Best Way to Leveling up Second and Third Characters?

Community General Discussion
1

I’m a returning player from WoW WoD and have missed 4 expansions.

I have currently leveled up my warlock main to 80, and wish to do so for several new characters for PvP - such as a mage, evoker, and maybe a shadow priest.

However, I heard that there’s a new Chromie system that lets you experience the old expansions in a way that scales to your level.

I’m thinking of leveling each new toon to experience a new expansion each, but am not sure how it works.

Here seems to be my suspicions on what might happen:

  1. Each character levels from 1 to 70 in one expansion each. Then for level 70 to 80, do dungeons and PvP to level up to 80.

  2. Each character levels 2 or more expansions each. So maybe level 1 to 40 is Shadowlands, 40 to 70 is Dragonflight.

I wish to not level up too fast. Instead, I wish to experience the WoW expansions and see what stories I have missed out.

How can I proceed with this?

Thanks!

2

Chromie time is quite literally choosing to level in any expansion except current until you decide something else or are done with everything in that expansion. You will be able to queue for dungeons and raids but only the ones for the content you chose. And you can change it when ever you want up until you hit 70. Then you get to do current content.
Chromie herself is in Stormwind. I’m pretty sure you could ask the guards where she is or just look for the hourglass icon on the map.

3

All new characters are directed to Chromie, so just follow the quest to speak to her. She’s near the embassy in Stormwind (or in Org).

4

The only flaw in your plan is that you get so much XP these days that you’ll only get through about 20% of an expansion’s content before you hit Level 70. (I did Chromie Time Legion leveling on my Rogue last expansion and was in Dragonflight before I had fully quested out Highmountain…)

Not sure there’s a way around this other than to randomly freeze your exp, but trying to figure out when and how often to do that seems like way more trouble than it’s worth.

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5

10-70? Dragon Isles questing.

70-80? TWW dungeon spam.

6

Well, by default, the game will try to push you from 10-70 in Dragonflight content as of The War Within. There WAS limited level scaling for a time at the tail end of Legion where you still did the traditional zone to zone, expansion to expansion hop.

Now, from my understanding as someone that hasn’t freshly leveled a character in some time, you can at least go to the early zones of any expansion at any time, but you WILL eventually hit level caps intended to make you move on, as well as level minimums for some zones as the intent is to have some kind of natural leveling curve.

Speaking to Chromie however throws all that out the window. She’ll be near the Embassy in either Stormwind or Orgrimmar. Just check the map for an hourglass icon. Once you talk to her, you’ll have the following options:

  • The Cataclysm (Cataclysm, also includes the classic zones with their post Shattering changes)
  • Portal to Outland (The Burning Crusade)
  • Fall of the Lich King (Wrath of the Lich King)
  • Wilds of Pandaria (Mists of Pandaria)
  • Draenor (Warlords of Draenor)
  • The Legion Invasion (Legion)
  • Battle for Azeroth
  • Shadowlands
  • Dragonflight (the current default state)

Once you’ve picked an option, this will scale the continent(s) in that entire expansion from 10-70. Some zones will still carry level minimums for the sake of story and/or natural progression similar to what it originally was, but you won’t have to deal with hitting level caps within the content of that expansion. As far as LFD searches go, you’ll specifically be in the dungeon pool for that expansion, but the game WILL expand the search to ALL expansions should the wait become excessive.

Now, with the speed of leveling nowadays? Yeah, good luck seeing all the zones of that expansion before hitting 70. Depending on the quest density of the zones in your chosen expansion, you’ll generally hit 70 no later than the third zone. The last time I did any sort of serious leveling was on an EU account I sometimes dabble with as I’ve made a couple friends that live over there. I had a mage do 10-38 in just Howling Fjord alone and only had two instances mixed in over the course of that (despite what people say, chain running instances is actually horribly inefficient if you’ve exhausted dungeon quests in a particular instance and just keep getting that one on repeat)

The overall timing on average during Dragonflight was about 12-15 hours for 1-60, and another 8-12 for 60-70. Speedrun time 1-70 on a fresh character using zero leveling exploits was somewhere around eight hours. As leveling time 60-70 was nerfed a bit just ahead of The War Within, I’d have to imagine the overall average timing of 20-27 hours still isn’t too far off, and as each level 80 character brings a 5% XP boost up to a cap of 25%, timing for TWW 1-80 is likely to actually be QUICKER than 1-70 for DF.

In short: you can get somewhat of a feel for the expansions you missed, but don’t expect it to be a way to see an entire expansion prior to hitting 70. Also, the moment you hit 71, Chromie will straight up yoink you out of whatever expansion you were running around in so the game can push you to start TWW. The game is all about getting to the level cap ASAP nowadays, and depending on how you feel about that, you might actually want to check out Classic.

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7

Once you level to 70 in Chromie time you get called to Stormwind but you can always go back and pick up questing where you left off.

You will no longer be in Chromie time and you will only get a handful of XP points for quests but if you don’t care about that, you can keep questing in the old expansion.

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8

Good point, I keep forgetting that you no longer get dragged kicking and screaming into current content the second you ding 70.

When I did it in DF, the second I hit 60, the game teleported me to Stormwind and basically told that I was going to the Dragon Isles right now, and I was gonna like it.

These days you can hang out in any expansion for as long as you want, with the game only mildly nagging you to go to Sillithus to start The War Within questline when you hit 70.

9

Even back then you could always go back to where you were questing. I believe that after you accepted the DF quest there was little, if anything, preventing you from going back.

When I’m doing Chromie time I usually have my hearthstone set for some place near where I was questing. After clicking any required clicks, I would just hit the hearthstone and I’d be back to finish what I was doing.

Then I would head back to Stormwind or Org and head off to DF.