More Levelling Tips From An Altoholic

As promised (threatened) last week, I'm continuing with my basic levelling tips. While some of them may seem straightforward or common sense, I seem to encounter a lot of people who aren't doing some or all of these things. I'll continue with my three questing-related tips.

Green Means Go, Red Means Stop: A lot of people try to do yellow, orange or red quests because they are worth more experience than green quests. That's true, but a little misleading. A quest gives the same amount of XP whether it's red, orange, yellow or green to you. Quests do give significantly less experience when they turn gray, of course. While it would be nice to do the higher level quests, it would only be beneficial to you if you could complete them as quickly as the green quests. It usually works the other way, however - you can complete green quests a lot more quickly than orange or red quests, or even yellow quests. Even with the "kill x mobs" quests where you do receive less XP per mob because they're green rather than yellow, the speed increase is usually worth it, especially since green mobs die a lot faster than yellow ones.


Coordinate Your Quest Paths: One thing I see fairly often is people grabbing a quest or two, running halfway across the map to do them, then running back for more, or even worse, getting another quest that takes them the rest of the way around the world. Twenty minutes of travel to do ten minutes of questing just isn't efficient. It's also often the case that if you're doing a quest in an area, there are other quests that can be completed nearby. There are plenty of places that offer lots of quests at once, and a little reading or research can suggest efficient quest circuits to complete them. Whether you have an epic mount or are running, travel still slows you down, so cutting down on unnecessary travel is nothing but a time saver.

Feel Free to Move About the Country: The last tip is to move around. Yes, I just said that unnecessary travel is a waste of time. Travelling from one level-appropriate quest hub to another is ultimately going to be a time saver. Let's face it - you can start questing in Stranglethorn Vale at level 30, but there's no way you're going to gain fourteen levels by questing there so that you can complete all the quests there. In the 30 to 45 range, though, there are clusters of quests available in Stranglethorn, Hillsbrad Foothills, Thousand Needles, Dustwallow Marsh, and the Badlands, for both Horde and Alliance. There are also quest chains that involve several of those zones. Travelling between zones, doing the quest chains, and doing a bunch of green and yellow quests while you're there makes for a much more efficient levelling experience.

Ok, so now that we've got all that covered, how do you know where to quest? Sites like WoWwiki and Wowhead have lots of quest and zone information available. Addons like QuestHelper and Tourguide can also help. Levelling guides can also be helpful, especially with making sure you're as prepared as possible for quests that have prerequisites or materials that can be gathered beforehand. I've tried a couple of levelling guides, both pay and free. I have to say that I recommend Jame's levelling guide and some of the other guides at wow-pro. I've said it before, anyway. They're free, and there's a community there contributing guides and feedback. They also have an addon (there's one for the Horde, too) based on Tourguide that I'm really liking right now. Just a warning that the addon version of the guides are still under development, so there may be issues. I sometimes hear people say that levelling guides take the fun and exploration value out of the game. That may be, but I also found as a first-time player that a guide was helpful in at least identifying zones that I should be questing in, and which order to try.