The Burning Crusade Classic Exploits - A Rough Guide (Patreon)

The Burning Crusade Classic is almost with us. This is a rough guide to what we can expect.

The original TBC was created at a time when Blizzard were much more naive about exploits and had not instituted game protection measures which are now commonplace. In TBC classic this basic architecture is in place but we should expect Blizzard to react to exploits that go public much more quickly than in the original game. 

Here's a list of stuff which is very likely to work at launch, based on PTR testing, retail, inference and precedent:

1. Demon Armies

To create an army you will need a warlock and some kind of source of mind control-ideally a priest. Have the priest duel or fight the warlock, after the warlock has enslaved a nearby demon. When mind control is cast on the warlock they keep their current enslaved demon but can enslave others at the same time-the only limit on the number of demons is the 5 minute enslave timer.

This is a very powerful technique. It requires some expertise-this is among the harder exploits to use successfully as it requires some trial and error to locate accessible demons and deal with their aggro. Done correctly however, it can be the fastest way to level or farm gold.

There is a more information on this glitch in this article:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/31792038

2. Scrying (THE most powerful gold-making in TBC classic)

Scrying is a very powerful way to generate gold. Scrying is any method that can remotely determine where valuable items or objects or located so the player can access them more efficiently and profitably. This will be a very powerful technique in TBC Classic.

When I first wrote about the concept some years ago the use of the hunter macro

/cast !Eagle Eye

(this allows you to chain-cast eagle eye and search vast distances)

specifically for gold-making purposes was relatively unknown. However this method became somewhat mainstream in Vanilla Classic with hunters monopolizing Black Lotus spawns by checking large areas using it.

In TBC the most valuable ore will be khorium, this is an ore that very occasionally spawns in the place of a fel Iron/adamanatite/ rich adamantite node. Almost certainly using the !eagle eye macro will become the standard method of locating it, indeed it will be difficult to find khorium in-world any other way.

What is still largely unknown and still very profitable is the use of Priest Mind Vision for the same purpose. A priest can look through the eyes of any mob anywhere in any dungeon with:

/tar NAME OF MOB

/cast mind vision

You can simply use /tar at the start of a dungeon to check for khorium nodes by looking through the eyes of NPC's. If no node is available simply walk out and reset the instance. This is still very profitable even in retail. In  TBC classic it is likely going to be THE most profitable gold-making activity to perform.

More detail on scrying is contained in these articles:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/19354807

https://www.patreon.com/posts/17725164

(These articles were written for retail however most of the information will work for TBC. A noticeable exception is the fact that priests cannot walk through dungeons in TBC classic without being killed-so a combination of priest and stealth class will work very well here.)

3. X-Ray Vision. 

As with all existing versions of wow, it should be possible to see through all solid objects by going to 

esc > system >graphics 

and making raid/normal settings the same apart from environment detail, which should be 1 on normal, and 10 on raid.

To access your x-ray vision assign a keybind to 

esc > keybindings > misc > Toggle Graphics Settings, and spam that key. 

This causes all permanent objects to reload persistently allowing you to see through them. This is a fantastic way to locate quest objects and has many other uses.

4. Game Freeze

To freeze your game client you do the same as above, but put your normal graphics setting to 1 and your raid settings to 10. This temporarily freezes your client and allows you to do things such as hang in mid-air suspended and glitch out certain abilities and game mechanics.

5. Exploiting Useful Debuffs

In the past one of the most powerful damage exploits to use in wow involved finding debuffs with some postive aspect. Hunters in particular would seek them out, get the debuff on their pets, dismiss them, and then summon them when they wished to do burst damage. 

Although examples of this type of exploit still exist in wow retail, many were fixed and Blizzard are aware of the issue. In TBC this was generally not the case. Here is an example of a debuff with positive properties:

In Shadowmoon Valley on the far left of the map there is a location called the fetid pool, containing many "mutant terrors", they cast a stacking debuff called mutated blood (from the tooltip),

Inflicts Physical damage to an enemy every 3 sec and increases damage inflicted by the target by 10%.  Lasts 15 sec.

This can be stacked 10 times for 100% increased damage on any pet/minion. 

Another more subtle debuff with a much longer three minute duration meaning it can be used by classes without pets/minions, is the "Curse Of The Shattered Hand" from the Shatterd Halls Dungeon:

Curses an enemy with Fel energy, increasing the damage they deal by 5% but increasing the damage they take by 15%. 

( https://www.wowhead.com/spell=36020/curse-of-the-shattered-hand )

Here is an article which covers debuff exploits in more detail, especially the "blood" related debuffs in Zangarmarsh. 

https://www.patreon.com/posts/21911014

6. Busted Mechanics, (eg Combustion)

Certain class-specific spells just were not very well designed in TBC and are very exploitable. Mostly I will publish these when I can confirm they can be exploited on TBC classic when it goes live to avoid any possibility (however remote) of them being fixed before launch.

One good example however that is really fun to mess around with right now in pre-patch is mage combustion.

Combustion, when activated, gives increasing critical strike chance with Fire spells until 3 criticals occur. Each time a fire spell is cast, the chance to get a critical strike with fire is increased by 10%. This effectively guarantees at least 3 critical strikes from Fire spells within the next 13 casts.

You can stack combustion to 10, ie 100% chance of 3 crits using the following method:

1. Find mob that significantly out-levels you. Karazahan has level 68-70 mobs outside it currently.

2. Cast fire spell.

3. Run away very fast. 

4. Repeat.

Because you will almost always miss a mob ten levels higher you will usually stack to 10 doing this. The combustion buff will persist into battlegrounds, where it has one-shot potential, and dungeons. 

You can do much the same thing with other class abilities, but I'm mentioning this now as we won't be able to find mobs 10 levels higher that easily after pre-patch.

A more subtle variant of the same technique is to simply strip your player of the gear lowering their hit rating, and cast spells on same-level mobs. This won't usually stack to 10, but it will stack significantly higher than would occur in normal play. This has a lot of potential for farming dungeons with talented flamestrike.

7. Spellsteal

Arguably the most broken spell in wow ever, it is worth considering rolling a mage solely because of this ability. Even in retail you can huge advantages in pve and non-competitive pvp by spellstealing powerful abilities and taking them into a raid or wherever over-powered burst damage is useful. This is despite the fact that literally hundreds of spells have been manually nerfed by Blizzard to prevent this happening. 

In TBC Classic it seems that currently the original naive approach to spellsteal has been implemented with little to stop players using this strategy. (I'm deliberately avoiding giving specific examples at this stage, I will in due course as this becomes appropriate for the player curve). 

8. Phase Exploit

This method from TBC still works in retail:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/14112132

Naturally we can assume this will work in TBC classic, albeit it will be even harder to complete the pre-quests. On the plus side it will be extremely advantageous for gathering professions given the challenge posed by TBC-era mobs.

There is a lot more to cover on TBC exploits but this should serve as a decent overview until launch.