Bill

Not everyone's cup of tea, but some of us love the challenge of power-leveling, the thrill of competition. The feeling that your brain is melting into grey paste after no sleep for 48 hours. This thread is intended to be a consolidated source for all of us to share our thoughts, ideas, tactics and experiences with power-leveling for the coming Wotlk. That is, leveling as fast as possible to 80 with the usual EJ approach; mixmax efficiency.

I understand power-leveling is not for everyone, nor possible for everyone, some people enjoy taking the game at a steady pace and enjoying the lore. This thread is dedicated to power-leveling in Wotlk as fast as possible, so please keep the discussion focused on that, thanks!

As far as I can see, 2 main factors determine your leveling speed (assuming you have cleared enough time IRL for launch).

1. In-game speed and efficiency.

Your exp gain per hour in game. How fast and efficient you quest, how often you die, whether you slow down due fill bags ect. All the tricks in game possible to speed up the leveling process for Wotlk.

2. IRL speed and efficiency.

The second, crucial aspect of power-leveling. Managing how much you sleep per day, eating at the PC, resting breaks ect. This also covers tactics to make sleep deprivation more bearable (music, food, exterior help from friends ect). I would be interested to hear peoples thoughts on correct sleep management, so that one does not under sleep and become inefficient/ill but not to sleep too much and thus lose crucial leveling time. What kind of food/drinks ect are good for staying awake when you need to push yourself beyond your natural sleeping habits, how can you prepare the day before launch?

Any tried and tested legal methods that people used to level in TBC or other MMO's are appreciated.

 

Balog

A sound concept for a thread. I'd be very interested in a compiliation of info about the starting questlines for Northrend in terms of efficiency of effort.




Risking one's health for a game is a very bad idea.

Also, given the significant lag/stability issues one can expect from the rush of people trying out the new zones it might be a more efficient use of time to wait a bit before leaping into leveling. I'm thinking of when the Isle first opened here.

 

Bill

Certainly risking your health for a game is not healthy or suggested, but pushing yourself safely beyond your usual habits is not a bad thing. I don't know if we have any doctors on the forum who know anything about the most healthy way to sleep less for a week or so, but I'm sure there are methods.

Depends entirely on server. I play on a low to medium pop server and I can say I did not so much as have one server restart (compared to say, Magtheradon, which was plagued with massive server instability). Is transfering to a low pop realm and then back to your original realm viable, out of interest?

Info on questing efficiency in the starter zones would be great, I sadly never got hold of a beta key =/

I have started on building a plan for what shall be in my bags for leveling. Currently, I plan to have 2 stacks of injector mana and health potions. Health potions I think are excellent for preventing a death (and a big loss in leveling speed) and mana potions for a bunch of mana when needed. This will only use 4 slots and having some more waiting in my bank when I need will be cool. Several stacks of the best water obviously. I am wondering whether constant flasks of death will be worth the money, but unless you very rich, I doubt it. Keeping a food buff on ones self seems little trouble though.

 

LiquidHAL

Howling Fjord has a better overall design but the quest hubs are far more spread out, you spend less time traveling in Borean Tundra. Speaking from a med-high pop server, I'm definitely going to be avoiding the two starting zones as much as possible. You need to be at least 71 to start questing in Dragonblight so if I find the starting zone quests overpopulated, grinding instances with a good group would likely be faster. Should have more than enough quests in dragonblight to get to 73 when you can start grizzly hills.

I've also identified several nice AOE grinding spots with very fast respawns and many melee mobs tightly packed. Not applicable to every class, but I was about to get roughly 370k xp/hour grinding them (unrested), compared to the 250k/hr I usually got questing.

As far as consumables go, good for instances but not worth it solo. There are fewer straight kill quests than ever before, and with decent raiding gear the mobs you do have to kill die extremely fast. (ranging from 7k starting to 12k hp in icecrown.)

That said, my first time through I wouldn't try to powerlevel it. Blizzard spent a lot of time on the lore and put in a few neat things I won't mention that make taking the time to read the quests worth it.

 

Snowmane

I was debating staying in Outland and sweeping up all the quests I never got around to doing in Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley.

 

Shuairan

I don't think it would be worth doing so, the mobs in Outland give almost half the Experience the mobs in Northrend would give.
I think it would be a good idea to finish those Quests before and at release, just fly around and turn them in. Should give you around ~250k experience if you prepare 25 Quests.

 

Aiu

They have stated that they will be increasing the XP from 60-70 - I'm not sure if they'll do this by bumping the quest XP and the mobs, or which - but I wouldn't count this out just yet.

 

Nemantopia

I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night, but my dad's a doctor. Or something like that.

Actually, I have plenty of experience with sleep deprivation as a Scout Camp Counselor and college kid, and dad really is a family practitioner, so here's some tips:

1) Pace yourself so you always get at least 6, peaceful, uninterrupted hours at once each night. Some people can go as low as four, and others will need seven. Regardless, make sure you are timing from falling asleep, not laying down. As long as you're getting this minimum regularly and it is good, solid sleep, your body can tolerate a lot more than if you catch two hours here and there. Pushing beyond this is considered unhealthy, and can lead to an uncomfortable shift in your sleep cycle.

2) In relation to one, pace your intake of snacks and drinks. Don't overload on caffiene and energy supplements all at once, but drink your morning caffiene of choice, and stick to water or a gatorade type drink, pacing another soda or energy drink of choice at about the 2-5 hour interval you're comfortable with and you know won't leave you jittery going to sleep. For me, the number is four, and don't fool yourself, 2 is pushing it. You'll still be drinking 3-5 this way, which is a lot of crap going into you [says the guy who does this regularly )_)...(_(...], and too much more will just make you feel bad. This avoids the worst crashes and kind of rides you along until end-time, when you go to sleep. Done right, you should wake up feeling energetic.
2a) Do not drink or take energy drinks close to bed (and by 'close' I mean around 3 hours) unless you know you can get the aforementioned good sleep even while doing so! Some people can, some can't, know your body.

3) Pace eating around meals, but not as meals. What would you eat for lunch? Split that in half, have some around noon and the rest around 2:30, or their equivalents in your awake period. If you can stand to, do thirds or fourths and pace from 11:30 to 3:30. Do the same for dinner! You feel better when it's spaced like this instead of eating too much at once and having a 'full' feeling distract you from your goal. Breakfast is really your choice, but fruit or cereal is recommended unless you have someone to make you a classic eggs meal. It's cliche to say eat fruit, but try to at least eat a banana or an apple. What junk you eat is your business, but try and balance your carbs with, say, a meat-cheese snack at some point, and if you can bear the weight of the sacrilige against all that is gaming on your shoulders, do real food preparation like quarter sandwitches, bowls of homemade w/e, etc..

[edit]And obviously, eat at your computer DESK (liquids over keyboard bad) if you're the multitask type. Make sure there's a bathroom no more than a room away to minimize bio break time.[/edit]

So, that probably seems like advice from a health nut. But here's why it's important: ever had gamer crash? My first real experience with this wasn't gaming, but as a Camp Counselour. You go strong for a while, but then you just hit rock bottom...where you just feel like crap, your brain feels dead, you're exhausted, your sleep schedule is way out of whack? The above advice is meant to help you avoid that and remain feeling good and alert for a long while...if you had a week off work and set up in advance, you could totally do this and just take bio breaks when needed. Although I'd farm some reputation with your gf/wife if applicable *cough* I recommend showers, at least, because you'll feel better wasting your week away if you don't feel grungy...unless you won't, in which case: ew. It's also meant to avoid overloading your body with too much of any one thing at once, so you won't end up throwing up, feeling like crap, or having the headache that could be called 'caffiene hangover'. I also gurantee from personal experience you'll be more productive this way than blitzing hardcore, because you'll be all there mentally the whole way.

 

katholas

Quest and mob exp in outlands remains untouched, the only thing that is changing from 60-70 is the amount of exp needed to level.

 

chrisb3

Do northrend lv70 mobs have more health than sunwell isle lv70 mobs?
What about lv80 ones?

Would be useful to know if the kill speed is the same as on live or not, to practise the best way to dps multiple mobs.

 

RootBreaker

The 68s and 69s around the starting areas have 6-7k health

 

Shatter Combo w/ Fries

Breads, pastas, beans, potatoes, bran, rice, cereals, etc... are all great for energy.

Energy drinks are okay for staying awake but the above listed are much more stable for your body, you will never have highs and lows.

 

Shuairan

I recently tested it on the beta server.
Level 68 Netherstorm Mobs give 516 Exp on 70(Unrested)
Level 68 Howling Fjord Mobs give 821 Exp on 70(Unrested)

Around 60% increase in experience, also the quests in Northrend give a little more, so you have to kill the mobs alot faster and more to make it worth.

 

Beardstorm

Hmm although never tried it for gaming I've survived on 4-5 hours sleep for 5-6 days with one day off due to being on call/studing/work.

Since this is sitting at desk stuff the things that got me through 48 hour last minute dissertation write ups was a combo of many small meals / snacks, fruit juice, showers and 15 min breaks of stretching + warm up exercises (push ups, 5 min run etc.). It's fairly important to avoid eating too much in one go as it just makes you really sleepy, and sitting too long will probably drop your blood pressure and also make you feel sleepy (based on my own ancedotal evidence of it being easier to spend 14 hours doing stuff around hosiptal VS 14 hour stint in library). Set up your room temperature to how you like it when you work, for me this is mostly open windows no matter what time of the year it is as the fresh air keeps me awake better and too warm sends me to sleep.

I found cereal bars were great as was yoghurt, cold milk + honey, fruit juice, and lots of water and it actually ends up being fairly healthy and balanced. I don't think sacrificing hygene is worth it since you will just end up feeling like carpet after about 24 hours and will make you less productive, although this perhaps doesn't apply to WoW since it's not the most mentally taxing thing in the world.

I find coffee and energy drinks are not that good since they second they wear off I feel like crap and then end up having to constantly drink coffee/red bull whatever to stay awake and theres probably a load of garbage in those drinks anyway. Yeah I don't use them anymore.

 

Ambika

Drink Water. Lots of Water. Enough to drown in.

Water and keeping your body hydrated is a fantastic, and relatively inexpensive way, to stay away and focus. Your body will be going through allot of fluids while you are going about your day. Drinking that magical 1 Gallon of Water per day will keep your body hydrated and fluid and avoid muscle cramps and being tired.

Plus it gives you the added benefit of having to goto the bathroom. This will give you time to get up, stretch, and walk about. That is unless you are that hardcore and wear a adult diaper. I'm not putting that past anyone after seeing the 1 day hitting 70 in TBC.

Schedule breaks, every 3hrs or so to get up and stretch. You will be very suprised at how stiff your body is after being in a chair for hours on end.

Skip Redbull/Energy Drinks if at all possible before sleep. All that sugar will get you to crash and crash hard. Stop drinking them a few hrs before bed and go back to water. It'll ease your body into the sleep state gradually instead of smashing your head into the kb and passing out.

Coffee is fine, but don't ONLY drink coffee. As noted above the caffinee will bring you down afterwards. Try to mix it up with decaf as well as regular. Half-caf is what they call it. You'll get your caff fix as well as keep your body hydrated. Hell switch to decaf all togther. There's enough caff in there to keep you going. Or move to Teas.


Eat vegetable snacks instead of candy/sugar bars. Body doesn't need a pound of sugar and you will get cravings for more once you burn it off. Granted you aren't moving much but this way will at least keep your body from going into sugar shock and blood sugar going all over the place.

Eat a smart breakfast: Eggs, Bacon, toast or any of the above formulas. Avoid that bowl of Captain Crunch and keep it healthy. Muffins are fine but make sure you balance it all out with lots of fluids and something else.

I can already see my guild buying cases of Redbull and snickers bars and watching them zone out. I'm hitting Sams club for the mega portions of vegetabls and meats (atkins dieter) so I can snack on beef jerky and celery while I'm slaughtering bears.

 

timski

Some observations on power-leveling/optimised play. I've played almost every world quest Alliance-side in WotLK except Crystalsong, Icecrown and Storm Peaks:

1. Don't! Some of the quests are exceptionally well designed and written. If you power through it all, you're missing a large chunk of the game you just purchased. But, you're still reading, so.

2. Like, TBC, grinding mobs tends to yield less XP than questing and dungeons. Quest and dungeon XP seem to be better balanced. Dungeon quests are mostly available without completing long solo-quest lines first.

3. Reputation tends to come from quests and dungeons, and not world mob grinds. Reputation looks like it will play an important role in WotLK, particularly through dailies, most of which only open up once you have completed quests. So arriving at 80 fast, only to go back and do all the quests that give useful rep, may be getting your priorities wrong. It is worth doing a little research on dailies, since plenty are available before 80. So you might find part of your schedule each day involves filling your allocation daily quests, simply for the early rep gains.

3. The early zones cannot be skipped if you are questing. For the first 4-5 zones, quests only start about a level before the intended level of the zone. Within zones, quest lines are fairly linear, with a neat structure of quest hubs. While you can skip some quest hubs completely, don't be surprised if you don't see much when you first arrive in a zone. You are being guided, and that creates less practical scope for optimising on specific quest choices. You can only skip so much before running out of content, so be careful, particularly if you intend to start each zone as early as possible, un-rested. Based on the current leveling curve zone only has about 2 levels worth of quests. Having said that, there are some complete quest lines I would happily avoid - for example, Alliance-side, the west side of Grizzly Hills has (had) several terrible drop rates.

4. Quests tend to involve a lot less killing, and lot more doing, moving, and seeing. As with the previous point, this means that your Sunwell or Arena gear won't give you much of an edge over someone in Outland greens. Likewise, you only need basic consumables, which will be purchased/made as you progress. There are probably a few seconds that can be saved by potions like water walking. But those are seconds in a process that will take days.

5. Personally, I found Borean Tundra to give slightly faster XP than Howling Fjord (in balancing terms it is also harder to play than Howling Fjord if you are green-geared, but that's probably not relevant here). But. Borean Tundra is easier for players to find than Howling Fjord (links from Stormwind and Ogrimmar). Borean Tundra also has more named-mob kills required by quests than Howling Fjord. Alliance side, the first big stall-point is (at least was) the Riplash Ruins area, where groups of 5 were queuing, waiting for spawns. Howling Fjord is not perfect (particularly the very first pair of Valgarde quests Alliance-side, where a whole boat load of people try and kill about 10 mobs), but has less waits for named mobs. So you might like to play Borean Tundra is quiet times, and switch to Howling Fjord in the peaks.

6. Past experience suggests that the zones added late in beta are both under-populated (because beta players were never familiar with them, so never advised anyone else to play them) and poorly balanced (too many quests that didn't get enough feedback submissions to ever get optimised). So if the Basin is filling up with players, consider Crystalsong Forest (which still hasn't been implemented fully).

7. Experience from EU Magtheridon last time around shows extreme power-levellers (who play the first 18 of the first 24 hours of release) can rapidly get ahead of the pack, after which they can slow slightly and play in reasonably quiet zones. And PvP curiously almost ceased until the first people hit the level cap.

8. The same experience also showed that instances can be a liability when servers are unstable. The problem is not specifically that the instance server may become laggy and crash, because the world server may do that too. It's that the instance server crashing will fragment your group, reset your instance, and in extreme cases lock you out of the character for a hour or more. Solo quests are a lot easier to recover from. You should also avoid transitions between continents under extreme lag/unstable conditions - I'm not at all confident that beta issues will have been fixed. In the worst case you can be left falling through nowhere until a GM fixes your account. At best, you'll spend 5 minutes at a load screen, or get dumped off the boat into the sea.

9. Don't worry about Dalaran. You don't need to hearth there until the mid-70s, when it starts to be closer to the questing hubs you are using. For training, banks and auctions, the starting zones are one short boat/zeppelin ride away. Beta has been full of level 70s desperate to get a Dalaran hearth set up, without thinking that need through. Of course, if you are truely power-leveling, there will be nobody with high enough level to summon/portal you anyway... But once you hit the appropriate level, you will need DND if you are a mage or warlock: Everyone and their level 5 alt will be demanding entry to Dalaran, which will cut into your leveling time.

10. An epic flying mount. A particular issue for a new character/realm, because you will not earn 7000-odd gold needed for Northrend epic flight (regular, epic and cold-weather flying approximate total cost) by the time you get to level 77 from general play. But Icecrown and Storm Peaks are big zones designed for flight. These zones are playable with slow flight, but it will have a big impact on leveling speed in these final stages.

 

guljiny

Someone suggested that you should hord 25 completed TBC quests then hand them in once the level cap is raised. However other people have said that if you complete a quest at level 70 it will only ever give gold. Can anyone clarify this?

 

◊ Cathela

I did a couple of IQD dailies on the beta and got xp. This was a few months ago, so it may have changed since then, but at that time level 70 dailies gave xp as normal.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Luminair

I, too, am particularly interested in the idea of simply having 25 dailies done, and waiting to turn in. I'll give it a try on beta later if someone swifter doesn't beat me to the response.

 

Ambika

In the profession thread someone mentioned that they did the IQD dailies and turned it in for XP. Guestimated xp for that first 25turn in is about 250k.

So yes it works as of 2 patches ago.

Best leveling idea:

Grab a full group: tank,3dps, 1 healer and head to the dungeons. Sit in the dungeons all day. Kill, smash, loot, exit, reset, do it again.


Reason is 2 fold:

1. Less lag in dungeons and less likely for server to melt down.
2. Great loot/xp than doing quests

We had several folks make a full group and sit in hellfire/Blood furnance and then the zangamarsh instances till they were 65+ and didn't exit. During that time they gained allot xp, loot, gold and were not prone to the many, many, many server crashes, lag fests, loot problems that occured all over the starting zones.

I for one am going to login, grab a healer, and 3dpstards and just sit in the first several dungeons till my eyes bleed and watch the server destroy itself around me.

 

Luminair

I, too, will be doing the instance grind for the first day. (Un)fortunately, Tichondrius is forever loaded with players, so it seems logical to sit in Utgarde or the Nexus for 24 hours, at least.

Personally, I found that my friends I plan to level with vastly outgear the begninng instances. We ended up going with our MT as prot, our cat, a ret pally, shadow priest, and myself. I'll probably stagger the group simply so that we don't end up continually hitting the lockout timer, but with Utgarde in particular, I start to worry, as it's fairly short. However, I don't think that continually running it will cause us to hit the instance lockout that easily - squeezing more than five runs into an hour just seems unlikely to me.

 

Nemantopia

I'm really torn on what to do here. Moon Guard has enough population that both the DK starting area and Northrend starting zones are going to be PACKED, and I want to be able to do these on my own time without the server trouble...this was how I did Outland, and I actually didn't touch instances until level 68. Otoh, I know a few healer/tank pairs, and if I can convince them that instances are a great way to level and gear up, I may very well clean out the quests for the dungeons up to 74 or maybe 76 before venturing into the wide world...as much as I hate passing up that much world questing for later, it sounds like the only way I'll get to play my main productively for a bit! I plan on using a full queue of 25 dailies for an initial burst of experience to help pass the crowd either way.

I suppose I should be working on getting my tank and healer to 60 this month so they can tear through Outland with the DK surge, but is this going to be any better? I'm sure the instance servers will be fine, but will Outland be any better than Northrend once all the DKs graduate from the starting zone? I'm afraid if I do this I'll be missing key opportunities as my main, but I'm afraid if I don't of being caught in unplayable lag...I guess playing during the server's 'night', between about 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. is the best way to avoid lag. *sigh* fun!


[edit]Are there any filters from sites like WoWhead or WoWDB that let you sort a listing of quests by their reward? I'd be very interested in sorting the actual base gold vs xp converted to gold at 70 to find the 25 beefiest quests to set up to turn in on release day. It's not going to mean a whole lot, but I'm wierd like that and DO have the luxury of picking and choosing. If not I'll just search them and make an Excel sheet or something for those that care.[/edit]

 

Malcophant

It appears that you can't search directly for daily quests, but if you sort by zone and filter the results for dailies, Wowhead has the XP rewarded for the majority of the daily quests. Here's the Isle quests sorted by reward, for an example.

 

Luminair

Well, the good thing about the Death Knight area is that it phases, meaning it expands and contracts with the amount of people in it. I read a figure at some point that said there shouldn't ever be more than forty people in one phase, so, you'd probably be alright. Once the Death Knights do level into Outlands territory though, things open up a lot. I realize the circumstances of it, but when I was leveling my Death Knight in beta, I saw nearly no one for the duration. Nagrand seemed to be the most 'packed', and even then I wasn't encountering more than ten to twenty people per day.

Also, consider that the leveling time to 70 has been pretty drastically reduced. Personally, I would consider the Death Knight first if you're willing to level one, and quest your way to Northrend. I was able to get 70 playing casually over about a week, something like two days played.

 

Nemantopia

Thanks, this is good info I'll keep in mind. In that case, I will work on my alts and level the DK when the time comes, since if it's only a 40ish per 'zone' issue that should be fine. Outland instances should be just as stable as Northrend ones, just the outisde zones causing trouble, so I can co-ordinate with friends for which instances to run when, and quest in Outland with alts/DK in lull time. Which will keep me from feeling bad I'm not pushing 100% on my main =D