WoW 1-60 Leveling Guide In Shadowlands / Dragonflight

Hi there it's Larold, today I'm going to be talking about how to level from 1 to 60 in shadowlands and dragonflight, I planned ahead and checked this stuff out on the dragonflight PTR in beta and it holds up there although that could change by the time we see a pre-patch, as it stands right now leveling to 60 is actually a bit faster in dragonflight than it is in shadowlands so if you've been thinking about leveling a new character for dragonflight or leveling an Allied race for the achievement in the transmog you can do it right now when it's really easy or you can wait until dragonflight when it will be even easier.

Earlier this week Blizzard added the Winds of Wisdom buff to shadowlands wow, that’s a 50% experience buff and it will be active everywhere in the game until the dragonflight prepatch, lizard Hassid that they will take the XP buff away once evokers become playable during the dragonflight pre-patch, that wording is a little weird it sort of implies that evokers won't be available from day one of the pre-patch I’m probably just reading too much into it.

What we know for sure is that the buff makes leveling very fast, leveled up a brand new mag ar orc Warrior to 50 uh two days ago so I could finally get the Allied race transmog and it looks pretty cool, I think it took me around eight hours but at least an hour or so of that was spent AFK and Orgrimmar while I made dinner and I was playing protection the whole time so it definitely would have been faster if I had uh thought to play fury.

Now if you've missed out on the Winds of wisdom buff that's completely fine because blizzard has reduced the XP required to get from Level 1 to level 60 by around 60 percent in dragonflight, this means that you will actually level faster in the pre-patch or the expansion for that matter than you would have during the Winds of Wisdom buff period 50 more XP is not as big as 60 percent less XP so totally fine if you missed out on Winds of wisdom, basically Winds of wisdom is Blizzard just taking pity on us here in the final days of shadowlands they have really back loaded the XP reduction too so characters that are in the level 50 to level 60 range now will have to do like 70 percent less to level up.

I even double checked this by doing a bit of leveling on the PTR and the beta and I copied my hunter over just to make sure that the quest reward values weren’t being scaled down and they are not a shadowlands quest for a level 5700 that was giving like 12 000 XP on live still gives 12 000 XP on the beta but instead of requiring 311 000 XP to hit the next level I only needed 80 000 so I only needed to do like six or seven quests to level instead of 26, that's a pretty big reduction.

Also because of the reworks to the talent system in dragonflight I found that I was getting access to important skills much faster than I did in shadowlands, just as a couple of examples I got spell reflection at level 12 in Dragonflight leveling I got it at level 47 in shadowlands again I got heroic leap at level 14 in dragonflight and level 33 in shadowlands, there are some weird things that happen in the talent trees while leveling in dragonflight as well like in shadowlands as a fury Warrior you get Rampage at level 19, Rampage is your main rage spender so until you get it you basically don’t have anything worth spending rage on, in dragonflight you don't get it until Level 27 so that's like eight more levels of basically just having full range all the time, It's fine the class plays okay but I definitely think it’s a little weird but a better leveling experience overall in dragonflight than in shadowlands, this is just one weird little thing that popped up.

So let's start with the basics if you make an Allied race character it will start at level 10. if you make a Demon Hunter or a death knight it will start at level eight, any other character will start at level one and you'll be given the option to level through exile’s reach or the traditional starting zone for that character's race, Exiles reach it's a really really good leveling experience that is way more polished and efficient than the traditional leveling zones.

If you have a nostalgic attachment to one of the traditional leveling zones you can do it instead it will be worse but if you’re having more fun I think that's the point of playing video games, I'm not sure.

Now let's go over chromie time, is a very good leveling mechanic the blizzard added to the game in the shadowlands pre-patch, once you reach level 10 and go to Orgrimmar or Stormwind for the first time there will be an hourglass on your map that indicates where you can find chromie, she will let you change your timeline to any previous expansion in Wow's history, you can choose the burning Crusade, wrath cata, draenor area Etc. and level through it.

However you like chromie time is tuned so that by doing an expansion's quests you can go from Level 10 to level 50 in shadowlands or 60 in dragonflight, this means that you don't need to visit the shadowlands at all once dragonflight is out and you can basically just do what used to be the old leveling route from 10 to 50 and now you'll be 60 and ready to visit the Dragon Isles, it also means you don't have to go from continent to continent start in burning Crusade zones then go to the Wrath of the Lich King zones and cataclysm zones, you can just do one expansion's worth of content and you'll be ready to go on to the to the new expansions content.

Once you are done with all of that once you hit the level where chromie time ends chromie will teleport you back to her in Orgrimmar or Stormwind so you can start leveling in the latest expansions content.

So now let's go over the options you have in terms of leveling paths, first there's dungeons, dungeons are not necessarily the fastest possible leveling experience but they are quick and usually pretty smooth they're pretty foolproof if you level as a tank or Healer especially a Healer you can just level through dungeons the entire way your cues will usually be very fast, I tanked a handful of Dungeons and I had some cues that were literally instant but I also had a couple of cues that took a little while every single time I had any sort of weight it was waiting for a Healer, as soon as I figure out how to heal on a warrior I'll be the fastest leveler in the world I'll just be in dungeons yelling people's health bars back to full.

The way that you level quickly through dungeons is simply about 85% of the XP that you get from doing a dungeon is from the group finder reward for finishing the dungeon and doing any quests in the dungeon as well, because of this you want to do dungeons that you can finish as quickly as you possibly can, killing mobs killing bosses none of that really matters you basically just want to start and finish as fast as you can.

Mists of Pandaria has the fastest dungeons in the history of wow but I found that not as many people were queuing for Mists of Pandaria dungeons as were for the burning Crusade and wrath Dungeons and I think that's mainly because of classic wow, people know the TBC and wrath dungeons much better and while TBC and wrath dungeons aren't close to as quick or easy as mop dungeons.

I think you may wind up spending more time just sitting in queue trying to run mop Dungeons and actually be slower overall because of it, there are really only two downsides to doing dungeons to level the first is queue times which can be very fast sometimes of day but sometimes they can take a bit I found around five in the morning they could be a little slow.

If you spend five minutes in the group finder queue you will get an option to expand your search to all expansions which is great but I really wish that this was something you could just do Baseline I like Miss of Pandaria Dungeons and I love Pandaria from a Nostalgia perspective but the zones actually aren't all that great to level in, I would like to queue for mop Dungeons and level in Warlords of Draenor zones and you can't do that at the same time because using chromie time to Quest in zones locks your group finder cues into that expansion as well.

Second because you're using the random dungeon finder tool it is RNG sometimes you'll get the fastest possible dungeon and you haven't been there before so you'll be getting tons of XP per hour and finishing dungeon quests and everything is going great then sometimes you'll get a dungeon that is really slow or you'll be in a dungeon you’ve already done before so you don’t have any quests to do there now and now the XP per hour is much worse because of this leveling.

Through dungeons is pretty smooth and pretty easy but not the most consistent option and not the fastest option instead that would be questing and when it comes to questing there is no question Warlords of Draenor is the most efficient leveling expansion in the history of wow, it is so much faster than every other expansion this is specifically because of gorgrond which is the fastest leveling Zone in the entire game.

It has tons of bonus objectives and quests that stack on top of each other you just get so much done at the same time it's really incredible, spires of arak is a really fast Zone as well and it has a Garrison building that gives you a 20% experience bonus while you’re in the zone as well so it's just 20 percent better than most zones on top of actually being pretty good too.

Now in terms of the order in which you should do things I just want to give a few quick pointers rather than an exhaustive step-by-step process, here are some things to watch out for before you even think about the route.

You’re going to take when you hit Level 20 you gain access to war mode which you should absolutely take the time to go back to Orgrimmar or Stormwind to turn on this will make you level 10% percent faster and you should use it 100%, you also get some pretty nice PVP talents as well so that can help make leveling even easier.

You also unlock 100 movement speed for your ground Mount at level 20so you should visit a riding trainer to unlock that while you're in a capital city when you hit Level 30 you unlock flying and again you should go visit a riding trainer as quickly as you can and when you hit Level 40 you unlock Epic flying so again you want to make a beeline to a capital city to buy that immediately traveling back and forth is one of the biggest time sinks that you have while leveling being able to cut that down by having faster Mount speed is hugely important.

Now as I said leveling in Warlords of Draenor is the way to go, I go there immediately at level 10. This is a very important note that I feel I have to point out the intro quest line to Warlords of Draenor is incredibly good because Legion BFA and Shadowlands all had pretty slow inefficient InterQuest scenarios, a lot of people have lumped bfa's intro in with them and they’ll drop the quests that chromie gives you to visit khadgar the dark portal so that they can skip over the intro quest line, do not do this, do not, the BFA intro is extremely efficient questing done it a couple of times in the last day now it takes less than 30 minutes and it gives at least four levels, it is one billion percent worth doing you shouldn’t skip it.

Again it's really good it’s at least as good as anything in Gorgrond which is generally regarded as the best in the entire games like I said I start with the dark portal questline and do the first few question Frostfire Ridge to set up my Garrison, if you're just going for Simplicity you can just do that and then keep leveling through Draenor.

I haven't leveled as Alliance in a while so I would say this basically just is my entire level and guide for Alliance, sorry Alliance players maybe I'll level some Alliance characters and make some guides on that if people want me to do that let me know if so this is not the most efficient way to level.

Horde though and it's actually not as fun either at least to me, I think frostfire Ridge and talidor are both fairly mediocre zones and I would prefer to get enough XP elsewhere so that I can just do the bonus objectives in each of those zones and Skip basically all of the quest slides there in favor of areas that are more efficient.

So once I finish that opening section of wod I go to my favorite leveling Zone in the entire history of the game, Silverpine Forest, the quests in this zone are densely packed because it was created back in cataclysm and intended for players who didn’t have mounts available to them until level 20, on top of the efficiency this story is just really well told and the aesthetic is incredibly cool it's a big spooky shadowy Forest, i just really love this zone.

There are some good quests in Hills Brad Foothills too which culminates in the dernhold challenge which is a series of five quests where you basically kill one Elite and get a full Quest worth of XP for it.

My goal with doing quests in Silverpine, Hillsbrad and potentially even arathi Highlands is just to hit Level 30 so that I can unlock flying, once I hit Level 30 I go back to Orgrimmar get flying and head to Draenor, at that point I do the bonus objectives in the West and East sides of frostfire Ridge then I head straight to Gorgrond.

When you get the choice of what building to construct make sure you build the Savage Fight Club the buildings you construct in Warlords of Draenor zones affect the quests and bonus objectives you get in those zones, the fight Club is way way better than the lumber mill, if you summon the fight club NPCs with your Zone ability in gorgrond and then kill enemies while they’re active you can get Quest items which is amazing, there are 11 proof of strength quests that you can get by killing different types of enemies with a Fight Club NPC assisting, you that’s pretty amazing in terms of efficiency just being able to summon a guy and kill 11 different types of enemies you know magnetars or whatever and get full Quest XP just from killing one guy.

You should hit Level 40 while you're in gorgrond so at that point go back to Stormwind or Orgrimmar and train epic riding skills so you can finish the rest of the leveling process as quickly as possible, once you reach the quest strike while the iron is hot you are done with gorgrond, this is true for Alliance and horde this is the final quest in the zone and while it looks like a very basic breadcrumb Quest just to fly north to the iron docks and then pick up another Quest it immediately transitions into a scenario once you land, doing this Quest gives you like a thousand XP if you’re in your 40s which is insanely bad and it takes about 10 minutes to complete so definitely don't waste your time, I suffered so that you don't have to.

Instead fly down to talidor and do the bonus objectives there while you're on the way to Spires of Arak, Spires starts with a very simple Quest from a roadside vendor at the North End Of The Zone he tells you to go down the road to another NPC and say Shadows call or something like that, you get a series of these quests in the first 10 minutes your inspires where for some reason they all give a normal quest’s worth of XP which is great but they’re just go talk to this guy and say Shadows call and then here’s like 15 000 experience for it.

One of these guys is an archaeology trainer and you should learn archaeology from him so that you can interact with many of the archeology Treasures throughout the Zone, looting these Treasures gives you a bunch of free XP and since you have flying getting to some of the harder to reach ones should be super easy, if you'd like some help finding all the treasures in Draenor there's a very helpful add-on named Draenor Treasures that marks them all for you on your map, very creative name but really really helpful add-on.

After doing a handful of Quests for these bird guys you will get the chance to build your build, well construct your building in the zone and you should choose the tavern your Zone ability becomes a very fast casting Hearth back to the tavern on a five minute cooldown which is nice, it is a quest Hub so being able to teleport back and hand in quests is pretty nice and you get 20 bonus experience the entire time you’re in Spires of Araks which is incredibly good.

At this point just go around and finish up all the bonus objectives and quests in the zone and you should be done with chromie time before you finish the zone if you manage to finish spires and for whatever reason you still aren't 50 or 60 in dragonflight you can finish up in talidor or do the intro to the Grand and that should get you across the finish.

Spires of Araks is a really really good zone, I seriously underestimated how much XP I would get in my first pass of leveling through Spires of Araks last week I hit Level 50 and I had five other quests to hand in. I completely overshot The Landing, whoopsies.

So at this point if you're in dragonflight and you hit Level 60 you're done, this video is over for you, have fun in the dragon Isles thanks for watching don’t forget to like and subscribe, bye! but if you're still in shadowlands or it's dragon fight and you're finishing up a character that's in the shadowlands keep watching I have some quick tips on how to get through Shadowlands leveling pretty quickly.

First off threads of Fate leveling is very good blizzard kind of screwed up with this initially in shadowlands, but they have fixed it and it is much better than leveling through the storyline, quests now are a lot less boring as well my biggest pet peeve early on in shadowlands was the bonus objectives around the zones they were incredibly incredibly slow and very unrewarding because of this.

That has been fixed I did all five of the bonus objectives in Bastion in around 15 minutes and a couple of world quests and regular quests that were in the same areas as those bonus objectives, and I was playing my fire Mage which is a class I literally do not know how to play if anything in this footage looks like it’s me knowing what I'm doing it's an accident I'm just I'm just pressing buttons man.

The bonus objectives are very rewarding now they give about 10 of a level each they are super quick it used to be that killing a mob or looting a flower would give you like one or two percent towards completion with the bonus objective now it’s like eight to twelve percent each and they usually overlap with World quests or something else you can do while you're in that area so you can pretty easily knock out several levels just going from Zone to Zone and doing all of the bonus objectives.

On top of that every zone in shadowlands has a big meta-Quest that gives you an enormous boost of XP for completing enough quests in shadowlands and bonus objectives give a big chunk of progress towards completing that meta-Quest.

Now once you finish that zone Quest well that’s it, you've done the quest you got the XP time to move to another Zone, none of this is my favorite way to level in shadowlands though my favorite way by a huge margin is just doing torghast, I understand if most people would prefer not to spam Run torghast that's fine but at least hear me out.

Torghast has a daily Quest that grants half of a level completing a torghast run, grants 20 of a level running the upper reaches on my Hunter and Mage which again I do not know how to play takes about seven minutes, that means if I log on every day during the time between now and the pre-patch and I do one seven minute torghast run each day for a couple of weeks I can level all the way from 50 to 60 in under two hours of actual logged in play time.

Now if you just want to sit down and knock it all out in a single play session on a weekend that is an option too I don't think spam running torghast is more efficient than just completing all four of the Zone meta quests, but it can be a good option for cleaning up once you're done with them if you haven't hit 60 yet.

If you're spam running torghast the main thing to focus on is speed, dying is bad definitely don't over pull or do anything that could get you killed that’ll slow you down but really just run to the end of each floor kill the guardian and move on to the next, you just need to be strong enough to kill the final boss of the Run, that's it, if you're able to do upper reaches runs in seven minutes or less pretty consistently which I think is a very conservative number I think you can level from 50 to 60 in less than six hours pretty easily.

If you go around all the zones do the bonus objectives and Zone meta quests and then use torghast Spam to finish up the last little bit of leveling I think you can probably get to 60 in under 5 hours pretty easily and just for the sake of being conservative with my runs wasn't using any of the tools I had to skip mobs like camouflage or invisibility I just used offensive and defensive cooldowns you know when I remembered that I even had them Indefinitely forgot them a lot too I did do a run or two just to compare where I used invids and camouflage to skip through everything and I was a lot closer to five or six minutes a run so if you're on a rogue or a druid you can potentially get these done in less than five minutes pretty consistently as a night fae cat Druid especially you can probably just prowl to floor bosses convoke them to death and be done leveling from 50 to 60 in like four hours.

There is one weird bit of scaling that I just want to make clear about torgast before I finish up, for some reason it’s really rough on tanks so I would not recommend doing torghast as a tank spec character, i did a torghast on my Allied race Warrior who I leveled as protection and maybe it was because heirlooms weren’t scaling up correctly because I was level 50 instead of level 51 but I found it to be miserably slow, I’m really comfortable playing protection Warrior unlike either the DPS classes that I was testing just basically just hitting random buttons for the whole time I was in torghast on them and killing the boss the final boss of the torghast run, on my prot Warrior took over two minutes whereas just screwing around on the Mage and Hunter the final bosses were dead in like 45 to 50 seconds.

Also blizzard explicitly said early on in the expansion they deliberately rebalanced torghast to make mobs hit tanks much harder than they hit non-tanks so that tanks could feel a challenge, I guess I don't know what I do know is that if you do torghast it's probably better off not doing it as a tank and maybe don't go in until you're level 51 at least but then do go in at least once every day while you’re leveling because the XP is great, you can get about 70 to 75 percent of a level for seven minutes of work, do the upper reaches and just run to the end of every floor don't do any of the other layers they're all horrible except horologe which is very fast but way more dangerous than the upper reaches due to all the Caster mobs that AOE heal and spam Fireballs into your face.

Alright that's it! if you have any questions or suggestions please leave them in the comments section, it's YouTube you know what to do, like And subscribe and have fun leveling, thank you for watching!