I started playing Classic/Era last week, and I’ve surprisingly been pretty into it. I’m only lvl 26 (I’ve always been slow about questing, just never really enjoyed it), but it’s been pleasant enough that I’ve debated whether I might consider leveling in SoD or not.
On Classic, I’ve been just going with a Warrior, but for SoD I would probably be more inclined to go with a Paladin (which was my original first character), namely in hopes that something becomes of the “Path of Arthas” rune that was datamined at the very start of SoD.
It would also be cool to be present for the opening of the gates of AQ, assuming of course they even do that again (anyone who completes the quest in a certain time frame would get the mount too, as I understand?).
But also, I am very slow about leveling, and much as I’m enjoying the more chilled out pace of playing Classic, I don’t know I have the patience to do it all over again. But I’m curious if there are ways of speed-leveling or anything? Like people just spamming dungeons, to the point you don’t really ever need to do traditional questing?
SoD is way faster. It only took me like a week to level my 28 rogue to 60 and im a pretty slow leveler. You can bang out quests and level extremely fast
Good to know. Is spamming dungeons a viable strategy to level, once you hit around Deadmines?
Also, kind of an aside, but any recommendations on tradeskills for a Paladin? My natural inclination would be Skinning and Herbalism, just to list stuff on AH to try and build some gold, but definitely curious what others think.
SoD server has a global buff that all players leveling get. It massively boosts up the XP gained from quests and the gold gained from quests. Plus, in like the low 30s you can embark on a quest chain for a sleeping bag that when you “sleep” in it, you get a stacking buff boost to XP gained for 2 hours
I don’t know about the pvp servers, but on the pve server, most of the gathering mats are super cheap so you may not make that great of profit off them until maybe higher levels of thick/rugged leather maybe and some end game herbs do alright. End game disenchanted mats can do alright too. Also, if you’re leveling up so fast with the exp boost buff you get in SoD (I think it’s at 150% bonus until level 50 when reduced to 50%??) you may find yourself out leveling zones that you’re current profession skills still need to rank up in. Maybe skinning can keep up though? Nothing wrong with trying. I heard from a couple hunters for example saying how annoying it was that the exp buff doesn’t affect their pets and they out level their pets quickly.
You can of course turn off the exp boost from any innkeeper at times and turn back on, not that you’d want to unless your goal is a faction reputation goal as if you out level quests, you get little to no reputation for them once they go gray color.
Oh, and you also get a boost for the amount of money reward quests (that give money, which isn’t always) give you, which seem to help with the fact that you’d be buying new skills much faster and doing less quests overall/have less vendor goods you’d be selling.
I do like that respecing is super cheap and maxes out at like 1g back in phase 1. I assume that is still the case. Gives you more room to play around with different talents during the leveling process until later in the game where you may settle down to two specs and buy the duel spec option for 50g is what I think the price was last (I believe it has a level requirement as well, maybe level 40?)
Particularly 2.5 times more XP 1 to 49. And 1.5 times 50-60.
Taking the median XP mark is around lvl 47 overall it’s x2 times more XP.
And taking all the super OP low mana cost spells they added in, other quality of life changes and warlock summoning, lvling in SOD is way more than x2 times faster comparing with vanilla.
Hit duskwoods incursions then ashenvale incursions, then felwood incursions. Do dailies and then just grind mobs ad nasuem. Check out simonizeshow’s youtube he has a video on it
Due to flat XP boost, the amount of XP for 1-60 is more than halved.
Runes help improve your TTK and uptime, reducing overall levelling time.
If you can get your hands on them, BRD/Gnomer/ST gear is disproportionately good and will improve your TTK, reducing levelling time.
Incursions and other new content provide disproportionately higher XP, reducing levelling time.
It’s much less of a slog than Era. It still takes time but much faster.
From my experience, levelling gear/mats aren’t readily selling on the AH at this late stage. I’d recommend picking professions you would want at 60, and just focus on levelling to make money.
The XP buff also provides 3x currency rewards for quests, so you shouldn’t be pinching pennies for new abilities and mounts.
