WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know.

Having the right weapon can make a world of difference in a players leveling experience. Last time on WoW Rookie, we looked at the types of weapons that each class can use and where to train the skill for them. Now just because you can use a weapon, doesn't mean you should. This week we'll examine what to look for in a weapon.

It's pretty important to keep your hands full. You have a four weapon slots at the bottom of your character sheet: Main Hand, Off Hand, Ranged, and Ammunition. Two handed weapons take up both the main hand and off hand slots. The off hand may hold a weapon if your class can dual weild, a shield, or an off hand item that either adds to your attributes or looks cool (such as Bouquet of Red Roses or a Dark Iron Tankard.) I recommend something useful when adventuring, though it's fun to see what folks come up with when roaming the city.

WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know.

One of my favorite things about World of Warcraft is the wide variety of sharp, pointy objects and projectiles at my disposal for beating on my foes (and occasionally my friends). At times I find myself overwhelmed by the number of options for each class, and I've always wanted a handy guide to what I can use and where to get it. Since I couldn't find such a guide, I've decided to create one. Hopefully you will all find it useful also.

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

This is it, folks. This is the final column in my four-part feature about how to take your casual raids to the next level. For parts one, two, and three, click on the purple words with lines under them.

I've noticed in the comments under these features that a few people seem confused about the difference between casual and hardcore raiding. One reader from last week, Ger, put it best:

The point of "casual" is to concentrate on WoW being a fun game more than a chore, but if you want to raid then be prepared to take some dang responsibility and not be a liability to 9 or 24 other people.

That one made me laugh. It's a bit of an exaggeration, yes, but I like that definition. Let's recap what I talked about previously, and follow that up with some more suggestions.

I was just sitting in Ironforge a minute ago trying to peddle my enchants. The members of the guild I'm in were sitting around shooting the breeze about Burning Crusade instances. Somebody remarked on BRK's article earlier today about hunters "once being in demand" in Blackrock Depths, and I chimed in that as a subtlety rogue I've felt a little left-out of some of the Burning Crusade content. It seems from my vantage point that hunters and mages own the vast majority of the Burning Crusade instances because those of us who have to be in physical contact with our targets who don't have the benefit of plate armour are getting the bejeezus beaten out of us in this series of instances.

While I can see the progression that Blizzard has taken, and I can understand the necessity for encounters to increase in difficulty I'm having a really difficult time finding the willpower to flush my carefully crafted rogue build down the toilet that I spent so much time perfecting.

So let's shift gears for a moment to solo instances. Yes, we've talked about them before. I think that with the right implementation though, that we could kill a number of birds with one stone.

How many crappy rogues have you met in-game? Ok, put your hands down. We can substitute any class into that question. There are lots of players with no skills floating around. We've all seen warriors who don't sunder, mages who don't realize they can summon (food and water), and even shamans who don't know what a totem is. Yes, I'm serious, I've seen every one of those.

So here's my idea - with apologies if somebody else already thought of it first. I know Dan brushed gently against it a few months ago. Why not make an Academy style instance where players could go solo, maybe every ten levels, and be taught in "live fire" situations how to use the skills they've acquired in the last ten levels. Loot would have the benefit of being class-specific (or at the very least class-appropriate), and lunchbox letdown would be next to non-existent. The only obvious problem to me, is that the gear would almost have to be Bind on Pickup, and they'd probably want to make it so once you beat the last boss that you couldn't come back until you graduated to the next bracket.

Then everybody would have something to do, nobody would feel completely useless, and best of all it would have a positive impact on the skill level of the players on our realms and in our guilds. What do you think?

The other day I was helping a guildie with their mage as they reached 20. Thus began the long journey to collect teleportation training from around Azeroth. Something he said along the way stuck with me though. He mentioned that he hardly sees people asking for portals to Darnassus now. I thought about it, and would have to agree. I seem to sell as many ports to Darnassus as I sell to the Exodar. The cities are so closely linked, it's fairly easy to hop on a boat and be anywhere on Kalimdor that you need to be.

Why then the great level difference in the training? The portal to Darnassus still remains a spell you can train in at level 50, while the portal to the Exodar is a level 40 spell. This goes for the teleport spells as well, since the level for Darnassus is 30, while all the others are available at level 20. So in essence, all that bouncing around the continent starts ten levels sooner. I imagine that initially the portal to Darnassus was level 50 because it represents a greater magical achievement. You are now transporting a group across the ocean. Does the Exodar require less skill to use? You are still transporting people across the Great Sea. Wouldn't it in fact require more skill, seeing as how we have had a longer history with the Night Elves than we have with the Draenei? I am thinking that the developers might want to take a look at the level requirements for the portals. The initial level requirements seemed to support the lore. The training, as it stands currently, does not.

A possible explanation is that Night Elves shun arcane magic. However, they do accept the portal trainer within their city, so this argument doesn't seem to work for me. If they let that first mage in there to create the portals in the first place, why would it be more difficult for other mages to do so? Is there some sort of other explanation that I'm missing as to why there is such a level discrepancy with both the teleport and the portal spells to Darnassus?

The good people over at Petopia have posted a lot of new info about pets seen on the PTR for 2.1. First, there's been four new pets found so far-- a new Blackwind Warp Chaser, a Ravager from Hellfire Peninsula, the Sky Shadows in Deadwind Pass (that scared the heck out of you even before the expansion was released), and this amazing purple tallstrider called a Dodostrider (that last one has hunters buzzing).

One pet will be made untamable-- apparently there are issues with the Death Ravager that gets spawned in a quest in the lowbie Draenei area, Azuremyst Isle, and so hunters won't be able to tame him any more. Also, Petopia has PTR info on two new trainable pet abilities, Avoidance and Cobra Reflexes. Avoidance has two ranks and reduces the damage done to pets by AoE (this is aimed directly at endgame PvE pet viability), and Cobra Reflexes has one rank and increases attack speed at a cost to damage done.

As usual, all this info is still subject to change. But it's great that Blizzard is getting more and more pets (and pet abilities) in the mix. Here's hoping the trend continues.

Ok, I'll admit it. I'm a slacker.

My resto shaman is definitely my main, and he's very, very helpful-- he can heal like a priest, DPS close to a mage (or at least a well geared moonkin), and he's even got Mana Tide totem and that always useful Earth Shield. But one thing he doesn't have... is a 375 profession.

He's an herb/alch, and therein lies the rub: I can't collect anything. Skinning, I'm great at-- I've gotten multiple toons to 375 skinning, just because it's so easy to take a second after a kill to skin. First aid, I rock, because there's so much cloth around-- my 63 rogue is already at 375. But mining and herbalism, I just can't seem to get done. By the time I level out of a zone, I haven't picked up enough herbs to get my skill up, and eventually I'm leveling near herbs that are red to me. Now I'm leveling a blood elf mage, and she's having the same problem with jewelcrafting-- I'm not finding the mine nodes on my normal journey, and as a result I'm falling behind.

A high end guild would probably have kicked me out by now for not bringing potions to raids (fortunately, my guild is very forgiving). But it is wrong of me to show up to a raid empty-handed just because I've been lazy. So what's the problem here? Am I missing some secret method of collecting as I level up? I do forget to turn on my tracking sometimes, although I know there are addons out there that will help with that. Unfortunately, since I've already hit 70, it looks like I'm just going to have to go back and grind it out, but maybe that's the best way to do it. Did you level your collecting profession while you were leveling or did you do it all in one big run? And what tips do you have for me to keep me from slacking off in the future?

Anyone who's ever ventured into Un'Goro crater has probably had a run-in with these beasts that didn't end well - and perhaps that's why I'm so amused by this attempt to walk one all the way into the Barrens.  While some players are opposed to the disruption caused by kiting dangerous beasts into low level areas, you have to recognize that it takes some amount of patience and skill to pull off this sort of prank.