Leveling with RAF - which way?

[daviddoran]

Nice, so as long as the group was initially formed by a level-appropriate group, the bonus exp sill applies. That right there is the money. up until level 50 or so is when that bonus is more than 1 entire level. That's when it starts to slow down, but by then, you are so close to Outland dungeons, that it is only a minor speed bump.

[cmeche]

Correct, the game still looks at it as a level-appropriate group(I get the Satchel and Xp reward).. And the best thing is that ther is no travel time. Just que up and port your booster to the dungeon.

[hyphnos]

I've used RAF multiple times - now bear in mind that i use either pairs of 2 or 2 pairs of is better, combined with currently a well geared 80 or 85 mage. Warlocks will do, but arcane mage with a 2 seater rocket owns all. hunters work well for upper level dungeons like HofL with lots of super trash instead of small stuff, but a well geared mage won't have any issues.

RDF penalizes you by making you wait 5 to 8 levels to get in dungeons that pay MUCH better XP even though you have to move manually this is not a big deal because the dungeons I use are close and because of summon friend being 30 minutes due to the level of my 2 man guild (18 nearly 19 now with 2 people boxing)

You can enter most dungeons many many level before they open in RDF bear in mind that xp is worse initially if you are too far below the dungeons mob level but it will escalate fast and in the crowded dungeons like scholo and stratholme and the two blackrocks sheer quantity makes up for and you'll notice your chars get more and more xp as they level when it levels off and starts down time to move on. i usually don't even wait for xp to peak before moving on.

Assuming you have it of course heirloom on.
If you don't have a levelled guild, join one that takes anyone.
Quest to 11 (for alliance in the human area I have found to be fast)
Go directly to SFK (my assumption is your upper level char has a RAF rocket, this helps a ton)

SFK (Shadowfang Keep) Place your new chars against the rail at the door.
Run the mage through the zone killing every mob with arcane explosion
Profit

2 -3 runs should get you 15 and open the stockades for alliance.

Stockades - too short a dungeon but excellent XP well into early 20s but I usually go to SM cathedral, move new toons to the courtyard door (out of LOS) kill lower lvl, move them to the bottom of the stairs, kill upper courtyard. Eneter cathedral. tag boss, whole cathedral comes running, arcane explosion bam 1.5 to 2 levels.

Anyway, SM Cathedral the Scholomance, then Stratholme Main, Statholme service AS soon as you can get in. In the case of strat it's 37 if remember. Scholomance may be as low 31 or so. These levels are well below the dungeon quest levels which tripled are worth doing (scholo, both stratholmes). Once you're 38 do scholomance once for the quests, then do stratholme as soon as those are open.

Do Strat service entrance repeatedely take a bit of time to loot on occasion so you don't hit the hour barrier until you can go to blackrock depths/spire. wow wiki has a fairly but not entirely accurate list of what level you can enter a dungeon manually. a good but not alwasy perfect indicator of when dungeon quests are available is the min level on the RDF to enter. Usually matches up but not always.

do those to 57 - head to Hellfire ramparts til 58, grab the head clicky quest off vazrudan. one pass should get your toons 58. turn in quest. go to blood furnace. do blood collect quest and clear zone until 61 or 62. I prefer 62 and go straight to mana-tombs. 63 move to setthek plow setthek til 65. you can either go back at 64 and do mana tombs quests, then at 65 the 2 setthek quests and at 68 the shadow labyrinth. I dont use SL because you can't get out fast and the mob level isn't much higher than setthek. if you want to skip the quests (well worth doing) then go directly to botanica at 65. more boss kill xp if you're trying to level your own guild there as well.

at 65 go to botanica (you can follow your toons behind and at the end walk out the back and be at the entrance.. no need for dungeon finder to reset. each pass there is about 330k xp tripled.

i usually stay in BC to 70. Then i grab quests for Utgarde keep, queue for it, do it once. head to nexus. grab the one quest you can get w/o screwing around outside. nexus til 71. then move to draktharon keep manually (can't in at 71 via RDF). Skip Novos. Plow dungeon, in the spider room past trollgore let the spiders run away spawning babies worth 800is each. open the cocoons with ice lance. Kill drakkari. finish dungeon.

Only negative.. running out. which is why at 73, you move to gundrak. do the quests at 74. then go to light's breach. do the bajillion points of quests you can do there with in 15 min. Do the ring event at 75. at 75 go to halls of lightning. (about 600 k plus per pass)

level to either 79.9 or move to cata and level to 80.9 for the referring account chars. Grant to 81.99 once the referred accounts get an 81 on them. conserve the first 81s levels somewhat to grant the more painful upper levels. one character can get 2 to 3 chars fully past northrend once positioned at the end of level if you're only keeping the inner account.

two accounts have instant 82s, outer accounts triple xp works even with 85s (at 80 in cata zone quests to 81). At 100k per quest a few minutes in hyjal and opening vashjir and hyjal porals will get you most of that.

That's how i do it and me and my friend have 60 chars 82 plus and 17 85s.

I do use the RDF to get to sunken temple which is worth one pass high 50s or at 60 or whatever due to the quests.
once i get in range of some of the few 60s or 70s i have left to make full groups (never did 5 RAF together always 2 pairs of 2 with a high level to mass slay).

and there you have it. the way to have insanely too many chars and any class you want to play around with 81 or 82 levels in with triple xp which of course with guild and heirloom works out to a normal 400% plus really.

The big question in dungeons is to loot or not to loot. if you want pure xp , grab the boss loot for your toons and plow on. with a second person driving your new toons they can loot while you kill, best of both worlds.
And the best side effect is rockets. )

i know a lot of this is obvious - but i've worked out the sequence over time and can easily make 4 81/82s in a leisurely weekend.

Enjoy

[Molson]

I have done RAF twice. The first time, I had my original Vanilla account, and I got 2 other accounts. I ran with an 85 from the original account and had the other 2 accts have chars and we went to 60. I did this ALOT...too much.

With the announcement to 80, and my boredom of just messing around, I decided to go full out 5 boxing. The problem with running all 5 at once is my screen isn't big enough on my windows PC and I hate the smaller screens. So what I've done is lvl 3 with a 4th account lvl 85, and 2 with another acct lvl 85.

1-15 is pretty slow outside the human areas. I suggest you do this:

Whatever race you pick outside humans, make a human on the other acct and summon that race. I found dwarf to be horrible, and if you are running a multibox of shammy's and choose them, you will hit 15 way faster in human lands: I only take the 1 collecting quest in the newb zone and none of the goldshire ones. (There are tons of horde guides out there...sadly not a lot of alliance multiboxers...)

I usually do Deadmines until 19, which is 2 runs from lvl 15. I guess I could go in earlier, but I find it only takes an hour or so to do a couple cool quests, and I want the rep plus huge quest xp.

At 19, I do Stockade until 26-28. It depends if I am looting for upping tailoring/first aid or just cleaning through. This RAF, no looting, just killing.

26-28 I hit SM untl I can do ZF. ZF I like as you get mounts and can move around nice and fast. There are 4 quests in there too, which I like.

Sometimes I get bored and will throw in Strat for the mix.

I usually do BRD for the quests, then LBRS/UBRS. Typically though, I just farm UBRS with a 85 who can DE if possible...I started to loot as I could clean it too fast and get locked out of instances. DE green/blues those sell really well.

60-70 was said above. I found Botanica to be my favorite place. Manatombs is nice too. I won't spend time farming anything I have to run out of...time = no xp/money.

70-80 I find really slow so far, as my first 85 is a pally...they suck for instance clearing. The other 85 I'll be using with my other group is a frost DK...really 2-3x faster in clearing instances.

As someone said, the rockets are gold. I'll have 4 chars with them after this round of RAF. SO worth the money.

If anyone has hints for FAST 75-80 please share. I find this is painful.

Also, for my point bump ups, I will most likely lvl chars to 70 and then use the bump ups to get them +10 to 80 after the initial 2-3 chars hit 80. So it means some accts will be STACKED with 80s, and others will only have 2-3+ many 70s. I find 70s I can use for twinks

Hope this helps.

BTW in Outlands/Northrend, loot everything. The amount of money I got looting everything in Outlands was worth it.

[sync00]

One thing I'm finding time consuming is figuring out which toon gets the loot.

[sync00]

so far I'm dual boxing my team using Zygor Guide and doing Quests.

How is it working out with Zygor?

I'm trying to avoid collection quests and now realizing there sure are a lot of them in WoW. Zygor doesn't seem to have a way to skip entire quest chains which is a huge nuisance.

[Molson]

I'd pay good money if someone had a 70-80 RAF friendly guide for the FASTEST possible way to get to 80. Running instances with an 85 (well the one I am using isn't great dps) is slow and boring. 60-70 flew in comparison

[Toned]

70-80 is still a pretty decent chunk of exp. 60-70 has been nerfed 2 or 3 times, 70-80 has only been nerfed once since WOTLK. If you notice 4.3 notes the 70-80 leveling experience is being revamped.

[Molson]

70-80 is still a pretty decent chunk of exp. 60-70 has been nerfed 2 or 3 times, 70-80 has only been nerfed once since WOTLK. If you notice 4.3 notes the 70-80 leveling experience is being revamped.

I did notice. Unfortunately my RAF runs out Dec 5th or so, and I doubt 4.3 will be out before then. If it is, it won't be out for long before that.

I think what I am learning is some more effective ways to do it.

Edit: Thought I would add a few things I am going to do:

Wait until you ding 70, then do the chain of battle quests...should still give about 30-40% xp into lvl 70. Start doing some of the quests in the startup zone. I HATE nexus and find the xp/hour is crap...so do that until 71+. I have been doing Drak...boring as hell too. I need about 3-4 runs per lvl but each run takes time, and the one boss sends minions to my parked guys...not cool. Easy to handle with my DK though. I am doing Violet atm as I can do 5 fast, then go do some dailies, come back do 5 and i can vendor/repair quickly and NO running. At 75 I'll hit HoL (tonight) and from what I've read, that is fast as hell.

I plan to have a minimum of 3 full teams, and then my RAF main accts will have a few extra 80s which I'll keep in reserve.

[vieux]

Few things to add
At 42, start doing BRD and for best XP dont run the whole thing, just these areas: Dark Iron Highway, Detention Block and Arena area. For Arena area, just park your toon inside the ring and run around the outside and above. Only run the whole thing when you want to finish quests.

On loot, i do Master loot and set the high level running the instance as the master looter. Both low level set pass on loot, this way you can just sent the loot direct into the bags of low level and you dont miss anything if you want to loot.