Efficient Leveling

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Let’s not forget

This was only 20% staged, give or take an added “F*** YEAH!”

As far as efficient leveling went in vaniller, guides were effective to a certain degree, but I was a player who enjoyed a less scripted approach to the game. Did any of you fellow vanilla levelers have your own approach to leveling efficiently?

I know that warriors claim acquiring the Whirlwind Axe and rolling Arms/axes really sped up the 30s while frost mages claim there is merit in AoE farming mobs. Back in 2005, just after 1.8, my first toon to 60 was a Priest, and apart from my spec and keeping up with my enchanting, the most effective thing I could do to have a decent /played by the final ding was to make sure I was hitting the right quest hubs. Cooking and, especially, first aid were never great concerns of mine obviously; necessities of most DPS. Plus I’m sure we’ve all been crazy enough to level a Holy paladin in vanilla >.>

What are your pro-tips? The almighty revolution that was rested XP certainly can’t be the ultimate factor at play here.

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Play often, play hard, and have fun! oh and don’t forget to stock up on snacks!

On a more serious note I will be leveling my warrior with a buddy, while leveling my warlock solo. Once we finish leveling I will swap to shamen and help him level his warrior.

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To me it’s just do as many quests as you can in a single area, and manage your resources efficiently. If you learn how to play your class you don’t need a guide to do that.

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I don’t want to give away all my secrets, but a big one that people don’t know is killing mobs the same level as you. Killing mobs that are only one or two levels lower than you imposes some relatively large penalties, especially earlier on. For example, a level 9 killing a level 7 mob gets only 2/3rds the experience he would have gotten if he was a level 7 killing the same mob.

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A few basic things I learnt in my 1-60 journey.
-Keep a good stock of food (and/or water)
-Pick up first aid, worst comes to worst you can vendor bandages for more than the cloth retail.
-Worry about crafting professions at cap unless it’s alchemy.
-Train what you need skillwise.
-Abuse rested asmuch as possible.
-Try to get asmany dungeon quests done as you can in one run, running most lowbie dungeons more than once or twice is a large hit to your leveling speed.
-Get the biggest bags you can early as you can. The time saving and profits made will pay for the bags 10x over.

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I totally forgot about this, but I plan on level weapon skills while I level. Just keep one of each weapon type on you at a time and level them as you go. Now let’s just hope I have the bag space.

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I plan on 2 weeks to 1 Month and a Half before I hit 60.

If a 10 year old me can do levels 1 to 35 from June 2006 to September 2006 - Whilst competing with my brother (Who also played WoW) for the ONE computer in the household - and having parents rip me off the game for dinner - along with setting parental time restrictions up to 12 hours a day. (10pm - 5am, and then again in the middle of the day at 10am - 3pm)

Even on sicks days from school the time restrictions were in place.

Then an adult me can easily do 1-60 in 2 weeks. Easy.
Even with a job.

Edit: Also whilst playing in two different Rugby teams - and Saxophone Practice!

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I think the biggest problem most people have is that they spend too much time doing not-leveling. It’s also the one thing that people do without realizing their doing it.

Basically what I mean is that any action you perform that does not work towards the increased level of your character is a not-leveling action.

There are tons beyond tons of examples. Some of them are preventable and others are not. The ones you can prevent are the ones you should focus on.

A lot of them are IRL. Getting the door, cooking food, feeding the cat, using the bathroom, spending excessive time doing necessary IRL tasks, changing your clothes, washing your hands, taking out the trash. In game: Checking the AH because you’re curious, spending too much time on bank alt, drawn out PVP engagements or battlegrounds, helping someone who isn’t on the same quest as you, stopping to type a long message.

By no means am I saying you should stop EVERY thing, because some things are just necessary and you have to do them no matter what. You can reduce the time it takes to do necessary tasks and you can eliminate unnecessary tasks.

Once you’ve found discipline outside of the actual leveling schedule, you can start to discipline yourself on the leveling routine itself. This is a bit harder, but it involves things such as efficient pulling and mana control. Never using more abilities than you need to kill an enemy (frost bolt the last bit of health or use the wand?)

How do I combat a lot of these pitfalls personally? I constantly remind myself, roughly every 5-10 minutes, to “focus on the goal”. I say this to myself the entire time while I’m leveling.

I don’t pull off record breaking 1-60 runs, I just don’t know the routes well enough to do that, and I also am victim of a lot of the things I mentioned. For example I will not be watching TV or listening to podcasts while I level in Classic. Why? Because I very easily get drawn into the movie/TV and forget I’m even leveling, to the point where I afk to the character screen before I realize I stopped. I also tend to google a lot of concepts I hear about in podcasts and that would steal time away from leveling.

I’m very easily distracted, and I realized in the end this was the number one thing preventing me from getting good leveling times.

Getting a good 1-60 time is as much about managing IRL as it is managing the in-game life.

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My plan for this was to switch to my secondary weapon and use it to attack critters and such things while I’m traveling. You can also use that second weapon to kill things in between traveling as well. I think if you stay really disciplined you can keep all the weapons at max level and still kill efficiently. Even switching weapons at the last 20%~ of HP would be a really good strategy.

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I’ve been talking with my friends about this question a lot: “Is it better to skip dungeons and their quests for the fact that you don’t drop a lot of time in an instance?” It’s a little inconvenient that we all have differing schedules because somebody is going to pull ahead of the pack or fall behind, and that means not being the right level for Mara or something. It sucks, but it can’t be helped.

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I know right!

When I first heard the complaints about weapon skill I thought each weapon had its own skill attached to it, and if you wanted to use any type of new weapon you would have to level it from scratch. But after seeing it in the tech demo, I couldn’t help but laugh at all the player who ever said it was “hard” to level and would hit the same mobs for hours on end. Turns out it is just a normal weapon skill system for each weapon type and can be simply leveled if you stay caught up with all the different weapon types while you level.

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The most efficient way to level is:

  1. Skip all dungeons entirely…

  2. Only buy essential skills while leveling, to ensure 100g at 40 for mount.

  3. Combination of power questing, while killing mobs on the way to quest objectives.

  4. Don’t really chase gear upgrades at all, unless they are part of your questing path… Leveling gear differences are supremely overrated as far as killing speed is concerned.

  5. ^exception to the above: Get and use a wand ASAP if able, as a wand available at lvl 5 will out damage most of your spells until mid 20s.

  6. Ignore professions while leveling, they slow you down… You can farm gold at 60 or do gathering professions then and powerlevel your professions faster than trying to keep them current as you go.

  7. If you plan on raiding at 60, you are incentivized to just grind dungeons from 55+, and especially 57+… It’s massively slower than leveling normally, but saves you time post 60, grinding for pre-raid gear.

  8. Look up Joanna’s Guide if horde for a very optimzed questing path.

  9. Look up Kargoz channel on youtube for in depth class specific leveling guides

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Disagree partially. Theres some really good upgrades and alot of class quests lead you into dungeons.

Disagree partially aswell, You’re more likely to find a solid weapon upgrade in a dungeon that will surpass a equal level quest drop.Better weapons, faster kills,less time leveling.

The rest of what you post is pretty much spot on.

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The bag space tip is surprisingly more effective than one might at first think.

Think of all the times you were caught up in deciding which item to destroy because you still need to keep profitability of your loot in mind.

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It’s why when my friends started playing I would always throw them 4x netherweave bags on toon creation. They never understood how much of a difference it made till they rolled their first alt.

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In nearly every case, the amount of time you save by chasing after the weapon upgrade is forfeited by the time you spent doing something other than leveling to go and get it.

Even Rogues, one of the most weapon dependent classes in game, don’t really gain all that much leveling speed by going nuts chasing weapon upgrades. The biggest boost for them anyhow is Trash Blade, which requires running the entirety of Mara… for a sword you’re using for maybe 10 levels if you’re lucky. It’s really just not worth the time, vs just going ahead and pushing more xp.

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Yeah, when leveling in vanilla my friends and I had the same schedule: nothing. Nowadays its a bit different and I’m sure a lot of the returning players are going to be in a similar boat; they have lives and different schedules. This is why I’m thinking there are going to be more people going the majority of the way to 60 either lone-wolf or with a different party day to day. I feel like there is room for new nomenclature around what type of leveling squad you fit in with lol. Even I know that I’m underestimating how arduous the grind to 60 was, especially from a Priest.

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Yeah but the difference between running a dungeon 3-4 times vs once with 5+ quests is night and day. I wasn’t advocating repeat farming for a weapon, I was saying do it once, maybe twice then go back to the grind.

When a dungeon like ZF and ST have a large amount of quests including class quests it is worth the time for the average person.

Rogues and druids can potentially gain the most time farming dungeons at cap thanks to forming stealth groups, don’t think it would really work pre-cap though.

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*Thrash, for those who aren’t aware :stuck_out_tongue: (Which is nobody here!) Two hits for the price of one, makes even the shortest of seconds count!

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Just to get most dungeon quests isn’t that easy. With the exception of deadmines where most the quests are in sw or wf, most dungeons aren’t so lucky.

Like for example scarlet monastery for the alliance where you have to go to desolace to get the quest…

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