Northrend Leveling Speed - Hunter

Here's the latest update about my Hunter on Horde Side.

If you followed the previous blog article about it, you saw that we dinged Level 72 at exactly 117 days 11 hours 14 minutes 38 seconds /played.

Time to get from Level 72 to Level 73: 4h 6min 49s

This is a good score, but I'm sure we can lower it down to 3h once there's no more overcrowding in Borean Tundra.

I was about halfway through my Borean Tundra guide when this happened by the way.

Of course, this was done with no rested bonus, I log the hunter outside of an inn on purpose. So it's quite a competitive xp rate right there :)

After a food break I went on with the guide until I hit level 74:



Total Time Played: 117days 18h 47min 3s

Time from Level 73 to Level 74: 3h 25min 36s


Ok, you're probably thinking 3h25min for 73 to 74 is quite good, and it is. But it could have been so much better, at least 30 min shorter. See this was sunday noon and it was starting to get really crowded, especially the murloc quest hub.
The murloc quest hub was simply hell. There was probably more players than murlocs over there, and I couldn't even do the escort out of the cave, the quest NPC simply was always busy and a bunch of people were waiting for him to respawn, so I just moved on.

This is just to say that the lower part of my Borean Tundra leveling guide is actually extremely competitive, and that once the overcrowding problems are gone, I expect people to pull some crazy numbers while following it. 2h30 per level seems definitely possible.

And finally today I went to Dragonblight and followed the guide until I hit level 75. Sadly I messed up the screenshot, but here is how it was about 15 minutes before I dinged 75:


I took me exactly 3hours 30minutes to do 74 to 75.

It's quite good, there was a lot of overcrowding of course on this monday afternoon, but it wasn't as bad as Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord.

The good part is that I wasn't even done with the first half of my Dragonblight Guide. So I might very well ding 76 towards the end of it. Also, the lower part of my Dragonblight Guide is actually the best part, xp rate wise, so stay tuned and tomorrow we'll find out how much it took me to do level 75-76 ;)

16 Response to "Northrend Leveling Speed - Hunter"

  1. Bladluis says:

    Nice work james! Following you're DK guides and outlands guides for now..and im almost 69 in a few days :) Going fast and smooth! Love to start on you're northrend version!

    Btw, can i go to nortrend on 58 already or should i wait?

    Jame says:

    Stay in Outland as long as possible is my advice. Right now, the first Northrend zones are really overcrowded.

    Unless you can play at ridiculous hours (like very late at night or early in the morning), stay in Outland at least till 70.

    vampy says:

    If my math is correct then it should be 4h 6min 49s and not 3 hours ....
    for lvl72-73 :)

    Besides it´s a very nice guide :)

    Acies says:

    Hey Jame..
    First I gotta say your guides RULE and are by far the best I've ever come across.

    But there's a problem.
    I'm currently leveling my alliance hunter from 70-80 and when the guide says that I should ding 74, I'm 4 bars away from 73 (which logically means I'm lacking xp). I normally avoid as many mobs as possible and I haven't done any instances more than Nexus, once, without the quests.

    What do you recommend me to do?
    Continue with the guides, instance or grind?

    Luke says:

    I've been following your guide I'm half way through level 75 at the moment and only half way through your dragonblight guide, I expect it will take me to level 76.

    My average time to level has been about 5 hours a level, but my server has massive overcrowding issues.

    Thanks for the guides they are letting me see all the quests and really just are making it more fun for me overall.

    Jame says:

    @vampy Thanks, my math was wrong ^^

    @acies That's not a problem at all, keep following the guide normally.

    @luke Glad to hear ;)

    Unknown says:

    Awesome, Jame!
    I'm following your guide and i must say... I LOVE YOU!!! :)

    I'm half level 74, and barely 70% of your boreal tundra guide (I have almost no time to play, plus I am doing instances with my friends). I think i'll ding 76 when I finish your dragonblight guide ^^.
    I WANT GRIZZLY HILLS guide!!!! :)
    Btw, when do you think you can publish it? ^^

    PS: Still loving you!

    Matteo says:

    Glad to read this post, Jame. It seems that your Dragonblight guide is going better than you thaught, isn't it?:P Anyway, can you please tell me if you did some group quest or have you just skipped those? I think that the Xp coming from the group quests changes a lot the leveling progression :)

    arb says:

    Please can we have a Grizzly Hills Guide? I've started with QuestHelper, but would much rather be using your guide.

    *beg*

    Jame says:

    Sorry guys, the Grizzly Guide simply isn't ready yet, you'll have to be patient. I'm doing as fast as I can, trust me :p

    Doyle says:

    Thanks for the hard work Jame. I've just started your Dragonblight guide and I'm hoping to come near your high water mark of 3.5hrs for 74-75.

    By the way, yesterday I started using quest helper for the automatic waypoint stuff but I'm still following your guide for the sequence. It's a nice help to me to not have to type in way points or look at the map as often.

    Matteo says:

    Hey Jame, I have a quick question for you:

    What is your chat addon? Does it include the Combat log and the General log? I'd like to know because one window for the chat logs is great for me :P.

    Jame says:

    It's the default blizzard chat ^^

    I recommend prat, it's the best chat addon out there imo.

    Haven't tried it since WotLK but I bet it's already updated and working.

    Jame,

    Great Guide...I've been following your 70-80 Alliance guide and I definitely value the effeciency and saving steps. I've just reached 73 but have found that my xp rate per hour is not what others are attaining.

    For instance, 72-73 took me almost 7 hours. My xp/hour in Titan panel would typically run around 225k/hr. During this time, I was grouped with another person, would this cause my rate to drop so drastically from what others are seeing?

    My time was exactly spent following your guide, even so, I'm not sure how I would attain the 500K/hour that has been mentioned.

    Any help would be appreciated.

    -Natrops
    Kel'Thuzad

    Jame says:

    It's normal, don't worry.

    500K/hour is pretty hard to attain. I only reached it during the beta when the quest areas weren't overcrowded, and I did that solo, with a very well geared character and I basically know the circuits by heart so I just have to glance at them, instead of reading them entirely.

    Duo'ing slows down the process for sure, whenever you encounter a quest where you have to gather items or where you need drops from mobs. And there are many of these types of quests on Northrend.

    So don't worry about it. 7h to ding is still very competitive at this level, especially when duo'ing and considering you're still playing so close to the release in overcrowded areas.

    I too have been dual-boxing a Horde rogue and a priest through Northrend, and 70-71 took me about 8 hours, which was a little bit discouraging. I thought that part of it was because I spent some time in Utgarde, including some wipes and long corpse runs, as well as your typical slowness of getting people to the summoning stone (and a tank leaving mid-instance).

    Anyway, for 71-72 I decided to follow the guide explicitly and not waste any time on instances, and it still took me 7 hours to hit 72. Perhaps this is because my priest is disc/holy and his main role is to heal the rogue while he takes on multiple mobs at once, but I'm also averaging around 250k/hour, much less than 500k.

    I might try experimenting to see if having my priest out of party and not completing quests is any faster for the rogue, but since my ultimate goal is to get them both to 80 it would have to be over twice as fast to be more efficient. My time/character is still 3.5 hours each I guess, I just expected it would be faster.