In this article, you’ll learn about where you can go at each level bracket to speed level your characters to 120.
If you want a more detailed step-by-step leveling guide, check out Zygor’s leveling guide.
Level 1 to 15
Grind Baby Grind. When you look at leveling in Retail World of Warcraft there are several nuanced things you have to take into consideration. For example, you will want to save all your starting zone quests for when you are higher level, so from the time you first set foot into Azeroth with your new character until you hit level 15, just find some safe and densely packed mobs near the starting zone and grind them out. Up to level 10 will move quite fast but after that you will start seeing a noticeable slowdown. Don’t worry though as we are playing the long game. Just focus on grinding mob XP until you are 15 so you can then start running dungeons.
Level 15 to 45-50
Random Dungeon queues. This bracket is the most simple, but also heavily influenced by others. As soon as you reach level 15, hop into the random dungeon queue and start farming them. Since most players have full sets of heirlooms the dungeons shouldn’t be much of a challenge, but you should anticipate at least a bad group or two. If you are playing a class that can tank or heal, you are in a perfect position for this as your time in the queue will be only a few seconds. DPS on the other hand will be slower so spend your time waiting grinding more mobs. You don’t even have to leave your previous starting zone thanks to level scaling. Once in a dungeon make sure you pick up each and every quest as each quest gives almost the same amount of XP as the entire dungeon itself.
Level 45-50 to 60
Because the endgame dungeons from Vanilla are long, tedious excursions we will want to avoid them as most groups will be lost in the sauce. Getting lost and backtracking, confusing objectives, and simply taking a long time to complete each individual dungeon is just not time well spent. Because if this we will now revisit your starting zone quests. These scale with you all the way up to 60, so run through them all. You will now have your mount and better gear so your travel time will be significantly less and the even though the mobs scale to your level, the stat gap will have widened too causing them to still be relatively weaker. If you happen to complete all the starting quests and you are not level 60, just run to another race’s starting zone and do theirs. Sharing is caring.
Level 60 to 80
Currently the best method for leveling from 60 to 80 is by utilizing the Party Sync method of leveling. Party Sync allows you to redo old and/or low level quests and still get your current equivalent level of xp rewards. By doing this you can repeatedly farm the quest hubs of each of the starting areas as well as other compact and dense hubs (such as those in Un’Goro Crater and Dustwallow Marsh). These areas are relatively small in comparison to other zones and yet offer a large amount of quests. To use party Sync you will need either a friend with a low level character or a second account. But do not worry if you have neither because you can start a free trial account that will work just fine for this. Just group with yourself on the other account, enable Party Sync, and level away.
Level 80 to 90
As soon as you hit level 80 go ahead and do the starting quest chain to go to Pandaria. This quest will give a good amount of XP and get you closer to our actual target of treasure farming in Pandaria. Treasure of Pandaria rewards huge bursts of XP however they are tedious to run around gathering. So make sure you use the Handynotes addon or another source to help you target each and every one in an efficient path. Also, while running around MOP be sure to queue for dungeons as this level range has many good short dungeons that will help supplement your XP from treasures. If a dungeon group happens to be exceptionally bad, do not worry about dropping the group and continuing other methods as dungeon grinding is more of a time filler and not worth a slow death filled dungeon.
Level 90 to 100
In Warlords of Draenor we will see our fastest leveling yet. Between the bonus objectives in WOD as well as the treasures you will see a huge uptick in levels per hour. Once again make sure you have the Handynotes addon with the treasure locations to make your life that much easier. Dungeons here are not worth your time as the queue times here are quite long on average, and take too long to complete for the xp reward. Also make sure that you use your garrison for the Excess Potion of Accelerated Learning for the 20% extra xp boost.
Level 100 to 110
Once you are level 100 do the starting quests for Legion. Once you have unlocked your artifact and are free to roam throughout the legion expansion, focus on rare spawns, invasions, and bonus objectives and their associated quests. If you have flying unlocked for Legion this level bracket will only take you a few hours. All the bonus objectives will be displayed on your map so just run from objective to objective. It’s as easy as that.
Level 110 to 120
The fastest by far is Freehold boosting. If you can have a friend run you through this, then it’s your best bet. If not then just post in trade chat that you are looking to buy a boost with gold and get ready for a dozen messages. Yes, it will cost a good bit of gold but many players think it’s worth it for the time spent. Ultimately, you will have to decide if this is something you want to do.
If you have no friends willing to assist you, and don’t want to spend gold, the only other good way is questing and faction assaults. Assaults from start to finish will net you about 1 complete level each time with a bonus XP buff at the end, and that’s everything.
I hope you enjoy your leveling experience and found this guide useful. As mentioned, for a more comprehensive, step-by-step leveling guide, check out Zygor’s leveling addon.