How did you guys level to 80?

[Void]

Did you just do all quests even collects or pure instance or mix of both but more of one than the other. I havnt really hit a wall but im sick of every quest i find being a collect and taking 45 min to complete it on 5 chars for 20k exp. is it better to just grind instances or what. Looking to see what people found the most efficient way to get 80 was. Yes im using quest helper but doesnt do anything for crappy collects which this expansion is full of.

[Zal]

still not 80, i'm doing every quest even collection quests and man they suck holy hell.

[Velassra]

The more I hear about the joy of the collection quest xpac, once I get my team to 70 I may stay there and do the old TBC content, probably can get 6 months or more out of that farming heroics. I don't do PvP so I'd be competing w/ no on but myself:)....idk, collection quests are a pain.

[turbonapkin]

I've decided there's only one way i can get through this coming weekend's worth of collection quests....

ALCOHOL :P

[Fizzler]

I am with you Turbo.

I have to tell you the sheer amount of collection quest I have run into is mind boggling. If the items were 100% drop I would be alright. Most quest are around 20k exp and each mob roughly 450-500 per kill with a 5 top setup so there is some experience to be had but at the same time killing trash mobs in Nexus yield 2000k a kill with 5000k a kill on the big trees but that gets fairly boring pretty quick plus you need to pay closer attention :)

I think I will get at least honored with a few factions that have gear that I want and than find me a warm comfortable spot that has a respawn quick enough to satisfy my AOE tank.

[Meeo]

im cruising through most of the quests, im a level behind what people said i should be for a 5 box, i should be near 77 by the time i get near/end of zul drak, but im only 1/3 into 75, i also skipped about 60 quests in each howling ford and Tundra, but did most in Dragonblight and Grizzly, i may go back and do some more quests in the zones i missed but i have to find the hubs i missed.

I just recently started doing collection quests in grizzly hill, most of the quests i missed earlier were collection quests.

[Los]

some, if not a lot, of times the quests you do open up new ones, and eventually hubs will tell you to go to new hubs. Might have missed something in that department.

[Ualaa]

I'm tempted to just grind while watching dvd's.
Have skinning, mining and herbalism on the team, pick up everything you come across.
Send it all, along with cloth to the auction toon.

Incredibly boring, but that's where the dvd's come into play.
Collection quests make the game mind numbingly boring already, might as well make a ton of gold if that's the way it has to be anyway.

Instances, pvp and quests will make it more fun, but grind as much as possible.
Hmm Disc-Priest's, BM-Hunters, Boom-Druids, Elem-Shaman's and a mixed team for instances.
It's going to be painful to level 28 toons to 80th, but have until the next expansion so no rush.

[Creazil]

I did instance:

70-71 Utgarde Keep
71-72 Nexus
72-72,5 Azjol-Nerub (It was decent exp, but couldn't live without loot!)
72,5-75 Ahn'kahet
75-78 Gundrak (did it around 30 times)
78-80 All level 80 instance.

I did Drak'tharon Keep and Violet Hold aswell, but only 1 or 2 times, but they sucked exp wise so went back to the others.

[Fuzzyboy]

I did instance:

70-71 Utgarde Keep
71-72 Nexus
72-72,5 Azjol-Nerub (It was decent exp, but couldn't live without loot!)
72,5-75 Ahn'kahet
75-78 Gundrak (did it around 30 times)
78-80 All level 80 instance.

I did Drak'tharon Keep and Violet Hold aswell, but only 1 or 2 times, but they sucked exp wise so went back to the others.I've done mostly instances with quests (non-collection) to break the grind. What dungeons did you find was better xp/hr of the lvl 80 dungeons?

[pengwynman]

im cruising through most of the quests, im a level behind what people said i should be for a 5 box, i should be near 77 by the time i get near/end of zul drak, but im only 1/3 into 75, i also skipped about 60 quests in each howling ford and Tundra, but did most in Dragonblight and Grizzly, i may go back and do some more quests in the zones i missed but i have to find the hubs i missed.

I just recently started doing collection quests in grizzly hill, most of the quests i missed earlier were collection quests.i'm in pretty much the same boat. I was about halfway through 75 when i ran out of quests in zul drak-- i've been running out of quests pretty early because i went to northrend at 68, rather than 70. i'm about to hit 76 though, at which point i'll be going to shalazar and i believe more quests in zul drak will open up as well.

[Fizzler]

im cruising through most of the quests, im a level behind what people said i should be for a 5 box, i should be near 77 by the time i get near/end of zul drak, but im only 1/3 into 75, i also skipped about 60 quests in each howling ford and Tundra, but did most in Dragonblight and Grizzly, i may go back and do some more quests in the zones i missed but i have to find the hubs i missed.

I just recently started doing collection quests in grizzly hill, most of the quests i missed earlier were collection quests.i'm in pretty much the same boat. I was about halfway through 75 when i ran out of quests in zul drak-- i've been running out of quests pretty early because i went to northrend at 68, rather than 70. i'm about to hit 76 though, at which point i'll be going to shalazar and i believe more quests in zul drak will open up as well.

I am in the same boat in that I brought my boys over at 68. I am doing something I did not think I would, I am doing every single quest possible. I am level 71 almost 72 and about 75% complete with BT. I completed about 90% of the quest in Howling Fjord that were available to me. So far the collection quest have not caused me to jump off a tall building there seems to be a better rate of drop compared to the older worlds. The quest I am most annoyed with believe it or not are the pick up 15 of "X" off the ground. I prefer to kill things and get experience while I am farming drops.

[XeR0X]

I hit out to northrend at 70, since i was already at 70. I finished both zones howling and borean then dragonblight, grizzly hills, and dinged 80 at the very end of zul'drak (finished it off with a few back to back gun'drak runs). Did everything single quest along the way plus every dungeon to knock off the quests when i got em. Did Gun'drak a couple times and UK a couple times in a row. But asides from that was just straight lvling. The collection quests killed me LOL specially in zul'drak where they had collection quests back to back in a huge chain.

[Tasty]

I've decided there's only one way i can get through this coming weekend's worth of collection quests....

ALCOHOL :P

I tried that. Strangely enough it did make the three collection quests I had far more enjoyable, although I think it took quite a bit longer than usual. It also made for some fun /general chat :D

[DgtlSorcrs]

I tend to just follow Joana's WOTLK Horde Leveling Guide, but if I run into a particularly bad collection quest, or if traffic's just too busy with competing players, I will just move on to something else and come back later.

I find that the big benefit of a guide is that they point out the places where you should be stacking stuff up. Very often, if you have a collection quest, there will also be other quests for killing the mobs or those mobs nearby to the collection stuff, but they may not be from the same quest givers. The "go here and accept this, that and this, before doing those, go here and pick this up, now you do them both together" type of advice really helps.

[ss2]

70-75 involved a lot of sleep depravation and utgard keep, but I don't remember it too well

75-77 I spent in gundrak

77-79 I went in halls of stone

79-80 I did in Icecrown. Instance grinding would have been faster, but I probably would have died if I had to do any more halls of stone

[suicidesspyder]

Well in response to the loot this many of that for a quest times 5 really really bites i finally got my shaman group first 5 box setup to 70 this weekend been out in borelean tundra since 68 but whats with the exp each shammy gets only 200 per kill yawn and the mass amount of loot quests is really really getting annoying i think im going to do the old time to run instances seems like i would level faster that way esp when i figue out how to run them faster but ehh what you think do all the quests cept for the loot ones unless u want the acheivements and mix that with all instances or do all quests no instances or all instances no quest cause i want to get 80 before i get my dk team currently at 61 to 80.

[jettzypher]

since i only have one char high enough, i just quested solo. started in BT, went to HF, back to DB, then GH, went to SB, SP, and then icecrown for the last half of 79. I've done one quest in ZD and that was a turn-in. think ill work on those starting tomorrow...

[Tasty]

I think we all missed the obvious answer. We earned xp until our bars filled up ;)

[Tdog]

Quested...

70-72 Howling Fjord ('http://www.wow-pro.com/leveling_guides/jame_horde_leveling_guide_howling_fjord')

72-74 Borean Tundra ('http://www.wow-pro.com/leveling_guides/jame_horde_leveling_guide_borean_tundra')

74-76 Dragonblight ('http://www.wow-pro.com/leveling_guides/jame_horde_leveling_guide_dragonblight')

76-77 Zul'drak ('http://www.wtbblue.com/questing-guides/horde/zuldrak') (I called it quits about a 1/3 of the way through Zul'drak. There are just SO MANY collection quests.)

77-79 Sholozar Basin ('http://www.wtbblue.com/questing-guides/horde/sholazar-basin')

79-80 Icecrown ('http://www.wtbblue.com/questing-guides/horde/icecrown')


If/when I level up a 2nd team I'm going to be skipping Zul'drak all together except for the arena quests (300k xp in 20 mins? Hell ya!) and including Storm Peaks ('http://www.wtbblue.com/questing-guides/horde/storm-peaks') in my questing adventure. Also yes I did all the collection quests, although I am now one a single PC which makes looting on the alts vastly easier. Also for questing purposes I just led with one of my elemental shammies and just had the warrior on follow till I actually needed her for a very hard hitting group quest elite, which their weren't many honestly that my shammies couldn't handle on their own.

Even those these are Horde guides there are Alliance equvialents on the same websites.

[Bigfish]

Still sitting at level 72. Damn the holiday season and work.

[Crayonbox]

I dont know. Find some nice peopel to talk to on vent while you quest and those collection quests arent so bad. I went through and did every single quest I came across with the single exception of bat dung in howling fjords.

I refused to dig through the crap again.

[rebjorn]

Well in response to the loot this many of that for a quest times 5 really really bites i finally got my shaman group first 5 box setup to 70 this weekend been out in borelean tundra since 68 but whats with the exp each shammy gets only 200 per kill yawn and the mass amount of loot quests is really really getting annoying i think im going to do the old time to run instances seems like i would level faster that way esp when i figue out how to run them faster but ehh what you think do all the quests cept for the loot ones unless u want the acheivements and mix that with all instances or do all quests no instances or all instances no quest cause i want to get 80 before i get my dk team currently at 61 to 80.That's one of the longest sentences I've ever seen /tease

[Frosty]

I did instance:

70-71 Utgarde Keep
71-72 Nexus
72-72,5 Azjol-Nerub (It was decent exp, but couldn't live without loot!)
72,5-75 Ahn'kahet
75-78 Gundrak (did it around 30 times)
78-80 All level 80 instance.

I did Drak'tharon Keep and Violet Hold aswell, but only 1 or 2 times, but they sucked exp wise so went back to the others.I must really suck, because my Paldin is still getting her butt handed to her in Utgarde Keep and is in an almost full set of crafted cobalt armor.
I tried it again last night at 71.. the dragons in the second room put the hurt on me. ;(

[Kaynin]

I did all quests in howling, borean and dragonblight. Then did half of the quests in grizzly, got too bored, did a handful of instance, got bored of that, tried zuldrak, hated it from the start, only did like 4 quests and the ring of blood there, then I was 77 and I went to basin. Ithas some gather quests but overall, this place is AWESOME. I had my best exp/hour. The quests are fun to do, and there's a lot of humor around. I leveled here close to 79 and did the rest in Storm Peaks leading up to the Sons of Hodin Dailies. And then Ice Crown questline leading up to the cool shield reward.

[suprafro]

5x Shaman

7 Grizzly hills pvp dalies everyday from 73-80 (140k quest exp in 15-20min)

70-72 (Nexus and Utguarde Keep exclusively)
72-74 (Mostly tundra/fjord questing with alittle more nexus/utguarde)
74-75 Grizzly hills questing and alittle Azjol-Nerub: Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom
75-77 Grundrak exclusively
77-79 Halls of Stone
79-80 Basin questing

I found that the instances were all very doable and fast except for the final bosses which tended to be alot harder in my experience, I never really pushed to kill most of them though im sure they are doable. I would usually just clear everything to last bosses and reset and re-run. All and all, the questing was definitely 10x more entertaining (surprise), instances get really stale after a few runs....but the exp from instances was incredible. Also I definitly agree with Kaynin that Basin is the best zone ever, hit it up if you havent yet. Also the "ring of blood" type arena quest lines

[Smahs]

Lol, if you want to hit 80 fast you have to play 72 hours straighte, when I bought WOTLK (two days after release) the guy said some guys took out 3 days of work just to play it, I kind of laughed and said thats how i'm getting lol, back to the thread..

You want to hit every zone and do every quest, it won't be fun. I am level 75 on my main and got tired of leveling it WELL get boring, and when it does, take a break, IT'S NOT A RACE

[Bovidae]

I just hit 80 a few hours ago. I quested my balls off, even those horrible low droprate collection quests. The fact is, they are prerequisites to finishing ANY chain...

I highly recommend doing the ring of blood style events in Zul'Drak and Icecrown. Not only do they have great rewards, but the XP+Gold+pots is huge (over 100k xp in the Icecrown event alone)

I also did a lot of the dailies. Some are designed to be quick and painless gold, well pre-80 they are also a quick way to get 22k xp.

[Hachoo]

I've gone through the entire Howling Fjord zone so far and am currently working on Borean Tundra. There are quite a few collection quests overall but honestly I don't think its any more than BC, and the drop rates are DEFINITELY better than the drop rates in BC.

I don't know why people expected something else - pre 3.0 xp nerf BC required quite a bit of instancing to not have to do collection quests, northrend seems about the same, the difference is some of th ecollection quests are a lot faster/easier.