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| Don't know much about history etc.... |
Yesterday I discussed some approximate levelling times for the new expansion. The Grumpy Elf left his customary comment yesterday, and it left me wondering if I was actually doing something drastically wrong. The figures below are not verified (that would take way too much time), but they appear to approximately correct. The data is from the Ascendancy website and shows the quest rewards for each of the zones and the associated mini hubs.
Level
|
XP
|
86
|
13000000
|
87
|
15080000
|
88
|
18980000
|
89
|
22880000
|
90
|
27560000
|
Total
|
97500000
|
The Jade Forest
Paw'Don Village 2998 K
The Wwaterspeaking Ceremony 1997 K
Pearlfin Village & The White Pawn 3123 K
Dawn's Blossom 981 K
The Arboretum 780 K
Greenstone Quarry 786 K
Ruin of Gan-Shi 1890 K
The Temple of the Jade Serpent 1170 K
The Battle for the Forest & Overcoming Doubt 1188 K
Tian Monastery 2064 K
Nectarbreeze Orchard 1019 K
Total 17996 K
Valley
of the Four Winds
Thunderfoot Fields 2253 K
Mudmag's Place & Silken Fields 2042 K
New Cifera 1056 K
Chen's Masterpiece 3571 K
The Stormstout Brewery 894 K
The Hidden Master 1909 K
Nestingwary's Safari 1951 K
Total 13676 K
Krasarang
Wilds
Zhu's Watch 1843 K
The Incursion 1754 K
Nestingwary member 822 K
Temple of the Red Crane 2034 K
Small Jinyu town by the river 437 K
The Water of Youth 1365 K
Stoneplow 1157 K
Fishing pandas to the south 1697k
Total 11109 K
The
Veiled Stair
Total 629 K
Kun-Lai
Summit
Binnan Village 733 K
Inkgill Mere 1633 K
Westwind Rest & The Youngal Invasion 3067 K
Shado-Pan Fallback 856 K
The Yak Wash 1621 K
Grummle Bazaar 891 K
One Keg 807 K
The Thunder King 2751 K
Zouchin Village 2144 K
Quests at the shore 978 K
The Burlap Waystation 3386 K
Kota Basecamp 1743 K
Winter's Blossom 1605 K
Temple of the White Tiger 238 K
Total 22453 K
Townlong
Steppes
Fire Camp Osul 4736 K
Mislurkers in the Sumprushes 2235 K
On Hatred's Path 3879 K
The Sha of Hatred 4461 K
Tai Ho' Investigation 4348 K
Total 19659 K
Dread
Wastes
The First Paragons 5854 K
The Might of the Klaxxi(included a few dailies) 6024 K
Taste of Amber 6213 K
Like a Deck Boss 3700 K
Total 21791 K
The Grumpy Elf thinks that it is possible to level
from 85 – 90 in 12 hours. Which would require a colossal 8,125,000 XP/hour. My
suggestion was for about 40 hours which would require a far more modest 2,437,500
XP/hour.
In the interest of science, I decided to run a test
to see what kind of XP/Hour I could reach if I went for broke and tried to
maximise my levelling experience in a short time frame of about an hour.
The scenario was as follows:
- Level 87 Dwarf Arms Warrior
- iLevel around 398
- Starting point – The Veiled Stair
- Time frame 1 Hour (approx.)
- Approach: Questing, kill as many mobs as possible and only mine nodes that are in close proximity
- Guild Level 25 – Full Rested XP and WOW 8th Anniversary Tabard
The start of the zone involves 2 quests and lots of
mob killing through the cave system. The two quests are Educating Sarok and
Robbing Robbers of Robbers. My method of calculating XP/Hour is the built in
app in Titan Panel, so I flew to the flight point and then logged off and back
on to reset the timer.
The first few kills set the XP/Hour into overdrive,
but the figure soon settled down to around 3 – 4 Million XP/Hour. Handing in
the quests spiked the system to over 5 million, but the next quest, The Spring
Drifter is a slow boat ride to Kun-Lai Summit, which obviously sent the figures
plummeting. The XP for a level 87 killing an equal level mob is 29,972 XP with
mining providing 16,402 XP per node.
I quickly collected all the quests in the area and in
an attempt to increase my speed I was a little more reckless than usual and
threw myself into large packs of mobs. Warriors have great regenerative skills,
but Arms is ultimately a DPS spec and not a tanking spec and my reckless
approach did result in 2 deaths due to misjudging the number of opponents.
In the end I settled into a quicker than normal
tempo and eventually stopped after completing Binan Village and Westwind Rest.
The time taken was 1 hour 20 minutes and the results can be seen below:
The most important figure is near the bottom XP/HR
This Session 5,121,197 which is way above my usual dawdle speed of 3,766,620 XP/HR
which includes going AFK for cups of coffee and snacks.
Using these figures shows that at my usual speed it
would take 26 Hours to level from 85 to 90, but at the new improved speed it
would only take 19 Hours. The question is could I maintain that pace for 19
hours and I think the answer is probably not.
At a pace of 19 or 20 hours to level a character,
that means that even I can level to 90 in a week with my restricted playtime.
In summary I massively overstated the time required,
but I also believe that I would find it impossible to reach the XP/Hour that
the Grumpy Elf thinks that he can obtain.
My guesstimate of 12 hours was based on my knowledge of 18 hours my first time through with no rested. If I can do 18 hours with no rested and without knowing the best routes 12 hours makes sense to me. No science, no fact, just a guesstimate. Worst case, it should not take more than 18 hours on a rested alt if it didn't take longer on an unrested main.
ReplyDeleteYou did choose a bit of questing that, if done the way I do it, has a crap ton of down time. The trip to open the gate, the trip down the river, a lot of running around without getting any kills. All that basically means 20-30 minutes with 0 experience to gain from it.
If you did a little more and averaged it with that huge collection of open space that you really can't do anything about you will find your over all average would go up considerable I believe.
Do the quest line for the shadow pan there and follow it all the way up and all those quests involved with it. They are all tight, quick and offer considerable experience, you will see your over all average skyrocket.