Greetings, adventurers! Librarian Husky here. With less than 10 days left until the War Within Early Access launch, now is the perfect time to start planning for our characters in the first few weeks. In this guide, I’ll share my personal plans, which are tailored to my playstyle and goals. While this isn’t a step-by-step walkthrough, think of it as a jumping-off point for your own decision-making.

My Player Profile

First, I should describe my player profile so you all know where I’m coming from as I talk about my plans. So far, I have 21 level 70 characters under my belt, with at least one of each class. I’m also a one-trick pony, as in I have a main, and the other characters are like serfs to the master, if that makes any sense. I run a game build, and at best, we do heroic raids and keys that will earn us Keystone Master achievements.

My Approach to Early Access

I don’t play at a particularly high level, nor am I a completionist, but I do play a lot, and I like making gold. I tend to go hard at the start of a season or an expansion with the intent that I can coast off of my hard work for the remainder. Let’s get to my plans during Early Access.

Launch Day Goals

I live in California, so I’ll be on midday August 22nd, along with all the others ready to test the launch before the rest of you join up the following Monday. I have a few goals in mind: I’ll be playing maybe five characters, with two of them reaching max level, so it’s not too demanding. In fact, it sounds very weird, but it’s definitely the goal.

Character Priorities and Reputation Management

Character one is going to be my main, the one who, even in the worst-case scenario during Early Access, will be at max level by the time we get to general release. Thanks to war bands, things like reputation gains are shared across the account. The only reputation we should be earning during Early Access will come from the campaign and side quests. World quests aren’t going to count—I’m not even sure if they’re going to be available—but reputation tokens from rares and respawnable treasures aren’t expected, only the one-time reps at best.

Optimizing My War Band Strategy

I’m guessing this means my war band can kind of split up who does what. So my first character is going to cut straight through the main story quest (MSQ) for the first and second zones, but then they’re going to complete every possible side quest in the third zone. The hope and expectation here, because I’m kind of guessing, is that I’ll get enough experience to cruise my way through the last zone without hitting any walls that require me to level up more.

Questing and Exploration Strategy

I’m also going to do all the quests related to exploring the Dells in each zone, along with dungeon quests. I never made any exact calculations here, but the idea is to line up level 80 with completing the campaign as best as possible. In the meantime, I’ll have fully explored the map and have unlocked Adventure mode and Pathfinder.

Timeline and Streaming Plans

I expect to complete this step in the first, I’d say, 12 or so hours of the expansion. I’ll be streaming this leg of the journey, so if you’re cool with us keeping each other company, hey, tune in whenever I’m live. Sometime during leveling, I’ll poke around or maybe ask chat if realms and logins are stable, and if so, I’ll start switching between characters to start building up rest XP.

Day Two Strategy and Managing Alts

I’m going to rest for a few hours, wake up in the morning, have a quick breakfast, and then we’ll be in day two, so it should be Friday now. Characters I level afterward will get to enjoy both Adventure mode and Pathfinder, meaning they can level in any zone they want and enjoy steady flight. However, I don’t necessarily need them to be max level, as my alts are mostly going to be used for profession cooldowns. Otherwise, I’m very hands-off with them until there’s a big leveling event.

Questing Approach for Alts

My main fully completed all the questing in Hof Fall, so I guess an idea I have is maybe the next three alts will take on a different zone each. They’ll fully complete those, and then they’re kind of done. I’ll just park them over in Dagol to standby for profession-related stuff. Doing side quests on my max-level character doesn’t get them anything useful aside from reputation, which is now shared with the warband, right? So it shouldn’t be a big deal to spread those efforts across other characters instead.

Managing Alt Levels and Profession Cooldowns

The other thing is I’m not trying to max out their levels either—I don’t need my alts to be max level. I just need them to be functional for profession cooldowns, which from testing, does not need max level. Alternatively, I can work on one alt at a time, have them do all the side quests, and if they hit max level, okay, cool, then I’ll switch to the next. So maybe I don’t need five characters; maybe I need fewer, but whatever works as long as I don’t feel overwhelmed.

Switching to Gathering and Preparing for the Economy

I’m wasting the experience, so once I’m done with all the zone content and have Lore Master, I’m going to switch to the alt who will be taking up dual gathering. The plan here is to do nothing but gather. I chose my hunter because they were my gatherer in Dragonflight and also because they have the best name I ever thought of. I expect to be at or very close to this stage by the end of the second day, which means Saturday.

Gathering Strategy and Market Timing

The third day might be nothing but gathering if I run out of side quests to do, but yeah, I’m going to gather, gather, gather. I’ll be keeping an eye out for whether I should sell materials now or wait for the general launch. There are two thoughts in my head with regards to selling materials or holding on to them. Early Access people are pretty hardcore, and they’re willing to throw down more gold than the average player, but general release is when the full might of the economy is unleashed. It’s going to be full of folks who are likely to dump WoW tokens to buy stuff, not knowing what the value is.

Early Access Strategy and Efficient Use of Time

What I’ve been doing during Early Access was mostly focusing on Lore Master, starting up gathering, and preparing for engineering. The story experience is fun and enriching, don’t get me wrong, but from other points of view, it’s kind of a time-consuming activity. Processing engineering scrap is a lot of me standing around, and I feel like the most efficient use of Early Access is to do things I’d rather not be doing during the hustle and bustle of release.

Launch Day Plans and Relaxed Approach

On launch day, I expect to feel a lot more relaxed without having to worry about slamming quests and rushing here and there. So, at 3:00 p.m. Pacific, while the majority of players are running into Cazal Gar, I’m going to hop right back into gathering while hanging out and celebrating the launch with folks, doing giveaways, and vibing. Remember, the first official reset doesn’t happen until Tuesday morning.

Preparing Alts and Weekly Routine

I’m still kind of waiting for stuff, and in the meantime, I’ll be staging my alts, as in bringing them over to Dornal, learning professions, and maybe having tools made for them if it’s easy enough. Tuesday is when it’ll be time to settle down from gathering, at least for a little while, so I can start practicing my weekly routine.

Initial Plans for Max Level Content

I still don’t have a full grasp of max-level content, so I’m not going to be talking about it in detail here. But here’s what I’ll be doing: dailies, hunting rares, and finding treasures. This is when I’ll start building up my alt professions in earnest, with a focus on Alchemy cooldowns, and I’ll begin fulfilling Patron crafting orders wherever I can.

Preseason Goals and Economy Focus

When I’m through with that, I’ll use the rest of my time doing more gathering and maybe rep grinding. My goals during the preseason include making tons of gold by selling blacksmithing and engineering items via crafting orders and building up the alt army to produce Alchemy items that should be profitable throughout the entire expansion.

Renown Levels and Gear Preparation

I haven’t looked into it myself yet, but I’d like to get my renown levels into the mid-teens at least, so I can get some easy Champion gear to supplement my main. I have the profession stuff planned out in my head, but the rest—the reps and delves—are things that I need to research later.

Flexibility in Max Level Activities

My personal testing of max-level activities is very limited, like I said, but so far it seems very welcoming and allows for a lot of flexibility in obtaining gear. If I compare this to the Dragonflight weekly quest, we’re not going to see stuff like, “Hey, you got to do soup and get 1,500 rep to complete the quest.”

Choosing Activities for Maximum Efficiency

It’s more like you can choose a few out of the numerous available activities, preferably the ones that we find the most fun or can do the fastest for the biggest weekly prizes. Everything else is for extra reputation, enrichment, cosmetics, or whatever. Warbands feel great, but they really disrupt the sense of needing to level up alts for obtaining rare recipes, knowledge points, and whatever else because my main is going to do all the heavy lifting.

Leveling Strategy and Achievement Goals

When the time comes, I’ll be leveling one alt at a time until I reach five, as there’s an achievement that gives an experience bonus and caps out at 25%. Barring server problems, this makes for a very productive and fulfilling launch, so let’s cross our fingers.

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