The Azeroth Cookbook

This is interesting because I’m not the fastest leveler in the world. I got my Rogue to 70 in just over 15 days time (using Joana’s Guide,) which is Ok, but it’s not breaking any records.

So here are a few things which slow me down, besides lack of experience, and what do do instead. This assumes that you’re leveling solo:

• Skip the looting. On my way to 70 I looted everything and skinned everything skinable. You get the loots, but it does slow one down. If you don’t need the loot or skins then skip the looting. Just kill and move to the next. Youi’ll save a lot of time over those 70 levels.
• Skip the gathering and gold grinding. For the same reasons. On your blast to 70 you might want to be as ruthlessly efficient as possible. Besides, if you follow the gold blueprint you won’t really need to gather.
• Skip the PvP. If you’re on a PvP server just put up with the ganking you’ll get and move on.
• Keep yourself in decent gear. By decent I’m talking about gear for leveling, not raids or PvP. Green gear will do you fine. Upgrade it every 10 levels or so.
• Let your mule do the buying. You should have an Auction House Mule. This is a low level character that will live at the AH 100% of the time. This character will do all of your buying and selling. Your mule buys the gear, then mails it to your main character. You’ll save plenty of time doing it this way. Your main should never visit the AH.
• Never visit the Vendors, except to resupply, repair, and sell your grey stuff. Everything halfway decent gets shipped to your mule.
• Get a Guide: I used Joana’s Guide for my Rogue, but I think Zygor’s Guide will get you there faster, not because the path is necessarily better, but because the guide in 100% in-game and visible on screen at all times and waypoints are set automatically. You’ll never have to switch to your main map or a pdf again. It also remembers where you were when you log out.
• Log out in an Inn. Get that rest XP. Most of us have to log out sometime, might as well do it at the inn.
• Never go AFK: If you want a fast /played time you don’t want to have your character sitting around doing nothing. Besides, if you’re on a PvP server you’re likely to come back to the computer to find your character is dead. Log out if you’re going to be afk for more than a few seconds.
• Hunters are faster, but Rogues do it from behind. A hunter will have far fewer repairs (never engaing in melee) and somewhat less need to keep his gear up to date, given a decent pet. This is why Joana and Brian used hunters for their speed leveling. If you find other classes to be more fun then by all means use them. Zygor’s guide is not class specific.
• Spec yourself for leveling: assign your talents to allow faster leveling. Some talents are great for raids and/or PvP, other are better for faster PvE. You can always respec later, it’s easy and cheap the first couple of times.
• Group your quests: Pick up a bunch of quests at a time. You’ll find that you can do two or three or four in one small area. Do all those at the same time. This is one reason that guides are so nice. All the quests are grouped, useless ones are dumped, and you do a lot less traveling.
• Questing is better than Grinding: You’ll level twice as fast by questing. ’nuff said.

The idea here is to be ruthlessly efficient. Dump anything that slows down your “get quest and finish quest” time. If you can do a quest without reading the quest description then don’t read it.

A full review of Zygor’s Guide is coming soon. It looks to me like it’ll be the fastest leveling thing out there, partly because it’s an efficient path, but mostly because it’s all right there on your main screen. Check it out here.