In two weeks of moderate playing, that also included a significant amount of raiding and Conquest badge farming on my main, my baby mage sped from 58 through the Dark Portal to Outlands, and up to 68 and into Northrend this weekend. This is thanks primarily to the many alt leveling changes that dropped in Patch 3.2.
Despite my long-standing dislike of Hellfire Peninsula, I forced the mage to start there, knowing it would quickly provide her with significant staff, hat, and boot upgrades. I did not need the chestpiece since she is rocking the new badge heirloom chest in addition to the shoulders. Together, these pieces provide a 20% XP increase from both questing and killing monsters. This is on top of any rested increases she had from time-to-time.
As soon as she dinged 60, she purchased her flying mount, now available at Thrallmar. This was the final key component to her zooming through the next 8 levels.
I cherry-picked my way through my favorite quests in Hellfire, Zangermarsh, Terrokar Forest, and Nagrand, hitting all the key quests with gear upgrades. I made sure to stop over in Mok’Nathal for the cooking recipe quests, and in Netherstorm for the cool pink goggles. I fully explored the map in each zone, grabbing the flight paths too. Each uncovered zone netted 1200 or so XP on average; in my final day in Outland as I finished up and got the Outland exploration achievement, I earned a solid 6 bars from exploring alone.
Some reminders for mages in this leveling phase:
- Be sure to go back to Ashzara any time after 60 to quest for your polymorph pig spell
- You can learn your Shattrath teleport at 60, then the portal at 65
- Especially if you have the boost from badge gear, keep up your mage armor at most times; the extra mana regen can keep you going from evocation cooldown to evocation cooldown, instead of having to drink every few pulls
I have not yet started any Northrend questing, but I did go through a few essential ready steps:
- My 80 sent her the heirloom tome of cold weather flight(costs $1,000 g from the cold weather flying trainer in Dalaran) so she could immediately start flying at 68
- I flew from Vengeance landing to Moa’ki Harbor, then up to Dalaran, grabbing flight paths as I went
- Once in Dalaran, I set my hearth there (can train for the teleport at 71)
- Got started on the cooking dailies
It will be interesting to see if her leveling velocity stays the course now that she is in Northrend, or if it is slowed down by virtue of having more folks out there jockeying for quest mobs, etc.
It seems 68-70 soar by in Northrend, and then levels off since there’s a large XP jump between 69->70 and 70->71. It’ll obviously be faster for you since you can fly. It took me maybe 5-6 hours of solid questing to do each of 70 and 71, with mostly full rested and 10% xp bonus.
From leveling my mage in Northrend I didn’t find other people questing in the area to have any impact on how quickly I leveled. What I did find, as a Frost Mage, was that the large increase in the amount of health that the mobs had is what slowed me down. I went from being able to rip through 8-10 mobs at a time in Outlands (I farmed the large groups of BElfs on the steps of Black Temple at 66) to running out of mana and/or hit points before I could take out 4 of the mobs in Northrend.
Some mobs were, of course, easier than others but I found in general that Frost was just too weak coming straight from Outlands. Once I made the switch over to Arcane things picked up, and then switching to Fire instead completely solved the problem. In the process of making the decision to change my spec though I was also upgrading occasionally to Northrend gear as well. So I can’t say for certain whether it was the talent changes that made things easier for me or if it was more gear related, but once I hit 74 Northrend became a breeze and I flew threw everything else, straight to 80.
But, that was before 3.1 came out as well.
yeah, that’s what I am worried about — it going from 3 hours max per level to double that… I’ll cross my fingers and report back!
I have always been frost (on this lady and my original Alliance mage), and figured I would have to pick up fire to be able to tear through things at this point. I am so used to frost mageing tho that I expect to suck at it for a while, hence dropping the cash on the dual spec.
I’ve gone through the same experience, but on my druid. With stealth + Flying now from 60-69 it has been incredibly easy. I waited until 69 to go to Northrend but I’m about to hit it up right now… as soon as the maintenance is over!
I definitely haven’t run into quest-mob saturation like I did leveling my main. Or too fast quest-mob repopulation issues – doing those spiders outside Warsong on day 2 of the expansion as a healer meant they would respawn before I’d finished killing the first one. I died many times within 20 yards of Warsong Hold.
Just remember they speed up 20-70 but they want 70+ to feel like an accomplishment. And the quests are still fun – the drunken, lazy, creepy pirates in HF? I literally lolled, even my third time through.
omg I LOVE the pirate quests — have done them on all my ladies thus far.
This will be the 5th toon I have quested with in Northrend, so I am really over the accomplishment of leveling…but keeping my eye on the shininess that is having a level 80 alt on the server…
Good luck! And I hope you have a gathering skill that maximizes the swooping in via flight form…
😉