Allow myself to introduce... myself

[Phemur]

Hi all,

I'm Phemur, and while I've been playing WoW since the launch, I've only started multi-boxing about a week ago. Initially, the idea was just to take advantage of the RaF program to get a few alts to Outland and Northrend quickly, but from what I've been reading here, I'm starting to get more and more interested in trying out larger teams and going for instances.

The information I've read here so far has been great. This is an unbelievable resource for a fairly small segment of WoW gamers. Without it, I think I would still be trying to play two characters with two mice and keyboards! So to all who've been writing guides and running the site, thank you for your efforts.

I'm easing myself into it now, so I'm only running two accounts. I've setup the following duos
Warlock / Mage (Hum, Hum)
Rogue / Pally (Hum, Hum)
Warrior / Shaman (Dra, Dra)
Hunter / Druid (NE, NE)

The warlock and mage are at level 23 & 22 respectively, after just over 10 hours of /played time. And it's going quite well. They're specced Demo and Fire and the lock is the leader, but I'm very tempted to try Frost and Destruction and switch the mage as leader.

I do have one question, however. What should my strategy be for the RaF gift levels? Initially, my plan was to get one team to 60, the rest of the teams to 30 or so, then use the bonus levels to raise teams together. But since I can only give bonus levels to characters on the "veteran" accounts, that no longer works. Since I play these characters together, I can't just raise the levels of the veterans on the pair teams, as they will be out of sync and I'll lose the triple XP. I don't have any alts to give levels to, as the only other chars I have is a 71 priest and a 60 DK.

The only solution I can see is to do the "gather" quests on the recruit characters to level them a bit faster, and they can grant the bonus level to their veteran partners. I think it would squeeze a bit more efficiency in leveling by cutting down the amount of grinding for gather quests (i.e. I wouldn't have to get 16 Goretusk Livers, only 8).

Again, thank you for all your work, keep it up!

[echo]

Welcome to the community Phemur.

I was in a similar situation as you. I had accumulated enough giftable levels (4 teams to 60) that I just created half of my 5th team on the master accounts, then did the paid character transfer to the referred accounts, then made the rest of my team on the master accounts and gifted them then. Granted, this cost me $50 to transfer the 2 characters so it might not be what you're looking for, but it's an option.

in case that was worded confusingly:

account a - linked to account c
account b - linked to accound d

(4 teams x 2 characters each x 29 levels = 232 levels saved)
* created new team members on account a & b, level them up to level 3 - 4 with new throwaway characters on account c&d. work of moments this way. then gift level them to 99% of the level, proceed to gift to 60.

* transfer new 60 team members to account c & d. create new characters on account a & b, level them with throwaways characters to level 2 - 3 or so, use throwaway characters giftable level to get them to 4-5. get them to 99% of their level. proceed to gift them to 60

congrats on your new team of almost 61 toons. not sure if this will work for you but this is what i did.

(alternatively, you can always just create new characters on your master accounts, and just gift them to 60. it wont be a full team but at least then you have alternative choices you can swap into and out of your team to meet different needs)

[Mercurio]

I'll echo the welcome as well.

I started up RAF to add four accounts and get the maximum benefit of it as well. In a little over two months, I was able to get one team of 5 to 70, then PL another 4 teams to somewhere between 60 and 40 or so. Using a pally to pull the entire SM instance over and over vaults other teams from 20 to 40 very quickly, can be used to get them to 45 (definitely slower), then used to get them from 45 to 60 in Stratholme UD side. I imagine this would only go quicker with the latest patches and WotLK release and the level cap increase above 70 for a pally PLer.

I quickly realized that when you gift levels, you really want to gift the maximum level you can with your gifts. So with my 70s and a team I PLed to 60, I only used gift levels from 45-60 for my other teams. I PLed my third team to 48 or so, then used all their gift levels to grant other teams from 35-48 or so. I PLed my fourth team to 35 or so, used levels to gift the last team from 30-35 or so. Those aren't exact, but you get the idea.

If you are shooting for having a large number of toons at high levels one day and want to ensure your RAF time is used to the max, this tiered leveling/gifting approach is what I'd suggest. I got a spreadsheet out to plan it out and optimize the gifting and what levels each team needed to be PLed to. This type of thing should work whether you use it with 2 accounts or 5 (though with 2, PLing doesn't have nearly the benefit - may be better off just duoing a bunch of times).

Bottom line: spend some time planning it all out, you'll reap hours or maybe even days of playtime benefit that could be used for the 60-80 push on all those new shiny level 60 toons.