Howto: get to 80 the second time

(and the third and the fourth). As of this writing, I have four level 80 characters and a level 70 one that I leveled pre-LK. I know what it's like out there in altland, and I've got some advice for everybody. I can get from 1-60 in something like 6 days /played, and be in northrend before I'm at 9 days /played. Plenty of people go faster, but people also go far more slowly.

This advice doesn't apply to your first character. Slow down, enjoy yourself. You'll never go this way again, because next time you'll be in a hurry. If you hack the RAF magic, you don't need all of this advice, but it's still useful.

DO: Get a leveling guide. I use Brian Kopp's. There are free ones too, but this is really worth the money. I've used it for a while now (although I didn't get the northrend updates, I mainly use it for the 1-60 grind, since that's so complicated right now). Personally, I print out a few pages at a time and run through the list in order. It's hugely useful, and very satisfying when you get to cross things off a list.

DO: Take some time off occasionally. Remind your guildmates that you still exist by running instances or raids with your main. Surface from the complete and total immersion in the quest XP gravy train. Heck, it builds rest XP.

DON'T: Do instances. Waste of time, you get more XP/hour questing. Sure, there might be some exciting piece of gear you want. Skip it. You'll get better as a random green "of the Foobar" in three levels, which is like later this evening, dude.

DON'T: Do group quests that require a group. See above - I give most group-3 quests one try, if it works, great. If not, move on. The advanced hyperspeed leveling plan means no particular quest is mandatory.

EXCEPTION: if there's a weapon as a quest reward (not a drop), and that weapon is a significant upgrade - make the attempt. I find while leveling that armor comes and goes, but most good weapons last about 5-10 levels. But see the next rule.

DO: Get some heirlooms. The XP bonus from the shoulders and hat are pretty huge, and stack with the rested bonus. If you can get a weapon that scales to your level, you're golden. At any given level, there's probably a better weapon, especially since at the mid-high levels the better enchants and scopes add a lot, and you can't really enchant heirlooms. However, it's still totally worth getting the heirloom weapon. Otherwise you'll probably have to spend a LOT of gold on midlevel BoE weapons. That's another option, too. I've found that while armor is a nice plus, you really notice when your weapon gets outdated, and a new one adds new life to your play (even for spellcasters).

DON'T: Do it the hard way. That means leveling with a healing spec or whatever. If you're a druid, level feral. If you're a shaman, go enhance. Each and every class has a talent spec that makes leveling easier. Don't level destruction as a warlock. Corollary to the rule: don't just pick an endgame spec and fill it out. Respeccing is cheap, plan on doing it several times as you level. For example, my advice to warlocks is to get fel concentration ASAP, then Fel Brutality, then back up to Siphon Life, but as soon as you hit 50, respec for Felguard and rebuild your affliction tree up to fel concentration again.

DON'T: Level tradeskills. Plenty of time for running around at 80. Yeah, you'll pass a lot of herb/ore/leather, but it's a lot faster this way. The only exception to that is skinning - it's easy to keep skinning up to date. But Herbalism and Mining are pretty hard to keep updated as you advance, at least until Outlands, and you'll spend a lot of time wandering around, looking for thorium sooner or later. Best do that at 80 when the eastern plaguelands mobs are less of a challenge. And if you're trying to level a crafting tradeskill, don't do that either, except maybe if you've got a TON of money to waste at the auction house and are trying to make one of the mid-level BoPs for yourself.

DO: Maximize rest XP. You get a level and a half of it at any time. That goes away really quickly at lower levels, and I don't worry about that too much. But it regenerates relatively quickly for its utility. Try and do all of the 60-80 push on rest XP. This means parking in an inn and waiting for a few days. Sure, go and get some work done on your main. Go farm Relics of Ulduar or whatever so you can send them to your shiny new alt when you get to 80.

DO: Get the Auctioneer addon. It tells you how much quest rewards vendor for. Always pick the most expensive quest reward - the difference can double your quest income. This adds up very fast over time.

DO: Get some runecloth or frostweave bags. Runecloth bags don't bind, so you can send them from alt to alt. Frostweave bags are much bigger, but bind and tend to be more spendy. Your call on that one, but every alt should have a set of four new bags in the mail as soon as they leave the starting zone.

DON'T: Go to the trainer every level. Generally speaking, you get new skills on even levels from 1-60. There are some levels where you don't get anything useful. Check Wowhead - go to database - spells - class skills and look at your class (sort by level). Anything interesting? Go train. But only train when your hearthstone is cooled down. You can keep leveling without those new skills for another half hour (after all, you got this far without them). Going to train means you wander around in a capital city for a while, you wander over to the Auction House.... and then there goes an hour.

DON'T: Go to the auction house. Period. There's only two reasons to get a BoE from the AH. One is, you don't have an heirloom weapon and you're desperately in need of an upgrade (my rogue leveled with a Krol Blade that I got on the cheap from my vigilant AH watching). Two is, you're almost 80 (or whatever the level cap is when you're reading this) and there's some good BoE stuff that will actually last you to 80. If you have a lot of green BoEs in your bags, send them to be disenchanted - 99% of greens are worth more disenchanted than sold on the AH. If you find some interesting blue or purple BoEs, save them for a later alt or give them to your guild. There are a few exceptions to that rule, but odds are against you finding any.

DON'T: Grind mobs. If you're out of quests in an area and don't know where to go, consult your leveling guide. There's probably a quest out there that will reward you for grinding mobs - most quests are worth about 20 unrested at-level mob kills. So if you get a quest that requires you to kill 20 mobs, you're doubling your XP rate.

And the final rule:

DO: Keep your eyes on the prize. This is the meta rule. Why did you get off of the quest gravy train? To go .... take orphans for a walk? They'll be back next year. To go .... work on some faction reputation? You probably don't need the item that much, and if you do, you can come back at 80. To go .... run some instances to clear out the last quests in a zone? Odds are, you're already high enough level to go to the next zone in the progression. Just delete those quests for now, and come back later when you're working on Loremaster.

Follow your leveling guide, skip ahead in it when you can (since the guide assumes no heirlooms and no rest XP), and keep pounding on the leveling train. Quest quest quest. That is all.