Adventures in Beta: Five things to pack for TBC (and five things to leave at home)

Following Paul's excellent TBC preparation post Tuesday, I asked my fellow beta testers what things they would recommend people bring through the Dark Portal, and what they would be best off leaving behind. So here, straight from the Home Office in Thrallmar, we have ... the top five things to pack for Burning Crusade!

1. Runecloth. A unanimous choice of beta testers, since it takes 330 first aid skill to start creating Netherweave bandages, and Netherweave drops more often than Runecloth in the starting areas.

2. Maxed-out tradeskills. The Grand Master profession trainers are waiting right in Hellfire Peninsula. If you're at all interested in using the new herbs and ores you'll find in Outland, you want to come in with 300 of everything. (Including Cooking and Fishing, if you're into that.)

3. Healing potions. The Outlands are crowded, and mobs can often sneak up and attack you when you're just about to finish off your last opponent. To give yourself the extra edge, bring a stack of healing potions or ask a friendly alchemist. The alchemist will be making lots of Volatile Healing Potions to get his or her alchemy up, so you might be able to get a deal.

4. Friends. So you and your friends have been split apart in five different raiding groups. Guess what? In the expansion, you're free to group with anybody without worrying about DKP or raid timers or stuff like that. So get that group of guys you used to run Strat with at 3 a.m., and have some good old retro dungeon runs. Outland can be a lonely place if you don't have anyone to party with.

5. Patience (and rested experience). There will be delays, there will be headaches, there will be five million people trying to do the same quest as you and the Hellfire Peninsula general chat will be like Barrens chat all over again. Just relax and enjoy the scenery!

And here are five things not to bring:

1. Resistance gear. Sell it or shard it. You'll need the bank slots, and there will be new resistance gear at 70. Seriously, get rid of it. It's a cathartic experience, like shedding the bad parts of your raiding past. Speaking of which ...

2. The guy you know who takes his gear way too seriously. People with, shall we say, an unhealthy preoccupation with loot are going to freak out the first time one of their purples is replaced with a green. Unless you want to hear ten levels of complaining, don't party with this guy!

3. A big pile of gold. A big pile of gold is never a bad thing, per se, but you get gold pretty fast in the Outlands. If you come in with "all the gold I'll need for my epic flying mount," there's a good chance that gold will be spent on trade skills, rare items and jewels.

4. A tendency to alt-tab and surf the web. I learned the hard way that the Outlands have a lot of deep canyons, tall cliffs and nasty drops into the void of space. If you like autorunning and alt-tabbing, you will spend more than your fair share on repairs.

5. A vacation. TBC is likely to bring hard times and unplayability to some WoW servers. Don't take a vacation from work or school and then feel cheated when you can't play. Plus, it's January. Take Jimmy Buffett's advice and go someplace warm instead.