Goetia hitting 20 fast is a pretty big deal for a lot of classes (Aspect of the Cheetah for Hunter, Blink for Mage etc) so it’s probably worth planning a route that saves quest turn ins and turn them in to hit exactly 20 or as close to it as possible. Also most classes get a bulk of skills from their trainer at intervals of 10. Here’s what I have in notepad for level 19 turn ins:
1150 - Altered Beings
1350 - Stolen Silver
1250 - The Angry Scytheclaws
1300 - Lakota’mani
1950 - Consumed By Hatred
1450 - Owatanka
Grind to <=8450 (12850 into 19) xp from 20 on beasts level 17-20 or Bristleback Geomancer/Thornweaver (use Spirit of the Wind from Bloodshards)
E: this is essentially following Joanna’s route with some skipping and minor differences so go by that.
Jpy, I think I would not have been so high in exp if I were on an actual server competing with other players. With a repack, there's no shortage of mobs to kill, so I was quite ahead on exp most of the time. Usually I need to grind after completing the first Quillboar quests, but not this time.
Special thank you to Colroyds, with his tips, I improved from dinging 12 at 4:09 to 3:44. And it was my first time trying that route and I made several mistakes.(like forgetting to train thorns).
So much better, I hit my goal of getting to xroads below 4 hours, so I'm ready to go! thank you all again!!!
Any druid videos are appreciated too!
Special thank you to Colroyds, with his tips, I improved from dinging 12 at 4:09 to 3:44. And it was my first time trying that route and I made several mistakes.(like forgetting to train thorns).
So much better, I hit my goal of getting to xroads below 4 hours, so I'm ready to go! thank you all again!!!
Well done adruid !
The run continues... 18 hours 13 minutes to 30.
Cheers
Grats Massivechonk! I really need to find time to do some longer runs; 1-10 isn't gonna cut it.
Timberfist Thanks. Running a repack locally and having rested disabled helps a lot. You can pick it up whenever, without having to worry that a longer break will screw with your results.
Massivechonk very nice time to 30 m8!
E: how do you feel about Wind Serpent for leveling? It’s nice for 60 but there’s a lot more high armor targets for dungeons etc.
Hey everyone,
So I was going through my notes for 30 from following joana's guide, and I wanted to ask about deviation in 3 specific areas, and to see if I am thinking of this correctly, or if I need to follow the guide strictly...
15/16 Stonetalon mountains...
simply skip this part. It's difficult, especially the escort and finding enough mobs for the kill quest. and I'll be back later on anyways
20-20 Ashenvale and Splintertree and Zoram Strand...
feels like I'm going for this just for flight points, before my running talents really hit as a druid, and to do the naga head quest before it gets too easy. I'll be back to both areas later, so I can save quests for then.
29-30-32. Hillsbrad, Arathi, STV for a few quests, then Shimmering flats until 32....
Feels like a lot of travel, waiting for zepplins, when I can do the early Nesingwary quests when I'm back in STV later. Hillsbrad can go grey, but that's mostly a filler section to hit 30 (according to the guide), and then arathi highlands isn't many quests at all. I could grind shimmering flats until 32, and then get the Desolace quest in Freewind Post and move on.
Am I thinking of this correctly? Does the quest bonus make up for the travel time? Should I focus on using the existing guides with fidelity (except for elite quests), or am i thinking correctly on the cost/benefit analysis of grinding vs traveling and starting an area early.
thoughts?
@Massivechonk very nice time to 30 m8!
E: how do you feel about Wind Serpent for leveling? It’s nice for 60 but there’s a lot more high armor targets for dungeons etc.
I'm undecided when it comes to the best pet to level with.
Cats have the best offensive stats. However, Claw has higher focus cost than Growl which makes for bad chain pulling. Of course, I can learn to Growl myself instead of having it on autocast, but I'm lazy, so I'm not planning on doing that as of right now.
I like Serpents because you can pull mobs more safely with Lightning Bolt while you're bandaging/drinking/skinning etc. It doesn't sound like much, but being able to range pull with your pet is really nice imo. Lightning Bolt itself is also pretty cool, as it can't be dodged/parried/blocked etc and it ignores armor. The ability progression is a bit scuffed past Rank 3 Lightning Bolt and you can't get Rank 6 until ZG so... that's a negative I guess.
I'll prolly end up trying an Owl in this run on the next. Supposedly screech is really good.
I'm curious though, what's your opinion on pets while leveling?
@adruid
Taking aggro quickly and all 3 mobs while escorting Kaya is a must as she's very squishy. I personally have never had issues with Avenge my Village and Kill Grundig Darkcloud. Some of the mobs for the quests are level 14, so you'll be skipping out on experience when you come back at 20. Ideally you would want to git gud and do these, however if you see that there are a lot of people doing these you can just skip them and and grind somewhere to catch up. Then again, those are kill quests so you can just group up.
As for Ashenvale... depends on what level you go back. Again, the nagas are 19-20 so if you might miss out on the exp. The quest also works really with with Vorsha the Lasher as it spawns nagas, however I'm usually 22 when I get there and I can solo that as a Hunter.
I agree that what Joanna does around level 30 is inefficient. However, grinding Flats till 32 doesn't sound plausible. Unless you are a head of the pack or you're leveling towards the later stages of Classic. The zone is almost always full with both alliance and horde and you'll have a lot of competition and pvp if you want to grind there.
I'm going to go ahead and assume that you're playing a pserver, not on a local repack, since you mentioned having a hard time completing kill quests. So, if you're serious about your route you should download the lightshope repack so you can experiment with different ideas you might have.
@adruid
Taking aggro quickly and all 3 mobs while escorting Kaya is a must as she's very squishy. I personally have never had issues with Avenge my Village and Kill Grundig Darkcloud. Some of the mobs for the quests are level 14, so you'll be skipping out on experience when you come back at 20. Ideally you would want to git gud and do these, however if you see that there are a lot of people doing these you can just skip them and and grind somewhere to catch up. Then again, those are kill quests so you can just group up.
As for Ashenvale... depends on what level you go back. Again, the nagas are 19-20 so if you might miss out on the exp. The quest also works really with with Vorsha the Lasher as it spawns nagas, however I'm usually 22 when I get there and I can solo that as a Hunter.
I agree that what Joanna does around level 30 is inefficient. However, grinding Flats till 32 doesn't sound plausible. Unless you are a head of the pack or you're leveling towards the later stages of Classic. The zone is almost always full with both alliance and horde and you'll have a lot of competition and pvp if you want to grind there.
I'm going to go ahead and assume that you're playing a pserver, not on a local repack, since you mentioned having a hard time completing kill quests. So, if you're serious about your route you should download the lightshope repack so you can experiment with different ideas you might have.
Thanks for the tips! I really appreciate it!
I can see that joana is inefficient at 29 to 31, but I just can't figure out something better. very good points on shimmering flats, are there any other thoughts/recommendations on possible alternatives to both joana or just grinding the flats?
Thanks for the tips! I really appreciate it!
I can see that joana is inefficient at 29 to 31, but I just can't figure out something better. very good points on shimmering flats, are there any other thoughts/recommendations on possible alternatives to both joana or just grinding the flats?
I have a route that works for me, as a Hunter. I'm not familiar with druid leveling. You should figure out what works for you.
Massivechonk idk I’m still experimenting personally also. I like Raptor early because you can get it right after you get taming and it has slightly higher armor than Cat (which is helpful early, especially running 1/5 Endurance Training) and skipping the Cat early. If you get the Raptor at 10 by the time you’re getting to the Savannah Huntress at 12 you’ve already ranked up Loyalty so you’d have to start over. It’s basically caster pushback vs more armor, their base damage is the same. Once you hit 27 you have like 3/5 in the crit talent for pet so you can pick up the 1.2 speed Cat in Thousand Needles to capitalize on that. I feel like with Wind Serpent you’d miss out on the great pet talents in BM that are specifically built for melee pets. When you get to 60 you start farming bosses with really high armor so Wind Serpents make more sense.
E: I also skip Bite for quite a while and don’t have issues with auto cast Growl. You can range pull with the melee pet for most cases by just sending it in to attack then recalling it once it gets in aggro radius.
E2: on the note of Joanna’s route, I’m in the same boat as Massivechonk where I have a Hunter route in mind but haven’t really practiced much on other classes for speedrunning. I will say that I have my doubts about escort quests in general before ~20 because of competition, even with sharding. I’d say there were maybe 20-30 people regularly working on the same quests as me from 1-20 on Northdale. I ALWAYS had to wait on escorts (it’s a long wait). Shards could be as big as 100 per shard (no confirmation on shard size AFAIK). I think it’s probably best to go in with a mindset of do it if you can but don’t spend an eternity waiting on something and letting everyone catch up to you.
First time ever trying to actually speed run. 1-10 on Northdale. Was tempted to do it on my server alone but figured it would've been too easy having every mob to myself. So I tried to replicate somewhat like it would be on classic. Benefits of having people around you is people are generally friendly and will save you if they think you're about to die. More buffs is nice and grouping up for quests like murlocs is convenient as soloing that would be a pain in a ass.
Downside was competing against mobs, specifically named mobs like Hogger, Goldtooth, etc. As in my case there were already people in full groups camping his spawn. So I had to wait.
But here is my time for 1-10 Paladin on Northdale.
I died like 7 times unintentionally due to not paying attention to my health. Im used to my health being by my spellbar but I kept it default up in the top left corner which got me killed too many times lol.
My character name is Catspus on Alliance (Northdale). Have him logged out outside and when im ready i'll push for a 10-20 run on him.