How long does it take to level to 110 in BFA?
(Breakdown by expansion)
I was tempted to use my level 110 boost but then thought to myself, “I have all the heirlooms. How long can it really take to reach 110?”
Well, this is the answer (broken down by expansion). A few quick notes:
- I had 45% exp gain from heirlooms (helm, shoulders, robes, legs, and cloak)
- I turned War Mode on for the 10% gain around level 60 (BC/Burning Crusade)
- I turned War Mod off around level 100 (Legion) where PVP suddenly became and issue (I also learned that it takes 5 minutes for your PVP timer to expire after you turn PVP off)
- I leveled as a Mage, and opportunistically did dungeons
- I had herbalism and mining as my secondary skills, which provided a bit of an exp boost as I was running quests
- I had no flying after Cataclysm
- Be very careful about upgrading heirlooms after 110. Compare my heirloom robes (fully upgraded to 120) at 44 Int / 66 Sta with my first quest reward robes at 235 int / 376 sta. I complete quests with one set of gear, and turn them in with another (which does increase the quest reward).
I had done all of this content before, but by no means did this as efficiently as possible although I did try to get through as quickly as possible. An experienced player could go much faster, but I imagine this will be a good point of reference for returning players and first time 110+ alts.
tl;dr: About 50 hours
Vanilla (1-60): 15 hours
Below you’ll see that it actually took me slightly longer to hit 60, but I didn’t realize at the time that you don’t need to keep your gathering skills up to level in order to move onto the next expansion. I also didn’t have War Mode on for the 10% exp bonus, but I had a good time at the lower levels and didn’t mind it. Dungeons got pretty iffy around 50, and the last 10 levels felt like they dragged a bit.
11 hours to hit 45
13 hours to hit 50
15.5 hours to hit 55
17 hours to hit 60
Burning Crusade/BC and Wrath of the Lich King/WotLK (60-80): 11 hours
Looking back, WotLK seemed like it was faster than BC, but quests felt really buggy in WotLK. In one instance, I had to stand exactly in the right spot to use a quest item, and quest tips on the map often felt misleading. I spent most of my time leveling in WotLK (with a half hour taken off while I was afk).
20 hours to hit 65
22 hours to hit 70
28.5 hours to hit 80
Cataclysm (80-90): 7 hours
I remember really loving Cata dungeons but they are an entirely different experience when the group doesn’t know (or care) about boss mechanics and wipe, then fall apart. This could probably be done a bit faster, but at 90 I took a hard pause at whether or not I wanted to continue leveling the character. 60-90 was not a fun stretch for me.
35.5 hours to hit 90
Warlords of Draenor/WoD (90-100): 7.5 hours
Moving around definitely helped when exp started to stall as some quests hubs were much better than others. This was done with trial and error rather than experience.
40 hours to hit 95
43 hours to hit 100
Legion (100-110): 9.5 hours
I lost roughly an hour to PVP very early on (I swear they put mains on a different instance than alts, as I couldn’t find any of the 110’s that were 2 and 3 shotting my fresh 100). I also spent roughly 1 hour on a seasonal event.
54.5 hours to hit 110
Total (1-110): About 50 hours