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

[SirCowdog]

Yeah, the posters with 5k+ definitely post quality stuff daily............

No offense, but I've been putting in a lot of work trying to find the most effective way to level up. I don't have to post my results. I could selfishly keep this crap to myself, and let people spam bad info that only serves to slow players down.

I get that there are a lot of shitposters, and stuff you probably personally disagree with. But don't lump everyone into badly defined groups and stereotypes just because you're feeling a little salty today.

[xcitng]

No offense, but I've been putting in a lot of work trying to find the most effective way to level up. I don't have to post my results. I could selfishly keep this crap to myself, and let people spam bad info that only serves to slow players down.

I get that there are a lot of shitposters, and stuff you probably personally disagree with. But don't lump everyone into badly defined groups and stereotypes just because you're feeling a little salty today.

Oh you mean exactly like the guy I quoted did for people under 10 posts?

[SirCowdog]

Oh you mean exactly like the guy I quoted did for people under 10 posts?

Look man...your opening post in the thread was built to pick a fight and didn't have anything to do with the thread topic. Do you have anything positive to add to the thread? How about you tell us how long your most recent alt took to reach 110, at least.

[xcitng]

Yep, just like the guy who I quoted.

Took me less than a week to get my Nightbourne to 110 as soon as they come out and only restricted by 10 instance cap per hour because I used another account to boost it through dungeons all the way before blizzard nerfed the method.

[SirCowdog]

Yep, just like the guy who I quoted.

Took me less than a week to get my Nightbourne to 110 as soon as they come out and only restricted by 10 instance cap per hour because I used another account to boost it through dungeons all the way before blizzard nerfed the method.

Ok, so you dual-boxed before the nerf to having a higher level character in the group. I actually think that's the fastest way to get it done without paying for a boost, even after the nerf. And since boosts cost the same as the expansion, I think it's a better value if you've got the time and a strong enough computer to run multiple instances of the game.

Which instances did you run? I've found that Stockades and Ramparts are the best, but I've heard people say Stratholme is really good for dual-boxing because of all the bonus objectives. And I've been trying to find a good instance to farm for the higher levels in MoP or WoD maybe.

What was your time /played? I ask this because my own solo run took a week of real time. That's not very useful information, because a lot depends on how many hours a day you can actually spend leveling up.

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

Questing is fastest and most reliable but you need to know the routes. Dungeon farming on a tank is the best way to level for new players though.

[SirCowdog]

Questing is fastest and most reliable but you need to know the routes. Dungeon farming on a tank is the best way to level for new players though.

Hmm...it is in some cases. But not in others.

But you're right that you can go REALLY fast if you know what you're doing.

[Marrilaife]

Oh you mean exactly like the guy I quoted did for people under 10 posts?

The problem is not that they have 10 posts, the problem is they try to churn those 10 posts asap to be able to post links so they post stuff that doesn't make much sense. Stuff like xp pots that cost half a token and rising due to vanishing supplies are outdated info and not applicable anymore. I don't care if they post in a thread "do you like cake or pie" - "I like pie", I care when they start posting wrong or misleading advice.

There was a guy earlier in the thread who said openly he had stockpiled some of the pots when they were still available and didn't care of their market value, decided to spend them on his alts. But someone who states as a "fact" that xp pots are "the best way"? You imagine chugging 15 min duration pots that costs hundred of thousands gold each and the supply dwindles every passing day to fit into the description of "best way to level"? Yeah and "the best way of making gold is selling spectral tigers"... I don't even know why you feel it's worth defending.

Plus even if xp pots were still freely available, there was further optimization to their use than just "run dungeons with a friend", for example logging off to preserve as much duration of the pot possible and only logging in for the dungeon completion xp which is the biggest chunk. If you're really quick, like SirCowdog with the Stockades, then it might not be necessary to log in log out, but when it came to longer dungeons, you didn't want the pot to go away in 2-3 runs when you could use it for 10 xp bonuses.

Also the WOD bracket both before 7.3.5 and now seems to be completely out of the "dungeons are the best" picture, treasures / bonus objectives seem to have retained their value after the scaling patch, and WOD dungeons have no quests in them lowering their value further (the only quests were tied to garrison inn and who bothers with developing their garrisons now?)

If someone wants to level by killing boars and picking peaceblooms it's their thing but don't try to sell it as "the best way".

And I've been trying to find a good instance to farm for the higher levels in MoP or WoD maybe.

Did anyone actually try Mogushan Palace, or not worth it due to RP on first boss? Seems better on paper than Stonecore due to less running back after completion.

Brewery used to be a boosting hotspot back in MOP but I reckon majority of it was coming from mob kill xp from monkeys and since now mob xp is severely cut when boosted I wouldn't expect it to survive the test of time.

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

Hmm...it is in some cases. But not in others.

But you're right that you can go REALLY fast if you know what you're doing.

A individual player has lot more control over the speed of questing is but other players can make dungeons hell the 50-60 is the worse because the dungeon are cities. If you get a tank that has no idea what he's doing your going waste a massive amount of time. Wotlk and the burning crusade dungeons a lot better though because the dungeon are small and fast.

A brd with a dumb tank and dps that pull unwanted mobs it the worst.

[Samakaze]

best way for time investment is just wait for invasions, do them on all your alts, then wait for the next invasion lol

[mcm944]

just run dungeons

[SirCowdog]

Did anyone actually try Mogushan Palace, or not worth it due to RP on first boss? Seems better on paper than Stonecore due to less running back after completion.

Brewery used to be a boosting hotspot back in MOP but I reckon majority of it was coming from mob kill xp from monkeys and since now mob xp is severely cut when boosted I wouldn't expect it to survive the test of time.

Once I can buy BfA and get Legion included, I plan to test a lot true dual-box methods. It's not worth paying twice(once for Legion, again for BfA) right now, though. There are a LOT of dungeons which would be more viable to boosting when you don't have to log in and out to support Method-0. When you swap clients using Method-0 you only have about 45-60 seconds before the alt disconnects and leaves the world. If you don't log back in and kill the bosses during that window, you don't get experience for it.

So finding a dungeon that can either be solo'd for good exp(like Kara trash or Ramparts runs), or doesn't have a lot of RP or other barriers so you can round up all the bosses, is a bit of work. I tried Lost City of Tol'Vir, but at level 83 where your alt can actually enter, it's only worth 17% of a level per run. And the run takes about 3 minutes or so. That's really not any faster than straight up questing in Jade Forest.

Mogushan Palace might be really good for a dual box run, though. I'll be sure to test it eventually.

- - - Updated - - -

A individual player has lot more control over the speed of questing is but other players can make dungeons hell the 50-60 is the worse because the dungeon are cities. If you get a tank that has no idea what he's doing your going waste a massive amount of time. Wotlk and the burning crusade dungeons a lot better though because the dungeon are small and fast.

A brd with a dumb tank and dps that pull unwanted mobs it the worst.

Absolutely! I was simply referring to level ranges where instead of questing you clear the trash of dungeons, like in Kara. Or run treasures, like in WoD.

In most cases after you do Stockades, RFC, and Ramparts the first time, dungeons are almost always slower experience per hour than a focused quest path.

[Magnagarde]

You can't, not anymore.

You see, a certain portion of the community didn't have enough "immersion" because someone else could level up a lot quicker than you'd normally do through questing. This is why they support this change(without supporting the other side despite some very valid arguements being raised) because it isn't really about questing itself, but about forcing the leveling style they prefer onto everyone else. I personally know half a dozen people who simply enjoy having a large number of maximum level characters, knowing that others will require a lot more time to get where they are and that makes them feel "special".

If people actually cared about their own leveling experience, then they'd support the possibility to still level through dungeons, while keeping their questing the way it is now. The point is that the truth is largely different; they know most would still opt in for dungeons because there's actually so few of those who enjoy this extremely snail-paced, outdated and combed-out "leveling experience". It's crystal clear people are more concerned over how the other players will level and reach maximum level, rather than their own leveling experience. If it was any different, they'd support bringing the dungeon leveling back so everyone can play the way they love to.

[SirCowdog]

You can't, not anymore.

You see, a certain portion of the community didn't have enough "immersion" because someone else could level up a lot quicker than you'd normally do through questing. This is why they support this change(without supporting the other side despite some very valid arguements being raised) because it isn't really about questing itself, but about forcing the leveling style they prefer onto everyone else. I personally know half a dozen people who simply enjoy having a large number of maximum level characters, knowing that others will require a lot more time to get where they are and that makes them feel "special".

If people actually cared about their own leveling experience, then they'd support the possibility to still level through dungeons, while keeping their questing the way it is now. The point is that the truth is largely different; they know most would still opt in for dungeons because there's actually so few of those who enjoy this extremely snail-paced, outdated and combed-out "leveling experience". It's crystal clear people are more concerned over how the other players will level and reach maximum level, rather than their own leveling experience. If it was any different, they'd support bringing the dungeon leveling back so everyone can play the way they love to.

How long did it take you to level a character before 7.3.5? From my own research, most people spend between 40-80 hours on it. The hardcore leveling people were below 20 hours, mostly by relying on over-use of experience potions rather than actually being good at leveling(yes that's a thing now).

My current best time to 110 is pretty close to 30 hours, and that's without using RAF or even the Darkmoon Fair buff. I suspect that with War Mode and DMF buff active, I could bring it down closer to 25 hours(Plus whatever it's going to take to get to 120). My times to reach cap right now, under the new scaling and balance, are actually BETTER than what most people were doing before.

I don't know. The scaling and balance changes of 7.3.5 just created more choice for how people want to level. It's all more or less equal unless you really crunch the numbers and focus. Leveling up via dungeons is not bad! It's just not a case where the tank runs at full speed through the dungeon with a DPS train behind them and the healer AFKs. And the experience isn't BAD either. It's just not quite as good as the most efficient method.

[Magnagarde]

How long did it take you to level a character before 7.3.5? From my own research, most people spend between 40-80 hours on it. The hardcore leveling people were below 20 hours, mostly by relying on over-use of experience potions rather than actually being good at leveling(yes that's a thing now).

My current best time to 110 is pretty close to 30 hours, and that's without using RAF or even the Darkmoon Fair buff. I suspect that with War Mode and DMF buff active, I could bring it down closer to 25 hours(Plus whatever it's going to take to get to 120). My times to reach cap right now, under the new scaling and balance, are actually BETTER than what most people were doing before.

I don't know. The scaling and balance changes of 7.3.5 just created more choice for how people want to level. It's all more or less equal unless you really crunch the numbers and focus. Leveling up via dungeons is not bad! It's just not a case where the tank runs at full speed through the dungeon with a DPS train behind them and the healer AFKs. And the experience isn't BAD either. It's just not quite as good as the most efficient method.

I used to have the RAF buff(not always though) and the DMF experience boost, I was fully equipped with heirlooms and I used the garrison experience potion once I reach WoD. Unless I was doing it with a friend, I'd usually find a group I could stick to all the way and level with for hours on end; we'd end up adding eachothers on bnet and we'd continue with leveling soon afterwards or whenever we'd schedule it. I'd also que up only during peak times when the que went extremely fast and would use a tank or healer spec if my class had it available. That way I'd waste the least amount of time possible on ques, which were the only time-consuming obstacle in leveling through dungeons.

I've leveled an allied race character and it took me two and a half days of playtime to get to 110, including Hellfire Ramparts boosts from 60 to 80, WoD treasure and bonus objective leveling and Legion invasions. I've properly quested through post-Cataclysm questing content numerous times and I'm not new to it; furthermore, questing is pretty straightforward ever since Cataclysm as you take care of numerous quests all at once and they're not all over the place as they used to be in many cases in vanilla.

Leveling from 1 to 60 is the easiest part of leveling now; I was done with that pretty quickly. Once the 60 bracket is reached, it becomes a lot slower as the experience requirement keeps increasing tremendeously, while the quest experience rewards don't really follow suit.

[Marrilaife]

I personally know half a dozen people who simply enjoy having a large number of maximum level characters, knowing that others will require a lot more time to get where they are and that makes them feel "special".

There's also a big possibility Blizzard realized how much old RAF and such "max level toon assembly lines" contributed to in-game inflation, and decided if someone wants to mass milk alt gold printing factories, they should face steep initial investments in the form of time or money (level boost). Since the introduction of mission tables and multi-tap gathering nodes that can be abused by multi-boxers, how many max lvl toons can one produce gained more meaning than in the past. There are people sitting on 30-50 max level toons or even multiple accounts of them.

Obviously another issue is heritage armor, and people making throwaway alts to unlock heritage for their racechanged main, that alt has no purpose except the utility of obtaining a transmog. Blizzard intended this to be a time sink like camping time lost proto drake or farming tusks of mannoroth - it was supposed to be somewhat rare, unique and special. It isn't really and the whole system just promotes looking for shortcuts to max level instead of giving two peanuts about the character itself. Since the account cap isn't going up, at some point people will just start deleting these heritage farming alts after grabbing the armor.

[Deleted]

Soooo... Level 1 to 100 in just over 25 hours

Do you ever loot mobs? Because that alone takes about 2-3 seconds per mob.

[xenogear3]

1 Find a real life job, and make $60.
2 Buy instant level 110.
3 Blizzard record profit.

The moment I see "instant level 110". I know Blizzard will make level as painful as possible.
I am surprised that it took them so long.
Blizzard plans well ahead.

[SirCowdog]

Do you ever loot mobs? Because that alone takes about 2-3 seconds per mob.

Not during the stockades part. In the Ramparts phase, definitely. But only at the end when they're all rounded up in one spot. Two clicks and you loot everything. From 58-74 I earned enough raw gold to pay for level 2 flight. So around 5k gold.

Same thing from 74-82 in Kara Trash. I only loot large groups.

I suppose if I already had an obscene amount of gold I could cut a few seconds out of each run by just killing, thus dropping the total level time to 100 significantly. But I don't have one of those Garrison/Order Hall farms set up yet. So I've gotta pay for flight on each new character somehow.

Make sure you have auto-loot turned on. And ElvUI has an option automatically vendor grey items as soon as you click on any vendor. It speeds things up significantly. I usually just loot until my bags are full and then stop caring, only clicking for the gold. If I had one of those mounts with the vendors on it, I'd be making a LOT more gold each character I level.

[SirCowdog]

Doing and spamming dungeons is by FAR the quickest leveling method, so the person you quoted was by no means efficient and his time should be taken with a grain of salt.

Clarification: Spamming dungeons with a pre-made group of competent or skilled players is probably very fast(I haven't tested this myself). Spamming dungeons with randoms is definitely slower.

If I had to rank leveling speed in order:

• Paying for a boost(obviously).
• Dual-Box+RAF
• Pre-made group of 5 doing specific dungeons
• Method-0/Solo Kara trash or Dungeons(my guide)
• Focused questing(only)
• Questing + Dungeons
• Dungeon spam in random queue
• Questing for fun or RP

Keeping in mind that the difference between some of these is pretty minimal. A lot depends on how good you are, or how good your group is. A solo player who's extremely focused and knows what they're doing without having to plan things out or constantly check a guide can get things done surprisingly fast. And coordinating a group to always be on long enough to really nail the leveling process is going to be tough to maintain.