Anyone done 1-60 non-raf recently?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Right now it takes me about 13h played time to RAF from 1-60. w/o RAF it should take about 40 hours to do the same thing so over all time its not too bad. However time is money and buying 2 battlechests for $50 is well worth the extra 26 hours it would take in my book. If you boost up more than one group the $cost savings per hour gets even better.

If you're talking blowing up instances with a geared-to-the-nines 80, you're probably right. For us quest-junkies, non-RAF questing is the PITS as you can't just knock off the non-collection quests and move on to the next zone. :P

Just as an update to the thread, I have three other comments re: non-RAF leveling. My shams are 79.8 at 13d4h played.

• Go start the argent crusade quest line in Icecrown as soon as you ding 77. (see point 2)
• Daily quests on the blimp and ebon blade and argent tournament all give normal quest XP (22k for normal, 33k for group dailies) and they open up very soon after you get the quest lines going.
• LEVEL AS MELEE OMG (see last paragraph below; obvious caveat is obvious: only applies to shams/druids)

I did all of Borean Tundra, Howling Fjord and Dragonblight. Skipped Grizzly Hills except for the Drakuru quest series to open up the DTK quests (about 36 total?). Did most of Zul'drak to open up Gundrak quests and finish the elites out there for the blue gear upgrades (about 79 total). Then went and did all pit/arena challenge quests in Northrend (with my 80s swapping out for tank duty), which yielded some nice gear updates. Skipped Sholazar and Storm Peaks completely and immediately went to Icecrown after hitting 77 doing the arenas.

As of now, I'm a little over 13days /played, have about 1400ish spellpower in my caster mail suit (including flametongue weapon; almost all mail, no crafted 80 stuff, which is in the bank waiting for my ding 80!) which will set me up nicely to start heroics at 80. I'm on phase 2 of the argent tourny dailies, so that's progressing nicely.

All in all, when undead hunters go live, I'll roll a set of those and be basically through leveling new alts for a while as I have priests, mages and locks at 70. With the knowledge after doing 3 runs to 80 non-raf, I've enjoyed the current one much better skipping Sholazar/Stormpeaks as those zones are just a PITA for me and not fun, IMO. Having epic flight (tome+cash) immediately at 70 has helped a LOT. If you have 80s, DO your dailies and get them the mounts/tome ASAP. You won't regret the money spent one iota.

Why do I say level as melee? Well, two reasons, mainly. First, melee is stupid powerful against most of the stuff my casters had trouble with and you can stack survivability gear and it works with melee specs. Second, if you're melee, you're already standing right next to the mob for group looting quest items and skinning corpses, burning them, using quest items on them, etc. A third good reason is that caster gear at sub-78ish levels just ain't much to write home about. Neither is melee but the effecitveness of crappy melee gear is better usually than bad caster gear as the stats help more.