Cartographer – The Ultimate Questing Addon

If you are sick and tired of trying to keep track of all the thousands of quests you need to run to reach level 70, then I have an awesome bit of information for you: you can use the WoW addon Cartographer to increase your leveling speed by a huge factor! This has to be one of the best kept “open” secrets in all of World of Warcraft.

Cartographer is a tool that allows you to display information about WoW directly to your in-game map and minimap. Addons like this are famously used to track profession nodes such as ore veins or herb nodes. Cartographer allows addon developers to create plugins to feed it whatever information they please to your in-game map, and because of this two projects were born that we are now interested in: Cartographer Quests and Cartographer QuestObjectives.

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First Posted on: July 11th, 2007 by Fortuente 15 Comments »

Tags: Addons | Power Leveling | Questing

Original Joana’s Guide Videos – Levels 1-60

Beginning originally as a post on the WoW community forums in response to a power-leveling contest, Joana/Mancow illuminated the WoW community how he was able to quickly level from 1-60 in only 4 days, 20 hours /played. Since then Joana’s Guide for leveling Horde characters has become Read the rest of this entry »

First Posted on: July 1st, 2007 by Fortuente 11 Comments »

Tags: Levels 30-39 | Levels 50-59 | Power Leveling | Questing

Shadowmoon NPC Helps You Grind Out 64-67

NERFED:

Well, this sucks! The Domesticated Hellboars have indeed been nerfed and now no longer give XP or drops. I wouldn’t have figured this strategy would get nerfed since it isn’t the absolute best way to level. In Outlands questing is definitely the way to go, but little tips like this help break up the quest grind and are fun for those of us who actually enjoy the grind once in a while. Perhaps it was the botters that got this nerfed – if I were going to level by botting this is one spot I would have definitely camped. Thanks to commenter Trax for the heads up!

First Posted on: June 15th, 2007 by Fortuente 8 Comments »

Tags: Grinding Spots | Nerfed | Power Leveling

Grinding Satyrs in Azshara, Levels 51-54

An awesome place to grind out levels 51-54 is in central Azshara (Wowhead | WowWiki) near the Legashi Compound (61,23). Here there are a large group of satyr that go down easy and respawn quickly. And best of all, they also drop Felcloth, so you stand to make quite a bit of extra gold grinding here. If you are a tailor this is a must-grind spot.

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First Posted on: June 7th, 2007 by Fortuente No Comments »

Tags: Grinding Spots | Levels 50-59 | Power Leveling

Best Spot to Grind Experience in Outland – Level 67+

So by now you know the easiest way to grind in World of Warcraft is to focus on yellow passive mobs as much as possible while leveling. They don’t have aggro, so you don’t need to worry about adds. In fact you can sit and rest right in the midst of a group of them without worry for your safety.

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First Posted on: June 4th, 2007 by Fortuente 13 Comments »

Tags: Grinding Spots | Levels 60-70 | Power Leveling | Questing

More and More Turtle Grinding, Levels 42-47

If you know me, you know there is one mob I love to grind in World of Warcraft more than any other – no, it’s not ogres, but they are good also – I love to grind turtles. What is there not to like about grinding turtles? They generally have high hit points, but not much damage. They go down in a satisfying way: not overly quickly, but very easy. And best of all, because the bulk of turtles in the game are yellow (non-aggroable), you never have to worry about adds. And that, my friend, will save you many wasted minutes and corpse runs.

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First Posted on: May 27th, 2007 by Fortuente 1 Comment »

Tags: Grinding Spots | Levels 40-49 | Power Leveling

Grinding Turtles in Alterac, Levels 29-32

What better way to escape from the tedium of your desk job in the Stormwind Library than by wreaking havoc upon the turtle populations of the Alterac Mountains? Not many, really. Unless you’re really into brooding Nelfs looking to cyber at the Goldshire Inn (shudder).

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First Posted on: May 25th, 2007 by Fortuente No Comments »

Tags: Grinding Spots | Levels 30-39 | Power Leveling

Ogre Grinding and More in Badlands, Levels 40-45

An easy place to level quickly is the south-westernmost corner of the Badlands. There you will find ogres. Lots of them. The reason I like ogres is because they tend to go down easy. This isn’t always the case (such as the elite ogres in Loch Modan), but as a whole I’d say they’re one of my most-grinded types of mob.

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First Posted on: May 23rd, 2007 by Fortuente 2 Comments »

Tags: Grinding Spots | Levels 40-49 | Power Leveling

Best Grinding for Gold and XP, Levels 36-40

The best spot for leveling between levels 36-40 is in the rock elemental area just east of Kargath in the Badlands (around 15,37). Because of its proximity to Kargath, a Horde outpost, I would say this is a better spot for Horde than for Alliance. However on RP and PVE servers this point is moot (so grind away Nelf hunters), and I have grinded (no, not ground, lol) this area in relative peace on PVP and RP-PVP realms, as well (that includes ganking as well as getting ganked – I must have been feeling generous).

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First Posted on: May 21st, 2007 by Fortuente 5 Comments »

Tags: Grinding Spots | Levels 30-39 | Power Leveling | Professions

Efficient Grinding in WoW

There has been a debate going on since the World of Warcraft beta first hit the Internet: Grinding or Questing?

For whatever reason (most likely learned habits picked up from earlier MMORPGs like Everquest and Asheron’s Call) most believed that Grinding is the most effective way to level your character.

Then along came Mancow (Joana) who was a vocal proponent of Questing as the fastest means of leveling, and he actually produced video to prove it during a Blizzard-endorsed power-leveling competition on the WoW Community Forums (these videos later became the foundation for Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide).

There are those now who claim that Questing is indeed the fastest way to level … until you reach level 35, and then grind grind grind.

So how to most effectively grind when the time comes that you must? I recently saw a great blog post on how to most effectively manage your grinding time at WoW Gold For Sale. The author runs through a comprehensive list of good grinding practices and – here’s the gem – gives specific grinding tips for each class. Sweet.

To me, I think the truth about how to most quickly level your character lies somewhere in between. I’m not sure how anyone can deny the importance of questing (it’s like free xp), but there are times when you simply cannot solo or even duo certain quests and are forced to wait until you are higher in level to complete them; it is times like this when you must turn to some good solid grinding to get that bump to the next level.

One final thing to remember about grinding: when grinding you should take your cue from a concept spawned by Starcraft: APS, or ACTIONS PER SECOND. Essentially it means that victory will always go to those who perform the most actions every second – in our case the quicker you are able to bag-and-tag the mobs you are grinding, the quicker you will level. Period.

First Posted on: May 4th, 2007 by Fortuente No Comments »

Tags: Grinding Spots | Power Leveling

How to Power Level Like the Pros

Have you ever had trouble power leveling yourself or friends in World of Warcraft? I have, and I think there still is a popular misconception that power leveling in WoW is pointless. Given how relatively easy (albeit boring) it is to solo level yourself, it’s not hard to see how such a misconception could persist.

However, World of Warcraft power leveling is alive and well. In fact, if some forum posts I’ve read are any indicator, it may be (or may used to have been) one of the main methods pay-for-leveling services employ at higher levels. So how do you do it?

To get experience for a kill you must “tag” it, meaning be the first to do damage to it. Then no matter who does damage to the mob, you will get credit for the kill. However, if a character who could not otherwise receive experience damages the mob your experience reward will decrease significantly.

So to power level in World of Warcraft you must have an ungrouped companion within experience range of the mob; optimally the mob will be green (almost but not yet gray) to your companion. Now when you tag the mob and your companion finishes it off, you will get 100% experience for the kill.

Using this technique with a friend or guildmate, you can solo mobs three levels higher than you for the sweet xp they give. And you can do it fast. Better yet, bring along two friends – as long as the mob is at least green to them and you tag it first you will still get the full amount of experience points. Don’t you love World of Warcraft?

To read more about how to use this power leveling technique, look at the WoWWiki entry on Mob XP.

You can get other good powerleveling strategies in Elite WoW 1-70 Guide. It has a complete and detailed set of guides that aim to be the best complete WoW leveling guide for Horde and Alliance.

First Posted on: April 23rd, 2007 by Fortuente No Comments »

Tags: Power Leveling