WoW Leveling Tips

Top 10 World of Warcraft Leveling Tips

1) Maximized Windowed Mode

Simply following Ding80's Leveling Guide will improve your leveling speed greatly, but setting World of Warcraft up such that it's easier to navigate between the guide and the game will save a lot of time.

If you have two computers, you can just load the website up on one of them and then run through World of Warcraft on your other computer to enjoy a very quick leveling speed.
For one computer, there's a setting within World of Warcraft you can check such that whenever you alt-tab, you can alt-tab while still having the game screen up. You can even take a look at the guide while auto-running to your next location to speed things along.

Go to Menu -> Interface -> Video and check Windowed Mode and Maximized in order to play World of Warcraft full screen (Maximized Windowed Mode).

2) Practice Good Questing Technique

The base philosophy behind the guide is simple: Get the fastest amount of experience in the shortest amount of time. This means not only questing, but rather, "Grinding Quests." The key is to constantly be doing quests. Quests give a lot of experience.

Grinding Mobs (continually killing the same monsters in an area over and over again) would only give the experience of the monster killed, so it seems like a no-brainer to do all the quests, right? Mostly right. If you don't know where a quest is, you may spend time wandering around looking for the location - that's time spent where you're getting zero experience, whereas the person grinding is getting a constant flow of experience. Also, if you choose to do quests in an inefficient order, you can spend a lot of time travelling through flight paths or walking along roads - time that you once again get no experience.

The guide paths out the fastest path so you can constantly be working on many quests simultaneously. After you've completed the objectives for those quests, the guide will have you move on to the next quest rather than going back to town (wasted traveling time) and then going back to quest - rather, it sends you straight from one quest to another to another, then finally takes you back to a town to turn in several quests at once. This is the best way to quest and will improve your experience gain rate by a great deal.

Here's where good questing technique comes in - note that you're often on many quests at the same time - when you are, try to 'balance out' completing the objectives. If you notice yourself being far ahead in a certain objective over another in the same area, then focus on completing the ones you're behind on first. If you have to kill 15 Defias Smugglers and 15 Defias Trappers for example, try to keep your kill count relatively balanced - having killed 10 Defias Smugglers and 10 Defias Trappers will be far better than having killed 15 Defias Smugglers and 5 Defias Trappers since with an imbalanced kill count you'll find yourself sitting around looking for certain particular monsters instead of just being able to kill at will.

3) Download QuestHelper!

To install an addon, download the addon into your World of Warcraft/Interface/AddOns folder. There are many AddOns that can be helpful - they can provide coordinates on a map, help with raiding, and revise your hotkey layout. There are also many to help you quest, which is the focus of this site - QuestHelper in particular is great!

QuestHelper: Download here.

"QuestHelper tells you how to finish your quests in the easiest, fastest manner. It includes a database of quests, monsters, and items, telling you the exact location of that dang Perfect Satyr Horn you can't find."

QuestHelper lets you see all the locations of all the quest objects of quests you have on the map. This is a handy tool to use since while in the game, you can use the map to more accurately arrive at your destinations. You'll save a lot of time being able to go to the exact location where an object is. Use it in conjunction with the guide which is accurate with placing the numbers at the location, but in the game, you can pinpoint it quicker with QuestHelper.

Question marks will appear at the exact location where you can turn a quest in, and the map marks locations where mobs are at as well - it is very handy.

4) Utilize Good Leveling Talents

For fastest leveling, you should specialize in talents which Improve Damage and Reduce Spell/Skill Costs. This lets you spend less time to kill monsters, and lets you be able to kill monsters for a longer period of time before having to eat and drink.

As a class that can heal, such as paladin, priest, shaman, or druid, you should not spend your talents in the healing tree even if you plan on healing when you hit 80 - having healing talents does nothing to increase your leveling while out in the field soloing quests, which are the bulk of your experience.

Note that it is possible at around level 70 to switch to full healing spec (or tanking spec as a warrior, paladin, or death knight) if you plan on always grouping. This is a viable strategy as healers are always in demand and the Northrend instances can take you straight from 70-80 if you want to take that path - to just do instances. This may take more time than pure questing, but you will make a lot of connections and make a lot of friends. You would be doing many instances as a level 80 anyways. However, while soloing, you'll find that many of the more group-friendly talents such as talents which improve healing or talents which are better in PvP and tanking don't help much and will cause you to kill mobs much slower.

5) Turn On Instant Quest Text

To speed up the quest text, Go to Menu -> Interface and under Objectives, check Instant Quest Text. (Also, having all the other options on as well is nice).

For the fast readers, this will let you be able to read much faster - for those who truly want to power level you can just skip all the quest text. Accept the quest, be on your way, turn in the quest later instantly.

6) Set Extra Action Bars & Put Quest Items on Hotbars

There are a lot of skills and spells you'll want to use - way more than the default sets you up with. To have easier access to them, you should add more ActionBars. You can turn these on by going to the Interface selection under Menu and then selecting to view more bars.

Anytime getting a quest gives you a quest item which you need to "use", you should drag it onto the key hotbar. This lets you be able to immediately use it when you get to the location where it needs to be used - and if it needs to be used often, using a hotkey is much faster than clicking the item from your backpack. (The latest Questhelper also has these icons appear next to the quests!)

7) Cities & Inn Business

Whenever you reach a town, you should automatically do all of the following:

Repair (You can filter your "radar" to look for NPCs that can repair as well).
Sell all your junk items (Grays) to a vendor
If in a major city, go to the auction house and auction all your valuables
Restock on consumables (arrows, food, water)

Getting this routine down and automatically doing it each time you enter a town will save you a lot of time in the long run.

Log off in inns or major cities! This will allow your Rested bar to fill much quicker, and when rested, you will get double experience - a huge incerase.

8) Keep Your Bags Organized

If this is your first character, bags are very important. You can never hold enough of the loot you've gotten from adventuring! If you are creating an alt, you should first and foremost mail your alt four 16 slot Netherweave Bags. This will increase leveling speed a lot since you will spend less time standing still deciding what item to destroy in order to pick up that quest item, and just kill mobs one by one quickly and loot everything.

Improve your bags whenever you have the money to - right after you purchase your mount at level 30, you should sink all your money into the biggest bag slots you can afford. At very early levels, you should go to a nearby Bag Vendor / General Store Vendor and buy cheap 6-slot bags to fill your empty bag slots.

If your bag is messy, you will find yourself often searching for that quest item which you need to use. If your bags are full, then you will spend time (and lose money) destroying items in order to pick up the quest items. This will be painful and agonizing.

Create a system where you organize bags. Place the items you won't sell (Hearthstone, food, water, mount) in your last bag and fill it up with those objects. Keep your main backpack to have just grays you pick up from monsters. This way, when you head to the vendor, you can just quickly right click all the objects in your main backpack and onwards up the bags to quickly just sell all the items you need to sell, and then be on your way.

9) Level Professions While Leveling

If you're making a new character, get at least one gathering, if not two gathering professions (Skinning, Mining, Herbalism). Keep them leveled up as you go through the zones and you won't have to go back later. Gathering skills are a great source of gold!

10) Don't Buy Gold / Powerleveling!

It is against the Blizzard's World of Warcraft Terms of Service agreement to buy / sell gold or to have somebody go on your account and powerlevel you. You can get banned for doing these activities! Thus, I've removed all of the ads that advertise gold or powerleveling from the website. This website is focused on leveling partially because I find the leveling portion of the game to be the most enjoyable - enjoy questing through World of Warcraft! By following this guide, you can easily reach level 80 in under 6 days.

Additionally, if you follow the Gold Guide while leveling, you will have a ton of gold at level 80 - at least ten thousand gold if you follow it while going through the entire leveling process!