Leveling alts quite slow now, how do I do it fast?

[Nize]

What's I've been doing with two accounts

-1(20)-37 Solo, Queue'd dungeons
-37-61 Second account, run Stockades (kill all bonus objectives), you can leave your character at the start
-61-73 Second account, run Ramparts, do this until 72 if tank or 73 if dps, leave character at the start
-73-81 Solo, run Kara trash, don't kill bosses
-81-90 Solo, queue'd dungeons
-90-91 Might as well do initial questline to go into Draenor despite able to skip it because xp pots aren't available until 91 anyway.
-91-96 xp garrison pots, grab treasures on the way to bonus objectives in the first area, Gorgrond, and Talador.
-96-98 Quest initial quests in Spires of Arak, get inn, use xp pots, do the above. At 98, grab artifact, but come back to Draenor.
-98-101 Do the draenor stuff, but stay here all the way until 101.
-101-110 Invasions. I typically become patient for this part just to minimize time spent leveling. If you're in a rush, you can add questing and the typical stuff.

[SirCowdog]

Yes, the instance limit is 10, not 5. I have also leveled 7 chars in the last three months, and as I said the high level pull worked fine until they nerfed it, and my numbers are correct. You get about 30 xp per mob in the stockades @lvl 26 with a level 110 in the groups - since two months.
And my priest Völkl-EU Antonidas who leveled over lfg dungeons and questing is also one step away from level 88 and has now exactly 1 day played. So considering I could not rely on the 50% monk buff (but started at 20) this seems pretty equivalent to your results.

You don't use mob kills when running dungeons with a max level character. You go for fastest dungeon completion and bonus objectives. Starting at level 20 saves ~90-120 minutes. So your actual time is about 26 hours if you started from level 1. That's still 2 hours behind method-0, and 5-6 hours behind monk cheese using the same.


Blizzard has actually done a fairly decent job of making sure all ways of leveling are pretty close. It takes a fair amount of groundwork and foreknowledge to speed it up significantly. Which is good, I guess. Lets people play how they want.

But you want the outright fastest, it's resorting to cheese as much as possible.

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-101-110 Invasions. I typically become patient for this part just to minimize time spent leveling. If you're in a rush, you can add questing and the typical stuff.

I just quest here. Invasions are kind of unreliable and random. Wish there was a faster way to level through this range, especially with BfA coming up. Maybe a 120 will be able run you through dungeons at speed. We'll see.

[Pickynerd]

What a helpful comment on the topic. Please tell us more about you quitting on a topic that has nothing to do with whether you quit the game or not.


On the topic, what I found the easiest is to just quest while queuing to a dungeon. 60-80 I found the worst levels to do, after that it wasn't such a huge problem to me.

Because there is no fast way right now, I did shave 3 hours of time off my second AR, but I don't foresee any changes to leveling in Legion.

On topic 60-80 is 2 of the 3 days of /played time, Blizzard knows it's a problem, but like all other problems in Legion is going to be addressed in BfA. So by not playing now you will save yourself the agony of leveling today.

[SirCowdog]

Because there is no fast way right now, I did shave 3 hours of time off my second AR, but I don't foresee any changes to leveling in Legion.

On topic 60-80 is 2 of the 3 days of /played time, Blizzard knows it's a problem, but like all other problems in Legion is going to be addressed in BfA. So by not playing now you will save yourself the agony of leveling today.

Even just questing and random queues, it only took my druid tank 50 hours to reach 110. And that's been the SLOWEST of my leveling methods thus far. If you're taking 3 days(72 hours or more) then the problem is with your leveling methods, not the game itself.

[Tinytalon]

Because there is no fast way right now, I did shave 3 hours of time off my second AR, but I don't foresee any changes to leveling in Legion.

On topic 60-80 is 2 of the 3 days of /played time, Blizzard knows it's a problem, but like all other problems in Legion is going to be addressed in BfA. So by not playing now you will save yourself the agony of leveling today.

Yeah and with that logic, not playing at all also saves you from everything else So useless information.

[Pickynerd]

Yeah and with that logic, not playing at all also saves you from everything else So useless information.

You're looking for information that doesn't exist, so this thread is useless.

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Even just questing and random queues, it only took my druid tank 50 hours to reach 110. And that's been the SLOWEST of my leveling methods thus far. If you're taking 3 days(72 hours or more) then the problem is with your leveling methods, not the game itself.

Uh huh.. Let me guess KZ? Because last time I did that it was nerf'd.

[Lucetia]

That's likely the case.

As DPS I found a strong tendency for dungeons to be slow to pop and then I got to have the fun of the idiot who grouped with a tank or healer to get in fast ... and then their buddy drops out leaving everyone to wait for a replacement tank or healer. If I managed to dodge that, the group was just as likely to be filled with dead wood multi boxing badly or just doing /follow afk.

Wow. I haven't had that happen yet when I queue as dps, because on one of my alts sometimes I just feel like being lazy and waiting on a queue. I think only one time we had the tank/healer leave.

Leveling is way better than it was prior to 7.3.5, but they didn't go far enough

I completely disagree. It's far worse now than it was prior. Right now you take longer to kill mobs with less reward and everything just takes longer in general. I've leveled so many alts I can tell now that it's worse than it was. Though I do wish it was faster and easier to do, but it's easier for Blizzard to entertain the small minority leveling up and it does help encourage the sales of boosts (which I refuse to do).

On paper perhaps. Before the nerf we pushed several allied races quickly through stockades. Now mobs just give 20-30xp with a highlevel char in the group, so you only get the bonus XP for the dungeon steps and the dungeon completion, an overall nerf of 45% XP in the stockades. With the five dungeon limitation per hour it pretty much disqualified itself, unless obviously you would level "professionally" and just log in every hour for five minutes - but that's hardly realistic.

Not to nitpick, but you get 10 dungeons per hour.

Stop worrying about getting to max level quickly. Enjoy the story and encounters.

Getting there is half the fun.

But I did that.....the first 20 times on my alts. Granted WoD/Legion I've only done 14 time, but still. I already know the story and the encounters. Nothing new to learn.

[Swalload]

lol blizzard can't fuken win can they :]]]]

That's all they do, they win all the time. Name another company who can sell a product to people who actively hate that product, rofl.

[Tinytalon]

You're looking for information that doesn't exist, so this thread is useless.

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Uh huh.. Let me guess KZ? Because last time I did that it was nerf'd.

I'm not looking for any information. Idk if you noticed, I'm not OP. I'm just pointing out that coming to WoW threads that are asking questions and telling you quit is not any useful information.

[Polarthief]

~Level 62, go solo Vanilla dungeons since they no longer scale and you get the higher level bonus. 62's still a little difficult but at 63, you can destroy pretty hard.
Also, this also holds true for any +2/+3 above cap. +2 you can do it, +3 you can crush it. Depending on your spec, you may need to wait for the +3.
~72: Solo BC Heroics or Karazhan trash runs (go Beasts, go up through Maiden's hallway, clear to Opera (just the lower-tier of audience), loop back around through the ballroom and dining room, the kitchen, then the upper tier of the stables down to the lower tier and out the front door. Reset and do it again. This works all the way up to ~81)
~82: Solo BC/LK Normals and LK Heroics
~87: Solo Cata Heroics
90: WoD Treasures
98: Legion Invasions (can start at 100 if an Invasion isn't up when you hit 98).

Pre-62, you're pretty scarred.

[Pickynerd]

I'm not looking for any information. Idk if you noticed, I'm not OP. I'm just pointing out that coming to WoW threads that are asking questions and telling you quit is not any useful information.

Just adding more useless information to the topic? I see.

[Puri]

You don't use mob kills when running dungeons with a max level character. You go for fastest dungeon completion and bonus objectives. Starting at level 20 saves ~90-120 minutes. So your actual time is about 26 hours if you started from level 1. That's still 2 hours behind method-0, and 5-6 hours behind monk cheese using the same.

Obviously you no longer kill trash now - not that it would make any difference, it's not like you would run in the stockade's rooms. Just again comparing to your number, and you had 50% more XP along the way including a extra daily quest, I'd say my time is still very close or even better than yours.

[darklogrus]

Meanwhile in FF11 back when it was new it could take you 2 months to casually level a job to max. .

FFXI leveling was pretty brutal and unforgiving and isn't really a fair comparison to the hugs and cuddles of Wow leveling lol. Most of that 2 months was looking for grps and regaining Xp you lost because some other grp trained half the zone passed you lol. As for taking a casual person 2 months to hit level cap is debatable..

[SirCowdog]

Uh huh.. Let me guess KZ? Because last time I did that it was nerf'd.

What is KZ? Click my signature(it's a link to a post on these forums), that's the method I used. Questing/random dungeon queues.

[Swalload]

I did 20-110 on my void elf rogue in 2 days 19 hours /played, didn't do a single dungeon. I did use heirlooms. It isn't as bad as people make it out to be, to be quite honest.

67 hours compared to the less than 20 it took before.

I don't mind it to be honest, I always thought it was straight up stupid to level so quickly, but the difference is very gigantic.

[SirCowdog]

Obviously you no longer kill trash now - not that it would make any difference, it's not like you would run in the stockade's rooms. Just again comparing to your number, and you had 50% more XP along the way including a extra daily quest, I'd say my time is still very close or even better than yours.

I ran two tests(running a third now):

Monk: 19h 43m to level 88.
Rogue: Almost exactly 24 hours to 88.
Paladin(current): lvl 18 at 2h 13m because apparently I suck at the draenei starting zone. :/

You have to remember that the bonus from monk doesn't apply to everything, and appears to not stack with certain things. So it doesn't get you nearly as much extra exp as it might seem on paper.

Anyway, this isn't a competition. I'm ALWAYS looking for faster and faster methods. If you can document and reliably recreate a faster method, by all means PLEASE tell me the details.

This newest run I just started I'm going to try figuring out how to most efficiently run Stratholme main gate with Method-0. It's going to be tough to beat Stockades, though. Each Stockades run I've got down to 60 seconds flat with Bear Tartare. Starting at level 15 each run is 40% of a level, dropping by ~2% a level until it bottoms out at 14% a run by 58, where I switch to Ramparts.

Even at 14% per run, that's still a level every 7 minutes or so, all the way through lvl 58. Call it an average of actually closer to 5-6 minutes per level, which on paper should bring the entire trip from 1 to 58 down to around 7 hours total time /played(depending on starting race). And only about 5 hours if you're on an allied race; LESS if you're a monk!).

It'll probably come out a little bit longer in practice, just because of slippage and less-than perfect connection, or whatever. And it requires doing only 10 stockades runs every hour. But that's still going to be VERY difficult to beat in terms of time /played. It's also super-casual, requiring only about 10-15 minutes out of every hour. So you can stretch, eat, shower, do chores, whatever instead of unhealthily being stuck to your chair for hours at a time.

[therealbowser]

My advice is to not try and make it go 'fast'. You'll just burn yourself out most likely. Instead, level your alts while trying to complete other goals; it's easier than ever to go after specific zones now.

If you are lacking any non-Draenor questing zone achievements, finish them. On my last alt, I knocked out all of my TBC zone achievements I was missing, and I had like 4 of them. Sure, it took longer than questing through WotLK, but I got to see some content I never saw before (or completely forgotten) and it finally got me my TBC loremaster achievement; I'm one zone away from being done with it entirely.

Other than this, pick zones that are efficient, or even better, zones you simply enjoy. Mix up what you do to keep yourself sane, if needed. A dungeon here and there is great, even a battleground isn't bad to do now and then. If you really like, say, Cataclysm zones (I love Mount Hyjal), do them over MoP. Or vice versa. I recommend doing WotLK zones over TBC on principle, because they have more coherent storylines and involve a lot less flying around across the zone/continent.

If you do dungeons -- which are a great idea -- I'd recommend doing specifics rather than randoms. Do each specific dungeon once and knock out their quests; this is a lot more efficient than repeating them and a lot less tedious, too. Some of the dungeons have a lot more quests than others, like Stratholme; prioritize those. Keep in mind that literally every dungeon in vanilla can be done at any point once you're high enough to unlock them; you are in no hurry to complete, say, Deadmines before level 26 any longer.

When you finally reach Draenor, you may wish to not even bother with the questing content at all, unless you want to unlock the Garrison really badly or you need the garrison to powerlevel professions (which is a good idea, by the way). Draenor is substantially overtuned and trying to quest through it will likely give you a headache...

If you do need the garrison for professions, you have the option to at least complete Gorgrond or Spires of Arak's questchain to get the level 2 profession building blueprint upgrade for free; being able to attach a follower to them will dramatically increase your productivity. That said, 750 gold is not a huge investment and can save you the trouble. However, you'll want to quest to unlock whatever follower you need, and that can't be bought with gold.

If professions are not an issue though, and certainly once you've done what you need if they are, collect treasures and complete the 'bonus objective' quests instead of trying to do quest chains. They are massively rewarding and are far more effective for leveling than dungeons or questing would be even if they weren't overtuned.

Lastly, keep in mind you can skip the boring Tanaan jungle quests by getting a portal to Ashran and flying out to wherever the quests start at; and on that note, if you haven't unlocked pathfinder, I suggest making the effort to do so (on a max level character, preferably) just to make leveling alts less miserable in WoD.

For Legion, first of all I don't recommend hopping into it at level 98 rather than 110, but the option is there (bonus objectives and bonus treasures are more rewarding than Legion questing at first); just log out and log back in to trigger the starting quest. I suggest completing content that you will utilize at level 110; IE, you should work on your profession quests and class order hall.

Aside from that, continue pursuing bonus objective quests as they continue to be quite rewarding (However, keep in mind that treasures around the Broken Isles will not reward you with experience past level 102 or so, and are drastically reduced before that point, so you may wish to save them when they give millions of times as much more artifact power).

Keep an eye out for invasions as they can easily give you 1-2 entire levels by themselves, especially if you get lucky and a bunch of them reward bonus experience. For the most part, broken isles is not hard to quest through, and just questing in the areas you enjoy most will push you over just fine.

I hope this helps in some small way.

[Healnutties]

Best situation is find a tank and healer to queue with, spam the dark moon faire carousel and gogogogo. It's slower, but not THAT slow.

[therealbowser]

You have to remember that the bonus from monk doesn't apply to everything, and appears to not stack with certain things. So it doesn't get you nearly as much extra exp as it might seem on paper.

Actually, this post does remind me that special case with monks. While their bonus does indeed not apply to everything, it does apply to all quests. This ironically makes certain cases that would otherwise be inefficient, such as TBC questing, far more effective; the goal is to do as many quests as possible without turning them in, pick up the monk +experience buff, and turn in 20+ at once for massive rewards that are all boosted.

Also, to add to my previous post, you obviously want heirlooms, but you'll miss out on 10% experience if you skip the rings. One can be earned from Draenor shipyard missions; yes, they suck, but this is the only way to obtain the rings. Technically you only need one, but each focuses on a different primary stat, so you might want to collect them all.

They are unique with eachother, however, but there is another ring you can also collect; the Dread Pirate ring from the fishing tournament. While getting first place is rather tricky, you just have to be among the first three or so to get the ring. I'd have to write up an entire guide to advise on how to win, and I don't want to spam... but if you get that ring, it helps.

Don't forget that there is also another trinket called 'touch of the void' that is quite powerful. While it doesn't give bonus experience, it deals a lot of damage and is recommended to obtain. While it's a Garrison quest reward, you can typically find a lot of people hoarding them that might even give them away for free if you ask on trade.

Lastly, if you are able to obtain the +50% battleground experience trinkets, it unlocks yet another viable option for leveling. They do stack with eachother, however, the trinkets are difficult to obtain and are among the few I've been unable to find... if you have friends willing to help you, though, they can be easy to collect and are helpful if you want diversity in leveling, or just enjoy battlegrounds in general.

There are a lot of useful, detailed information on how to powerlevel, including the rest of the post from the guy I quoted here, but ultimately a lot of how you level characters efficiently will depend on how you play the game; it's best to experiment a bit and try a little of everything.

As a final note, when the BfA pre-patch finally does arrive, activating PvP mode -- while risky, obviously -- will reward you with an additional +15% bonus experience, which is substantial. Keep this in mind for the future.

[Puri]

I ran two tests(running a third now):

Monk: 19h 43m to level 88.
Rogue: Almost exactly 24 hours to 88.
Paladin(current): lvl 18 at 2h 13m because apparently I suck at the draenei starting zone. :/

You have to remember that the bonus from monk doesn't apply to everything, and appears to not stack with certain things. So it doesn't get you nearly as much extra exp as it might seem on paper.

Anyway, this isn't a competition. I'm ALWAYS looking for faster and faster methods. If you can document and reliably recreate a faster method, by all means PLEASE tell me the details.

This newest run I just started I'm going to try figuring out how to most efficiently run Stratholme main gate with Method-0. It's going to be tough to beat Stockades, though. Each Stockades run I've got down to 60 seconds flat with Bear Tartare. Starting at level 15 each run is 40% of a level, dropping by ~2% a level until it bottoms out at 14% a run by 58, where I switch to Ramparts.

Even at 14% per run, that's still a level every 7 minutes or so, all the way through lvl 58. Call it an average of actually closer to 5-6 minutes per level, which on paper should bring the entire trip from 1 to 58 down to around 7 hours total time /played(depending on starting race). And only about 5 hours if you're on an allied race; LESS if you're a monk!).

It'll probably come out a little bit longer in practice, just because of slippage and less-than perfect connection, or whatever. And it requires doing only 10 stockades runs every hour. But that's still going to be VERY difficult to beat in terms of time /played. It's also super-casual, requiring only about 10-15 minutes out of every hour. So you can stretch, eat, shower, do chores, whatever instead of unhealthily being stuck to your chair for hours at a time.

I absolutely agree to all you said, but when you do it like you described you should have significantly less played, but it's just a little less. Questing and dungeoning has timeouts, like travel time or queuing time that bloats the /played (yet can also be used to do rl stuff), and you would expect that to wear down your /played pretty much compared to a char that only logs in once every hour, but apparently it does not so much.

That's my argument here, the m0 method does not seem to be more efficient - especially when you consider that not many players have two accounts so it requires the time of at least two people.