Leveling in Northrend

[Tezze]

How much instance grinding is necessary to level out here? I've completed virtually every quest available in Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord and I'm about level 70 and a half. Am I already supposed to hit up the next zone?

Thanks in advance.

Edit: I have not done several of the collection quests for obvious reasons unless its a collect off the ground quest.

[Catamer]

ouch, that seems a little slow.
I went to north end at 68 with my DK team, did all of the Borean Tundra and I was 70 before I finished.
I was talking my time though, I pretty much didn't play them unless I was fully rested.

they are 71 now and i've done about 1/4 or less of the forde quests... but again. I only play them when rested so I've made 2x the XP for all of my kills.

leveling in Northend prior to 70 seemed really fast because the XP requiremetns prior to 70 were reduced. 70 felt a little like a wall to me.

[Starbuck_Jones]

Holy crap thats it? I JUST finished borean tundra a few days ago and a few weeks back finished everything in Howling Fjiord, and did the quests for Utguard Keep and Nexus and dinged 76. You can check my armory links in my sig and see the achievements of the quest and exploration accomplishments and for nexus and uk runs.

The only instance grinding I did was to kill the first boss in UK about a dozen times to get each of my druids the knife and hat drops. I think the armory says how many times ive killed him. But its in no way enough to be 5 levels ahead of where you are doing the same thing.

I did do all the collection quests, so if you havent done that, then you are missing out on a TON of quests and their end quest wrapups that give 10G rewards and the like.



Recent Achievements

10http://www.wowarmory.com/images/achievements/tiny_shield.gif ( 04-17-2009 ) The NexusDefeat the bosses in The Nexus.

10http://www.wowarmory.com/images/achievements/tiny_shield.gif ( 04-17-2009 ) 50 Daily Quests CompleteComplete 50 daily quests.

10http://www.wowarmory.com/images/achievements/tiny_shield.gif ( 04-17-2009 ) Utgarde KeepDefeat the bosses in Utgarde Keep.

10http://www.wowarmory.com/images/achievements/tiny_shield.gif ( 04-15-2009 ) Nothing Boring About BoreanComplete 130 quests in Borean Tundra.

10http://www.wowarmory.com/images/achievements/tiny_shield.gif ( 04-15-2009 ) Explore Borean TundraExplore Borean Tundra, revealing the covered areas of the world map.

[Stealthy]

How much instance grinding is necessary to level out here? I've completed virtually every quest available in Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord and I'm about level 70 and a half. Am I already supposed to hit up the next zone?

Thanks in advance.

Edit: I have not done several of the collection quests for obvious reasons unless its a collect off the ground quest.



There are many collection quests that are prereq's to quest chains...if your avoiding them, you might actually be missing out on a lot of quests.

How far are you into the "Nothing boring about the Borean" and "I've toured the Fjord" achievements are you? That will give you a good idea of how many quests you have remaining...

Cheers,

S.

[Fef]

Indeed, you cannot afford to skip *every* collection quest.

I usually accept every quest, by default.
For collection quests, I just try to get a feeling of how long it is going to take (number of available mobs, drop rate, horde presence, etc ...). if it looks ok, I do the collection. If it looks bad, I check on the net whether the quest opens a chain or leads to some interesting reward. If it does, I do the collection (in grumpy mode, granted).

At the end of the day, I skip very few quests. On my first two groups, I finished
the two starting zones well into level 72 (from 68). That's with basically no instance runs (I do the easy instance/collection quests and keep bosses for later).

[Zappy]

Wow. I have to call bs on this one. I did nearly every quest (106 of the 110) in Howling Fjord and got the achievement "I've Toured the Fjord" and went from 70-72 right in that zone. I did run UT Keep once to finish out those quests as well. Moving to borean tundra, I did about 1/2 the quests there and moved on to dragon blight @74, and once I hit 76, skipped right into Grizzly Hills. I'm currently half way through 76 and still have loads of quests left in Grizzly Hills. The only instances I've ran were UT Keep once, Nexus about 5 times, Ajol'Nerub once, half way through Ahn'kahet, skipped and moved on, and ran Drak'Tharon once last night.

For reference, I get about 250 XP / kill which is next to nothing. The real experience gain is from doing all the quests.

Here's my druids for reference:
www.wowarmory.com/character-statistics.xml?r=Hakkar&n=Larrÿ

www.wowarmory.com/character-statistics.xml?r=Hakkar&n=Zappyzap

[wowphreak]

I went to northrend as soon as I was able to think that was 68 I ended up getting I've Toured the Fjord and Nothing Boring About Borean just barely made 71.

Hit up nexxus and Utgarde Keep till yer about 72 then go to dragonblight do a few quest go The Old Kingdom and Azjol-Nerub


What I started out doing is checking
http://www.wowhead.com/?zones=2#0-2+1
Did the instance in order of level

@Starbuck_Jones this 10 ( 04-17-2009 ) 50 Daily Quests CompleteComplete 50 daily quests. got yeh huge chunk of exp :P

[Starbuck_Jones]

Not all of those daily quests were from Lich King. I had dozen or so PvP daily quests from outlands completed before getting that achievement. Still I did do a lot of them. Each morning I run through the multibox friendly ones that are available to me. But they only net 20100 xp per turn in. Lets say all 50 were from Lich King thats only 1,005,000 xp. Thats 2/3 of one level in the 70-80 range. Also if someone went to Lich King at 68. Thoes last two levels to 70 would have required much less xp as it was reduced in a previous patch. So yes, the daily quests help, but did not put me 5 levels ahead.

With going to lich king at 68 and no dailies or instance runs. I would conceed at most one maybe two levels, not 5. There is no way I can see that I completed 7+ million more xp doing the same content.

[falsfire3401]

Granted I'm just starting out, but I do all collection quests deliberately to make up for the less xp from mob kills. Collection quests mean I need to kill twice as many mobs (roughly) which makes up for the less xp per kill.

[Bigfish]

Collection quests aren't bad once you get a circuit down. Assuming there is a circuit to run. If there isn't, yeah, like pulling teeth, but generally, I found it to be just laying claim to a territory and nuking any thing that moved.

[Malekyth]

I dinged 80 after Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, a reasonable number of instance runs, and just a few quests into Grizzly Hills. I wasn't leaving zones 'til I had the quest achievements.

A lot of that was rested and I started at 70, not 68, fyi. Still, 68-70.5 in two full zones sounds broken to me. You've got to be missing some important questlines.

[Tezze]

Yea, turns out the collection quests open up a TON of stuff. Pulling teeth it is :(

[Fef]

... and don't under estimate the power of the blue bar. My groups are ONLY played rested. It makes a big difference, especially in instance, and when you have to kill 200 mobs for a quest ;)

[Ken]

... and don't under estimate the power of the blue bar. My groups are ONLY played rested. It makes a big difference, especially in instance, and when you have to kill 200 mobs for a quest ;)
Well ... killing mobs doesn't go that fast ... 200% of nothing is still nothing :P
I got about 500xp (including rested) per mob kill at lvl 70+
That's quite terrible with 1.6 million XP per level.
Of course it adds up to a nice 10k experience when you have to kill 20 for a quest ... but still ... 10k/1600k = ugh
It would mean you'd have to kill 3200 mobs for a level. In reality I guess it's more like 1000 mobs + quests per level, but 1000 mobs are still insane.

[Nisch]

... and don't under estimate the power of the blue bar. My groups are ONLY played rested. It makes a big difference, especially in instance, and when you have to kill 200 mobs for a quest ;)
Well ... killing mobs doesn't go that fast ... 200% of nothing is still nothing :P
I got about 500xp (including rested) per mob kill at lvl 70+
That's quite terrible with 1.6 million XP per level.
Of course it adds up to a nice 10k experience when you have to kill 20 for a quest ... but still ... 10k/1600k = ugh
It would mean you'd have to kill 3200 mobs for a level. In reality I guess it's more like 1000 mobs + quests per level, but 1000 mobs are still insane.

It's my belief that when you use mathematics, you can easily talk yourself out of any motivation to level.

I'm just picking up all the quetss, doing the kill quests, then get a feel for the collection quest. I've even found a couple where the drop off the mobs was lootable by all my group members off the same corpse, so it helps when doing collection quetss. Plus, get your "Interact with target" key setup, and that helps a bunch too.

[Ken]

It's my belief that when you use mathematics, you can easily talk yourself out of any motivation to level.

I was demotivated before I did the mathematics ;P
What made it fun was changing from running WotLK quests, then instances, then some old content, professions, etc.

[blast3r]

I usually head to northrend at level 68 and normally don't have any problems until about half way through lvl 72. Sometimes I will go back and do dailies at Isle of Q to catch up a bit. Once you hit 73 you will find no problems at all finding quests. And at lvl 77 you can finish up in Icecrown just getting all the dailies unlocked for the most part.

[Duese]

What is the fixation with going to northrend before level 70? If you are running out of quests after two zones in northrend and you are only lvl 70, perhaps you went to northrend to early and dropped to many quests?

The first quests in Northrend do give a bit more xp, but it was in no way comparable to the 4500 xp vs 13000 xp difference in quest turn ins you were seeing Vanilla->BC. BC -> Wrath was more like 16,000 -> 19,000.

My team stayed in outland until 70, ended up at lvl 74 walking into dragonblight after completing HF and BT. I finished out the achievements for GH and ZD. Dinged 80 across the board in Scholazar Basin, about 35 quests in, leaving me about 2.5 zones worth of quests left for gold.

Also, I spent the entire time from 70-80 on rested xp, despite my best efforts. I literally went from 74 to 80 in 6 days on 4x Shaman and finally saw the end of my rested xp bar when I dinged 79. By the time I turned in more quests, it had moved off the board again. I could see maybe running out of rested if you ran a lot of instances, but just questing? It's pretty hard if you are starting with full rested.

[Starbuck_Jones]

I dinged 77 on all my toons yesterday in Dragonblight. Im about 60% through the quest achievement there so around 70+ quests in and I think its like 130 quests for the achievement. I did notice that once I picked up cold weather flying, its a whole lot quicker to fly to the quest objective, assassinate the target, and fly out and not have to fight my way in/out. I can see it taking more quests now to get to 80 because ill be missing out on a lot of non quest related kills getting from point a to b. But on the same token, ill prolly have a few more daily quests I can farm each day to make up for that. the daily in wyrmrest looks to be mb friendly like the one in Steel gate. Just do all your kills in range of the toons.

[Terraelf]

There's no problem going to northrend pre-70. You can skip one of the two starter zones if you start at 70 so if you start at 68, doing them both should get you up to speed. You MUST get the achievements for those two zones to get back up to pace. Yes the collection quests suck ass, but I've got to tell you that I dinged my first team of 5 to 80 just shortly after a week of release, and within a few days after that I got the Loremaster of Northrend, so I was skipping only dungeon quests. I was about halfway into Storm Peaks when I dinged 80 and I was getting the quest completion achievement in every zone. I ran no dungeons whatsoever.

My second team of 5 took a little more time to level up (they were 70 to begin with) because I was diverting attention to raiding on my first 5.... as a result they had a lot more rested XP. With them, I did Howling Fjrod, Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills, I then skipped Zul'Drak and Sholazar Basin and went to Storm Peaks followed by Icecrown. I started the team at 70 and was getting quest completion accomplishments in all the zones I was doing. I was about 10 quests away from the Icecrown quest completion achievement when team 2 dinged to 80... I'm yet to go pick Zul'drak and Scholazar Basin back up, but I need to do that at some point for the rep gains if nothing else.

[Rin]

For my current team, I brought them into Northrend at 68.
From 68-70.3ish, I did most of the quests in Howling Fjord (~100 or so), and then I farmed Utgarde Pinnacle's Prince Kelesith for his blade about 5-6 times. That brought me up to level 71.
From 71 to 73 I went to Borean Tundra, and completed about 105 quests there (also did the Nexus shoulder quest, but no other quests in the Nexus)
73 - 74 was spent in Dragonblight. I've done all but 3-4 of the quests for the achievement there.
74-75 was spent in the Grizzly Hills. I then took a break and started working on buying gear and resting my characters
75-78.2 was spent largely on dailies and instance grinding (with rest experience, you should be able to get at least 230,000 exp/hr in an instance - which is about 1 level every 6-7 hours)
78.2-80 is being spent in Zul'Drak, there's enough quests here (+Gundrak instance quests) to ding 80 at this point.

That leaves me with Sholazar Basin, The Storm Peaks, and Icecrown citadel untouched @ 80.

On my Horde team, I started them at Northrend at 70.
I finished Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra (3-5 quests away from the achievement), Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills (10-15 quests from the achievement), Zul'Drak, and about 15 quests in Sholazar Basin before I ding'd 80.

------------------
If you dread questing, you shouldn't have a problem instance grinding, but ONLY instance grind if you have rest experience (otherwise, questing is much faster). Also, if you dread questing and instance grinding, then simply get to 73 and do Grizzly Hills dailies until 80. It would take about 52 days to get to 80 with only 1 hour of game play per day. (73-80). That's only a bit over a month of casual play, plus you'd clear about 13,000 gold between now and then just doing dailies, and you'd have all of the quests in Northrend available in case you ever decided to do the quests.

Cheers

[Basilikos]

Now that I've made actual attempts at overcoming some RL limitations on my PvE team's Northrend leveling, here's the scoop so far.

My PvE team was grinding instances to 70. I had nearly every quest from Terrokar Forrest and up to do after hitting 70. Why? Easy gold. Anyhow, I hit Northrend just after dinging 72. Yeah. So I'm FINALLY playing regularly again and have just leveled to 75 without entering any instances, but doing EVERY quest I can get my hands on. I've not quite finished Borean Tundra, but I have completely wiped out Howling Fjord.

First and foremost, I'm learning to love collection quests. Yeah, there's a definite slow-down factor when doing them, but they're almost totally indispensable for several reasons. I'm likely going to be half-way to 76 before leaving the "starting" areas. Dragonblight follows and then on to Grizzly Hills. From there, we'll see. I've read a number of reports that are forcing me to save for the level 77 cold weather flying purchase. That has been done already on each of these characters. After that, it seems like the epic flying will come quickly enough if I keep up with the questing.

I think my situation (what with starting Northrend at 72 and all) is pretty unique and will probably not help anyone, but I thought I'd share a different perspective.

[David]

I personally would never go to northend that late. As soon as possible I`m moving in that direction for sure. I`m currently sitting at lvl 66,5 so it will be soon. But I run paladin + 4 shamans so I can grind instances as well to get enough quests.

On my alliance team which I retired at lvl74, I started in northend at lvl70 after the release of WOTLK. Also cleared the first 2 zones and working on DB when I quit.

That would mean I would get in qust trouble with my current team, luckily I can fill it up some with instancing.

[Starbuck_Jones]

I'm almost done with Dragonblight. I'm at about 112 quests completed and 115 is the achievement mark, but there is a quest hub that I haven't even gone to yet. The alliance place at the wrath gate, right now im doing the goblin quests by the giant canyon. After Dragonblight is cleaned out, I have 3 quests for the Old Kingdom undead bug dungeons. As of right now, I am 15% away on my Paladin from 78, and 30% away on my druids. Cold weather flying has sped things up, but I also dont have to fight my way into things anymore either so questing is faster, but missing out on some xp from unrelated trash. Just fly in. assassinate a guy, fly out.

I predict that my paladin will be 78 by the time I finish the normal quests in DB. I plan on going back to the Nexus and farming 3 more of these off hands for my druids. http://www.wowwiki.com/Tome_of_the_Lore_Keepers One of them already has it from the one time I ran it, then spend the time and knock out the 3 Old Kingdom quests and im sure by then my whole team will be 78. with a lot of content left to see and do.

I haven't looked into boss loot for the dragonblight dungeons but if theres any upgrades that are not too big of a pain to get, I may stay and gear up my team on them.