Cataclysm multiboxing 80-85?

[Negativ1337]

Hey there guys,

How are you planning to level up to 85? Anyone knows if there are a lot of multibox-unfriendly quests in cataclysm?

I am thinking of just questing as much as possible, i really would love to do dungeons but i've seen how hard bosses and trash is in cataclysm, and have no idea to work out the crowd control.

I was thinking to do 80-82 quests/instances
82-83 #1 leveling area
83-84 #2 leveling area
84-85 sahara

How about you guys?

Kind regards,

Team Overdose

[Vecter]

Hey there guys,

How are you planning to level up to 85? Anyone knows if there are a lot of multibox-unfriendly quests in cataclysm?

I am thinking of just questing as much as possible, i really would love to do dungeons but i've seen how hard bosses and trash is in cataclysm, and have no idea to work out the crowd control.

I was thinking to do 80-82 quests/instances
82-83 #1 leveling area
83-84 #2 leveling area
84-85 sahara

How about you guys?

Kind regards,

Team Overdose

I have read there are a bunch of collection quests and a ton of phasing which we all love as boxers. I thought in regards to collection quests though that each mob drops the needed item and every member of your party can loot it. Not sure if that is still true. That would help.

Questing vs. Instances? All depends on Queue. Plus for questing have to battle with everyone else. I probably will do a mix.

[gunsun]

I was thinking of running WoTLK heroics for 80-81 to avoid crowds and avoid collection quests to start. Has anyone tried this in the beta? Is it a waste of time?

[thedreameater]

I'd love to see more discussion about plans from people who have done the beta.

Personally, I'm going to camp my toons outside BRC on the 6th. Great site here which shows exactly where to place them here.

Has anyone run through the underwater instance in the beta? Will it be too much of a headache to box?

I'm probably going to grind instances to hit 85, but the main question is BRC or Lich heroics? Someone posted here on WoWhead - :"I understand that trash mobs for 80th lvl players give 7k each, 4 bosses give 24k and end boss gives 32k each."

Also, a lil write up about BRC from our own forums here.

[naPS]

Questing is definitely the way to go. The phasing is definitely there, but I didn't notice it being too obnoxious when I leveled a couple of toons on Beta. I only had 1 beta account though, so I wasn't able to test out a lot of the typical boxer functions.

Apparently dungeon XP has been nerfed into the ground. I will attempt to find a link for this information, but that's basically what's been posted on my guild forums. A couple of guys are going for world first, so they're keen on how to get there the fastest.

Basically, your quest flow should be :

80 - 82 Hyjal or Vash'jir leave as soon as you hit 82, and go to
82 - 83 Deepholme leave as soon as you hit 83, and go to
83 - 84 Uldum leave as soon as you hit 84, and go to
84 - 85 Twilight Highlands

This is more or less the path I followed while leveling in beta, and it worked really well for me.

The main problem with leveling is that all the quest lines are completely linear. You HAVE to move from quest hub to quest hub, there's no way around it. It's going to be a nightmare on launch day. Some of the quest lines have to be completed before their dungeon quests are unlocked, even though all the starters for the dungeon quests are inside the entrance to the actual instances.

Vash'jir shouldn't be too bad for boxers. You get an underwater mount pretty much right off the bat that makes things just like flying. If you can fly with your team currently, you'll have no problems with Vash'jir. The only issue I had was that everything is 3 dimensional there, and can make it difficult to find mobs and other shit you're supposed to find. Also, Blizzard felt the need to stuff everything into caves in Vash'jir, and then made the entrance to the caves difficult to find. Fun. I found Hyjal far less irritating than I did Vash'jir. Oh yeah, there's a pretty long quest chain where you are phased as a Naga where it acts like a vehicle. Could be a real cock-block to multi-boxers.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm still going to grind some dungeons with my own team. It's just supposedly not the fastest way to do things right now. Also, it's recommended you fill up your quest log with 25 completed quests - you can get all 25 from Icecrown dailies, and turn them in immediately after launch. This nets you about 500k experience, and puts you 1/3 of the way into 81.

The experience levels needed for each level are as follows :

At any rate! The numbers:

XP per level:

80-81 1686300
81-82 2121500
82-83 4004000
83-84 5203400
84-85 6546500*

84-85 was changed post-beta to be 40% more, so it probably is around 9.2M.

Quest completion:

hyjal - 115/115 (10-15 more; achievement stopped at 115)
deepholm - 90/125
uldum - 108/108
th - 86/120
~424 quests total

This was with about no rest experience, but also without pre-questing 25 dailies (which would be around 500k of level 80-81).

Total time, grouped, was 15.5 hours.

Here's a post from our guild forums :

Everyone should have their hearts in Stormwind. When the shattering hits, the dalaran portals will be gone anyway. Before heading to Vashj'ir or Hyjal, pick up old world flying from the flight trainer in Stormwind, otherwise you're fucked. From there, you can go to new questing.

You can get around a third of a level by queuing up 25 daily quests (hodir, icecrown, toc, etc) and turning them in before heading to Stormwind.

Tracker Snacks and Blackened Worg Steak can be handy if you aren't a class that can track. This will help with a few quests.

Pick up new food and water when you hearth to stormwind before heading out.

When you hit level 82, go to Deepholm and quest it to completion. When you hit 84 in Uldum, bail and go to Twilight Highlands asap.

Movement speed increases are one of the most valuable and effective ways to reduce leveling speed. Ditto mount speed. Swiftness of Zanza (though you only get one) is nice.

If you are doing Hyjal first, do NOT click the mole machine. Trust me. It's a breadcrumb quest you can finish some other time, but if you take it and turn the quest in, you're stuck in blackrock mountain. fml.

Being Human for leveling is handy -- there are lots of reputations you build up as you push through quests and it will save you some time. As you quest, you may spot dailies as well; often they are solid XP.

Some people say pushing BRC for 80-81 or even 80-82 is good; at best, it is only slightly better than questing, but is potentially risk (one wipe and you're way behind; likewise, instance trouble could delay you). More data is needed, but definitely it only pays off in a full guild group absolutely raping the entire instance in 11-13 minutes.

Carrying an extra Tuskarr enchantment scroll or two will let you upgrade boots and keep run speed boosts (assuming your class doesn't have them already).

Swimspeed potions will come in handy maybe 3-4 times, depending -- worth grabbing a few.

Get the biggest bags you can and addons to auto-sell shit when your bags are full.

If you don't have one, an argent squire can be handy for bank/vendor access.

Be fully repaired before midnight! Save time!

(All info is specific to non-heroic modes.)

All dungeons have a few quests tied to them, given by NPCs just inside the entrance.

Blackrock Caverns
Mostly chain pullable if everyone has ilvl 264+, no CC needed (kicks are nice but not required), and very easy bosses. Be sure to have a ranged dps or two to simplify the second boss.

Worth farming for 80-82 with a solid group.

Throne of the Tides
(Not done this since it was nerfed, but...) RP and elevator waiting: eww.

The Stonecore
Trash requires CC or AoE damage will be overwhelming. Easy bosses, though they can take some time to kill.

Do Deepholm, don't bother farming this for xp as it will hurt in the long run.

The Vortex Pinnacle
Trash needs some CC and does pretty constant AoE damage.

The dungeons below give faction rep with tabards

Halls of Origination
Not much trash and it doesn't require CC. Lots of bosses.

Lost City of the Tol'vir
Trash needs some CC.

Grim Batol
Trash needs some CC. And there is a ton of it -- five to a pack typically.

[Ualaa]

I'm planning on flying around for Herbalism with the first team.
Do as much of that as I can possibly stand.
Given the 29 alchemists I'll want to level...

Chances are, the majority of the leveling will be questing.
And probably battlegrounds on the BG weekend.

Might do the intro quests, even with the first team.
As the gear is supposed to be more of a reset than Classic > Burning Crusade.

Chance are, I'll rush two teams, as I'm interested in having an alliance and horde team for rated battlegrounds.
Ideally get the accumulation of points going asap.

But after that, take my time for subsequent teams, and read every quest at least once; experience the game and its' lore.

[Tyval]

I'm hoping to level mostly in dungeons as I figure it will be good practice as well as a way to avoid the crowds.

The only thing I'm not sure of is if my current gear will be enough for the first two instances with the gear/stat inflation. I probably average around i232+ (have some 264 and 251 but also still sporting several 200s).

Though reading above I guess maybe that isn't a sound plan if exp has been nerfed.


I was also curious if doing the lvl 80 heroic dungeons would be worthwhile from an experience standpoint? Of course no nice upgrades going that route.

T

[Kedash00]

i dunno what the hell i'm going to do since quest helper dosen't work anymore, i know bliz has their own version of it now but i'll prolly wander around before i get frustrated enough to read the damn quest and then finish them all. or do instances sounds good, just over and over and over. but that gets boring.

[naPS]

The gear reset is huge. I'm in all BiS on my hunter right now, and I've got about 33k HP. In Cata level 85 blues, I had 80k. :0

[Ualaa]

The quest helper site, recommended uploading the relevant .LUA file for accumulated data.
They said they were working on updating the program, and anticipated a couple of weeks to do this.
Which puts that at, about a week into Cata.

The Blizzard quest thing, has auto progress tracking, if you set that option.
You get a number on the main map, which shows approximately where to be.
And an arrow on the mini-map, but that fades away when you get close.
So it is a lot less useful then Quest Helper was.

Carbonite had a bunch of other options in it.
But a quest guide is part of the addon.
Might be worth checking out.