With a Level range from 1-70, starting a new character might take it’s time. Some players enjoy questing, others do dungeons to reach the maximum level. We dont take sides of how you should level, but if you are interested in reaching the Endgame fast, our Leveling Guide might help you on your journey.

Basics of Leveling in World of Warcraft

Experience in World of Warcraft

A fundamental part of leveling in World of Warcraft is Experience – abbreviated XP. It is required to advance through your levels. Many activities in the game grant XP, such as completing Quests, finishing Dungeons, and even opening secret lockboxes, gathering Herbs and Ore and Pet Battles can yield Experience. There are also different ways to increase your experience gain, by either using certain potions, enabling War Mode, Rested XP, or even Seasonal Events.

Rested XP

The Rested Experience system is designed to reward players for returning to the game after being away for a while. While you are offline, your characters earn Rested Experience which increases the amount of experience you gain by killing enemies in the game until the additional rested XP is depleted.

The Rested XP bar grows up to 150% of your level. This bar fills up faster and you gain more Rested XP whenever you log out in an Inn or in a Capitol City, so players should always try log out in either of those places.

Mounts in World of Warcraft

The ability to ride a mount is unlocked at Level 10. This allows players to quickly travel trough the world without walking to their destination by foot. To ride a mount, you first need to learn the Riding Skill. You are taught this by Riding Trainers around Azeroth. Mostly, Players will encounter them quickly in almost every main capitol of the game (like Orgrimmar or Stormwind).

Players are also able to unlock a Heirloom Mount, which can already be used at Level 1, by unlocking the Heirloom Hoarder achievement, which requires you to collect 35 different Heirloom items. After earning this achievement, you will be able to use the Chauffeured Chopper already at Level 1.

Heirlooms

Heirlooms are a special type of items in World of Warcraft. These can be purchased in Ironforge or Orgrimmar, and usually scale up to a certain Level. You can upgrade Heirlooms currently up to level 59. These Items increase their own Itemlevel everytime you level up, so these item will most likely never be replaced during the Leveling Phase.

Wearing multiple Heirloom Items will grant you certain set bonuses.

2 Pieces: Rested XP consumption is reduced by 30%. This simply makes your Rested XP period last longer.
4 Pieces: Increases your health generation while out of combat, letting you recover quickly from tough fights.
5 Pieces: Whenever you level up, you activate a Burst of Knowledge, dealing AoE damage and giving you a 40% main stat bonus for 2 minutes. Killing enemies extends this buff up to 4 minutes. It can be kept up as long as you keep killing mobs before it expires.
6 Pieces: Rested XP consumption is reduced by an additional 30%. This simply makes your Rested XP period last longer.

War Mode

War Mode is a feature in World of Warcraft which enables PvP in the Open World. You can read more about War Mode in our PvP Guide & Overview here.

War Mode grants certain bonuses to Leveling, which are very useful in speeding up your Leveling Phase.

10% increased XP rewards from quests and killing mobs. This can scale up to 30% if your Faction is under-represented in World PvP.
Unlocks PvP Talents, some of which are helpful for leveling and World PvP.

Exile's Reach - New Player Starting Zone

Exile’s Reach is an uncharted island located within the North Sea which serves as a level 1-10 starting zone in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. New World of Warcraft players automatically start in Exile’s Reach before moving to their faction’s capital and entering Battle for Azeroth leveling content. Existing players starting new characters are able to choose if they want to start in their race’s regular starting zone or in Exile’s Reach before moving on to 10-50 content. The story through the island culminates in a mini-dungeon of two bosses designed for 1 to 5 players, with scaling difficulty and no role requirements. Players can choose if they want to take on the challenge alone or with friends. Overall, the experience is intended to introduce new players to the world and the basics of the features seen later in the game.

Exile’s Reach is not available for allied race characters and Death Knights, Demon Hunters and Evoker.

Leveling Through Different Expansions

Chromie Time is a new feature added with the Shadowlands Pre-Patch that allows players to level from 10 to 50 in any zone they desire from Vanilla to Battle for Azeroth. Activating Chromie Time changes the player to a different phase from players outside of it, which causes all quests and objectives from Vanilla through Battle for Azeroth to scale up to level 50.

You can only activate Chromie Time after having a character reach level 50 without it. If you’re leveling your first character you can still level in old world zones like Wrath of the Lich King or Mists of Pandaria, but they will only scaling up to their maximum normal level.

How to Activate Chromie Time

In order to activate Chromie Time players must speak with Chromie in Stormwind or Orgrimmar. There you’ll be able to enable it by selecting one of the available expansions. This effect is character-based, not account-wide. Chromie is located both in Stormwind and Orgrimmar, near each city’s Embassy. The Embassy is where the Allied Race Totems are located.

The only way to leave Chromie Time is to return to Chromie in Stormwind or Orgrimmar and speak with her to turn it off. Chromie Time will also turn itself off automatically when you reach level 50, teleporting you back to Stormwind/Orgrimmar. Note the if you’re in the middle of a questline you want to finish, you can still go back and finish it. It just won’t reward any experience or scaling rewards.

World Scaling Without Chromie Time

If you choose to level your characters without Chromie Time, the world has the following scaling starting in Shadowlands:

Vanilla Zones: 10-30
Burning Crusade Zones: 10-30
Wrath of the Lich King Zones: 10-30
Cataclysm Zones: 30-35
Mists of Pandaria Zones: 10-35
Warlords of Draenor Zones: 10-40
Legion Zones: 10-45
Battle for Azeroth Zones: 10-50

Leveling in Dragonflight

In Dragonflight, it is mandatory to complete the Main Story Campaign to unlock certain Engame features which require all Chapters in every Zone. If you are playing throughout Dragonflight for the first time, there is currently no other alternative.

Completing the Main Story will bring players not to Level 70. It is required to additionally complete some Side Quests or Dungeons to be able to reach maximum Level.

If you are leveling an Alternative Character in Dragonflight, you automatically unlocked the Adventure Mode which allows players to level in any way they want.

Check our recommended Leveling Route for more information for Alternative Characters in Dragonflight.

Recommended Leveling Route

We recommend to:

Start Leveling in Exile’s Reach from 1-10, due to its Quest density, easy difficulty to complete, and you will be granted a run speed buff which significantly speeds up leveling in the area.
From Level 10-60, we recommend the Warlords of Draenor Expansion to quickly level up. These Zones have very dense quest chains, that reduces traveling time between certain quest giver. Draenor also offers many bonus objectives. These are one-time quest objectives that appear throughout the zones. Completing these will grant a huge amount of Experience for the time spent for completing them.
You can also complete your Leveling Journey until Level 60 in Draenor whenever you chose Chromie’s Timeline – Draenor, by activating it on the Command Board in Orgrimmar.

Leveling in Dragonflight is pretty straight forward. If you are playing on a New Account, you must complete to Main Story to be able to unlock Endgame Content like World Quests or Spark of Ingenuity’s.

If you are leveling an Alternative Character in Dragonflight, farming Experience in Azure Span by killing Enemies for the Cobalt Assembly Reputation is the fastest way. Using a Group for this is mandatory!

Usually, we would recommend to complete Dungeons aswell whenever you have collected multiple quests for a dungeon. Many quests are also found within the dungeon, so you might should complete each newly unlocked dungeon atleast once. Downside to leveling through dungeons might slow you down, depending on how fast your group can clear a dungeon. You should also not use Specific Dungeons

Party Sync - A Legit Way to Cheat

One of the features implemented in World of Warcraft is Party Sync. You are able to synchronize the Level of the highest member in the group down to the Level of the lowest Level player in your group. Your Quest Progress is also getting set to the one of the player with the lowest Level in your party.

This allows players to re-visit already completed content, and get rewarded experience only once more for completing those Quests. In our tests, this used to work in starting zones like the Orc Starting Zone, but this is no longer possible. You are still able to synchronize your quest progress back to someone who has not yet completed any quests in Warlords of Draenor, and you will be able to complete all Quests and Bonus Objectives again.

Addons for Leveling

Addons for Speed Leveling

WoW-Pro or Azeroth Auto Pilot are very strong addons which help you quickly through all Quests you encounter on your way to maximum Level, and help you adjusting your Route to save time whenever traveling.

General Addons

ElvUI is a very popular Addon compilation which replaces your UI completly. It redesigns Action Bars, Unit Frames, Name Plates and many other aspects of your UI.
WeakAuras is an addon which helps tracking your abilities, buffs and cooldowns, but also has even more advanced tools that can be used during the Endgame.

More information about our recommended Addons can be found in our New Players Guide here.

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World of Warcraft Leveling Guide & Overview

October 15, 2023