Leveling in World of Warcraft can feel like a grind, however here are several ways you can more efficiently complete that grind in record times.
Addons
Zygor’s leveling guide addon
Zygor’s leveling guide addon is a detailed leveling guide which works for both World of Warcraft and WoW Classic, all versions, and shows you step-by-step what to do to reach max level in a very streamlined way. It also includes tons of other useful features and guides, such as auto-repairing equipment, auto-selling grey items, revealing the entire map, skipping cutscenes, auto-accepting quests, turning in quests automatically and much more.
Zygor’s Guides are viewed inside WoW with their addon, which includes a navigation arrow that shows you where to go to complete the next step in the guide. This makes it very simple to follow the instructions to max level. Zygor also includes tons of other guides, such as professions, titles, mounts, achievements and more.
Azeroth AutoPilot
Addons such as Azeroth AutoPilot are amazing when it comes to leveling. It has a full list of all the quests in the game and will decide what the fastest leveling path for quests will be for you automatically. That way all you have to do is follow the onscreen arrow to the next quest giver, objective, or location. This takes most of the guesswork out of deciding where to level, what quests are worth doing or skipping, and where to go next. Also, this addon has many great features such as skipping cutscenes and dialogue, auto-selling grey items, auto repairing, auto quest accepting and turning in so that way you spend less time going through NPC dialogue.
Joana’s Classic leveling guide addon
If you want to level really fast in WoW Classic, any version, Joana’s Classic leveling guide addon is definitely worth checking out. When it comes to WoW Classic, these guides basically cover everything. Joana has created leveling guides for Era/vanilla, TBC, WotLK, Season of Mastery, Hardcore realms, and almost anything else you can think of when it comes to Classic. Joana’s guides work for any class, any race, Horde and Alliance, so they’re quite comprehensive.
Joana’s guides can be viewed inside WoW with the addon that’s included, and there’s also a navigational arrow that shows you where to go to complete the next step in the guides.
Heirlooms
Heirlooms are simply a requirement when leveling. With more than half of your equipment capable of being heirloom items that will level up with you, this will provide several great benefits. First, is the experience boost given by the items.
- Helm – 10%
- Shoulders – 10%
- Cloak – 5%
- Chest – 10%
- Legs – 10%
- Rings – 5% each
This gives a maximum of 55% increased experience just through heirlooms.
Also, since heirlooms level with you then you never have to worry about replacing your gear, meaning your character will be effective for longer without having to bother searching on how to replace that blue weapon from 10 levels ago. And since you can level from 1-60 with the same items, that means you can enchant them and add item enhancements that will stay with them the entire time. (Elemental force enchant on a level 1’s weapon always feels amazing).
On a side note, once Shadowland’s Pre-patch arrives, Heirlooms will lose their XP bonus and be restructured heavily. Now, this doesn’t mean they wont be still useful, just not in the same way as they once were. Honestly with the level squish and significantly faster leveling already happening this isn’t actually a bad thing in my opinion. Anyhow, aside from the base stats, Heirlooms will now have set bonuses.
The set bonuses are as follows:
(2) Set: Rested experience consumed is reduced by 30%.
(4) Set: Increases your out-of-combat regeneration in the outdoors, normal dungeons, and battlegrounds.
(5) Set: Gaining a level triggers Burst of Knowledge, dealing (X) Holy damage to nearby enemies and granting you 40% (Primary Stat) for 2 min. Defeating additional enemies extends this effect, up to 2 min.
(6) Set: Rested experience consumed is reduced up to 30%.
Heirloom set bonus effects only work for characters from levels 1-50.
A useful side note is the flightpath toys that will unlock popular flight paths throughout Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdom. For the Horde the toys are sold by Estelle Gendry in the Undercity and called “The Azeroth Campaign” and “Walking Kalimdor with the Earthmother” while the Alliance is sold by Krom Stoutarm in Ironforge called “Surviving Kalimdor” and “To Modernize the Provisioning of Azeroth”. Since these are toys they can be easily used by any alt to learn these flight paths.
Other useful experience increase items are the Draught of Ten Lands which gives another 10% xp boost (available in BFA), the Insightful Rubellite for 5% (craftable by Jewelcrafters), the guild item “Battle Standard of Coordination” for 15%, and of course Warmode for the last 10%.
Mounts
Mounts can also play a huge role in your leveling speed. Any mount with a vendor on board such as the Grand Expedition Yak and the Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth can help you keep your inventory clear of junk when you are out in the wild. Few things are more annoying than having a full inventory when out in the middle of nowhere with no idea where the closest vendor is. By having one of these mounts you never have to worry about this problem again because with a click of a button you can vendor, repair, and be on your way. Next are mounts such as the Water Strider that allow you to cross bodies of water without having to swim. It functions just like a Death Knight’s ability Path of Frost which states “Your freezing aura creates ice beneath your feet, allowing party or raid members within 50 yards to walk on water for 10 min. Works while mounted, but being attacked or receiving damage will cancel the effect.”
The heirloom Chauffeured Chopper/ Chauffeured Mechano-Hog are great when leveling at low low levels. While it is a slow mount, it’s still faster than using your legs.
Consumables
Exploring the world of Azeroth can be dangerous, so be sure to take lots of consumables to help you melt faces. Flasks are a good way to increase your damage and survivability for an hour at a time and are often reasonably priced. For example, strength based classes can benefit from Greater Draenic Strength Flask, intellect based classes from the Greater Draenic Intellect Flask, and agility based classes from Greater Draenic Agility Flask. Each last an hour and increase their respective stat by 49 points. Also, at higher levels the Lightforged Augment Rune and the Defiled Augment Rune provide another hour long buff increasing all primary stats.
The Potion of Prolonged Power is another great consumable when you need that little extra burst, increasing all stats by 113 points for 1 minutes. For classes without Heroism or Bloodlust remember to stop by your auction house and grab a few sets of battle drums. The Drums of Fury and the Drums of the Mountain can give you that extra push by Increasing melee, ranged, and spell haste by 25% for all party and raid members for 40 seconds. So if you catch yourself in an extra tough pack of mobs or need help downing that rare elite, this is a great tool to see it through to the end.
Remember to eat! Food buffs alone might not add up for a lot, however when added to everything else on this list they can help make you a powerhouse. There are plenty of cheap food buffs you can buy from the auction house that will increase your primary stats or even give you other utility like the previously mentioned Bear tartare speed boost. Pick whatever suits you best at that time and keep plenty in your bags.
Utility
Speaking of bags, make sure you have a full set of 4 Hexweave bags. Each bag has 30 slots and seeing as we are at the end of BFA they are quite cheap, typically around 500G each. If that is still a bit out of your range then search previous expansion bags. They are only a few slots less but at a much lower price. In addition to this, make sure you save space in your bags. For example, you can delete your Hearthstone and use any of the following toys instead.
The Innkeeper’s Daughter
Greatfather Winter’s Hearthstone
Headless Horseman’s Hearthstone
Lunar Elder’s Hearthstone
Peddlefeet’s Lovely Hearthstone
While this will obviously only save you one bag slot, if you do this with several items it will add up to saving a lot of space in the end. Things like the Ultimate Gnomish Army Knife replaces every profession tool so you no longer need to carry a pick ax, skinning knife, jeweler’s kit, and so much more.
While we are talking about hearthstones, make sure to use yours frequently. Every time you enter a new questing hub with an inn, set your hearth. With most everyone having the Guild Perk Hasty Hearth, granted at guild level 8, your Hearthstone cooldown is reduced to only 15 minutes. This means once every 15 minutes you can skip that run back to the quest hub and once again speed up your leveling experience.
Katy’s Stampwhistle is a toy that when used calls forth a mobile mailbox for all your mailbox needs. While the process of getting this toy is annoying to say the least, it pays itself off within the first few uses. The 3 hour cooldown is rough but it can be very helpful in many situations. This way you can mail any clutter to an alt, check incoming mail, or just see her adorable little hat every few hours.
Lastly, if you are playing a class that can tank and/or heal, run dungeons as much as you can. Tanks and healers have insanely short queue times because nobody wants to play those rolls. So if you know how to and don’t mind running random dungeons with pugs, that can be one of the fastest ways to level. If your class only has DPS specs, do not worry. Even though DPS rolls take a while to queue you can still quest and grind while you wait for it to pop. The main objective of running dungeons are the quests they offer. So make sure to pick them all up, work to complete them, and turn them in before you quit the party. Nothing is as frustrating as working on a dungeon for an hour only to leave the group before remembering to wait for the NPCs to arrive for the quest. Since those quests xp bonuses typically equal the entire xp gained of the dungeon, it can feel like a massive loss if you have to run it a second time just to turn them in.
Advanced leveling secrets
Mobility plays a big role in leveling speed because the faster you move the less downtimes between quests. Be sure to stock up on a stack of the Goblin Glider Kits that allow you to glide long distances in no-fly zones. These can help you cross large distances with ease and bypass terrain obstacles and annoying mobs. I recommend keeping a full stack on you when you go out leveling. If you have the previously mentioned addon Azeroth Auto Pilot, it will even tell you when/where to use one to cut minutes For when you are killing mobs, Bear tartare is invaluable for movement speed. After each kill you get a 10 second movement speed buff. Most of the time this is advertised for gold farmers who run dungeons where you cannot mount inside of, but it is just as helpful when leveling because it can cut down on your traveltime which will add up quickly with each level.
When leveling 1-60 remember that all the vanilla content scales up to level 60 now. This means that you can level up in each of your faction’s starting areas. This is useful because these zones are designed specifically for low level, slow moving characters and are also quite easy to do. So once you have a mount these quests can take no time at all to run around and finish. Feel free to visit your allies starting zones and run quests because the time spent there will be lots of compact quest hubs with plenty of mobs for everyone to share.
I would recommend grinding mobs until you are level 15. Since mobs in the starting areas respawn fast and are no real threat this can be done very quickly. Once you hit level 15 start queuing for dungeons while you continue grinding mobs. While in each dungeon make sure you complete each of the quests associated with them. By the time you hit level 45-50 then return to the starting zones and do the quests there. With multiple easy starting zones to work through getting from 45 to 60 will be a breeze.
This method can still be used after level 60 as well, assuming you have a friend or second account. With the new Party Sync system you can join a group with someone lower level than you and be scaled down to their level. The xp that you get for completing quests and killing mobs is scaled for your character as if you were doing level appropriate quests. Even the quest rewards scale up to your appropriate item level once you leave the group so that your time is not wasted. This method can be extremely powerful if you form a group of 5 players, 4 of which are higher level with 1 low level character to sync to. The higher level players even when scaled down are noticeably stronger than their low level companions meaning they can cut through quests at record speeds.
If you are interested in maximizing your leveling for a /timeplayed and less about rushing to cap in realtime, you can actually repeat quests when you are using Party Sync. Like daily quests, you can repeat quests once a day while using this system. So for example if you go to the Tauren starting zone and do all the quests in Mulgore, you can then join a Party Sync group and do it again. Then, the next day you can do it again after it resets. This multiplied across all the starting zones can equal massive XP.
Pro tip. After you join Party Sync and accept the quests, drop the group and complete the quests at your higher level. Mobs can be 1 shot so gathering and kill quests can be done in a small fraction of the time. Then before you turn in the quests, rejoin the Party Sync group. Then once you turn the quests in you get the full XP as if you had done it at that low level. This is an insanely fast way to level at the moment.
So if you have a level 115 Druid, you can create a free trial account and invite your main character from it. Then set the group to Party Sync so your 115 Druid levels down to 60. Accept all the quests then drop the group. Once back at level 115 you can bulldoze all the local mobs to complete the quests. Once you are back at the quest giver, invite yourself back to the group and activate Party Sync once more bringing you back down to level 60. Turn in the quests and DING, massive, fast XP.