Newbie guide/Items

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Item quality

Main article: quality

Items are ranked by their quality in World of Warcraft, identifiable by the color of the item's name.

Most items you will encounter will be one of these qualities:

• gray names indicate poor items: These are meant to be sold to a vendor, but can be equipped for the [[appearance].
• white names indicate common quality; NPC's occasionally want these. They might be useful in professions or quests.
• green names are uncommon. These are often random world drops. They can be equipped for the appearance, or sold to other players.
• blue names are rare; these items normally come from dungeons. Items this rarity and higher are almost always Soulbound.
• purple names indicate epic items, generally found on high-level bosses when doing max level content, and will make up the majority of the powerful gear on a character.

Item binding

Main article: Bind

Some items in World of Warcraft can become "soulbound" to one particular character, making it impossible to exchange or trade them with any other players. They can still be sold to a vendor.

There are three types of item binding:

• Bind on Equip items bind when first equipped or used.
• Bind on Pickup items bind when they are looted or picked up.
• Bind to Account items are bound to your account and can be traded amongst your own characters, but not other players characters.

When looting, you will get a warning dialog telling you that looting the item will permanently bind it to you when you either equip or loot such an item. Once an item is bound to you, it will indicate in the tooltip that it is "Soulbound" just below the name of the item. Besides trading you also cannot mail them or sell them in the auction house.

Selling them to a vendor is the most often used method of getting rid of soulbound items, but they can also be destroyed or disenchanted (if you are an enchanter.)

Acquiring gear

Equipment items, which increase your character's power, can be acquired in many ways:

1. Killing monsters
2. Completing quests
3. Getting them from other players
   • By trade.
   • By Mail.
     • Mail from strangers takes 1 hour to arrive - try to trade when you can.
4. Making them yourself with Tradeskills
5. Buying them from the auction house

Equipment attributes

Main article: Attributes

Most equipment in World of Warcraft has one or more attributes. Depending on what class you chose to play, some attributes become more important than others. You can see what your class's preferred attribute and weapons are by looking at the Specialization & Talents panel.

• Classes that mainly use martial weapons and melee combat, normally want Strength or Agility on their gear.
• Classes that are damaging casters or healers normally want Intellect on their gear.