Default Level Caps for Each Expansion. Do These Exist?

Guides New Player Help and Guides
1

Good day! My google-fu attempts are very weak today and I’ve been struggling to find basic information on how expansions work in chronological order in the retail version today. I had thought that I read that earlier expansions (without using Chromie time to scale them even further) started with a cap at level 30, then 45 for a couple, then 60th for some of the later ones. I’m seeing, though, that almost all of the classic raids in the raid finding tool are suggested for 40th level. So now, I’m a more than a bit confused as to how far earlier expansions scale up in their default state. Was I completely mistaken about earlier expansions capping out at 30th, 45th, then 60th levels in their default states?

I was planning to attempt to work through each expansion’s content in chronological order as far as I reasonably could. I’m finding, though, that I’ll need to level well beyond 30th level just to have access to basic grouping and raiding tools. I was abruptly and permanently removed from the new player channel to ask questions such as these. Am I missing something where basic grouping and raiding tools might be available prior to reaching 50th level with any characters? Again, I’m likely missing something obvious here, but that would seem like an odd design decision if there are, indeed, any default level caps for earlier content that would be lower than 50th level (at least).

I’m using Chromie time to limit the dungeon finding tool to Classic dungeons, but I had a handful of goals that I wanted to achieve before outleveling earlier content would make such impossible for me. Just in leveling to 30th, I’ve noticed that quests from the Hero’s Board, just as an example, are simply vaporized from existence. Likely irrelevant for most players, but I’m hoping to avoid getting locked out of any earlier content just from overleveling. This seems to be impossible without making strenuous use of the experience eliminators and deep web searching, though. If there are any default level caps in place for any of the earlier expansions, can anyone, please, explain how they work in the retail version in its current state?

2

/deep breath

This is a mess. The devs have left us a mess. And they don’t really care much. Their focus is on getting us all to max level and feeding us activity at level 80, so they put no priority on making the levelling content sane and intuitive.

To be fair, this probably is what most people want, so they’re right in wanting to focus on 80, but the way levelling is laid out is a mess. It works fine - for some value of “fine” - for people who choose an expansion from Chromie and work through it to get to 70. And as long as that is true, they are not worried about other cases.

The minority like you who want to do it all differently have to deal with the gaps left behind. And it’s a mess. It is actually logical, but takes a bit of brain stretching to internalise the model.

A character below 70 can be in either of two states

Chromie Time

In Chromie Time. When you have taken an expansion from Chromie, two things happen:

  1. You are placed in Chromie Time, where all mobs scale to you in all expansions
  2. Chromie gives you a starting quest for that expansion

 

Present Timeline

Characters above 70, and characters who have asked Chromie to return them to the Present Timeline, see the mobs in each expansion at the level(s) of that expansion.

A character of level 23 in Outland will see all mobs scale to 23, but a charactar of level 40 will see the mobs there as level 30, since that is as high as they can scale in Present Timeline.

PLEASE disregard anything you see in Raid Finder below level 80. Raid Finder technically works below 80… ummm, from 50 or 60 I think?, but nobody uses it, because there is no point…

… except right now, because the 20th Anniversary Event is going on, and as part of that there is an Event Raid for Blackrock Depths which is available to lower level characters. I’m honestly not sure whether the required level is 10 or 30, but it’s a novelty one-off event.

 

Are you wrong about caps at 30, 45, 60? You have the concept right, but the levels …

/groan

Oh, Gawd. They’ve changed them AGAIN :scream:

I’ve just done a quick check of all the expansions, and here’s what I get

Up to 30 Classic, TBC, Wrath
30-35 Cata, Mists
35-40 Warlords
40-45 Legion
45-60 Battle for Azeroth, Shadowlands. Really??? 45-60? what’s that about?
60-70 Dragonflight

Don’t take those numbers as final. This is news to me, too. But it’s what I found in a quick visit to each of the expansions on a level 80, and a level 11 saw level 11 mobs in Wrath. (I had to edit the previous section of my post to correspond to the new levels, so if there is a mistake left there, I apologize.)

The rules I knew, which may still be valid, for previous expansions’ dungeons and raids was that

  • Normal dungeons scaled to your level up to the max for the expansion, and possibly beyond?
  • Heroic dungeons and Raids were fixed at the highest level for the expansion

Characters one full expansion level above the previous get a “Legacy Buff”.making them much stronger. AFAIR, one expansion above meant you could solo Heroic dungeons easily; two expansions above meant you could solo Raids easily.

As I’m sure I have said before, the only way to see all the content sensibly is to create many alts. There is just too much content, and too much XP, to cram into one character.

The way the devs want you to see the content is to send one character through one Chromie Time expansion, and they have set that up to work. Even then, in fact

  • there will be more XP than you need
  • you will not see the endgame stories and raids in each expansion

but it is a pretty coherent way to see everything in the levelling content.

And you can use higher level characters to solo the raids and dungeons to see those, and they are worth seeing, since they are some of the best work in each expansion, as well as carrying the main expansion story. Personally, I think the pinnacle of this was Wrath. After meeting the Lich King and his influence while levelling, and hints of the Titans and their creations, you get two giant payoffs of story:

  • the three ICC dungeons, followed by ICC itself
  • Ulduar, and the understanding of how it was corrupted

These are huge, HUGE payoffs of story, and critical to the understanding of the larger Warcraft story, but you will miss them when just levelling through because they were in the endgame content of thexe expansions. And there are others, like Garrosh, and Jaina and the Divine Bell leading to the Purge of Dalaran. All these big stories are in the endgame content for each expansion rather than the levelling content.

I can understand you miss the Newcomers’ chat. Personally, I think everyone can be called a new player until they level to max in one expansion, play the endgame, and then level to max in the nest. SO many things to learn!

As a replacement, you might find the WoWNoob Discord helpful for quick questions

discord.gg/wownoob

3

Thank you for the details here. Using the group finding tool (the parts that I’m actually allowed to use, so far, I’m meaning) has certainly added to my confusion here. At least, two of the Classic dungeons, for instance, show that they become available as early as 7th level. I’ve yet to see the group finding tool allow me to access any of it before reaching 10th level with any character, so far, though. Then the tool shows that almost all dungeons in earlier expansions should scale up through 71st level now. I had rather hoped to do, at least, a few of the earlier raids at appropriate levels, too. There’s really no market for doing this sort of thing, though? No one uses the raid finding tools at lower levels? Customized grouping doesn’t appear to be possible prior to 50th level, too. Once I’m allowed to use that with a character, is it any better than the raid finding tools?

4

Nope, no one. You can queue forever if you really want to.

Nope.

Nobody does raids in a group below level 80. You just outlevel the raid and solo it. That’s what happens.

Dungeon Finder … last I looked, it assigned you to the dungeons of your chosen Chromie Time. I have no idea what it does now in Present Timeline.