User:Yourbuddybill/Leveling

WoW Leveling Thoughts
For toons level 1 through 59, I found that easy experience points, silver, and fun can be had with a bit of time and planning. After that, Get them Alts to Outlands!


 * Bind on Account items that give rep bonus
 * Recruit-A-Friend
 * Special Events

Get 20% xp bonus
Using Champion's Seal, Emblem of Heroism, or Stone Keeper's Shard, and depending on the class armor restrictions of your toons, acquire the Bind on Account |Chest and |Shoulder pieces. Cloth works for all Classes to give 10% xp bonus each, but you might find Leather or Mail gives better stats for leveling YOUR alts. Everyone can use Stamina, and a little Resilience or Hit goes a long way, the hard part is deciding whether to take Intelligence, Spell Power, or Attack Power.

I like to spend Stone Keeper's Shard in Wintergrasp on Shoulders (resilience and stamina), and Champion's Seal on Chest in Argent Tournament Grounds, but whatever you have and can spend is good (old Emblem of Heroism maybe?).

I put the +4 All Stats Enchant Chest - Greater Stats on the Chest piece, you can consider other Chest Enchants that do not require a certain level. There are no level-less, non-reputation based shoulder enchants, so do not worry about them.

Get 35% xp bonus
New in Cataclysm, Guild Bank Vendor will grant access to Head ( +10% xp) and Cloak ( +5% xp) items.

Get 300% xp bonus
Recruit-A-Friend rocks! Even if you do not have a friend to introduce to WOW, you can easily make one or two temporary Trial Accounts using Recruit a Friend. If you are leveling a 58 Paladin, how does a level 1 toon in your group help? Well for most questing, grinding, and battlegrounds, not much except
 * they can Summon once per hour
 * the 3-times (300%) experience bonus ... level-less quests

Special Events are VERY Rewarding
Many Special Events like the Lunar Festival, Midsummer Fire Festival and Hallow's End have quests and daily quests that are level *, or level-less. This is important because, when grouping with a Recruit a Friend buddy, even a level 59 and a level 1 can get the 300% bonus xp when completing the quest since both were eligible, quest not grey, and receive credit. The Lunar Festival and Midsummer Fire Festival are a bit more dangerous because the quest givers are not in Inns, but outside the towns. Your level 1 TARFs will aggro stuff like crazy in Silithus! So be careful and be quick.

Tie it All Together
The Best and Safest example is Hallow's End. All the good events take place inside the various Inns and starting zone towns. This means LOW chance for random hostile mobs to get aggro on your level 1 and eat them. I use my little trial account recruit-a-friend noobs (gonna call them TARFs from here on) as taxi service and 300% xp bonus buffs.

Day Before the Event
Your Trial Account only has 10 days, figure thats really 8 days between setup and sleep and stuff. Ok, * are in the major Cities, and a bunch of Towns across Eastern Kingdom and Kalimdor. For Outlands and Northrend, you are on your own because (a) Trial Account cannot go to Outlands (need BC) or Northrend (need WotLK), and (b) Recruit a Friend summons and xp bonus only work for level 59 or lower.
 * Planning the Destinations

I like two because I can use one while the other is logging in/out or flying. Assuming that the level 59 or lower alts do NOT have all the flight points, and/or you don't wanna spend lots of time flying them around anyway, I make ten 10 level 1 toons per account per server. Class doesnt matter, but I used Warriors for the HP and AC bonus, just in case. Race kind of matters ... you should get atleast two 2 for each major vanilla city (SW,IF,Darn or Org,UC,TB) and then 4 others any race. Pick your race, class, and a name ... use a pattern like mytaxia, mytaxib. Set your Video size to about 2/3 or 1/2 normal. Set to Windowed Mode. Turn off SLI if you have NVIDIA graphics cards. Be mentally prepared to alt-tab and switch in and out of the WoW clients. Launch two, one log in to main paid account, one in a trial account (can do two trial account if you like). Position the windows so you can see as much of both as possible. Using your existing toons, you will seed these TARFs inside Inns across Azeroth. You should pop a TARF into each major city, and the starting zone town. To do this, fly or ride an existing toon to that Inn. Log in your TARF, escape out of the intro cut scene. Have the existing toon invite them to a group, and TARF accepts. Existing toon selects TARF, right-click, 'Summon Friend', TARF accepts. TARF should now set their Hearth here, and log out. Rinse repeat. Put one TARF in Booty Bay or Ratchet, Auberdine & Theramore(ally boats), Gromgol(Horde) Position the other TARFs at the most distant ends of the world, like Gadgetstan, Silithus, Winterspring, and Hillsbrad. Make some bag space. Put their Chest and Shoulder armor in the Bank. Go to the Special Event starting area, like Org or SW. Give the BOA gear to highest level under 60 toon. Get beverages, snacks, and sleep.
 * Create one or two recuit a friend trial accounts
 * Create your TARFs
 * Poor Man Dual Boxing
 * Position your TARFs
 * Prep your Alts and Self

Day of Event
Focus! Your are going to level your alts and make some money, so do not wander off for dailies or a raid. Log in to your first Alt (the one with the BOA gear) and the TARF in the same city. Form a Group. Set TARF to follow and do not mount up or cut corners. Find the NPC announcing the event and grab that quest. Find the Inn, do Trick or Treak with the Inn keeper, yeah candy! For the exciting part, now get the *. notice how you get ALOT of XP. If the reward would have been 140xp, with the BOA and Recuit a Friend bonus it will be 448xp (use Combat Log to see exactly). Grab any other Special Event quests now. If you need to visit orphans or get candy or other such, do it now and if its not soulbound, buy enough for all your leveling alts. Going from one spot to the next you will do many times. Log in to a different TARF, join group. Have the TARF invite your Alt, then Summon Friend. Set TARF to follow your Alt as it gets Candy Bucket (3.2 times xp AGAIN!) and does any other quests there. mark off this location. Grab the Flight Point if you do not already have it! Rinse Repeat to other TARF locations. Eventually, you will use up all your TARFs but maybe not be done with all the Inns. TARF summon cooldown is one hour. If you finish with one Alt in less than an hour, perfect time to use Boats and Zeppelins to go to other towns; if you got Summoned to Booty Bay, boat ride to Ratchet! If you got Summoned to Auberdine, boat ride to Exodar, Azure Myst, Blood Watch, then Summon to Darn or Telerador. Ok, MAIL the BOA gear to the next Alt toon. Switch to a different Alt, grab the BOA gear from Mail, and Start over. Ok, if you still need to get your Alts to places without your TARFs, you can send an Alt to one location, and have THEM summon one of your used up TARF (say from Silithus over to Feralas). That repositioned TARF can now be used to ferry more Alts! You do NOT need to do all the Candy Bucket or one-shot quests in the first day, but first day and all others you should make time to do the dailies. Ok, there are Daily quests too! Park your Alts in a Inn near the Dailies, like Brill or Goldshire. When you do those dailies each day, go FAST! With the TARF in group and following, log in, grab the quest, log out, log next alt, grab quest, log out, log next alt, ... etc until all have the quest. The Last Alt will now work on Completing the Quest, get credit, grab the pumpkin head, log out, next alt log in ... etc until all have the Credit. Often, 6 or 7 Alts can log in and get credit for Saving the Town from the Fires and the Pumpkin. Once all Alts got credit, or the credit stops being given, then log in to each Alt (grab BoA gear from Mail) and turn them in, then mail BoA gear to next alt. Yeah, you log in to each Alt 3x, but it means you quickly do the important part (getting credit) and then can leisurely transfer the BoA gear and do turn in. And the dailies will give alot of xp, and alot times 3.2 is triple alot!
 * Start Event
 * Main Sequence
 * Time is On Your Side
 * All Alts and all TARFs
 * Dailies Aerobics

Drawbacks
After using a week of Hallow's End to go from level 18 to level 23 on a Hunter, you will probably need to gain 25 skill points in Defense, your Melee weapon, your Ranged weapon, any gathering skill (herb, skin, mine), plus go visit a trainer. If you were embarased about your gear for your level, you will be even worse after this. Suck it up, get questing for new gear, or make your Main buy you presents, or have your Crafting Professionals make you some. Quests can easily go from Red/Hard to Green/Easy or even Grey/fahgitaboutit. Turn in completed quests, or finish the easy ones ("Go Deliver this Message to Capt. Foobar in Westfalls") before doing this method. Unless you really want some item, rep, or are forwarding a quest chain, ditch the grey and move on, possibly to a new zone.
 * Skills levels need to be practiced.
 * ZOMG Your Gear Stinks
 * Quests going Stale

Tests
Here are some summarized results of using BOA items, RAF, and special events to level alts.

2009 Oct
With two trial accounts, I could get an Alt to 25 Candy Buckets in an Hour (includes visit to the BC faction city/town and next zone, and the Booty Bay/Ratchet run). At 3.2 times this is equivalent to 80 Candy Buckets. Add in the Fighting Fires and Pumpkin Head dailies on six days ( which at 3.2 times is over 19 turn ins of xp), and I got five levels on my level 14 and five levels on my level 52. In two hours or less of play on that Alt, five levels.

2009 Nov
On Pilgrim's Bounty I got about 1.5 levels for the starter quests and first set of dailies, and 16 bars (80% of a level) for one day of dailies. Plus skill 300 cooking on all toons, some higher, without any Bear Flank or fishing in Azshara!

2010 Feb
During Love is in the Air 2010, changes were made for the quests so that (a) one did not have to grind obscene amounts of tokens from guards, and (b) the quests gave experience!

On several toons level 30 to 47 wearing Bind on Account Shoulders and Chest, and with a lil buddy TARF in tow, I had them do the Orgrimmar or Stormwind questline leading to uncovering the shipments and the one daily for spraying or passing out samples.
 * 83.3% at level 26 with TARF (no BOA)
 * 81.1% to 82% levels 40 to 47 with BOA and TARF (my level 14 from October is now 34)
 * 13.1% at level 60 no BOA, no TARF
 * 11.1% at level 64 with just BOA items (no TARF)

Doing the one daily for spraying or passing out samples, and a few Lovely Charm Braclet turn ins, my 30 to 47 toons gained 3 to 4 levels from this holiday ... without this method would have been barely 1 level.

Rolled a level 1 Human Warrior TARF, ported them to Stormwind, and completed the quest chain (with a level 40 toon assistant). That TARF advanced to 3rd level with 12 bars. Doing the daily for 8 more days, was well in to 7th level.

2010 June
During Midsummer Fire Festival xp and cash is fairly easy to get. Some bonfires, however, are dangerous for the TARF to be close, like Silithus and STV for example. Expect to spirit run a bit.

The various bonfires  *  with RAF were giving 14% at level 12, 8.5% at level 59, so 30 bonfires is in the 2.5 to 4.2 levels alone. Descrating flames pays off 2x, but can be much more challenging to get your TARF within range.

The no-travel dailies are each good for 2x what a bonfire gives (17% to 29% of a level!)  * For torch catching, because of the dependence on shadows, I suggest that Alliance do these in Ironforge, and Horde do these in Thunder Bluff.

Doing Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms along with 4 days of dailies, my 40 to 56 toons got six or seven levels each. The level 14 from October 2009 is now 51 at 2days 2hours played (did some random dungeons between Feb and June). Three hit level 60, so they are now out of the TARF experiment.

BONUS: With  tokens, these BoP shoulders Mantle of the Fire Festival are available for anyone. This is a great addition for a Level One Twink such as my Droplet, Choplet and Implette.

Summary
Not surprisingly, the Recruit-a-Friend bonus is a huge help, and the xp gains are most pronounced at lower levels.

Level Battery Power Boosting
This is an additional tactic that is fairly time involved. However, it should allow leveling a future character to level 60 (59?) in a matter of minutes. It probably only makes sense to do in a handful of situations:
 * Before a major expansion pack
 * Before a new race or class is added
 * When you are starting on a new realm/server

"Recruit-A-Friend trial characters (continuing even after upgraded) will receive 1 free level for every 2 levels gained up until 60. This means, a 'trial' character may successfully give away 30 levels (same realm and of the same faction). These levels may be stored up to 90 days, when the Recruit-A-Friend benefits expire.With this, you may give all 30 levels away at once—all to one character, or to multiple different characters. A character may receive gifted levels up to level 60." (see forums )

The basic idea is to create one (or two) characters on the main account ("helpers"), and two on the RAF account. The goal is to as quickly as possible, get all these characters to level 60. Each RAF can gift, to a primary account toon of lesser level, one level gain per two levels they attain. A RAF that reaches level 60 then has 30 levels to gift. Getting two RAF to 60 effectively gives you a "level battery" charged with 60 levels. Actually, you only need 58 stored up since level 1 is free.

WARNING: The leveling and gifting must take place in a 90 day window. After those 90 days, the stored levels are LOST.

Preparation
There is a 90-day period in which the primary and RAF accounts are linked. You MUST If you ONLY are doing this for a level battery and do not expect to keep these toons (that is, plan on deleting them), it may be best to choose clases you find easy to level; Paladin can heal and fight. Shamans and Warlocks are not so good because of the neccessary side quests for some abilities. If you choose different races, a teleport or summon may be necessary. Designated an existing toon to play the role of "the welcomer". Park Weclomer in the starting zone before you login to the RAF or Helper, bringing the following welcome package supplies:
 * 5 big bags, 50 gold, minor healing and mana potions, Level One Twink gear, buff food (gives 2 stamina/2 spirit)

Execution
Roll all four toons. Login RAF 1 to the starting zone, along with the Welcomer. Form a group, and hand over their welcome supplies, (bags first :)) and the welcome supplies for your Helper 1. Logout Welcomer, login the Helper 1, form a group, hand over its supplies (bags first). Do Quests to get to at least level 5, which leads to the first town with a mailbox. Do any quick local quests desired, but do not go past level 9 just yet. Mail away anything no longer needed, park in the INN, log out.  Now, repeat for RAF 2 and Helper 2.  Storing up Rested XP with one group while playing the other is a key tactic.

OPTION: You could level one RAF to 60, and two other RAF to 30 each. This may be a faster route to take, just make sure to grant the levels from the level 30 twins FIRST (from 1 to 30), then from the level 60 vet (from 30 to 59).

For levels 10 and beyond, trot out a RAF/helper pair to go leveling. Maybe take in a BG or two when in the early levels of a bracket ... you die more, but get more XP and Honor. Dungeons, buy a run for Deadmines, Stockades, Zul'Farack. Maybe do Scarlet Monestary as Random Dunegons using LFD. Just focus on quests and mob grinding.

Drain that Battery
Once the time is right to make the new character on your primary account ("Lucky Toon"), roll it, log in, and log in with RAF 1. Have RAF 1 grant 30 levels to the Lucky Toon. Login with RAF 2, grant 29 levels to the Lucky Toon. Congratulations, Lucky Toon is level 60. You are done with the RAFs and Helpers for now. Get to your home City. Read a welcome email (from the Helper!) containing bags and money, take Lucky Toon to get Class, Weapon, Profession, Riding training. Ah, now thru the portal to Outlands for your grind from 60 to whatever. On second though, maybe delay Outlands for a short while...

Drawbacks
Plenty! Besides that time investment (get 2 toons to 60), you have MUCH catching up to do. Buying Riding will be a tad expensive since your Reputation with your home Faction is Friendly at best. Buy a pile of Training, then build your spec, then get more training. Getting any gathering or secondary Profession up to 275 (so you can continue leveling in Outlands) is fairly time consuming. You need to start beating on some level 40-50 mobs NOW to gain those weapon skills ("Look a Hellboar. Miss.  Miss. ... Dead"). Enjoy the boats, zeppelins, and tram since you do not yet have any useful flight points. Enough QQ, since this may be enough to get you that head start on '''Realm First! Level 80 Murloc Bard''' one day.