The WOTLK Classic Exploit Mega-Article (Final Update 6 October) (Patreon)

(Update: this article will no longer be updated as the initial chaos of launch dies down, most of it still works as of October 12 though)

I've decided to consolidate most of my initial investigations in WOTLK Classic exploits into a single article so as not to annoy retail-exclusive players too much with multiple threads.

Please be aware that there is much more content in this article than I would normally publish in a month. This will be constantly updated till the chaos caused by the initial launch period is over, whenever that is.

In no particular order:

1. Icemist Village-Secret Grinding Location. At co-ordinates 24,38, Icemist Village, Dragonblight,  there is a series of rope bridges where Anubar cultists stand and empower Anu'bar Blight beasts. The cultists re-spawn instantly most of time-often you will kill one and another will re-spawn in exactly the same position.

This appears to be a location inaccessible from the ground.* If your character does not have flight you can use the method I explain in this article:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/wotlk-classic-in-72598548

To access the rope bridge. The fact that regular players cannot access this location means you will face little or no competition. 

Also see spellsteal opportunity below. 

2. Set Up A Teleport To ANY known location.

In introducing "que-anywhere" battlegrounds Blizzard have created an interesting new glitch. If you enter a battleground while on a flight path your postion will be "saved". When you exit the battleground you will be returned to your flight as normal-however, when you next exit an instance you will be returned to the "saved" location either by teleport or clip-through flight path if the saved location is in the same zone as the instance you just exited. 

This sounds like a curiosity: in fact this can be very useful to exploiters in a number of ways. Aside from the travel convenience of being able to store  a specific saved point in space and return to it, this makes limited item runs much faster, and allows you to use advanced techniques such as porting outside dungeons with some over-powered buffs acquired from long distances away.

3. Mage-only - Infinite Damage. Spellstealing Valkyrion Aspirants "Metanoia" buff in Valkyrion, in the Storm Peaks. 

UPDATE: This is now ONE buff only. It still works surprisingly well for farming even with just one.

https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/spell=57524/metanoia

Somehow after both myself and Rextroy blew up half of Icecrown at the start of Shadowlands Blizzard still allow this buff to be stacked from multiple mobs in classic allowing Mages to one-shot up everything in the area, doing almost literally infinite damage. This makes for some very fast leveling in low-population realms. In higher population realms it might be a good idea to try this off-peak, at least till people have mostly finished leveling.

Currently you can make over 1000 gold per hour with the currently high price of relics of Ulduar the valkyrion aspirant and other mobs drop.

Metanoia does not survive any kind of teleport. It can however be taken into adjacent zones if you can work around the two minute duration. 

4. 100% Alliance Win Rate on EU In Alterac Valley. This is a strange one, and technically not an exploit but very interesting nonetheless. On EU realms Alliance have won literally every Alterac Valley battleground I have played in the last four days, well over 50 battlegrounds. With four towers destroyed and Drek killed this is worth around 100k in experience, and usually a lot of honor also. Although I participate actively you don't really have to do anything significant to contribute. The only drawback is the 20-30 minute que time. This is the best no-effort way to level. 

5. Glitch In Strand Of The Ancients. The version of Strand Of The Ancients where players wear masks and play as supposed members of the opposite faction is seriously bugged at the moment. Players cannot re-spawn at the graveyard when killed, so a team that wins the initial skirmish in a round will usually win, provided the winning team loots the corpses. I found a partial workaround for this: simply log-out and back-in. If you and your team know this you should have a huge advantage.

6. Phasing Exploit - Farm Ores And Herb Without Competition In Kalimdor

I received this message from Mich Wiz on youtube:

"Hey Archvaldor. I find a neat way to farm ores on the kalimdor (for alliance at least) in WotLK classic. After the quests at wrathgate you are told to go to stormwind to talk with Vrynn. He then sends you with Jaina to Orgrimar. You are ported into a weird world, where there is only a couple of NPC at the Orgri. There are no mobs on continent nor any players to contest with you the ores and herbs. You can run freely, you just can't use any teleportation as it will take you out of this weird world."

Note: I have not had time to test this one personally with everything else going, though it is very interesting. I'll update this one shortly.

7. Mage Spellsteal  - Zeal Buff - Infinite Haste. 

In the same location I mention in 1. the Anubar Cultist mobs have a 20% haste buff called "Zeal". This stacks. You can get very high haste levels with this stuff. An expert mage (and you do have to be an expert, conserving mana is very complicated with that much haste) could get very high levels of experience per hour, comparable with the fastest possible approaches. 

Normally this would be a fantastic opportunity but there are even better spells to steal in Northrend (see above). 

This buff can be taken through a port to do temporary but impressive burst damage in a battleground, dungeon or raid.

8. Thing Which Are Properly Fixed:

Blizzard seem to have comprehensively fixed vehicle quests so they no longer give meaningful experience (it used to be possible to get full xp from one-shotting mobs with vehicles provided for quests): tested on the Dragonblight Shredder quests and Voldune Dragon quest so far. 

Most mobs which spawn excessively fast on launch do not award xp.

As I mentioned above though the aforementioned "metanoia" buff can still be stacked it does not survive a port.

EDIT: Despite reports to the contrary mob tagging in the traditional sense did not make it out of beta.

9 The Fastest Ways The Classic Community Has Been Leveling. 

In the days leading up to the launch of classic there was a lot of comment about various youtube videos covering a method mages can use to farm Utgarde Keep. 

While this is an effective if expert and demanding method (the cost of an error is extremely high with this type of approach) the fastest levellers on most realms appeared to be melee classes running the Botanica and utilizing high avoidance builds to kill multiple mobs at once. 

All of these people are using creative game mechanics rather than exploits, but I thought it was worthy of comment. 

10. Bypass Death Knight Restrictions With Transfer Glitch.

I have received multiple reports that players with existing death knights that take advantage of Blizzard's free realm transfer offers designed to easy pressure on over-populated realms, can then set-up more than one death knight on that realm.

11. Existing Retail Exploits

Worth adding that everything I have tested so far that is broken on retail is also broken in Classic. This is quite a lot of stuff: Wrath was easily the buggiest expansion. This means anything in the archives that was not explicitly fixed here works in classic. 

This article will be constantly updated and new exploits may be added. More to come...

UPDATES 4 October

12. Interesting Spellsteal Buff - Infinite Haste

The Focus Wizards in the Azure Dragonshrine in South-East Dragonblight have a buff called Arcane Focus which increases haste by a huge 30%, even more than the Icemist mobs mentioned above. This buff stacks!

The mobs can be farmed for leveling purposes but due to the way they are stacked a leveling character will struggle to stay alive. More interestingly the buff can be taken through teleports. Standard 2 minute spellsteal durations applies as usual. 

13. Wrathgate Phasing Glitch Affecting Horde Also

 The quest "Herald Of War" is bugged and turning Orgrimmar into a ghost world where you can gather without competition: see this bug report:

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/herald-of-war-glitch-wrath-classic/1357126

Note this is the same bug affecting Alliance described above in 6.

14. Pet Debuffs Still Work

In an earlier version of this article I suggested pet debuff exploits had been fixed. This is the strategy where you get a pet/minion to attack a mob with a debuff that has beneficial properties, dismiss the pet and summon it later when you need a burst of damage. As it turns out these still work for hunter pets and minions but not water elementals for some reason. 

A good example of a debuff with beneficial properties is the blight bears in the area around Azjol Nerub in Dragonblight which give your pet/minion a 30%+ critical strike chance for 15 seconds.