How to level an alt painlessly: tips and tricks

Lately I’ve leveled several alts – as have some of my WoW-acquaintances and friends. I’ve also looked at other characters, who are obvious alts – and for some reason, it seems that players are clueless when leveling alts. They level their alts in the same way that they did their original characters… which means painfully slowly and not especially optimally.

Don’t take these ideas as absolute and ultimate truths – do not take anything in life as absolute and ultimate truths, always question everything. There is always a way to do things better… but if you follow the ideas in this small guide, at least you won’t make things worse.

 

Know the class and build

This is the one most important aspect not only with alts, but with any character. If your “main” is rogue and you are now in process of leveling priest – don’t treat the character in the same way. Priest doesn’t need agility and attack power, priest does not need to get up close and personal with mobs, quite the opposite.

Read about your class and build – look at WoWwiki and other sites. Even just read the tooltips of your abilities and spells – they are helpful, you know. I’ve met a paladin, who has reached level 80 without knowing or using Hand of Reckoning – which is simply a must-have battle opener for a Retribution paladin. I’ve met a feral druid, who had no idea how to attack from stealth. I’ve met a shadow priest who didn’t use Shadowform.

So, learn  about your class. Always read the spell description when you visit the trainer. Put the abilities to your toolbars and rearrange them according to the changing needs. Research the optimum build for your level, play around with talent calculators. It is worth it.

 

Heirlooms: get them. Love them.

Heirlooms are added by Blizzard to the game especially to support alts – they want us to fill the starting and leveling zones, not just Northrend. They keep adding heirlooms with every patch – 3.3 will bring Northrend faction reputation enchants, so you won’t have to grind reputation with all the factions over and over.

Right now there are three ways to obtain heirlooms: buy them from Dalaran with Emblem of Heroism, from Argent Tournament with Champion’s Seals and from Wintergrasp with Stone Keeper’s Shards. The items from Argent Tournament and Dalaran are the same, but Wintergrasp items are more PvP oriented. For leveling, it really doesn’t matter if you’ll get PvE or PvP items, especially on lower levels.

The heirlooms are comparable to high-end blues – and they grow better as you level. If you buy mail items for your alt, they will be leather until your alt reaches 40 and gets the ability to use mail items. One additional bonus is that heirlooms don’t need repairs – they are always at full health.

There are three heirlooms that are must-have: chest, shoulders and weapon(s). First two give 10% additional experience each – and you won’t get shoulders normally until level 17 or even later. Weapons allow you to blast through the content fast and painlessly.

Don’t forget to enchant your chest and weapon. For melee classes, Crusader is a must-have on weapon – but if you dual wield, remember that Crusader doesn’t stack.

Trinkets are good to have, but not really needed that badly. Blizzard created “universal” heirloom trinkets, which means they are good for all classes, but not desperately needed by any class.

If you have the heirlooms, you can easily solo group quests and take on enemies that are unthinkable with regular gear. And the best part – you don’t have to spend money to fill those slots until you reach the level cap – and they are awesome all the time until then!

There is one special heirloom: Tome of Cold Weather Flight. You can buy it from the flying trainer in Dalaran for 1000 gold – and it is worth every penny. This allows your alt to learn flying in Northrend at 68 (the tome is consumed when you use it) – and oh boy, does this make the questing different!

 

Must-have: big bags

Remember the excitement, when you got a new 6-slot bag at level 3 – and you had suddenly so much more room? Do you really want to experience that again…?

When you start your a character, you should send him/her some things: heirlooms, 100G and big bags. If the new character needs anything else at all from your main before the Tome of Cold Weather Flight, then you are doing it wrong.

Don’t skimp on the bags. Frostweave Bags cost only 60-80G in the Auction House – for an established main, buying four bags is not an issue. If the money really is a problem, Netherweave Bags cost 7..9G.

If you know what alt’s professions will be, buy also the specialized bags for them. Buy the best bag for the profession – that is one bag your character will always use, never replacing it. It doesn’t make sense to buy a cheaper bag and replace it later – just go for the best right away.

But why the big bags are needed so badly? Easy – they allow your alt to stay away longer from the cities and villages, questing for longer periods of time. And since you won’t have to visit city every few hours or so, you can concentrate on storylines, quests and enjoying the game.

 

Questing addons

Blizzard quest descriptions are notoriously misleading – they send you to northeast when the quest target is actually in southeast, they miss crucial details and so forth. That is especially true for vanilla WoW content, it gets better in Outland and Northrend.

Therefore, get help for questing. There are  two questing addons I’ve tried – Carbonite and QuestHelper. I prefer Carbonite, because I like the mini-map on battlegrounds, but Carbonite needs a bit more tweaking before it is ready to use.

Both addons show you where to go to finish the quest. Even if you liked searching for the quest end-point the first time, do you really want to do it over and over, again and again…

 

Leveling spec is not necessarily your end-game spec

This is something I cannot stress enough.

If you want your paladin to be healadin at 80… do you really want to level as Holy? You want an Arcane PvP mage at level cap, do you want to go through painful leveling as one, instead of blasting through enemies as a Frost mage? If you solo the content, which is better, Shadow or Holy priest?

If you have heirlooms, you can easily heal or tank with your retadin until you get dual specs, it really isn’t a problem. So pick the build that is most useful for leveling – you will get a second spec at 40 and can change your main build to suit your needs when you reach the level cap.

Pick the build that is most useful for questing – i.e. find an optimal trade-off between the survival and damage-dealing. Retribution paladin, frost mage, feral or moonkin druid, arms or fury warrior, shadow or disc priest, blood death knight etc etc.

 

Keep your gear up to date

Level 17 ring on level 43 druid, level 21 headpiece in Western Plaguelands… we’ve all seen that. While heirlooms compensate for the rest of the gear to some extent, you really should replace anything that is more than five levels old. This will help a lot with the mobs and questing – trust me on this. You don’t have to spend money on epics or blues – in fact, I discourage that – but get good, your spec greens. Everything gets suddenly easier – mobs die faster and do a lot less damage to you.

And as you have big bags, you can keep an eye on the AH and buy items before you need them. I have a habit of keeping an eye on items five levels above my alt – if there is a good item with a good price, I buy and keep it in my bags, equipping the item when I reach the appropriate level.

If I get an equal or better item from a drop or quest reward – no harm done, as the item has not been equipped, I can re-sell it and get my money back.

Don’t forget the glyphs. Getting the right glyphs at the right time can make a huge difference.

 

Set your hearthstone to Dalaran

Strangely, this is something that many players don’t get. So what does a hearthstone in Dalaran give you?

Answer: you can get to all of your faction cities, Shattrath and Tanaris every 30 minutes. If you need to go from Booty Bay to Eastern Plaguelands, it will take close to 20 minutes. If you hearth to Dalaran, take a portal to Ironforge and fly to the Light’s Hope Chapel, the time will be five minutes. It is faster to go from Ironforge to Stormwind through Dalaran then take a train or gryphon.

So find a guild-mate, friend or just pay a mage who can make you a portal to Dalaran. Set your hearthstone to Underbelly inn, because the loading time is faster there then in the faction inns.

 

Primary professions: what and why?

This is a very complex question, with a lot of things to consider.  One thing I definitely DO NOT recommend is skipping primary professions altogether. However, remember that professions are not set in a stone – once you reach 80, you can drop a profession useful for leveling and take up one useful for endgame. You can use materials collected during leveling to quickly grind your skill up in the new profession – if you have the materials, it takes but one or two evenings to max it.

There are professions are good for leveling and alts: skinning, mining, herbalism, enchanting and tailoring.

And there are professions that are not so good: blacksmithing, alchemy, leatherworking, jewelcrafting, engineering and inscription.

As you can see, I recommend primarily gathering professions for alts and don’t recommend crafting professions. Why? Because by design (i.e. intentionally by Blizzard), unless you grind or buy the materials from the Auction House, your crafting skill is always just a bit too low to create items for yourself. That is Blizzard’s way to make sure AH has items and materials – and that people buy what is offered.

Basically, all crafting skills have recipes that sell well and will make a tidy profit – but by and large you are forced to make badly selling or pricy items to get the skill higher. Therefore, it really doesn’t pay to craft things on your alt.

But if you have gathering skills, you can make a tidy profit from the materials. Very tidy – it is normal that your alt has the money to buy dual spec (1000G) and normal flight without any funds from your main. Also, alt should normally have about 2000G towards the epic flight.

Let’s go in details of the recommended professions:

• Skinning. This is a mixed one – leather doesn’t sell that well/is cheap and crit increase for the character is marginal. But if you have an alt with leatherworking or plan to pick it up on alt later, this can be a very good choice. If your main is a leatherworker, you can send the materials to make armor kits – which do sell very well and have a nice profit marginal.
• Mining is a really profitable profession. You’ll get ore, bars and occasional gem – all of which sell really well in the auction house. Downside is that it can be somewhat boring, especially before Outland.
• Herbalism is practically a must-have for classes who don’t have self-healing capabilities, such as rogues. Lifeblood is incredibly good in both PvE and PvP – imagine fighting on a battleground and instead of dying, your character starts to regain health. Instant cast and quite a nice amount of life – nice up to mid-seventies, after that the health gained becomes too marginal to matter. Also, herbalism is probably the most profitable gathering profession – by just picking up the herbs you encounter, you will earn nice amount of money in the Auction House.
• Enchanting  and tailoring are a match made in heaven. You can disenchant all the unsellable items crafted by leveling tailoring, gaining material for making scrolls or just selling them. You can disenchant all quest rewards and old soulbound gear; you can disenchant all badly selling green drops. Both enchanting material and scrolls sell really well and have a nice profit. And the material for tailoring just drops from the mobs you kill – and there is a good chance your main has loads of cloth in the bank.

 

Battlegrounds

This is not for every player or every class – some classes are weaker then others in lower levels and Blizzard has stated they care about balance in PvP only at the level cap.

However, now that battlegrounds give experience and have no twinks, there are no reasons not to do some PvP at the upper end of every range. This is not to grind honor – only exceptionally stupid players grind honor before reaching the level cap. This is to get experience and learn to play your class to the max.

Players, who do PvP, know their class better. They know when to use what ability, how to vary the rotation as needed and so forth. This is all useful knowledge for PvE leveling.

You will suck at first when you go to Warsong Gulch at 18 or 19. Accept and live with it, in the same way you have to accept that even at 80 there are players who have not a clue how to play battleground for the win. You will get quickly better in PvP – and if you got the heirlooms, you’ll have a nice advantage over players who don’t have them.

I have accepted that I have to re-learn PvP at every level range – especially big change is from 40-49 to 50-59, as the latter will bring a whole new class, Death Knights. Thankfully, my latest alt is a retribution paladin – and it seems that DK’s have been told that they are insanely op and should faceroll everything else. Otherwise, I cannot explain why DK’s attack a paladin alone and are surprised to die quickly with no noticeable loss of life on the paladin. Oh well, the revenge is sweet…

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