Further Rep Grind Info

If you haven't read my first post on grinding reputation, catch it here before continuing.

In BC, once you got to the level of doing heroics, normals were nearly 100% cut out of your life.  In Wrath, though, this is not the case.

A)  You earn rep (albeit at a slower pace than heroics) all the way to exaulted in normals.  This is unlike BC where at some point you stopped earning rep altogether.

B) Turning in a daily normal dungeon rewards gold and a choice of one of four commendation badges.  Using the badge consumes it, and grants 250 rep with the faction you chose.

The badges/factions to choose from are:

Kirin Tor

Argent Crusade

(Knights of the) Ebon Blade

Wyrmrest

Here's a good reference guide to the various factions and their rewards in Wrath.  Note that Horde Expedition and Alliance Vanguard are identical versions of the same group for their respective sides, and the rewards they offer are identical.

The New Rep Grind

Disclaimer:  This post is information as I understand it thus far!  There may be some innaccuracies here, and I hope you guys will help me correct it as the true system is better understood.

Blizzard hath both giveth and taketh away this xpac. That is, while it's likely rep grinding will be easier and less tedious in Wrath, there are more distinct reps to be concerned with, and the new badges work in conjunction with rep to get you gear.  Simply collecting a mountain of badges won't get you into the good gear anymore.  Generally you must have a combination of both badges and rep with a specific faction.

Sounds more complicated so far, right?  Well this is where Blizzard giveth.  Rather than being locked in to a specific instance or set of instances to grind faction x, you now "champion" a faction and run any instance you feel like to earn rep with them.  You champion a faction by wearing their tabbard while running any level 80 instance.  If you want rep with The Buggering Brothers, you're not locked to running Buggering Brothers' instances.  Run any instance wearing a Buggering Brothers tabbard to gain rep with that faction.  Normal and heroic modes will earn you rep all the way to exalted, though naturally you'll gain faction faster in heroic mode.

Again, the one caveat is that you must be in a level 80 instance for this to work.  If you throw on the Buggering Brothers' tabbard an run heroic Nexus, no problem.  If you throw on the Buggering Brother's tabbard and run normal Nexus (lvl 72 - 74) you gain no rep.

All factions have mountains of dailys that can be done as well.  The quests may change as your rep level increases, but quests will be available all the way to exalted.

Looking for the New Shoulder Enchants?

They come from reputation with The Sons of Hordir. I wrote a fairly thorough description on how to get started with this faction over at wowdb.com, so rather than rewrite it I'll just link the page.

Improved Shadows in Wrath

/console extShadowQuality #

This is the code to access the improved shadows in Wrath of the Lich King. # is any number from 0 - 6. The higher the number, the higher the quality, but Blizzard says to not use values 5 and 6 as they are intended to be internal testing values only. Some people have reported that 5 and 6 work fine, but others have reported that they're no different from 4. The difference in performance hit between 4 and 3, and again 3 and 2 is significant. Experiment and see what you get.

Quest Japanizer

Zowie. Hardcore.