind on equip and farmable by casuals. No raiding needed, but it will be very expensive as the Hide can sell for anywhere from 300g to 900g.



The second class is the -based items. These are comparable to the Hide items, but the Carapace is Bind on Pickup, so it requires a lot of UBRS farming. Once you have the Carapace, you will need Skins of Shadow from Scholomance or Frayed Abomination Stitchings from Stratholme, Blood of Heroes from the Plaguelands, and Chromatic Dragonscales which can be bought or farmed from UBRS.


 * , a plate tanking chest with fire resists
 * , mail pants with strength, agility, stamina, and resists
 * , mail pants with stamina, intellect, spirit, and resists

There are a small number of very rare epic drops in high-level 5- and 10-man instances. These include:

Epics Based on Raid Items
There are a number of epic raid items that are Bind on Equip, or use items that drop with some frequency in raid instances.

One class of these is the Bind on Equip Tier 1 items from the Molten Core. These can often be purchased directly from a guild leader or on the auction house. The price will depend on your realm but ranges from 200 to 600 gold, usually.

The second class are crafted items that depend on Molten Core raid drops. The Thorium Brotherhood sells recipes that use Molten Core drops (notably s, s, and ) to create a variety of epic armor and weapons. The Fiery Cores and Lava Cores can be purchased on the auction house but are very expensive; typical prices range from 80 to 200g. Most of these items represent around 1000 gold of materials cost.

Armor:
 * , plate bracers with stamina and fire resist
 * , plate head armor with stamina and fire resist
 * , plate hands with agility, stamina, and fire resist
 * , plate leggings with stamina and fire resist
 * , plate booths with fire resist and a random enchantment
 * , a mail belt with stamina, intellect, spirit, and fire resist
 * , mail shoulder with stamina, intellect, and fire resist
 * , mail footwear with stamina, fire resist, and attack power
 * , mail gauntlets with resists, attack power, and spell crit
 * , a leather helm with stamina, fire resist, and dodge
 * , leather feet with agility, stamina, and fire resist
 * , a leather belt with stamina and fire resist
 * , a leather belt with high agility, stamina, and fire resist
 * , a leather belt with intellect, fire resist, and healing
 * , cloth gloves with stamina, intellect, and fire resist
 * , cloth shoulders with stamina, intellect, spirit, and fire resist
 * , a cloth chest with stamina, fire resist, and spellpower
 * , cloth leggings with stamina, fire resist, and spellpower

Weapons:
 * , a dagger with a feint proc
 * , a polearm with strength, stamina, and fire resist
 * , a one-hand sword with stamina and parry
 * , a two-hand axe with a superb anti-boss proc
 * , a one-hand mace with stamina, fire resist, and shadow damage

The third class are crafted items that depend on Temple of Ahn'Qiraj raid drops. These are:


 * , mail chest armor that provides many offensive bonuses.
 * , a very strong shield with resists and a silence power
 * , plate chest armor with strength, stamina, and spell immunity
 * , mail gloves with attack power, crit, and mana drain

World Drops
These items can be obtained through extreme luck or by purchasing them from the auction house. They all tend to be quite expensive. Some of these are quite good items, while others are mere status items.



Field Duty
Field Duty is a quest line in Silithus related to Cenarion Circle. Most of the quest can be done solo or in small groups (depending on your class), but it does require a rather significant time commitment. The following items can be obtained.

Stalwart's Battlegear (Revered): Champion's Battlegear (Exalted):
 * , Melee DPS Plate Bracers
 * , Healing Off-Hand
 * , Caster DPS Cloth Bracers
 * , Melee DPS Ring
 * , Caster 2-Handed Mace
 * , Caster DPS Ring
 * , Melee DPS Trinket

Armaments of the Dawn
With Patch 1.11, a series of quests in the Eastern Plaguelands with the Argent Dawn has made available additional epic items. These can be obtained through a combination of reputation grinding and collecting a series of drops (either from the auction house or farming). The higher your reputation, the less items you need to collect. These include...


 * , Caster DPS necklace
 * , Healer cloth bracers
 * , Melee leather bracers
 * , Melee DPS necklace
 * , Caster DPS or Healing Trinket
 * , +1% crit gun

Player versus Player Rewards Items
As of Patch 2.0, honor points from PvP can now be accumulated to buy PvP rewards items. Now it is possible for casual players to obtain Field Marshal/Warlord armor sets as well as Grand Marshal/High Warlord weapons with constant PvP grinding. This may take a while but it is considerably easier than raid items for players who do not have the amount of time to go in a raid constantly.

Conclusion:
Casuals can still get epic items, however they will get them at a very slow rate and it will take long stretches of grinding. The unique thing in these items is that you can break up the grind stretches.