Hey folks, this is Librarian Husky. The War Within Expansion is finally here, so it’s time to level up all of your characters and get them ready for the new endgame content coming our way. But this time, things will be a bit different. There are new systems to tinker around with; the Warband system changes how leveling works, and the Early Access gives you a couple of days head start. However, not everything will be available right from the get-go.

Efficient Leveling Strategies

There are also many ways to earn experience on your way to level 280, with some being far better than others. Additionally, there are some huge bonus Experience Buffs that you can earn to speed up leveling your alts and future characters. We’re going to cover some very useful tips and tricks to ensure you don’t get lost, miss out on potential rewards, and show you the most efficient or enjoyable ways to level depending on your play style.

Preparation Before Diving In

Now, before we jump in, be sure to familiarize yourself with the quest-related icon changes, as these have undergone quite a few updates in The War Within. You’ll want to focus on the main Campaign Quests first to ensure you’re on the right track.

Understanding Quest Icons for Efficient Leveling

If your main goal is leveling quickly, Campaign Quests will always have the kind of shield background to the icon. Quests you need to pick up will have an exclamation mark, quests in progress now have the dot-dot-dot, and then turn-in quests will have the question mark. So, if you want to focus on the main Campaign Quests, which I suggest you do, make sure they have that shield icon.

Using the Map Legend

A really easy way to check the icons for each quest and what they mean is to open up your world map and click on the map legend button. This will show you what each icon means, so you shouldn’t ever get lost. The other important ones to pay attention to are the purple-pink important quests and the blue meta quests, which are going to unlock important features or systems or point you towards key weekly rewards.

The Importance of Main Campaign Quests

There are two reasons to focus on the main Campaign Quests as you level through each zone. First, these are the quests that progress the storyline, so you can finish as many side quests as you want, but until you work your way through the Campaign Quests, you won’t be able to move onto the next zone properly, and you won’t be able to unlock important endgame content.

Experience Gaps in Leveling

The second reason is that they usually offer more experience and better rewards, so you’ll level faster if you focus on the main story quests, and you won’t be sent halfway across the zone to pick up someone’s lost pickaxe—or at least it’ll happen less often. You can always go back for the side quests later on. However, you are going to run into a bit of a problem if you only do main story quests; there doesn’t seem to be enough experience across the campaign to get you from 70 to 80 when I tested this on the beta.

Experience Challenges After Campaign Completion

I only reached level 78 when I completed the campaign, so you’re going to have to get some experience from other sources too, either after you’re done with the campaign or just as you level up. The good news is that you don’t actually have to reach max level to unlock some endgame content.

Unlocking Endgame Content

As soon as you finish the campaign, you unlock World Quests and events, the earn Allied race quests, as well as Adventure Mode, which gives you a bit more freedom while leveling on your alt. You can jump into some of that content for your last bit of experience.

World Quests for Experience

Completing World Quests will give you big chunks of XP up until level 80, so that’s one option that you have. However, be careful with World Quests specifically, as there are special assignment World Quests that pop up in random zones. These give you much better rewards, but you need to complete three other World Quests in the same zone first.

Special Assignments and Level Considerations

It’s not entirely clear if World Quests completed before you hit 80 on your first character count towards these special assignments, so just double-check your map and look for the special assignments before completing any World Quests for XP. If you do complete some, double-check that they are counting towards that three World Quest requirement. You don’t want to miss out on a special assignment because you weren’t max level yet, and there are plenty of other ways to get experience.

Maximizing Experience with Bonus Objectives and Side Quests

You’re also going to see these bonus objectives on the map while leveling, which offer you a big chunk of experience when completed. So, whenever you’re questing near one of these objectives, just be sure to complete it before moving on—it’s basically just free experience most of the time.

Importance of Side Quests

There are also plenty of side quests scattered around every zone. These will all reward you with experience, so you can complete them as you level if you really want to, or just return to them after the campaign and use them to round out your leveling adventure. It’s really just up to you.

Managing Side Quests Across Characters

The most important tip I can give you for side quests is that you don’t have to do them on every character. The main reason you might want to complete all side quests is for the rep and renown rewards they offer. But renown is now Warband-wide, so you won’t actually benefit from completing the same side quests on multiple characters.

Strategic Side Quest Completion

Most quests will have one-time Warband bonuses, meaning that you only really need to do each side quest once. You could knock all of them out on one character if you wanted to, but another option would be to complete all of one zone’s side quests on one character, using the experience to get to max level, and then on your next character, focus on another zone’s side quests instead.

Efficiently Distributing Side Quests Across Characters

You can complete all of the side quests in all four zones across four different characters, which will give you all of the renown and rep bonuses for your entire Warband while making use of the experience gains across four characters instead of wasting a good chunk of it on just one. Obviously, this is up to you and how you plan to level, but it’s an efficient option available to you.

Delves: A Solo-Friendly Option

Another option you have is Delves, the new solo player-friendly content. These become available as soon as you level up and work through the zones. You can go into them by yourself or with up to five players, so you don’t have to join a group if you don’t want to. Delves offer you experience, some gear rewards, and various currencies as well.

Delves Before and After Level 80

You’ll only have access to the first three tiers of Delves until you hit max level, so the rewards will be restricted if you’re doing them before you hit level 80. You can also run dungeons to help fill in the gaps either while leveling or after completing the campaign if you still need some extra experience.

Mandatory Dungeons in the Campaign

Dungeons will still give good experience rewards, and you can get some shiny gear upgrades if you’re lucky. You can start learning some of these new encounters as well. Curiously, you will actually have to do some dungeons as you level up this time. Certain dungeons must be completed to progress through the campaign, but don’t worry—every dungeon will have the follower dungeon option, so you can go in by yourself and have NPCs fill in your group. You don’t have to interact with other players or worry about something going wrong; the follower NPCs will take care of you.

Earning Experience from Dungeons and Professions

This is another option for earning experience from dungeons. You can run follower dungeons as often as you want without having to rely on groups or other players. You can also earn some extra experience from leveling up your professions. For gatherers, this is super easy; mining and herbalism both gain experience whenever they gather a node.

Gathering Professions for Easy Experience

If you pick up one of these professions, or maybe both of them, be sure you learn the Caz Algar version before you set out on your adventures. You can do that as soon as you reach Daag Girl for the first time. Gathering professions provide an excellent way to gain experience while exploring.

Crafting Professions and Experience Gains

Crafters will also have some large potential experience gains. Every time you craft something for the first time and get that first-time crafting bonus, you will also get a big chunk of experience. This was limited to about two levels’ worth of XP in Dragonflight, so it will likely be similar in The War Within.

Maximizing Experience with Double Gathering

If you plan on leveling up some crafting professions, you can start doing that a bit before you hit max level and get some experience at the same time. If you want to min-max this a little bit, you can take double gathering at the very start, such as herbing and mining, and just gather every node you come across while leveling. This will get you some extra experience and provide you with a bit of Artisans Acuity, the new rare crafting material.

Optimizing Experience with Gathering and Crafting Professions

That is quite limited, so getting a little bit from gathering professions while leveling and then swapping over to your desired crafting professions later on can give you a bit of a head start with that material specifically. The other option would be to pick up tailoring before you start leveling. Tailors get far more cloth from monster drops when compared to non-tailors.

Maximizing Material Gains with Tailoring

By the time you are done with the campaign, you should have a nice bundle of materials collected. You can then either sell these on the auction house for a nice chunk of gold or use them to craft the early, cheap tailoring recipes. You only want to craft each recipe once to get that first craft bonus and the experience that goes along with it.

Switching Professions Strategically

After you’ve run out of cheap first crafts in tailoring, you can then drop it and swap over to whatever profession you actually want to use on that character. This gives you quite a few options to sneak in some extra experience from your professions.

Warband Mentor Achievement

One very cool change you need to be aware of in The War Within is that we’re going to get bonus Experience Buffs for leveling characters up to the new max of level 80. When your first character dings 80, you’ll earn the Warband Mentor achievement, granting all of your alts from levels 1 to 80 5% extra experience from all sources. This not only helps your other alts get from 70 to 80, but this bonus will be permanent for any character you want to level.

Maximizing Experience with Stacking Achievements

If you start a brand new alt from scratch at level one, the best part is that there are multiple stacking achievements you can earn. There are five in total, so for each character you get to max after the first, you will gain another 5% bonus experience until you have five max-level characters for a total of 25% bonus experience for your alt.

Benefits of Focusing on One Character at a Time

That’s where it caps out for now, so past that point, leveling won’t get any faster. However, with that 25% bonus in play, your other characters will zoom through the leveling process. It’s way better to focus on one character at a time—get one to 80, then start working on another. Get that one to 80 and keep going until you hit that five-character cap.

Optimizing the Leveling Process

At that point, you can do whatever you want, but I would definitely try to avoid jumping between characters before they hit max level just so you’re always benefiting from as many of these Warband Mentor experience bonuses as possible. Your alts should also be able to skip over the whole intro section of questing if you’ve completed enough of the campaign.

Skipping Intro Sections for Faster Leveling

When your alts pop down to Sthus, just talk to the NPC and tell him you know the story. You can skip over all the introductory quests and even the Dagal introduction, allowing you to dive straight into whatever content you’re interested in to start leveling those extra characters. This is particularly useful if you’re looking to level multiple characters early on.

Starting Rested Experience for Your Alts

I would encourage you to log into every alt you intend to level, or perhaps just log into every alt anyway sometime after the expansion goes live. This will start all your alts’ Rested Experience gains, so when you get around to that character in your list, they’ll hopefully have maxed out Rested Experience to help you level them even faster. If you don’t log into these characters until you start leveling them, you could be missing out on huge chunks of rested XP, which directly translates to less time spent leveling.

Sky Riding in The War Within

Now, something else that will be a little different is Dragon riding, or Sky Riding as it’s now called. We’ll have Sky Riding right from the get-go in The War Within, so we can zoom around to our heart’s content. We’ll also have the tree fully unlocked as well, with all of the talents and all of the Vigor, so we don’t have to worry about starting out with slow regeneration or anything like that. Full Sky Riding is available from the moment we touch down on Cazal Gar.

Dragon Riding Glyphs: What You Need to Know

You may be wondering, then, what about the dragon riding glyphs? Do they still exist, and do we need to collect them to unlock the new talents like we did at the start of Dragonflight? The answer is yes and no. Yes, they still exist—you can find them in the same kinds of places you’d expect, like high mountaintops or large buildings. But they aren’t actually used for anything in The War Within. They are just collectibles for earning achievements, so there are no new dragon riding talents, and you don’t have to collect these new glyphs if you don’t want to, as you won’t gain any tangible benefits from doing so.

Unlocking Steady Flight in The War Within

That’s going to be up to you. You can eventually unlock the Steady Flight option for The War Within, but you’ll need to unlock an achievement to do so—the War Within Pathfinder achievement. Thankfully, it is quite easy. You just need to complete the campaign story quest for each zone and explore all of the new zones as well. That’s it. So, as long as you prioritize the main campaign while leveling, you can actually get this done before you hit max level. Just make sure you’re exploring all of the zones as you go.

Campaign Experience and Story Progression

The last thing I want to say here is that leveling this time around was actually really smooth. The Campaign Quests tell a great story, set the stage for what’s coming next in the expansion and future patches, and the last zone specifically is going to be really interesting to progress through. The campaign also isn’t all that long—it took me about 7 to 8 hours when I worked through it on the beta.

Linear Campaign and Adventure Mode for Alts

Even if you don’t really enjoy questing, it won’t be too long before you’re up at max level, ready to jump into the new dungeons, Delves, and raids. It’s also a very linear experience the first time you work through it, so as long as you are following those shield icons for the main story, you can’t really get lost along the way. You also really only have to do it once. When you’ve completed the campaign on your first character, you’re going to unlock Adventure Mode for your alts, which means they can do the zones in pretty much any order.

Flexible Leveling and Endgame Progression

If you want to skip over something specific, you can do that. Alts also get World Quests right away, so you can start completing those for extra experience. You should have access to some of the meta quests, weekly activities, and world events to start Endgame Progression as well. With so many different ways to earn experience, especially on your alts, you can change things up as often as you want and level through the activity that you find most fun.

Conclusion: Leveling Strategies in The War Within

But that’s all of our tips and tricks for how to level quickly and efficiently in The War Within. What character are you going to level first? Will you be zooming to max level to start on your gearing and character power, or are you going to take the scenic route and complete all of the side quests as you go?

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