I got the

So I suppose I probably can level past 20, we'll have to see tonight. I'm more annoyed that I can't even give the character gold to train skills, nor buy any gear for him off the AH. It's entirely possible all of this is cleared up within 72 hours, I'm just impatient and a bit concerned.

Don't worry this is normal (albeit irritating) the same thing happened to me, took 2 days for them to finalise the upgrade so I could give the character some gold so that I could train alll their skills (the downside to leveling so fast is you dont make enough money to train everything).

Took my trial account a couple days to "upgrade," like others are reporting. Very annoying, but that's just how they do it. Apparently you can get around this by buying an actual box at the store to upgrade the account though.

As I understand it the delay is due to the way the credit card system works. They want to make sure your payment is fully processed before letting you trade gold, and that actually takes longer than you would think - all of this is part of their efforts to make life harder for gold sellers.

If you use a code from a boxed copy WoW, this is a non-issue and the account is fully upgraded right away.

Well, I finished my RAF experience (at least a week ago now) and I'll throw my advice into the ring.

I followed basically what a lot of other people have posted, especially in regards to Scarlet Monastery. However, I changed my routine up a bit and I'm now in possession of three 70's and six 60's on my primary account (and two 60's on the secondary account, but I'll likely never use it again). I won't bother going into details about how I got them all up there in the month I paid for, if only because it's a waste of time. I will, however, give a few tips on how I tried to speed things up as I went along. Keep in mind that I play Horde, so some of my options may not be available to the Alliance (Hinterlands, for example).

From 20-40, I did Scarlet Monastery Cathedral runs. With my friend's pally, I was able to do the runs in about 14 minutes. With my brother's mage, I was able to do them in about 11 minutes. If you have access to a decently geared mage (my brother is sporting all PvP gear, mostly S1 with a piece each of S2/3/4 thrown in), I'd highly recommend it. Frost specialization helps here for obvious survival reasons.

From 40-45, I did Zul'Farrak runs along with most of the quests. Get your high level character the mallet so you can do the Gahz'rilla quest and do all the other ones (Mosh'aru Tablets excluded unless you feel like taking a trip to Feralas for the prereq). Here's my biggest hint: In the Witch Doctor's area, you can run around and open up all the shallow graves for masses of elite melee-only trolls to fight. Clearing out that entire room probably gives you another 1/3-1/2 run's worth of killing XP. I highly recommend this because these are much easier to kill than the variety of casters/ranged (that all cast Hex) that inhabit the instance.

The first batch of characters I actually took to 50 through Zul'Farrak, but I changed my routine up for the ones after it and it seemed to go much faster.

From 45-50, have a higher level character escort you through all the quests you can find in town in Feralas. Don't forget the Gordunni Scroll and the Homing Beacon quests, as these give pretty substantial XP, too. (If someone requests it, I can find all the quests I did during this time and link them here.)

From 50-55 or so, I did most of the town quests in the Hinterlands. It will take a decent chunk of time, but you'll easily level at least once just from kills and get another 3 or 4 levels from turning in quests at the end of it all. Jintha'alor is a godsend for quest experience and you'll end up with some fairly decent gear (plus a great trinket if you're a melee/hunter) at the end of it all.

From 55-60, I did a decent amount of quests in Western Plaguelands and finished up with Silithus. The guide linked a few pages back (Recruit-A-Friend Leveling Guide) was very helpful in this area.

If anyone wishes for a more extensive write-up, just let me know and I'll get started.

I'm leveling a Ret Paladin and a Rogue at the same time, with Recruit a Friend. I simply bind a button to auto follow ("G"), have the rogue on auto follow. I cast Seal of Command on my Paladin, run up to a mob and start attacking. I quickly alt-tab to my rogue, stealth, ambush, backstab, and continue to stab the mob til it's dead. Press "G" to auto follow again, alt-tab back to my Paladin, and repeat. It works really well.

I'm at level 48 right now with 1 day, 20 hours played, and much of that was AFK. I haven't done a single instance.

Yeah, that's a bug. Obviously accounts B and C should be linked properly and both tripling.

It is a bug that account C is getting triple xp. When a mob killed is trivial to anyone in the party, nobody in the party is supposed to get triple xp.

The problem is that the since mobs killed by B are trivial to it's linked partner (A), B gets no experience. You may be able to call blizzard and have them break the link.

Hey guys,

I'm thinking of getting myself a second acount and then ofcourse abuse this invite a friend thing for 2 additional free alts.
I was wondering though could i give my DK's in Wrath the bonuslevels I get from leveling my alt?
So basicly letting both my DK's start out at lvl 59 (or 59,9) or even if possible lvl 60 (or 60,9)

I would not use the other 20 levels don't really need a extra alt since I already have 5 chars.

I'm currently in a pickle in that I bought 5 new accounts and leveled a group to 60, I then gifted a new group to 60. Unfortunately the last account is unable to received free levels and feels like the odd man out now. Is there any way around this? Sucks to level a group to 60 only to realize you cant get a new free group, only 4.

An RAF writeup would be fantastic.

I know I've mentioned it in the leveling alts thread, but I'd like to reiterate here that anyone with access to a 70 Paladin should be able to do SM faster and safer than any DPS running through one-shotting mobs. All you need is Blessing of Sanctuary, [Figurine of the Colossus], and some blue-quality tanking gear. The downside is that this doesn't work in ZF, but it does work in Stratholme. There are two primary ways to use the paladin depending on the gear you have available that I'll try to outline briefly. Using the raid-gear methods I am able to reach the reset cap for SM and Strath (5 runs of Armory+Cathedral or partial Strath an hour).

Recommended spec for either gearset is full Prot with PoJ. Good enough tank gear can pull off staying Holy but you'll miss the run speed bonus. Holy Shock yourself every cooldown to partially compensate for losing Sanctuary.
Pack multiple shields. They will break often.

Scarlet Monastery for Blues (or Holy spec in T5+ tank gear):
Armory -> Run through the halls strafe-kiting every mob that you find. Bubble to open Herod's door, jump down and heal yourself before you tag Herod. Run back to the entrance and Consecrate. Activate trinket before the mobs start fleeing and you'll get a full heal.

Library -> Same strategy as Armory, but it doesn't work as well. Many mobs leash, pats respawn that will gank your lowbies. I recommend doing it once for the SM quest and keys.

Cathedral -> Run up to the Cathedral door, aggroing some mobs on the way. Bubble to open the door. Pull Mograine and run like hell. With PoJ you can outrun all of the mobs, but don't get too far ahead or many will reset. You will have plenty of time to heal yourself when you drop down at the fountain. LoS the mobs around the corner and Consecrate a couple times, activating your trinket at low health. If you angle them right they will all flee in the same direction towards the zone-in, follow them and consecrate there. There will be some stragglers that managed to escape with full health, ignore them and reset. You won't get Mograine loot since he dies too far away and the script breaks.

Optimal for 25-40, still excellent for 20-45.


Stratholme for Blues (or Holy spec in T5+ tank gear):
Start at the backdoor. Open the gate and immediately run in with Freedom. Exorcism the Magistrate, aggro all of the skeletons in the first room and LoS pull them into the chapel for mass execution. There's a good chance that if you lag or hesitate at all, you won't get him before he teleports away. There's also a small chance that you'll get him as he teleports away, if this happens zone out and reset unless you think you can take on every trash mob in Baron side Strath at once.

Lowbies will need to follow at a safe distance, as you can't pull everything to the entrance anymore. Keep an eye out for ghouls, there are a couple patrols and a few pairs that stand off to the side and won't aggro a 70 unless you step on their toes.

Go out the west gate and pull as much as you can comfortably. Find a corner to duck into so that the mobs will be forced to stay in front. With practice you can safely pull everything up to the spot at the gates where the ghost boss spawns and use that little nook for your corner.

Continue along the path, killing the Eye and picking up the Hearthsinger on the way towards SM side. Again only pull as much as you're comfortable with, eventually reaching all the way to the final undead trash at the SM gates.

Drop a consecrate 20 yards in front of the rat trap before you trigger it. Repeat the same pulling routine, with your goal being to manage the remaining undead mobs in 2-3 pulls. Be wary of the Stratholme Courier, he stuns! Run out the back gate and reset when you're finished here.

Excellent for 45-60.


Now some trickier methods to squeeze every drop of exp/hour out assuming you have access to raid gear on your tankadin. Use one damage absorb trinket: [Runed Fungalcap] [Talisman of Arathor] [The Burrower's Shell] with the Figurine.

Scarlet Monastery:
Library -> Same as above. Do it once for the keys and again if you pick up the quest.

Armory -> Same as above.

Cath -> Run to the door, avoiding as many mobs as possible. Use the absorb trinket to open the door. If you fail, revert to the strategy listed above. If you succeed, run into the Cathedral, again avoiding mobs that you can. Kill Mograine where he stands, being careful to keep the mobs in front of you. Start to kill Whitemane, but bubble BEFORE you take her to 50%. You cannot DS out of the sleep, which is a very long stun that will get you killed by all the mobs you've been blocking. Once she resurrects Mograine, kite them to the entrance and kill as usual. You may end up having to blow your Figurine while you're kiting them, if so let them catch up and start getting blocked so that you can get a full heal from it.

Optimal from 25-42. You will hit the reset lockout, just anticipate it and use the opportunity to loot every other Cath or so, or go repair.

Stratholme:
As before, except that you should basically be invincible as soon as you stop pulling and park in your corner. As a result you can boil it all into 2-3 pulls:

Magistrate packs -> Kill these in the chapel if you get the Magistrate. If you don't, drag them with you to the next pull.

Everything in the instance up to the ghost boss, and keep going. Kill the Eye. Go all the way to the end where the SM trash starts, and use the back corner. You need to be careful to grab every pat as the lowbies can get creamed even if they enter combat and do nothing.

Cross the rat trap and cut left, then out towards the main entrance. Kite them back around and kill everything next to the Courier, who you should be careful not to aggro unless you have LoH up. There's an Eye and at least one pathing ghoul that you need to take out before the lowbies can cross the rat trap to be in exp range.

Optimal for 45-60.

Ah so I won't be able to gift the levels as long as the DK is in the starter area? That would be a shame but better then nothing I guess.

Had same thing. Ended up summoning my ex-trial account to Tyr's Hand (FFA loot) whilst I grinded on my main. A few grey weapon vendors and I had about 20g on my referred. Covered the skills training and some 10 slot bags from the vendor

I don't know about summoning, but you have to complete the starting area quests to get his talent points for the level he is at. If I remember correctly you start at 55 and each quest awards 1, sometimes 2, talent points and by the time you are done the DK is almost 58 or is 58.

Unless they somehow stop summons from happening inside that instance, it should be possible.
However, in my opinion, it wouldn't be worth it. You wouldn't gain that much per level since most of the kill quests are either on a vehicle or slaughtering gray level civilians. Rest of the quests are mostly running around with scripted events so the actual gain is pretty small. You could however gift from 57.9 forwards if you happen to complete the main quests by then (personally I got just past it since the torturing RNG hated me).

Well free experience is free experience. Also every DK is around 58 when done with the prequests so whatever way you look at it you will gain 3 levels worth of exp, the fact that you kill grey civilians has nothing to do with it it's the quest experience that counts and that probably won't change much between 55 and 60,9. I don't use the "gift" levels on a different alt so if I dont do this they will just rot away. So if I can start out at 60,9 with both my DK's then do all the DK quests I would probably be halfway 61. I then have all the materials banked to do turn in quests in blasted lands cloth turnins in the main cities etc and basicly I start out at 62 in outlands.

I want to spend as less time as possible in outlands so I really hope this works. Theoraticly you should be able to summon the DK's and then scourgestone back into the instance I'd think. Could I also summon one DK and then have the second DK who is still in the instance summon the other one back? I'm a bit new to the whole summoning thing as you can see.

So I managed to con the one RL friend I still have playing into letting me use his high level toon for instance boosting. Problem is, his 70 is a shadow priest (1244 +shadow). Obviously this won't be as effective as, say, a protadin or mage running through AEing things, but I'm wondering if it will even be worth the time to try boosting on a SP. Thoughts?

I don't think it will be worth it to instance boost. However it maybe worth it to quest boost. I used a high dps class to quest boost from 45-60 after using a prot paly to instance boost from 20-45. The help on questing would be fine anywhere, just run around and slaughter the necessary mobs.

Be very careful, you can get his account banned for "account sharing," which blizzard specifically states is against the TOS.

I have referred a buddy of mine and after getting his new character within 3 levels of one of my alts we did a few quests until trying to have 3rd friend run us through RFC. Basically we walked out of RFC with level 18. We were too low for SM so we hit SFK for couple of levels then went to SM.

So far this is the plan we have for next pair of toons:

1-5 questing and getting to Orgrimmar
5-18/20 RFC/SFK (4RFC quests / 2 SFK quests)
20-40 SM (with 2 quests that are not parts of chains)
40-45/50 ZF (all 7 quests)
45/50-55 ST (unsure about quests)
50/55-60 Strat/Scholo (also unsure on which quests are not chains)

Character running us through is level 70 pvp geared Warrior nothing incredible just honor based gear. SM Cath/Armory so far have been 20 minutes combined.
After 11 hours played on referred account shaman is level 36 with 1/2 level rested exp.