Leveling Speed, or: best way to level?

[Creazil]

I only have experience levelling 4 shamans, and the number 4 helped me alot. I levelled like this ..

1-8 - Questing.
8-40 - I had a friend that was willing to boost me.
40-60 - Most of the time questing, with occasional instance runs (boost aswell). I avoided gather quests as much as possible, but if the follow-ups were worth it I did them .. To catch up with the lost exp from not doing gather quests, we took a few instance runs now and then.
60-70 - Primary instance levelling with my friends 60 Tankadin, occational questing. I dicided to do all the Hellfire quests (even gather quests, Zzz) .. to obtain gold for my epic mount and a few other things, and the fact I can't do them at level 70 for the same profit, because of the level gap.

Boosting
This is ofcause only doable, if you're playing 4 characters .. I felt it went really fast, even compared to levelling a single character and I had no problems at all. I am unaware the best way to level as a full party setup, my brother is considering starting 5 characters, and he asked me how to level the most efficient way .. and I have no clue until level 40 :-)

Creazil

[Mendicant]

Boosting
This is ofcause only doable, if you're playing 4 characters .. I felt it went really fast, even compared to levelling a single character and I had no problems at all. I am unaware the best way to level as a full party setup, my brother is considering starting 5 characters, and he asked me how to level the most efficient way .. and I have no clue until level 40 :-)

Creazil

If someone else is boosting you, you can just leave 1 of your 5 characters outside every run. Leave out the one with highest xp and they'll stay pretty close together xp-wise.


I'll probably try ZF at 40, though I saw someone on this site say that BRD is a good place to go at 40 if you are being boosted... has anyone else tried BRD around 40? Also, does anyone remember how long it took them to level questing at 40?

[Havelcek]

I used to be 100% convinced that questing is the only way to level, but then I rerolled on Mag which is PvP and I'm rethinking that approach. After a long Sunday spent in the Tarren Mills area I spent so much time getting ganked and having to corpse-run, or wait for town NPCs to respwan, that I'm starting to think that it might be more efficient to just grind in instances, where noone can bother you.

[Boylston]

stick with SM:Cath until L40, when you can wear mail. It'll help a touch with survivability.

Quest from L40-58 by following a guide. You can probably skip most collection quests without too much pain (I did). You may want to have someone run you through some key instances (like BRD) which have a TON of high-XP quests that you can complete.

58+ is outlands, and you'll continue to quest from there on out.

I'd ignore the disrespectful comments about paying people to run you through content. If you have the cash, go for it. I powerleveled myself through SM:Cath, but I'd certainly have paid someone gold to do that since it's so efficient. I would stop at L40, though. ZF and other instances aren't worth the trouble, in my opinion.

[merujo]

anyways, the fastest way to level, is the one that u enjoy the most.
i barely do quests because i dont like that much, on top of that, its picking the quest x5. but some quests i like to do, and other i know they are worth, so just do a mix, whenever ur tired of questing, go to an instance, vice-versa.

[Greythan]

The PL boredom factor is something else to consider.

I'm currently PL'ing my four man team through SM. I've been there since level 20 and my little gang is now 32/33 (sig not updated). Once I hit 30, my enthusiasm has been challenged. I've found myself more recently hoarding honor in anticipation of season 4 on my main. I'm sure I'll get back into it, but the monotony is mind-numbing. There sure doesn't seem to be a more efficient way to level a four box team, however. My exp rate/hour seems to outweigh questing.

Looking forward to 40 for the mix of quest-boosting and instance-boosting for the change of pace. I've heard some mixed opinions on boosting more in ZF at 40, but I have to think now that I'll be sick of it. Hence, the mixed approach.

[Mendicant]

I'm definitely going to be questing pretty soon... I mean after 50 its not so easy for any 70 to aoe easily. Possibly a fury warr with my shamans healing, but, well we'll see.

Has anyone actually been boosted through ZF like 40-45 or 40-50? How was leveling speed?

I tried to on one of my chars before but I could not find a competent runner.

[Drizzit]

Has anyone actually been boosted through ZF like 40-45 or 40-50? How was leveling speed?

Doing that now. There are 4 easy quests there that are not chained which should get you a lvl by itself. It takes me about 40 mins to do a quick clear (i skip the stairs because i have on aoe being a rogue). I get about 6 bars per run at lvl 40. I rested the guys and was able to get 2 lvls in about 2.25 runs (was 40.5 when started and ended in 42).

My plan is to lvl there to 43 maybe 44 then turn in the quests. Do some grinding until lvl 45 then go to scholo. Team 2 (ZF Team) is resting when Team 1 is doing sm runs until 40.

[Lazzadorabcd]

The lazzador's are almost lvl 40.

I found that instancing is the fastest way to go. Generally I will try to do the quests in each instance also - assuming they arent requiring a long list of other quests first.

Questing is brutal and very time consuming. Also the more you instance the easier it gets because you should have all the best gear available to you if you are doing every instance 3-5 times.

[daviddoran]

I'm doing a mixed bag here. I'm on a PvP server so sometimes you just can't quest. 70s that used to leave my solo characters alone always seem to wanna obliterate my lvl 20s....

What i'm doing is running my characters through at the earliest level they are able to zone in, and basically farm boss loot, and collecting greens to DE/upgrade/Sell on AH (Master Looter FTW!) And once the group is level appropriate, I run the instance normally. It seems to work pretty well, because I end up being pretty well geared. I did many a VC run, got just about every item I could think of on every character (easier on my 5 man mixed class team than my 3x locks lol) and when I was 22 I ran it the normal way and had way more fun than when running with my 70. The added intensity of being vulnerable added to my excitement. I also boosted through SFK, though not as often, as I'm Alliance and SFK is a long way for lvl 10s to run lol, and ran at lvl 24-25 but due to all my gear being red, I couldn't take down the final boss, and didn't want to bother hearthing one by one to repair and re summoning.

I am now farming SM Library for with my 3 locks and another pally (who will be used to boost the chars on the account with my current 70 boosting pally) and gathering rested xp for my mixed 5 man team. Both teams are 24-26 now, so I may experiment with swapping one out. My locks do plenty of damage, but can't rez unless i remember to SS a pally, and can't off heal. (I made a "oh crap" macro that has all chars that can heal cast a heal on my tank, helps a lot for many "oh crap" moments) I have a few more runs to go before they all have the gear from Doan, then it's off to Cath (and I guess GY, but I skipped it as the gear isn't as great, but there's always the rares, and paladins PWN undead) Then I will boost the other team and farm gear, my pally should be fully decked out in Scarlet Chain stuff by the time he runs it as the tank. It's way more fun to play at a slight advantage and own, than play slightly too low/undergeared and wipe a lot (hence my inability to take down Arugal in SFK with red gear)

I will probably also quest a bit as well, but when avoiding collection quests, and playing 5 characters, you tend to blow through available quests before you are able to pick up the next part of a chain, or level out of a zone. The strength of 5 boxing comes in being able to do dungeons by yourself, which easily makes up for collection quests, and gets you some nice gear to boot!