This article was written during the BFA expansion (Battle for Azeroth) when the max level in World of Warcraft was 120, and may be outdated.
Leveling in retail World of Warcraft has gone through many different revamps over the years. Some methods are much more powerful than others, but could require a lot of setup to complete. Today we are going through those harder to master leveling tips and tricks for the overachiever.
If you want to level your characters FAST, check out Zygor Guides, a step-by-step leveling guide.
Without further ado, let’s get into the advanced tips.
Party Sync
Party Sync is complicated and often a confusing mess. But if you take the time to learn and understand how the system works then you can make it work for you instead. You see, Party Sync was made so that players could level together even if one person had already done the quest line the other was still working on. With phasing so prevalent in the game nowadays, once you complete certain key quests you get phased out of the earlier area and can no longer see players that have yet to do the same. An additional mechanic in Party Sync is the level scaling that it does. If your friend who just started playing is only level 25 but you do not have any alts around that level, well just join him with your main and enable Party Sync. This will level you down to the cap of the current zone. Meaning if you are in a vanilla zone, you will become a level 60 equivalent. You still keep your abilities, but the stat gap and level advantage are heavily reduced meaning you can actually play the game as if you were a low level once again.
But how can this be used to level? Well, Blizz didn’t want the scaled down player to be ‘punished’ by being made weaker without giving them a perk as well. The perk being that they can now repeat these old quests once per day. So you already did every quest in Kalimdor? Well, now you can run them again once a day and still get XP and level-scaled loot. In fact, most of the XP you get is worth close to (if not a little more) what quests at your level reward you. This means that if you can group with a low level character in a starting zone, you can redo all the starting quests again and complete an absurd amount of quests in record speed and get xp from each as if you were doing BFA quests.
Personally I was sick and tired of leveling after I leveled 4 characters through BFA to 120, and I was looking for any way possible to get around doing it a 5th time. That’s when I figured this method out. You can create a free starter account on your BNET that you can roll a new character on. From that new level 1 character, invite the level 110 that you are looking to level to 120 and enable party sync. Your 110 will now basically be the equivalent of a level 60 in a level 60 zone, but with all your endgame talents and gear it’s still a cakewalk. Just leave your new level 1 character where he spawned in at and have your level 110 run through each and every quest in the starting zone. You can still mount and fly so you can get those quests done even faster. Once you have cleaned out all the quests in the starting area you should have easily gained three or 4 levels. At this point you can wait until tomorrow and do it again, or travel to the next starting area and do it again.
Now, imagine if you combined Party Sync with multiboxing. You get 5 accounts and set one of them up as the ‘support’ level 1. The other 4 get down-leveled but then can faceroll through the rest of the quests with even more ease, raining down armageddon on all the starting mobs.
Chain Dungeons
This method is for those people with an active and good guild. Coordinate with your friends and build a premade 5 man dungeon crawling team. This way you can maximize your group composition as if you were pushing Mythic Dungeon Keys but instead you are aiming for fast dungeon leveling. Instant queues with a premade team are truly the best.
With everyone geared in enchanted heirlooms you will be able to cut through dungeons faster than any fetch quest. Even after the dungeons were made harder, they still dont pose much of a challenge to anyone who knows not to stand in the fire. Between doing the dungeon quests, grinding the elite dungeon mobs, and the bonus XP at the end for completing a random dungeon, this method is hard to beat.
Your tank can be chain pulling while your healer helps DPS when the tank is topped off. The speeds you can achieve in some of the older dungeons are laughable when the group is prepared and ready to steamroll it. Remember to set the dungeon queue to random each time because the bonus chest at the end also gives bonus xp and bonus gold. Now, if you are getting close to being out of range of a dungeon you have not done the quests for yet, then by all means select that dungeon so you can get the quest xp. But if that is not the case, then random it up.
Also it is hard to understate how fun leveling can be with a group of friends. The grind can be taxing at times, but being in a voice chat server goofing off with friends can make the hours just fly by.
Monk specific tip
Lastly, if you have a high level monk on one of your accounts there is a fun trick you can do. Roll your monk as a tank so he has access to the spell ‘Black Ox Statue’. This statue can be summoned at a location where for 15 minutes it will taunt everything in a large radius. Since the statue doesn’t do any damage and if you are ungrouped, your low level character can AOE down the taunted mobs without fear of drawing agro. This can make for some easy grinding levels. A great example of this is in the Tauren starting area. There is a quest called “Feed of Evil” that leads you to a pen with dozens of battleboars. If you take a monk there and drop the Ox Statue in the middle, then you can AOE all the boars down to your heart’s content. As long as you are standing close to the totem, any mob that comes close to you will aggro to it instead.
Camp Narache possible leveling spot.
Multiboxing
Update: Blizzard has now banned the use of any software or hardware that duplicates or replicates keyboard strokes on multiple characters, thereby making multiboxing very difficult, because you have to play each character individually instead of controlling every character simultaneously.
Therefore, multiboxing has for the most part become obsolete. Nevertheless, the old, outdated information below is still left intact if you want to read it.
The info in this box is largely outdated/nerfed now:
While there is always a hot debate about if multiboxing is cheating or not, Blizzard has stated time and time again that multiboxing is indeed fair play and allowed in the TOS (Terms of Service). So if you are lucky enough to have multiple accounts then feel free to play on them both at the same time without fear of repercussions from Blizzard. In fact, each Battle Net account can hold up to 8 separate WoW accounts. But how might this be helpful in leveling?
First, if you are multiboxing two characters at the same level, and going through a level appropriate area, you can mow down mobs twice as fast. If you have two mages spamming arcane blast at the same target then it will not last long at all. So imagine if you have your own 5 man team all running the same kill quest. It’ll be done as quickly as if you were doing a starting area quest. Plus, if you are playing classes that can heal then you can set up multiboxing scripts and macros that can get all your characters to target the same one and heal simultaneously. This type of gameplay is now banned by Blizzard, as far as I know.
Next, you are able to quickly level yourself without needing to ask anyone else. Nothing is quite as empowering as being able to get on your main character and run an alt through a dungeon or 1 shot that elite mob that is part of a group quest. But note that when grouped with someone that greatly outlevels you then your share of the XP for killing mobs will be dismally low, so this method is best for pumping out quests.
Additional tips
Remember, no matter what option you chose to use there are always methods you can use to increase your xp per hour. WoW had been around for almost two decades now and there are items all throughout that can make your life easier, and it is easy to forget about them all as well. As for increasing your XP directly you have the following.
- Turn on Warmode – 10%
- Insightful Rubellite gem – 5%
- Draught of Ten Lands – 10%
- Battle Standard of Coordination – 15%
- Full Heirloom set – 55%
Then don’t forget these expansion specific leveling methods. These were designed as catch-up leveling mechanics in the first place, so be sure to use them whenever you have the chance. When you first log in, check and see if any invasions or assaults are going on and if you have time to goof off elsewhere or if you should head right there and knock it out first thing.
- WOD Treasure Hunting
- Legion Invasions
- BFA Faction Assaults
Now that you’ve been introduced to some advanced leveling methods, feel free to try them out.
If you want a leveling guide to level your character(s) fast to max level, check out Zygor Guides.