Avoiding Leveling Burnout

If you are like me, you like your alts. Once I reach max level, I immediately want to start leveling my next toon. Well, in Warlords, I found that my usual way of leveling (just powering through) wouldn’t be very productive. I noticed a few places that would allow me to quell my leveling itch but still allow me to have enough resources to do what I want to do. Plus, make a nice bit of gold since garrisons are a gold sink at the moment.

Obviously, you start the leveling process in Shadowmoon Valley. You will want to quest through the chains at least until you finish the quest Shadows Awaken. You will then want to head over to Twilight Glade and do those quest up to and including The Fate of Karabor. Once you complete this you will receive a quest to raise your garrison to level 2. If you are not yet 92, hold off on completing this quest until you reach 92. The reason for this, is you can unlock/upgrade your mine at 92. Now, obviously, if you have several alts already, you may not need the ore. However, even if you have a lot of ore, There may be times when you run low and it would be nice to have extra available (you don’t have to mine it daily). It’s also an alright source for no effort XP. You are now ready to sit on this toon for a little bit. While you are building your resources on this toon you can work on your max level toon to gear for raiding. (Or start another alt)

Ok, It has been some time since we leveled our toon. Be it a week or more (up to you). From this point on there is no quest checkpoints like there was in Shadowmoon Valley. From this point it is a simple thing. Just level to 96. At this point you can open your garden which is great because personally, I cannot get enough herbs. Then again, I am the one who decided (Way before Warlords) to make five alchemists. Probably wasn’t my best decision but I was able to make well over 100K gold in MoP just by using mats from the farm. And with the changes that are coming in 6.1, I am expecting more income.

Now, at this point you can level your toon to 98 whenever you like. I would suggest though, that once you hit 98 (If you haven’t already) make sure you build your Dwarven Bunker/War Mill. This will increase your loot upgrades while you level through Nagrand, which is important for hastening the gearing process for getting ready to raid.  I would wait to push to 100 until you have about 6k resources (unless you are leveling to fill a spot on your raid team).

Once you reach 100, it is time to fix up your garrison. I hope you have some gold saved up. Otherwise you will have to pick and choose what you upgrade and when. To fully upgrade your garrison and all the buildings you will need roughly 15k gold. This will vary depending on how many blueprint books you picked up while leveling. You may want to have/keep the Lumber Mill so you can build up a buffer of resources. After you get your buffer to where you feel comfortable you can change out buildings to something that you may want. Patch 6.1 will be bringing a reduction of resource cost for the Lumber Mill and the Trading Post. They will actually no longer cost resources.

I hope this has given you some help and ideas to ease the leveling process. If you have any questions or suggestions feel free to contact me on Twitter @Moodahla (www.twitter.com/Moodahla).

Who is Moodahla?

Since I am joining the Casual 2 Raider team, I figured I would start by giving a brief rundown on who I am and what my experience is. Please bear with me as I have never written anything, nor have I participated in a podcast. This will be a learning experience for me even as I am helping others.

To start, I have been playing World of Warcraft for about six years. I was introduced to it during The Burning Crusade. I never got to raid in TBC, however, I reached 70 three days before Wrath dropped. My first raiding experience didn’t come about until Naxxramas. In Naxx I ran a hunter. I fell in love with raiding at that time. I would have to say, it is by far the best time I have had in WoW even to this day. I continued playing my hunter until Ulduar, where the needs of my raid team saw me switch to a resto druid. I fell in love with healing. I thought I had found my niche. This continued through Trial of the Crusader.

In Icecrown Citadel, We had a tank shortage. I volunteered to switch, even though I had never even thought about tanking before. Once I switched and started learning what was expected of me, I couldn’t get enough. As much as I liked to heal, I loved tanking more. I have been tanking in every raid since. I haven’t neglected my healing though. For all of my characters (and I am an altoholic, during Mists of Pandaria I had 13 90’s) I have stuck to healing or tanking. If it could tank, it did. If it couldn’t tank, but could heal, I healed. If it could do both, I maintained both. At the height of my raiding in MoP , I was a member of five different raid teams.

During my time raiding I have picked up a lot of tricks. I have been a raid leader or assistant on most of the teams I have been on. I have picked up a few tricks that I like to pass on. I think that in all of my raiding, as much as I like to raid, I enjoy teaching others what I have picked up and seeing them enjoy raiding as much as I do. So, I am looking forward to passing on what I have learned in the hopes that many more people will raid and enjoy raiding as much as I do.

I am always open, if anyone has questions or comments, I can be reached through twitter @moodahla. I also have been known to stream occasionally at http://www.twitch.tv/moodahla.