The race to power level your newest character is on. On average you can expect 8-10 days of play time. Or 192 hours of time you need to spend killing and questing at a rate of 4 hours a day this can take quite a bit of time to completely get a character from level 1 to 70. While it is possible this task is not an easy one.

So what can you do to give yourself a little edge? Simply follow these few hints to help you cut that playing time down.

Questing is by and far the fastest way to power level a character. This might seam like common sense, however there are some people that refuse to do it. The reason questing is so beneficial to leveling is because of the massive boosts in exp you get in one shot. In addition to the one shot experience you get for completing a quest; many of the quests require you to kill things…which also give exp. These are the best quests to shoot for as they can be done in groups and NPC’s are easily killed when 1-3 people are killing them.

There is of course a flip side to this. On quests where you have to gather items NPCs drop it is NOT wise to work in a group on these as you’ll have to loot double the corpses to get the same amount of items as the drop rate does not increase but stays the same.

For questing it is important to remember this: Killing quests good with groups. Gathering quests best if soloed.

One could take the approach of running around wildly completing quests in a random pattern with no real goal. One could also take a hammer to their skull. I don’t recommend either.

The greatst part of power leveling through questing is that you can often complete several quests at once or in a close proximity to one another, further cutting down the amount of time you need to level your character. Rather than completing one quest, then running back to complete another, why not complete three quests in the same general area and then turn all three in, effectively eliminating 2 extra trips.

Finding these paths is not that hard if you simply read the quests and generally you can find many of the quests in the same location. There is of course a much simpler way of organizing your quests and streamlining your questing route. Zygor Guides, which provides an in-game tool to help chart a course that will yield the best possible return on your time.

In addition to setting a course you can see on your map, Zygor Guides provides crucial help in completing quests. Can’t find that book in that cave? Zygor Guides gives you detailed instructions on where to locate it. Don’t know what direction to walk? Zygor Guides provides you with a taxi cab like arrow to point you in the right direction.

Leveling from 1-10 is typically the easiest thing to do as it requires little grinding and all the quests are centrally located in one specific region. Not until you get to higher levels will you start to experience having to travel for 10 minutes to compete a quest and another 10 to get back to turn it in. This leads to one crucial questions, what quests do I do then.

Ideally you’ll want to quest in an area your level or slightly lower. Slightly lower because you will tend to clear the quest quicker. It does not make much sense to spend 45 minutes on one red(high level) quest and get a slight boost to experience, when you can spend the same 45 minutes completeing 15 quests and get a HUGE increase to your exp.

Rested experience is also a must for anyone looking to power level.

Rested experience is a small bonus you get for NOT PLAYING. When you’re in a capital city or in an inn and you see “zzz” below your character icon this means that you’re recieving Rested Experiences, which is 1.5 times experience. ALWAYS make sure you log out in an inn or a capital city as you can accumulate rested experience when you’re not playing. You can identify your rested experience by looking at the experience bar right below your aciton bar. If it is blue you are getting 1.5 times your normal experience for killing things, if it is purple you’re on normal experience.

With the release of WOTLK looming, leveling your new character to 70, or at least to death knight status is a must, and with these few hints and tips is capable of being accomplished by anyone.

Happy Hunting.