Tips

On this page, you can find some tips and tricks for Nyctermoon.

Running Dungeons


Dungeons are a great source of gear and wealth, but it can be difficult to do them with the Companions if you aren't well-versed in how to use them. This section will distill down some of the most important things to know to succeed at running dungeons with your Companions.

Corner Pulling

Corner pulling is the most important tactic to know how to do in a dungeon. This refers to aggroing a mob and then moving out of its line of sight, so it will run to your location instead of using ranged attacks. Even if you know the mobs don't use ranged attacks, this tactic is safe because it clumps up the mobs in a tight group and eliminates the risk of pulling nearby packs or patrols.

The first thing you should always do is have your party stay behind some part of the environment that breaks line of sight with the enemy, most commonly something like around the corner of an extruding wall. When they are safely staying put, there are several viable ways you can proceed.

  • The most basic is simply to run out yourself, pull an enemy, and run back to the corner. Tanks are usually pretty good at picking up mobs asap, so this usually works if you're in a hurry.
  • If you want to be a bit safer, you can use the .z pull command to send the tank out to pull a mob. Then once the mob is aggroed, use .z comestay to bring the tank back into the corner, and optionally use .z start to prematurely end the pull's pause on your DPS Companions and allow them to attack before the 10 second pause is up. This method is depicted in the video to the right (if the timestamp doesn't work for you, the explanation starts around 20:18).
  • One weakness of the above method is that it will make the tank bodypull or charge in to the group of mobs, potentially pulling more than you expect. The safest, albeit slowest, method possible is to force your tank to use their ranged attack to pull the mobs at range. You can do this by staying the tank in range to pull, using the cast whisper to command them to use their ranged attack, and comestaying them back into the corner once they have pulled. The initial stay is necessary to prevent your tank from charging in to the group of mobs immediately after pulling. There is a macro to automate most of this on the Macros page.

Even outside of corner pulling, you should generally use stay or comestay often to prevent your Companions from running off and bodypulling other packs.

Use raid marks

Using raid marks is a great strategy in dungeons. Companions will pay attention to the marks you use and their AI will react to them. By default, Companions will focus damage on the 💀 skull mark and CC the 🌙 moon mark. But you can use the .z focusmark and .z ccmark commands to change these settings for each Companion. Read those entries for more details about how Companions react to raid marks.

Soulstone

Warlock Companions will automatically Soulstone you. This is a great way to recover from a wipe, and makes warlocks a nice Companion to bring if you aren't sure of your dungeon skills. You can change who your warlock sets their soulstone on by whispering them "set soulstone on [name]".

Bring CC suited for the dungeon

This is more of a general WOW tip, but since you have complete control over your party's makeup, if you want to add more safety to your dungeon run you can always bring a class that can CC most of the mobs in the dungeon. Companion mages can sheep humanoids and beasts, warlocks can banish demons and elementals (and fear anything), druids can hibernate beasts and dragonkin, priests can shackle undead, and paladins can turn undead. They can do some others in a pinch, but these are the most reliable.

Blacklist dangerous spells

You can use the deny whisper to prevent your Companions from ever being able to use a certain spell. Some great candidates for this command are:

  • A mage's Blink (otherwise, he might Blink into a pack of enemies)
  • A warlock's Fear (if you aren't using it as a primary CC - it can be a great CC if you plan for it)
  • A warrior's Intimidating Shout, a warlock's Howl of Terror, or a priest's Psychic Scream (fearing a group of enemies is always a bit chaotic; sometimes useful but sometimes causes a wipe)
  • A priest's Shadow Protection or Fear Ward (not really dangerous, but if you know a dungeon doesn't involve any shadow damage or fears, it's just a waste of their mana to keep rebuffing it)

Clear dungeons faster by not hiring a pure healer

Once you feel comfortable with your dungeon skills, consider increasing your party's DPS by not hiring a Companion in the Healer role. Instead, hire a hybrid dps who has healing skills, like a ret paladin or balance druid, and leave them in their DPS role. Especially at low levels, these classes can easily maintain the party's HP while contributing a respectable amount of DPS (not as much as some other classes, but much more than holy priest wanding). They are coded to heal when a party member hits a certain threshold (50% by default, but you can raise this with the set offheal whisper.) All Companions come with an infinite stock of mana potions (though they're still limited by cooldown) and will intelligently downrank their healing spells to efficiently meter out their mana, so you usually don't need to worry about their mana unless you over-pull.

The following is the editor's personal ranking of the offhealers:

S Ret Paladin (they don't use much mana on dps, extra blessings & auras are great, ≤60 and dungeon tier paladins spec significantly into Holy)
A Balance Druid (comes with Int gear, can Innervate self, deny Moonfire or Moonkin Form for more mana efficiency on trash without too much downside)
B Shaman (totems are great, but they take a long time to drop them all against trash; both Elemental and Enhance spec significantly into Restoration, Elemental comes with Int gear though dungeon-tier Enhance gets more points in Resto)
C Shadow Priest (comes with Int gear, but runs out of mana quite fast when offhealing, though you can deny Shadow Word: Pain for more mana efficiency on trash)
D Feral Druid (powershifting eats most of their mana)

It's possible to complete every 5man in the game without a pure healer, though at higher levels, it requires skillful use of quick .z command macros to ensure you only pull exactly what you want. At low levels, you can 4-man dungeons to get more XP for yourself while maintaining as much DPS as you would in a normal 5-man.

Making and Saving Money

Probably the most discussed topic, since affording the Companion upgrades at level 60 is a significant goal. Nyctermoon is not and will never be a pay-to-win server, so you cannot just buy gold, you have to earn it through in-game activities. Here are some of the most common ways to save and earn gold, both while leveling and at 60.

Use the Marketer

This is the most important thing to do to make money for both 60s and levelers. The server has a custom module called Marketer that will buy almost anything you post on the Auction House for 2x the amount you would get for vendoring it (except greys). It's really profitable to sell your unwanted loot to the Marketer instead of to vendors.

There is also a special addon for this server that will help you with this by automatically defaulting your buyout price to that 2x vendor price, so that you don't need to do any math.

To start, you can make a great profit by looting a dungeon and selling the greens. At level 60, Stratholme seems to be the most profitable dungeon to farm greens from, but you can make good money while leveling too - enough to comfortably buy your mounts as soon as you hit the required level. You can also convert your cloth drops into bolts/bandages and sell those (bolts are more profitable at low level, bandages are more profitable at high level).

You can also get a pretty good return from selling the items you make while leveling your professions. And nobody has really discovered the best ones yet, but the Marketer should theoretically make it possible to make a great profit from selling certain crafts with a low material investment but a high vendor price.

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Don't train every spell rank while leveling

This is a pretty classic vanilla tip, but one you might not know if you are not so familiar with vanilla WOW. There are many spells with ranks that are useless to buy past the first one. For example, on a Rogue, you don't need any more than the first rank of Kick, since the you only need the first rank to interrupt a spell cast, and further ranks only add on a tiny amount of damage. If you are really familiar with your class, you might want to even skip some spells entirely.

Don't learn every profession recipe you can

On Nyctermoon, you can learn all 9 primary professions. It's a great idea to learn all the professions, but be careful about which recipes you learn while leveling. It can be tempting to just spam the Learn button, but this can really eat into your gold. Instead, only learn those recipes that will help you level or make a good profit. You can use a guide like the one on WoW-professions to level your professions efficiently, but keep in mind you don't need to follow these guides to the letter. This server has some tweaked profession skill rates so you will level a profession with generally less than half as many materials as you would normally.

Get big bags

Bigger bags = more loot = more money.

While leveling, you can level Tailoring to craft bags. If you play with a Companion that can heal you, the First Aid profession and bandages aren't really a high priority anymore, so it's fine to prioritize your cloth for Tailoring.

Or, you can whisper a friendly 60 or post in the Discord to see if anyone can craft you some Runecloth Bags.

Once you reach level 60, you can do a couple quests that earn you truly huge bags - a 26 slot and a 36 slot bag. These quests are a serious undertaking though.

Make a bank alt

It's tedious to run back to the auction house every time you want to sell stuff to the Marketer, but mailboxes are all over the place. Make an alt and park it in a city near the AH, then just mail it everything you want to sell. This server has instant mail delivery so you will immediately get your items to sell.

Some suggestions about your bank alt:

  • Since you can make accounts freely, consider making your alt on a separate account so that you don't have to log out. You will lose your hired Companions if you log out intentionally. This is done for server stability and will probably never change.
  • Make multiple bank alts to hold all the crafting materials you collect while leveling up, like ore, skins, herbs, etc. Having access to a bank of materials rather than having to scrounge around or buy them will make powerleveling your professions much easier and cheaper.
  • The best places to keep your alt are Ironforge on Alliance side, and Thunder Bluff on Horde side. These have the shortest distance between the mailbox/bank/AH. Since Nyctermoon is cross-faction, it doesn't matter that much, but it's nice to have your alt on the same faction as your main so you can directly trade items without needing to pay the mail fee.
  • Use the Gmail addon to efficiently send a large amount of items at once.

Valuable crafts

Some professions have extra value because they have time-gated crafts or have specializations that only some players will be able to make. Although you can learn all primary professions on the same character, you can't learn all the specializations, you have to choose just one, like normal. If you can provide time-gated crafts or certain exclusive recipes, you should be able to find someone who can pay for that service.

  • Tailoring
  • Alchemy
  • Leatherworking
  • Blacksmithing and Engineering
    • Like Leatherworking, these professions allow you to choose an exclusive specialization, but to be honest, you probably won't make much of a profit from them. Mentioned more for completeness, although they can certainly add a lot of personal power to your character.

Open-world farming

The Companions make open-world farming a snap. When you have the strength of 5 characters, you can kill regular mobs significantly faster and almost nothing can stand up to you. Dungeons are still the fastest, but if you want a change of pace, there are some other places that have good drops.

  • Tyr's Hand in Eastern Plaguelands
    • The mobs are tough elites so you definitely need at least a couple Companions, but each one carries around 15 silver which really adds up if you can kill them quickly, plus the possibility of high-level greens. There's also a rare in the cathedral for a guaranteed green.
  • Silithus camps
    • Not very profitable, but you can grind Cenarion Circle rep at the same time, and mobs die fast with a group. You often get a green or blue item to sell from summoning the elementals, and you can even sell your extra Twilight Cultist gear to the Marketer when you're done.
  • Darkwhisper Gorge in Winterspring
    • Normally off-limits to most due to the elite demons populating this area, this can be a good place to find some Rich Thorium Veins for Arcane Crystals.
page revision: 29, last edited: 27 Jul 2024 00:57
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