Grinding 101 (How to for beginners)

Guides New Player Help and Guides
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This is my first attempt at writing a guide like this so bare with me. My name is Sabatykos (Also known as Kerey on the forums) and I been researching an interesting matter. I’m noticing there are very few actual beginner grinding guides on the internet so I got the idea of writing one myself.

To begin the discussion I was doing some tests, I know WoW is a grindy heavy game, so I started doing a test right? I was like HOW long does it take to grind to level 5 versus just questing. The data I found is very very interesting. What I discovered after my personal testing is grinding mobs in Deathknell (As a loose example of a start zone since I like Undead) takes approximately 36 minutes. Of killing the start zone area mobs over and over. Now comparison this to wearing full heirlooms and just questing it takes a little over about 10ish minutes going ham questing.

The disparity here is apparent. But half an hour more or less grinding separates you from level 5 versus questing. In a game that primarily built on grinding, I noticed that’s an interesting observation. Now comparison this to higher level grinding. I’m getting on my level 45 Demon Hunter roughly 400ish exp per mob kill. That is an interesting observation here.

Now with grinding I want to stress grinding is a viable alternative to questing.

All it requires is patience and yes maybe a little bit of OCD even.

I wanted to write this up as a beginner guide and hear yall’s thoughts on this in general.

I know a lot of people like to grind I don’t know the population of players that likes to or anything but perhaps someone can add this in the discussion.

Here’s the the thing. The whole game is built around grinding. I want to see more rewards for grinding.

That is the comparison about tenish minutes with questing with full heirlooms versus about half an hour of grinding. Now, I’m a avid grinder and I think there could be slightly more experience gain here for grinding versus questing. Primarily for players without heirloom gear. (I have most of mine I do tests with heirlooms and without)

So heres the thing, grinding is a very basic process.

You just go out and start killing mobs.

I recently discovered that you can save all of the quests (In for example, tirisfal glades/silverpine forest) to much higher level) till much higher levels and knock them all out for incredible exp gain with Chromie Time active. Just a neat trick I recently was made aware of.

Now the benefit of grinding is you can farm a lot faster various goods and items. (Yes I am a gold maker type is how I was discovering all of this)

What are yalls thoughts on grinding versus questing?

I think it’s an interesting disparity. Half an hour of hard mob killing versus about 10ish minutes of questing. All very good things to discuss and think about. Let me know what you cats think.

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Grinding mobs from areas that are too low to scale with your current level will give you seriously reduced xp per mob.

For example, BC and WotLK zones cap out at level 30. If you are not using Chromie time, they stop scaling with you at 30 as well.
In addition, however, once you hit 31, you may get only something like 10/20% of the xp that you would have gotten for the same mob you killed when you were level 30.

If you are using Chromie time, however, the mobs, and their corresponding xp will continue to scale with you until level 50, at which point, the xp nerf will kick in as you level above 50.

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Hey bro thanks for the response I appreciate the words and tips.

My attempt with the guide was just to show that grinding was viable you know? I think you get the right idea though. I know the mob regular exp is like really low on it’s own I was just saying the route requires a lot of patience almost ocd. But totally doable yo.

Your advice is really interesting too.

I personally do a combination of grinding and questing at this point now.

I like both routes I think they are totally viable.

And as you pointed out, the exp scales up drastically as you level up higher and higher. Just food for thought give grinding a try sometimes. It’s pretty neat and a good throw back to Classic leveling.

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If you are grinding mobs for leveling xp, I would suggest doing it in WoD.

WoD has a lost of bonus objectives that grant significant xp by themselves and many of those objectives seem to involve killing a lot of mobs.

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Ive been testing various zones and expacs and I really like the old school zones. (Such as silverpine and all of them) I think those are pretty neat and the experience farming scales upward past level 10 range for sure.

I noticed at higher level ranges (Such as level 40+ range) the exp scales up. I’ll add WoD to my own leveling experiments for sure.

I noticed a lot of the zone exp scaling is quite promising and worth it to share various notes and discoveries.

I like your ideas and suggestions bro.

I am a huge alt maniac so leveling is something I’m learning to master.

I want to try WoD and other expacs when I am leveling future toons.

Should be good bro.

Thanks for your advice n suggestions for sure.

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Another thing to consider is that you can grind out levels by doing gathering. I haven’t done the mob grind method in modern WoW, but I have done the herb/mine grind to level. (Of course, you can add in the mobs you run into along the way.) I haven’t really tested, but it feels faster than pure mob grinding.

It’s also probably worth considering targeting you grinding to mobs that are good for rep if you are into filling up those rep bars for older expansions. (Either directly or through drops.) It can help to have a secondary goal to keep motivation up.

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My advice …

You can never get back that first time moment.
Standing in a doorway while someone else plays the game for you is …

Peek/poke int13

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@Udiza-yeah in my testing gathering is quite a steady experience farm. I’m trying to compare notes with what everyone has discovered in their own testing to be effective and fun leveling routes. A lot of what you guys are bringing up is things I am going to add into my own findings for sure.

Keep up the great work everyone I am thoroughly enjoying this discussion.

I’m going to try a mostly gathering route for future alts myself.

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@Btq-

As someone who has a lot of max level alts I can promise you this is not my first rodeo heheh. I’m mostly just comparing my findings with the community to see what are optimal level routes and things like this. But yes I am far from a noob though your words are appreciated mate happy hunting.

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Grinding, added thoughts.

I know there’s a huge like schism between questing and grinding right now but here goes.

I’m an old school WoWer myself and I played waaaay back in vanilla hahah. I want to get to a point where grinding is viable once more.

I get the dev team is trying to put the emphasis on questing and what not, but I think some combination of both would be very healthy for the game. So we’re not all locked into becoming mindless robots just questing all day.

So as stated earlier in the thread, the exp rewards for quests scale upward as you level with Chromie Time active.

What this means, is you can essentially save your quests till much higher levels and grind to say, like level 10. Some people consider grinding boring as hell but I love it and I’m sure I am not the only one who does to hahah.

But yeah for grinding my recommendation is to kill mobs to level 10+ range and THEN activate Chromie Time, quest the whole way through to sixty (Current level cap as of Shadowlands) but yeah my thoughts are the devs should make grinding more on par with questing to provide an alternative level route.

I’m personally looking forward to the Dragonflight Chromie Time changes that are coming in the future. I hope we get them on 10.0 whenever that goes live.

But yeah guys. I know WoW is a time intensive game, you get your rewards based on the time you put into it. What I"m just saying is hang on to your quests in the start zone to higher levels and grind a few levels out. (Even if just to level 5) I hope some of these suggestions will be used by some of you guys. I’m personally a very patient person and find grinding oddly entertaining. As I am killing monsters for loot and such. Much like how Diablo 3 works.

Either way guys I’ll add more thoughts as I come up with them. Stay safe yall and keep it cool hahah. But yeah I wanna see grinding matter more!