Power-Leveling Tips: A World of Warcraft Guide

Leveling a character in World of Warcraft can be a pain and seem quite a struggle for some, for those inexperienced in the ways of WoW I'm going to share some tips for power leveling your own character.

Power leveling a character in World of Warcraft does take time, however if you follow these leveling tips you'll definitely increase your leveling speed drastically.

Before you begin power leveling you'll want to download some specific WoW addons listed as follows, you can go to the Curse Gaming website, curse.com to get these.

To install these, you'll download them from the Curse Gaming site and unzip them to the following default directory (you'll have to find it on your own if you've changed this):

C:Program FilesWorldofWarcraftInteraceAddons

Quest Helper

This is a wonderful addon for power leveling, and a must-have for new players that aren't familiar with the game yet. It is very simple to use. Once you collect all the quests in a certain area, it will show you the most efficient path in which to complete them, as well as exactly what you need to find or kill.

Titan Panel

Titan is another useful addon that I definitely recommend for power leveling. Once you install it and enter the game, it will display a thin bar on both the top and the bottom of your screen that will show you things like armor durability percentage, how much gold you have, how much experience you are getting per hour, time to level, available bag space, etc.

Those are the two basic, and in my opinion most necessary addons to get for power leveling, however there are thousands of addons out there and you can always go back and look for more advanced ones as you see fit. Auctioneer and Gatherer are good as well if you plan on working on your professions and making money while you power level.

Once you install these and get them working, it's time to begin power leveling to the end-game!

Power Leveling Tip #1 - Plan out your talent build

For every specific class in WoW there are different primary talent builds you can use that are better for certain things. For power leveling you will want to build your talents in such a manner so that you are at maximum efficiency when killing monsters. Below is a brief list of each class and their best power leveling talent tree, however be sure to go research the specific build so you get the most out of it.

Druids - Feral

Hunters - Beast Mastery

Mages - Frost

Warriors - Arms or Fury

Paladins - Retribution

Priests - Shadow

Warlocks - Affliction or Demonology

Shamans - Enhancement

Rogues - Combat with sword specialization

Power Leveling Tip #2 - Don't die!

While this seems obvious, I don't think many people realize what a time sap dying really is to power leveling. If you find yourself in a sticky situation while fighting creatures and you think you might bite the dust, run for it! When you die in World of Warcraft your spirit will be sent to a graveyard and you'll have to run back to find your corpse and resurrect, this can be as long as a five minute run depending on where you died relative to the graveyard. Death will really cut into your efficiency, and is a horrible use of your time. Run away until the monsters stop chasing you, recover, and go back and try a different method.

Power Leveling Tip #3 - Time management

Time management is a big deal when you're trying to level your character quickly. It's very easy to get side tracked. Attempt to make the most of your play time by questing immediately once you log on, and try not to linger in cities when at all possible. Be sure to get any flight paths you come across, so you can fly back to that point if needed. Set your hearthstone to Shattrath City in Outlands (get a mage to port you) so you can have easy access to all of your factions major cities via portals. And, as previously stated, don't die.

Power Leveling Tip #4 - Questing

Since a recent patch, which if I remember correctly was 2.3, completing quests gives you more experience than it used too. There were also many more quests added to the game to improve leveling speeds. Questing will yield the highest amount of experience in the shortest amount of time in most cases. When you get to a new zone, gather up all the quests in the area and then use Quest Helper to guide you to completion. Questing in this manner will shorten your time spent due to not running back and turning in single quests one at a time. Do it all in one fell swoop.

Power Leveling Tip #5 - Don't be afraid to grind

Grinding is the art of killing monsters repeatedly in such a fashion that by the time you kill the last one in the area, the ones you first killed have respawned and you can begin the cycle over again. Grinding is boring, I'll just get that out there, but it is necessary and faster than questing at some points in the game. Put on your favorite music, get some munchies, and get down to business. Grinding is appropriate when your quests start to thin out. This tends to happen in the mid 50's where you might have finished a zone, but are a level or two shy of starting the next one. If you get in this predicament, find a spot that isn't heavily populated with other players but has a large amount of monsters, and start killing.

Hopefully the above tips help you to power level your World of Warcraft character faster and more productively, if that is your goal, but remember that you should take breaks often from leveling so you don't burn yourself out. Above all though, have fun!