One of the most frequently asked questions among the players, both new and veterans leveling another alt, is how to reach level 120 in less than 12 hours.
Being new to Battle for Azeroth, you should definitely fully enjoy such things as the amazing plot, beautiful locations and the adventurous atmosphere without rushing. It’s totally worth it. If you already have leveled a toon and want to reach level 120 on your other characters, or if you have a lot of twinks and want to start leveling professions, or if your friends are waiting for you to get to level 120 to do raids or dungeons, then everything comes down to powerleveling. Either way, let’s figure out how to make the leveling process smooth and easy so that you can reach level 120 as fast as possible.
Preparing for leveling
Useful addons
Azeroth AutoPilot
To save up a lot of time, it is recommended to use Azeroth AutoPilot. This speed leveling addon allows you to skip unnecessary stuff along the way, such as cutscenes, dialogues, automatically accepts all quests and turns in all completed quests with one click. It also provides leveling routes and brings along a number of other useful settings. It is easy to use and you can choose only those functions you need.
Skipping scenarios
- If this isn’t the first character you are going to level to 120, you can easily skip a familiar scenario or even two.
- The first one is The Battle for Lordaeron. The second one is the introduction for arrival to Kul Tiras or Zandalar. Remember that scenarios of both those factions are different and if you have not leveled a toon as the other one, it will be impossible to skip those events.
Useful items and consumables
Experience increases
- Let’s start with the newest one. Patch 8.1 brought us Draught of Ten Lands. After drinking such a mixture, you gain 10% more experience and your stats will also increase by 10.
- Insightful Rubellite – new Jewelcrafting gem that increases experience gains by 5%. Make sure to buy one off the Auction House and put it to good use.
- Turning on War Mode increases gained experience by 10% and if players of your factions are the minority in the area, it will scale up to 30%.
- Battle Standard of Coordination – your guild banner. Using this item will increase experience gained from kills by 15% for you and your guildmates for 15 minutes within 100 yards. You can maintain this buff with your guildmates by using it one by one. It is easy to do considering the 10-minute cooldown.
Useful mobility items and mounts
- New to Patch 8.1 are account-bound maps to unlock flight points on Kul Tiras and Zandalar – Honorbound Scouting Map and 7th Legion Scouting Map. These can be purchased from the War Campaign emissary to send to alts. They unlock after completing Pathfinder Part 1.
- Goblin Glider Kit – Allows you to glide and cross over long distances. A staple of leveling in no-fly zones, and incredibly cheap to craft. Allows you to move down from the high ground easily.
- Reins of the Azure Water Strider/ Reins of the Crimson Water Strider – If you want to level a toon faster than 12 hours then this mount is a must-have. There is a lot of water in areas, especially in Alliance zones. This mount will allow you to cross water and save up time instead of looking for paths around it.
- Apart from strider, you might need Reins of the Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth or Reins of the Grand Expedition Yak to repair your gear or sell grey items.
- Skystep Potion – Sprint that is faster than ground mount speed.
- Draenic Swiftness Potion – Swimming speed increase that is higher than the water mounts. Useful for quickly dashing from one water area to another, or if you want to move faster while in combat.
Consumables
- Flasks and potions from Legion will significantly increase your leveling speed.
- Potion of Prolonged Power – Incredibly cheap to make, lasts for a minute and bump your primary stat.
- Lightforged Augment Rune / Defiled Augment Rune – simple 1-hour primary damage boost.
- Drums of Fury / Drums of the Mountain – for classes without Heroism/Bloodlust it’s great helping tool to fight hard elites and rares and complete hard quests quickly.
Useful legendaries
- Each spec has a number of useful Legion legendaries that help during leveling, their effects stop working at level 116, but until then – make sure to use them to its fullest potential. There are some universal legendaries that are shared for many classes and well suited for powerleveling:
- Sephuz’s Secret: – Passive 10% movement speed increase, increasing to 70% when landing a CC or an interrupt. During the leveling process, it should be easy to maintain this item active at almost all times and the haste buff is a mini Heroism/Bloodlust which is also incredibly useful.
- Kil’jaeden’s Burning Wish: Deals an AOE damage on a 75-seconds cooldown. Very useful stat stick with a good on-use effect if you don’t have stronger legendaries.
- Plate: Rethu’s Incessant Courage – crafted legendary, heals you for 2% of your HP if you are surrounded by enemies and gives you a nice 15% speed buff if there are no enemies within 8 yards.
- Aggramar’s Stride will start out as a strong choice for open world content, but you’ll want to replace it with something else as your gear begins to provide less secondary relative your level fairly quickly.
- Mail: Vigilance Perch – Crafted legendary. Movement speed and a HUGE boost of movement speed outside of combat, very easy to stack and maintain.
- Leather: The Sentinel’s Eternal Refuge – Crafted legendary. Movement speed and a HUGE boost of movement speed outside of combat, very easy to stack and maintain.
- Cloth: Celumbra, the Night’s Dichotomy – Crafted legendary. Gives you somewhat good 1% per second HP regeneration with no enemies within 12 yards, otherwise reducing damage taken by 5% and increasing movement speed by 10%.
Leveling
Hearth of Azeroth
A Battle for Azeroth leveling stage starts with a necklace – Heart of Azeroth. You need to fly to Silithus and take a quest from Magni Bronzebeard. After completing the scenario and obtaining the necklace you can use azerite armor and choose traits. It won’t really matter which traits you choose while leveling.
Choosing the path
Patch 8.1 allows players 2 ways of leveling. The first one is questing – level your character by questing as you travel around Azeroth and follow the storyline, crossing with War campaign missions. It is important to discover local quests, flight paths, and level reputations.
The second way of leveling is island expeditions. If you don’t mind farming the same mobs for hours then leveling through expeditions in a group is a good choice, they are easy to complete particularly before hitting level 116 with all your legendaries still working and secondary stats not affected by scaling too much.
Questing
The zone choice
You can start your journey in Azeroth in any zone. If you play Horde it is recommended go to Vol’dun first because of the weird scaling of mobs at the last levels which makes it difficult. Afterward, the most efficient zone order for Horde is Vol’dun > Zuldazar > Nazmir. Do all the quests Azeroth AutoPilot leads you to.
Alliance should start in Druvstvar for the same reason as being noted for Voldun, and the most efficient zone order for Alliance is Drustvar > Tiragarde Sound > Stormsong Valley.
Also, if you want to level fast, it’s only worth going in a dungeon if you have a quest in it, which you will get, one for every location at the end of questing. You can get fine loot in dungeons but gain a little experience. It is better to get to level 120 as soon as possible and do more difficult mode dungeons for gear you really need.
Rares and treasures
During questing, you will encounter rare mobs and find some treasure chests. While it’s better to avoid rares, given that the experience they grant and the loot they drop isn’t worth the time to take them down, while treasure chests, on the other hand, are worth taking as they grant you War Resources needed for the War Campaign. Collect the treasures along the way, and the rest can be picked later while doing world quests at level 120.
Do not sell scrap to a vendor
While leveling, you will obtain a lot of gear. Do not sell gear even if you don’t need to equip it, and save it to utilize in a shredder later. This works the same as the way the Obliterum Forge worked in Legion, but instead of obliterum, you gain crafting resources after item utilization.
Alliance Scrap-o-Matic 1000 is located in Boralus, at Tradewinds Market, you can find it by coordinates 77,16.
Horde is using Shred-Master Mk1 which is located in Dazar’alor and can be found at 45,40 at Terrace of Crafters.
War Campaign
War Сampaign is the main storyline of the expansion which leads to many options in the game: followers quests, additional flight paths, and other bonuses.
First of all, you need to choose a leveling zone and go to the ship docks for the war campaign. You will be asked to gather 100 War Resources. So it’s better to do all the quests in one zone entirely and then return to the ship at level 112 -113.
After completing that you will be met with your followers and told how to maintain them. You will also gain a choice between locations for attacking an enemy island. The first base can be settled without any level restriction. At level 114 and 118, you can establish other footholds into enemy territories.
The most efficient way to progress through the War Campaign is:
1) To complete the first zone entirely;
2) Do your first foothold;
3) Complete the questline in the second zone;
4) Do a second foothold quest;
5) Head back to the third zone and quest there. By now, legendaries should be inactive, thus feel free to replace them with better quest gear.
6) Once you hit level 118, get back to faction hub and complete the last foothold quest. The further quest chain is gated by reputation with 7th Legion for the Alliance and the Honorbound for the Horde.
Expeditions
As mentioned before, Island Expeditions are easy to complete particularly before hitting level 116 with all your legendaries still working and secondary stats not affected by scaling too much.
In order to get into an expedition, you need to queue for one using the Expedition Map at the Port of Zandalar or the Boralus Harbor. Expeditions are scenarios for 3 players, and if you take your friends it will be easier. While leveling in expeditions try not to get too far from the group. Walk to the marked spots on the map, kill strong enemies and collect the azerite around you as much as possible.
Professions
Choose gathering professions such as mining and herbalism and level them while questing. Gathering grants you additional experience and you can get gold by selling gathered resources at the auction house. While rested, each mining and herbalism node will award nearly 4,000 experience points which makes it so that four to five herbalism or mining nodes are equivalent to one quest.
Keep in mind, if you have Sky Golem mount, you don’t need to dismount while gathering herbs, which combined with gloves enchantments that increase the processing speed (Zandalari Mining / Kul Tiran Mining and Zandalari Herbalism / Kul Tiran Herbalism) will save you a lot of time.
Summing up
A Battle for Azeroth expansion offers variable routes to level character, each one with its own pros and cons.
Leveling by questing:
- Pros – a lot of reagents after utilization, leveling professions, and reputations at the same time, gear, some gold.
- Cons – takes a long time, doesn’t give much of azerite.
Leveling in expeditions:
- Pros – fast to complete, gives a lot of azerite.
- Cons – lack of gear and utilization resources, no reputation and profession leveling, no world exploring.
Quest leveling is important for your main character, as you gain much-needed reputations, gather some gear to start with and complete storyline achievements needed for meta-achievements such as Pathfinder. Expeditions are a good option for leveling alt characters in a party with friends.
And what about boosting? For this you have Overgear! Choose the way of leveling you want and relax. When you return, your level 120 character will already be waiting for you.
