Move to Northrend at 68?

[Tonyx]

As my multiboxing team approaches 68, I am wondering.. should I go to Northrend as soon as I get to 68 or wait for a bit (70 maybe) ?

As for solo, playing, that would be a non question, as Northrend quests will give more exp and more money than Outland ones (and better gear, although the difference is not as big as classic-bc) and there is no point in delaying the voyage to the north.

But for multiboxing, since in Northrend there are so many annoying collection quests, and my group won't be geared well enough to step right into the instances, I was thinking that maybe it could be better to cap on Outland fast quests while they are still yellow/orange and then head to the North.
What are your experiences?

Thanks!

[JasonB87]

I went at 69 1/2 the other day. Not much strategy behind it just bored with what I was doing. I just started the beginning quest in howling fjord and have ran into some annoying collection quest that I'm skipping which unfortunately give some nice gear. So I might go back and dual-box the collection quest that what they are a little less overwhelming.

[Owltoid]

Move to Outlands as soon as you can, and move to Northrend as soon as you can. If you're worried about running out of quests before hitting 80, then rest assured there will be 100s more after that final ding. The gear is better in Northrend, the money is better, the exp is probably faster, etc.

[Tonyx]

I am worried about getting out of quests if I skip (the majority of the) collection quests.

[Svpernova09]

I went to nothrend (solo DK) at 68. I skipped Blades Edge, Terrokar, SMV, NS totally. I hit 70 before getting the "nothing boring about borean" acheivement. If i play it right, I'll finish borean and hit HF, doing everything I can until i can get acheivements on every zone should put me at 80 in zul'drak. RL friend of mine started in Borean at 70, then HF, Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills, and just went to zul'drak last night, he's 5 bars from 79. The idea of Scholozar, Storm Peaks, Icecrown all being gold is pretty awesome.

[Catamer]

for me I would say it depends on whether or not I have my trade skills up.
any skill at 350 can become the grand master so I would go to northend and learn the next level but go back to BC content since I really know the quests well and can speed through them.
even though the quest rewards my be higher, you can probably do 2-3 or maybe even 4 outland quests in the same time it takes for the team to kill a bunch of turkeys ( omg, I hated that quest and vow never to do it again, EVER )
I found I got my skinning,herbs and mining well over 410 on BC content.
400 seems to be a pretty magic number because it allows you to herb, mine or skin at any time while you are doing northend begining content ( at least until your team is 75+ and you should be maxed out at by then ).
My JC needed all of the adamantite ore to prospect anyway while I got him leveled.
JC feed my enchanter, etc.
tailor leveled up
leatherworking leveled up

[Owltoid]

I am worried about getting out of quests if I skip (the majority of the) collection quests.

Unfortunately for us MBs you can't really skip many of the collection quests since WotLK loves quest chains. If you skip some of the collection quests you'll miss out on the next 7 quests (5 of which are very MB friends, 2 which are a pita)

[Kicksome]

I think there's less than 10 "bad" collection quests you need to do before 80. If you do the sons of hodir rep quests then double that number.

I'd go to outlands at 58 and northrend at 68.

[blast3r]

I'm taking all my teams there at 68 because of better gear, better gold, etc. Does anyone know if the dailies give xp if you are under level 80? I didn't really run many dailies until after I hit 80. If it does give xp then there will be no shortage of quests to do to get you to 80. And you can easily hit 25 dailies each day.

[Bigfish]

I went to nothrend (solo DK) at 68. I skipped Blades Edge, Terrokar, SMV, NS totally. I hit 70 before getting the "nothing boring about borean" acheivement. If i play it right, I'll finish borean and hit HF, doing everything I can until i can get acheivements on every zone should put me at 80 in zul'drak. RL friend of mine started in Borean at 70, then HF, Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills, and just went to zul'drak last night, he's 5 bars from 79. The idea of Scholozar, Storm Peaks, Icecrown all being gold is pretty awesome.

This sounds earilly similar to what I'm doing. All those quests spitting out gold sounds nice. Having no idea how many of those are going to be "go collect 10 bear skins" times 10 quests is kinda annoying. Drakuru's grinding my nerves enough by making me collect 50 variable-brand mojos everytime he has a new quest in the chain, but by God, I will get Loremaster of Northrend on all my characters.

[Bigfish]

I'm taking all my teams there at 68 because of better gear, better gold, etc. Does anyone know if the dailies give xp if you are under level 80? I didn't really run many dailies until after I hit 80. If it does give xp then there will be no shortage of quests to do to get you to 80. And you can easily hit 25 dailies each day.

Yes, the quests will give XP if you aren't at cap.

[emesis]

I went to nothrend (solo DK) at 68. I skipped Blades Edge, Terrokar, SMV, NS totally. I hit 70 before getting the "nothing boring about borean" acheivement. If i play it right, I'll finish borean and hit HF, doing everything I can until i can get acheivements on every zone should put me at 80 in zul'drak. RL friend of mine started in Borean at 70, then HF, Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills, and just went to zul'drak last night, he's 5 bars from 79. The idea of Scholozar, Storm Peaks, Icecrown all being gold is pretty awesome.

This sounds earilly similar to what I'm doing. All those quests spitting out gold sounds nice. Having no idea how many of those are going to be "go collect 10 bear skins" times 10 quests is kinda annoying. Drakuru's grinding my nerves enough by making me collect 50 variable-brand mojos everytime he has a new quest in the chain, but by God, I will get Loremaster of Northrend on all my characters.

Hey, those mojos aren't soul-bound! Still, I gave up on that chain about half-way through.

I went to NR at 68 on my second team and didn't regret it all all. As other posters have noted, you can't really skip all the collection quests in NR if you want to quest at all, since many unlock or are parts of chains. However, it's worth looking up and deciding whether you want to pursue a chain. Grizzly Hills is the worst, I skipped about 1/2 collections stuff and still dinged 80 on my second team 2/3 of the way through Icecrown (which went straight from Sholazar to Icecrown, still need to go back and do Storm Peaks).

[Vyndree]

I am worried about getting out of quests if I skip (the majority of the) collection quests.

I went to northrend at just-barely-dinged-68, less than 1k gold per character, no rest XP, and leveled to 80 using Suvega's guide (which is how I recorded my TourGuide version). I dinged 80 just after hitting Icecrown.

The trick?
Do BOTH starting zones. Seriously. It's good rep.

Money?
I had epic ground mounts, no flyers. By the time I hit cold weather flying I could afford normal flyers + cold weather. By 80 I had around 3k gold per character.

[Bigfish]

Hey, those mojos aren't soul-bound! Still, I gave up on that chain about half-way through.


Oh I know. Still didn't alter the fact that I had to commit Troll Genocide to get 50 of the things. Of course, given that about halfway through the chain, the trolls really start grouping up, and they can be AOEd down in batches of 7-8 at a time, its not as annoying as it could have been. Still seems a bit unimaginative.

[Owltoid]

.......Grizzly Hills is the worst, I skipped about 1/2 collections stuff and still dinged 80 on my second team 2/3 of the way through Icecrown (which went straight from Sholazar to Icecrown, still need to go back and do Storm Peaks).

Sorry to disagree here, but I think one of the best pieces of leveling advice I have received was in Storm Peaks start your Sons of Hodir questline ASAP (lvl 77 I believe). The quest chain is something like 40 quests long and I would curse every minute of that if I wasn't also gaining experience. In other words, if I knew that I was just doing it for rep, then I'd be pissed... since I was doing it for leveling & rep it made it more palatable.

[Souca]

I have to solo leveled two 80s. The first was a DK and went to NR at 68. The second was my geared 70 druid with full rest. I didn't do more than one instance on either when I was leveling.

The DK did Borean, Fjord, Dragonblight, Grizzly, Zul'Drak, and Basin to achievement. She hit 80 with a mix of Storm Peaks and Icecrown.

The druid did Borean, Fjord, Dragonblight, 91/100 Zul'Drak and 38/75 in Basin. He didn't do any quests in any other zones before 80. He never ran out of rest.

Granted, these were solo characters, but when I start working my 5 teams up there I am going to try and stay in Outlands until 70. The sheer amount of XP you get doing both starting zones is mind boggling. It also gives you a huge advantage when you are level 77 in Dragonblight heading into Zul'Drak. You can also skip whole chains if you need to.

There are so many money sinks in Wrath that any quests you can save means more gold in the end.

- Souca -

[glo]

If you can stand it wait until 70. There are so many quest chains in Northrend with collection components being able to pick and choose which you want to do is nice. On the team I am working on now I waited until I ran out of all of the fast XP quests in BC and was about 70.7, that is with starting outland at 58.

The above about the sons of Hodir chains is dead on right. I made the mistake of skipping some of that when I was leveling simply because I was in a hurry to hit the cap, going back to do it later on I really wanted to kick myself in the ass. You are going to end up doing it eventually, you might as well take the extra few hours while you are leveling and at least get the xp.

Yes the above two paragraphs are at odds with each other as far as leveling speed goes but they are both accurate as far as overall time investment to get the characters ready for end game is concerned which is what really matters.

[heffner]

As mentioned, it's probably not the best idea to skip the collection quests in Northrend. Thus, you will end up doing most of the quests anyway. You will definitely not run out of quests before you hit 80 if you don't skip anything.

Reason not to go? Hmmm, well you will have more quests at 80 for gold. Can skip collection quests in Outland. This might work out to be faster to 80, if that is important to you (but, you I don't think you will not get as much quest XP in Outlands, so maybe it wouldn't be faster, I don't know). Regardless, getting from 68 to 70 will take no time in Outland as well.

Personally I had difficulty with the normal Northrend instances. I was a fresh 70 when I went, so I wasn't geared to the max like a lot of folks. So, I actually decided to skip them for the most part until I hit 80. Although, I do need more experience with multiboxing instances, you may be skilled at it so it might work for you.

The daiiles in Northrend (at least the few I did) do give XP when you are not 80.

So, if you're excite to go and see the new zones, then go. Otherwise, leveling to 70 or higher in Outland won't be a mistake. Either way it won't make much difference IMO.

[Gadzooks]

I went to nothrend (solo DK) at 68. I skipped Blades Edge, Terrokar, SMV, NS totally. I hit 70 before getting the "nothing boring about borean" acheivement. If i play it right, I'll finish borean and hit HF, doing everything I can until i can get acheivements on every zone should put me at 80 in zul'drak. RL friend of mine started in Borean at 70, then HF, Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills, and just went to zul'drak last night, he's 5 bars from 79. The idea of Scholozar, Storm Peaks, Icecrown all being gold is pretty awesome.That's what I did - I went to Northrend at 70, and took my 3 through Borean, Howling, Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills, and dinged 80 in the Basin. I did'nt leave a zone until I got the quest achievement. I did all of the collection quests though, as painful as it was. I also did some grinding for leather and meat for cooking.

I did'nt run any dungeons or PvP. With the right balance of dungeons and questing, you should have 3-4 zones untouched, easy.

I'm halfway through Icecrown, it's *easy* money there!

[Bloodcloud]

I was there the other day with my lvl 65-67 team and it was EASY and lots of money on the Vendor trash.

I couldn't get any quests though since I was to low.

Whats the quest starting lvl there ? 68 ?

I am 65 with my Dk and I only did Hellfire (1 quest from Archivement away ).

cheers

[Greythan]

I asked the same question of this community six weeks ago and hit Northrend as freshly minted 68's (four of me that is, my "main" was halfway through 70).

I've done almost enough quests in BT to get the achievement and have about half that many quests done in Howling Fjord. My team is 72.5 now (main is 74.5). I have yet to do a quest in Northrend other than those two starting zones. I've done a little bit of the two initial instances, but just recently.

I think I skipped one or two collection quests only because they didn't lead to anything. So far I have been AMAZED at how UNPAINFUL the collection quests have been as a five boxer. Mobs spawn fast, generally drop whatever the quest item is and if its a ground item collection, the items seem to be plentiful. This may change as I move beyond the starting zones, but so far its been much better than waiting and doing Outlands. To be honest, the ratio of hard collection quest seem to be on par or even a bit EASIER than what I recall of level 68 - 70 zones in Outlands.

YMMV

[Hachoo]

It really stays like that. Yes, collection quests x5 still suck, but honestly they're far less painful than collection quests in BC were - the drop rate is definitely better and theres not usually a large distance between mobs.

[heffner]

Some collection quests are ok some really suck. There are just A LOT of them. HF and BT weren't that bad. Personally, I think some of the worst ones are in later zones. I am currently doing the quests in Zul'Drak....some of the collection quests (which is many of the quests available) have been the worst yet for me. I just spent 2 hours doing only a handful of quests since the drop rates were so bleh. Goes with the territory I guess.

The quests where you complete the quest on all five toons makes up for some of the pain.

[Multibocks]

I have skipped a TON of collection quests and just finished HF and BT at 72+ on all characters. Now I started at 69 and have done 2 instances from start to finish (nexus and UK), but it seems to have not screwed me up. The only collection quests I am not skipping are the Wrathgate ones, since the story is so epic and you get the achievement =)

[daviddoran]

I'm gonna mix it up. First team i jumped there the second after dinging 68, and leveled to 70 quickly. I had a paladin waiting at 70 so i ditched a mage, and started with my new 5 man team. My second team is going to go at 70, just so I can skip a feq early collection quests and get to the next zone quicker. I like doing it differently, makes it less monotonous. I did the same in outland, from 60-70 on a couple teams, one hitting instances hard to skip some content i didnt want to do that I did on the other team just previously. I might even keep my druid team in outland (farming cenarion rep for Earthwarden) until I hit 71-72, just 'cause.

[glo]

Some collection quests are ok some really suck. There are just A LOT of them. HF and BT weren't that bad. Personally, I think some of the worst ones are in later zones. I am currently doing the quests in Zul'Drak....some of the collection quests (which is many of the quests available) have been the worst yet for me. I just spent 2 hours doing only a handful of quests since the drop rates were so bleh. Goes with the territory I guess.

The quests where you complete the quest on all five toons makes up for some of the pain.

Zul'Drak is the main reason I waited until 70 to hit Northrend on this group, unless you want to do a couple of the more painful collection quests in the expac you will miss a few quest chains in this zone. Zul'Drak slowed me down quite a bit on my first 5 man team.

I just finished the second starting zone 3 quests short of dinging 74, took me about 2 minutes once I arrived in Dragonsblight. Dinged, got the FP, set hearth and all that before going to train so it was real smooth. I have a half level of rest xp at this point as well. I should be able to be extremely picky about which quests I do the rest of the way ;)

[heffner]

I discovered that if I drink, Zul'drak isn't that bad. Finally made it through. Finished all the quests. The zone is fairly easy overall, but there were so many collection quests. I actually think almost every single quest was a collection quest, at least in the "second half". I highly recommended drinking if you plan on hitting Zul'Drek :P