Activities to Do at 90 to Ready for Raiding

Hit 90 within the first 18 hours of day 1 on a diet of Amped and pepperoni steaks. Rice never tasted so good on the second day. I celebrated my 25th birthday yesterday with nothing but heroics and scenarios! Whew! Real party’s happening on Saturday so I have some more time to gear up for raids next week.

As more and more of my guildmates and friends are hitting 90, I’m getting increasingly asked “What do I do now to get myself ready for next week when the raids open?”. You should be exploring any reasonable method you have to increase your gear, your reputation, or your professions.

Your Klaxxi reputation should be up if you cleared out a reasonable portion from Dread Wastes. Go to Niu Zao Temple, by your 450 ilevel gloves.

Go do Scenario: Arena of Annihilation

The first thing you can do is tackle the Pandaria Ring of Blood set of quests. Thankfully, this time it isn’t outdoors where it’s subject to other people stealing your kills or tagging your mobs. Open up your Scenario Finder and queue into it. Accept the quest within and you’ll get yourself a nice 450 weapon.

Do the Temple of White Tiger quest

In Kun-Lai summit, you’ll eventually run into a quest where you help out Anduin unlock the Vale of Eternal Blossoms (Temple of the White Tiger). If you’re leveling up, you can skip and bypass those for now. Once you hit 90, the only way to unlock the area is by completing that quest through.

Spec your level 90 talent

I admit, I forgot to do this.

Unlock Flying

Once you’re 90, head over to your faction foothold in the Vale. On the top floor, there should be a flying trainer next to the flightmaster.

Level up your professions

Check with your guild bank and see if there’s any open mats you can use. For tailoring, I’m seeing a ridiculously large number of cloth drops and I was able to get that out of the way quick.

BTW Enchanters, I don’t know abut you, but I’m thrilled at how easy it is to switch between dust and essences. You?

Start Golden Vale dailies

There’s many factions you can gain reputation with. But in order to unlock the meaningful ones (Like Shado-Pan), you have to start at the Golden Pagoda with the Golden Lotus in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. I believe Ruins of Guo-Lai is the first step.

Buy justice points gear

You can’t do it yet until you hit revered with a few of the factions, but you can shore up your gear some as you steadily gain reputation. The justice point vendor for all the factions is located in Niu Zao temple in Townlong Steppes. He’s on the fortifications at the back.

Dungeons

You need 440 item level to queue into heroics! If you need to, mix and match some gear from other specs and queue in before switching back to to your main set but only if you’re off by 1 or 2 item levels)! I found myself able to heal a DPS geared tank, even! Heroics aren’t as challenging nor as difficult as the Cataclysm initial set of heroics were so you’ll find them a little more forgiving and you can get away with it for now.

I know, I shouldn’t be encouraging it, but I’ll make an exception.

Grats to everyone that’s hit 90 and others that are about to! Can you think of anything else you should do at level 90? (Or other questions?)