Low 60's team - Spend time on gear in Outlands or head straight to WotLK?

[Greythan]

Title says it all.

Curious what my plan should be as I close in on 68. Should I spend time in Outlands getting to a certain level of 70 gear or head straight to Northrend and begin quest/drop gear upgrading in expansion? While slow, I am a leveler by nature so my bias would be to move straight to expansion. However, if a basic geared group (i'm doing a combination of quests/instances for my leveling to 68) would be really disadvantaged starting out in Northrend, I'd like to know.

Thanks.

[Fef]

My first group is also closing in on 68.
I just plan to level them to 70 with a mix of quest and instances. After that, I will continue exploring Burning Crusade for a while, not for gear, just for fun. Most of them I never even played.

I will probably move a bit in level 70 by doing that, perhaps up to 70.5, which might save me a couple collection quests later ;)

[emesis]

Title says it all.

Curious what my plan should be as I close in on 68. Should I spend time in Outlands getting to a certain level of 70 gear or head straight to Northrend and begin quest/drop gear upgrading in expansion? While slow, I am a leveler by nature so my bias would be to move straight to expansion. However, if a basic geared group (i'm doing a combination of quests/instances for my leveling to 68) would be really disadvantaged starting out in Northrend, I'd like to know.

Thanks.

Nearly all the starting zone quests in Northrend are designed as solo quests, so you should have no problems with them at 68 as a boxer. Quest rewards are comparable to level 70 blues so that will clearly be an immediate upgrade path for you. Mobs are 69 or so so you won't have significant hit issues.

I have a 5 man shammy group at 73 in Northrend and a mixed group (DK/pally/mage/druids) at around 65 in Outlands. The shammies were at 70 when WOTLK came out, but I have a similar situation to you for the mixed group. Although from a gear perspective taking them to Northrend at 68 is clearly the way to go, I'm a little concerned myself over leveling speed in Northrend, and I'm thinking about trying to get to 70 in Outlands. This is particularly because of the phasing issues people have mentioned later in Northrend, given that I want to equalize the teams and give myself the opportunity to mix-and-match the teams.

That being said, it's gonna be pretty hard not to head to the North as soon as my second team dings 68.

[Greythan]

Thanks for the feedback.

Anyone have a sense of how leveling speed will compare between Outland and Northrend for the 68 to 70 run? I'm certainly having fun in Outlands so far with the instances/questing with my group so its not like I feel compelled to hit Northrend right at 68. However, I have enough of a min/max makeup to not want to be overly inefficient.

The other factor that is real for me is the concern of forcing myself into a massive array of collection quests in Northrend if I go too early. Talk about inefficient!

[Greythan]

Thanks Fur.

I do want to do/see some of the content, but I'll admit it: doing it with an overgeared group (i.e., Northrend gear) sounds fun. :)

Any thoughts on the question of being able to avoid some collection quests by leveling 68 to 70 in Outlands? I'm wondering if the fastest (i.e., most efficient) route is getting to 70 first so you can avoid some of the collection quests or hitting Northrend right at 68?

[Jheusse]

On a similar vein, is there a monetary reason to finish up in Outlands before heading to northrend? We all know about either getting to 60 in azeroth or doing a lot of instancing so as to save at least 2 or more areas worth of quests in Outlands that would yield big coin when done at L70.

Does northrend look to have a similar mechanic/approach at work? If you go to northrend at 68 should you try and go heavy on instances to get on pace or ahead of pace and save some quest hubs or areas for pure gold earning?

[Vyndree]

I, personally, am following Suvega's guide and hitting both starting zones.

I am 79, exalted with Valiance Expedition, and on-track with all of the level requirements in the guide. I hit Howling Fjord first and then Borean, but you can swap and still do fine. I'm recording everything with TourGuide so once I ding 80 I'll throw it on our website.

I was level 62 when Wrath came out, and IMMEDIATELY on hitting 68 went straight to Northrend. Most of my characters were boosted so I had less than 200g spread across all of them. At 77, I bought normal flying mounts (self-funded) and cold-weather flying for Northrend and had over 1k gold per character to spare (which I'm saving for epic flying).

I was about 25% into 77 on my slowest character when I started doing Sholazar Basin. Suvega only did 1 starting zone and said he had some trouble making sure he was 67 for that zone since there are prerequisite levels for some quests.

If you're 70, you can do 1 single starting zone and still be on-track with all the level requirements in the guide. However, if you care about your rep I'd suggest doing both starting zones anyway -- you'll hit 74 by the end of the two starting zones and it'll be much easier to fend off PvP encounters in future zones if you're at the higher range. ;)

[Gaffy]

I am 69, exalted with Valiance Expedition,

HOW?!?!?!?! /boggle

What he said!!!!! :!:

[Greythan]

Vyn,

Suvega's guide is for alliance or is it something horde characters can follow as well?

[algol]

I, personally, am following Suvega's guide and hitting both starting zones.

...IMMEDIATELY on hitting 68 went straight to Northrend. Most of my characters were boosted so I had less than 200g spread across all of them. At 67, I bought normal flying mounts (self-funded) and cold-weather flying for Northrend and had over 1k gold per character to spare (which I'm saving for epic flying).

Thanks. I've been wondering about that.

[Vyndree]

I am 69, exalted with Valiance Expedition,

HOW?!?!?!?! /boggle

Both starting zones. I was exalted a long time ago... I dunno what level but I know it was around 73 or so.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-reputation.xml?r=Archimonde&n=V%C3%BDndr%C3%A9%C3%A8
You can see that the character was boosted based off of my rep with the Alliance factions, my Argent Dawn rep, and the numerous times I've killed Scarlet Commander Mograine. ;) Mwahahaha.

I'm human, but I still had plenty of quests to do after I hit exalted so I have no doubt other races would also be exalted by doing the same.


The guide is alliance -- I'm sure the neutral area quests work but we haven't played horde so we can't really say about the horde-specific quest chains.


Oh, and to make sure the leveling was "clean" for the tourguide recording, I haven't stepped foot in an instance.

[jimbobobb]

I am 69, exalted with Valiance Expedition,

HOW?!?!?!?! /boggleI'm pretty sure all the 6s in his post should be 7s. So I'm fairly certain he means I'm 79, exalted with Valiance Expedition....etc etc.


Also, as for avoiding collection quests:

I found that it is impossible. You just have to tough it out and do them, if you care at all about the lore/achievements. Everything in Northrend is based on chains that seem to go *collection* *kill x* *collection* *kill x* *pick up x* *kill boss* etc etc. And many of the quest lines are linked - the developers really want things done "in this order or not at all" it seems.

For this reason, as Fur already stated, leveling feels ridiculously slow for multiboxers. Also you can't multibox for many of the quests that require you to use vehicles, because you can't /follow while in a vehicle. Doing all of the collection quests sucks, but really the quests are sooooo well done and interesting in this expansion, it would be a real shame to skip them.

[heffner]

Transposition?? 67 = 76.

I am in a similar situation. My group is almost 68. With my other toons I probably only saw about half the instances in Outland before I was primarily raiding and doing PVP for gear (started about 1 year after Outland was released). So, I figured I would level up to 70 and get the expansion and continue to level as far as I can in Outland before I actually head to Northrend. I am pretty sure I can get to ~71, maybe 72?, questing in Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley (assuming I still get XP?? I don't see why I wouldn't). I actually never completed a lot of the quests in SV before.

Of course, I still plan on doing as much of Northrend as I can. I will only skip the collection quests that don't chain or give good rep...if at all possible. I still have to decide if I should hit Northrend at 70 to get some gear and then head back to Outland to finish up what quests I can (or just stay in Northrend). I can stomach the collection quests, just listen to some music and keeeeelll, especially since I am not in a rush like I was when I had RAF. Just wish I had a better way to loot.... Didn't there use to be a /loot command??? or am I mixing up WoW and EQ??

Cheers.

[Smahs]

I went to northrend at level 69, but regreted it.. Next toon I well do all the netherstorm quests and get to level 70 or 71 before northrend. I also plan on getting some PvP gear if they lower how much it costs..

If I where you I would buy a flying mount and do all the netherstorm quests, look at it as free money and experiance. You well get 2k gold if you didn't upgrade your account to WOTLK yet too so thats good cash..

All the Northrend questing gear isn't as good as T4/T5/T6 or even S1, they made it that way so it wasn't like TBC where some greens wwhere better than T3 :O..


Oh BTW lets say you get 2,000g from all the quests in netherstorm, but if your multiboxing 4 accounts thats 8k gold which you well need later on :O

[Greythan]

All the Northrend questing gear isn't as good as T4/T5/T6 or even S1, they made it that way so it wasn't like TBC where some greens wwhere better than T3
Fur mentioned earlier in the thread to definitely hit Northrend for gear.

I sure don't plan on staying in Outlands long enough to grind gear. Purchasable PvP gear is an option of course, presuming I get enough rep (which I'm sure I will). Otherwise, I really don't want to grind for gear in Outlands. That seems totally counter-intuitive. Now, grinding in Outlands to make the run to 80 easier is an option. That said, I'm not sure I'm seeing that as the best route yet.

It always seems to be the same thing in any expansion: min/max considerations tell you to hit the new content as early as possible. (General rule)

[Vyndree]

I am 79, exalted with Valiance Expedition,

HOW?!?!?!?! /boggleI'm pretty sure all the 6s in his post should be 7s. So I'm fairly certain he means I'm 79, exalted with Valiance Expedition....etc etc.

Agh, you're right. Brain fart, I'll fix. I blame work distractions for the extended lapse >.<

I know I was exalted by at most 73, though. Close... ish. ;)

Wowarmory hasn't updated my level -- I'm still 79, but only ding'ed yesterday night.

[Moorea]

I recommend going to boorean tundra the minute you hit 68 and all quests will be upgrades for you; then go do the fjord when you start getting orange quests and come back later to the tundra and finish it before doing any other zone - I did that on my raf'ed healer and I'm very happy with the result (good gear, good xp; you get l68->l70 fairly quickly)