I hit level 80 last night around 8:45 PM. Most of the player curve is around the 74-75 area so I’m considered “ahead†of the curve. Although I could credit my leveling speed to my “Asian racial (25% extra stamina when really focused on a goal, cooldown: once every 365 days)â€Â, there’s a few things to keep in mind if you really want to get to 80 as fast as possible.
Note, you’ll miss out on a lot of the lore and the story. But I’m proceeding on the assumption that it is not a primary concern.
- Accept all quests in the area without reading the backstory. 4 out of 5 times, the quest involves you killing something or picking something up. Read what you have to do, and go do it. You don’t need to know about the circumstances behind the objective.
- On quests where you need to pick up items off the ground, keep looking for others. It takes a few seconds to loot one anyway. Use the time to spot.
- Forget professions. Worry about them when you’re 80.
- Train at every 2nd level. Unless there is a specific spell that you feel you really need, it takes a lot of effort to fly down to the port and boat or zepp back to your capital cities.
- Keep the autorun handy. Read up on WoWhead or your favourite leveling guide to find out what you need to dow hen you get to your destination.
- Chunking. Just like how I sometimes write my posts in massive chunks or blocks, do all the quests in an area. I’ll usually do 7 or 8 quests at a time per hub and do a gigantic turn in.
- Know your damage rotations. Find out the fastest way to kill things even if it means being inefficient. You’re trading efficiency for speed. Find out what the “execute†range is. A typical Smite and Shadow Word:Death will kill any mob with around 3000 health remaining. Holy Nova will clean it up.
- Blow your cooldowns. You’re not fighting a raidboss. Everytime Heroism is up and you have to level an entire camp of Gnolls, do it. If Power Infusion is available and you get to blow up Murlocs, use it. Maximize the useage. If it involves you killing 60 Rhinos for Nessingwary, it’s a green light to pop trinkets and just nuke the place.
- Consumables. Chances are, you still have still have some Mana Potions and food or flasks left. Use them as you’re leveling. They’ll provide a slight edge.
- Know how much resource it takes you to kill a mob. For example, I know it takes me ~3000 mana to bring a whelp down to its knees. For most mobs, its around 3000 – 3500 mana. If I can squeeze off one more kill before drinking, I’ll do it.
What other tips would you suggest for players that want to level fast?
New blog post: 10 Tips for Extreme Leveling to 80 (without denting your wallet) http://tinyurl.com/6f92nk
You Forgot
Trying to beat me
Some how, I had the mats for around 200 superior mana oils just in the bank when expansion hit – handy. I’m having no problems as holy spec doing quests. Just made a few macros for my trinkets, and I Blow every CD every time. Shadowfiend is a mana battery; you can 3-4 mob pull. I would have to say, just do the beginning instances until the quest are done, then move on. Better gear will drop later.
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Skip group quests too, if some obscure quest is too far away wait till you hit that area to do it, efficiency above all. =)
i hit 80 sunday at 6 serverish.
@Karthis: That’s totally fine. Actually, on certain quest chains I slow down a bit to catch up on the back story. The epic quest chain in Storm Peaks is one very good example.
Along with #6 – Chunking.
Know when to stay in the area to do quests and know when to leave. Usually most areas require at least one or two quests to open up the rest. Using Questhelper can help you know a lot of them out in one area before turning them all in, like you suggest. Once you realize that you’ve done most of them and the rest are scattered it can be more efficient to move on to the next area.
That said, I’m trying to clear out all the quests before moving on where possible, so it’ll take me longer. Achievements are addictive… 🙂
Also, I think my “Asian” racial is bugged… /sigh
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I just can’t bring myself to not read the quest text…. the game is sooo very meaningless without the backing plot. And I’m a raid-centric player.
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Of all the prof’s, tailor/enchant is the easiest one to level up as you level, since you accumulate mats as you do quests and such. It also helps clear up bag space. I’m only level 78, but I managed to get into the 410’s in both profs.
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The one thing better to level, right out of the gates of an expansion that is, than tailoring is skinning. The sheer volume of dead carcasses lying around right after an xpac opens up is mind boggling. I’m not even 72 and I’ve maxed skinning out. My lw feeds all the crap greens to my tailor/enchanter and I get double the enchant mats.
In the spirit of sharing other ideas for leveling up:
1. Hire high school kids. This will turn the productivity of the hours you’re at work work to your advantage. Make sure you know the kids or they’ll run away with your account.
2. Send the wife to a friend’s place or family’s place for a couple of days. There’s nothing quite like a wife nagging about how much you play “that stupid game” and it sucks to wake up late for work to a “I told you so” from said wife. Remember, there’s no polite way of telling your wife “stfu”, so you might as well be smooth about it. For those of you who have WoW-supportive wives, all I can say is “you lucky bastards”.
3. Tell people in the trade or general chat channel that they are giving out free stuff back in Azeroth in a remote location, say, Azshara or Desolace. Many gullible players will actually take the trip back meaning that you’ll be ahead of them by a little bit.
I can think of many other clever ways to stay ahead of the curve; if these get a good reception I’ll make sure to post more.
And don’t forget: have time to play 😀
Actually we – playing in a 2 person team – use an in-game quest guide (we switch between QuestHelper and CarboniteQuest – actually a commercial addon, but the quest thingy is free). It helps incredibly to know where you are going and on the side there’s always a tab with WoWHead open …
Playing team in our case is faster because we only play these characters together and always have the exact same quests. That way you can do a few group quests. Usually playing with others slows you down I think.
Personally I prefer to go slow and so we don’t follow all your points. I have even been seen Fishing in Northrend 😉 and I do read quest texts – quickly. I want to understand a bit of the lore behind the quests.
But I will take a look at how much damage each of my spells does and use my cooldowns more often because while I don’t want to level extremely fast I want what I do to go smooth and efficient and the next character I level will go much faster anyway … don’t need lore for alts
Not sure if you are on a pvp server, but a major time sink is getting side tracked getting involved in some pvp. Turns a simple “kill 10 of x mob” into “kill 2 x mob then kill 2 players, retrieve corpse, repeat”
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Regarding ‘efficient damage’…check into Dr. Damage…free addon that calculates (apparantly with fair accuracy) all your spells / abilities and displays on the icon your expected averages (it takes into account talent specs, procs, etc. too)….
Drinkers should bring max-rank water, and food buffs are helpful. It’s cheap stuff relative to the time savings. Non-max elixirs may be available for a steal from people leveling professions, and every little bit helps.
Bank alts are good to mail your BoEs to. Or even stuff you plan to bank as far as mats. Faster to give it to them than trek over to Dalarn.
I’ve also been following Jame’s free wotlk leveling guide and must say it is a lot more efficient than quest helper and carbonite because all the quests are spread around, I get about 500k exp an hour non-rested.
I want to echo what Yashima stated about questhelper/carbonite quest. This really does help reduce alt-tabbing, reading up locations/tips/etc. being a casual player, I’m the only one int eh guild that used these add ons, started yesterday and compared to our top plays in the guild, I already out leveled them by 2. Definite a way to go for extreme leveling.
I know your trying to help and all, but this is what 90% of the WoW population does. And whoever doesn’t use cooldowns, buff themselves, look for quest mobs/containers while opening another probably isn’t trying to get to 80 asap. Thanks for the general knowledge, and GL to anyone who doesn’t already do these things.
If you do want to level ASAP, gather friends and go AOE, ignore the quest unless the mods are good for AE.