by World of Warcraft’s latest chapter takes players to the Dragon Islands, where you can level up in four areas while honing your professions and learning how to ride dragons – definitely a highlight of the new expansion. Getting from level 60 to level 70 in Dragonflight will usually take you between four hours and 14 hours, depending on how interested you are in speedrunning, whether you read quests and watch cutscenes, and how many fun detours you take along the way.
This Dragonflight leveling guide will give you the tips you need to optimize your journey through the new content. Want to speedrun, maximize your professional benefits? I have some tips to help you. And I have some thoughts on what role dragonriding should play in your leveling process.
Decide from the start if going fast is worth missing a story
Speedrunning pros have already gone from 60 to 70 several times, figuring out what quests and hubs to do, identifying minor shortcuts they can find, and farming all the possible fast items they need. But that doesn’t mean you can’t go fast yet, even if you’ve never logged into the Beta Realms.
Speed gear, procs, and items are useful. Your objective is to outrun the leveling crowd; even a minor perk can multiply, since you’ll get to quests before they’re overrun by other players killing your mobs and looting your quest items.
To advance, you will start by not reading any quest text and ideally not watching any cut scenes. Most speedrunners eliminate them when testing on the beta or catch up with the lore later on the alts. Mods like QuickQuest can help you with this, automatically accepting new quests and dropping completed ones when you click on NPCs.
Don’t forget that there is a new Interact Key shortcut in the default UI and you can assign it to any key or button you like. You can find it by clicking Options in the System menu, then searching for “Interact”. Click to activate the interact key, then assign a hotkey to interact with the target. That, combined with an auto-accept mod, means all you have to do is get in range, point your character at an enlightened NPC, hit a key, and leave.
Other ways to be fast
There are a number of rare items, enchantments, and drops that can help you get from point A to point B quickly in Dragonflight. Some are a little less prominent than in other World of Warcraft expansions thanks to Dragonriding, which can quickly have you jumping from place to place. But in many cases, throwing along the floor for accidental runs can save you time.
Some of these items take a lot of work to cultivate. Falling Flame, a 50-use item that propels you far away, is a rare drop from the rare elemental monster Cinderfall on the Timeless Isle. If you want to grow it, good luck; it has a 1-2% sink rate.
But there are a few easy-to-pack things in your bags that will help you get where you need to go faster. A few we recommend:
- fried bonefish, the Shadowlands expansion version of Bear Tartarus. This gives your character a 282 speed boost (about 20% at level 60) after killing a monster that gives experience.
- Doublet of jewels on horsebacka gem that adds 13 speed rating for each Shadowlands gem you have equipped.
- A level 262 Shadowlands piece of armor or trinket, crafted with Pure-Air Sail Extensionswhich add a flat speed rating of 82. The additional increase in mount speed, alas, does not work outside of the Shadowlands.
- The Fortified Speed Shadowlands cloak enchantment, which adds a fixed speed rating of 30.
- Rifle shoes, a Legion expansion engineering item that sets your feet on fire and dashes you for 25 seconds at 200% movement speed. Useful for traveling a longer distance to return to a quest hub, but perhaps less useful the farther you go.
- Light-Step Hoof Plates, if you are not already using them. This mount gear designed for the Battle for Azeroth expansion adds 20% to your mount speed, but it does not stack with other mount speed effects, such as Death Knight’s Mount Speed Buffs and of the paladin.
- If you are in a guild, take a guild coat from your guild merchant in Stormwind or Orgrimmar. This will allow you to put your home wherever you want in the Dragon Islands and use the cape to quickly teleport to your capital for supplies or other errands. While you’re there, pick up a guild banner – they accumulate experience points when you kill mobs in an area for a certain amount of time. The three banners and three cloaks don’t share a cooldown, so you can buy and use all six if you want.
What quests should you do?
If you’re trying to stay ahead of the crowd, even if you don’t commit to running at top speed, the fastest way to steadily move forward is to avoid anything optional. This means only doing campaign quests, which are listed separately in your quest log and have an angular frame around the ! above the heads of quest givers. Ignore profession quests, any “go visit that distant hub” quests that aren’t marked as a campaign, and keep your nose to the grindstone for anything but dragon riding.
Campaign quests alone won’t get you to 70 – they end at around 67.5 assuming you haven’t accrued rest experience times along the way – but when you get to the end , you have many additional choices for where you will go. This means you won’t be locked into areas that are overused and overrun by tons of other players.
The only exception to this rule is the Dragonriding opening questline, which is not entirely required by the campaign. You definitely want your new mount buddy and the first set of boosts and abilities. If you want to optimize for speed, you’ll probably want to pick up the Dragon Ride Glyphs from the first area.
So you want to be quick, but not obsessed
There’s a compromise approach to leveling that can give you profession boosts, a bit of history, and less stress, while still steadily progressing in experience. Start by ignoring the quest text, which you can read at your leisure on alts later, but always watch the cutscenes, which usually catch you up on what’s going on.
Instead of skipping all profession quests, take them. They’re often found in the same areas where you do other campaign quests, and you’ll get profession items and accessories as you level up, which will get you in good shape when you reach 70 and you want to improve your skills.
If you find yourself in a quest area where there are campaign quests plus an additional bonus objective area, consider doing the bonus objective if you are halfway through or more when you complete the campaign. Bonus objectives are worth around 1.5 times a normal XP quest, so they’re worth it if you can easily complete them, not so much if you have to travel to a new location to get them.
It’s probably still worth skipping side quest hubs out of the way on your hike to 70, but even if you’re speedrunning, come back to it when you’re done. They’ll help you get known to different factions, and most distant quests are downright fun to play.
two dragon
If you’re not aiming for record speed, consider taking the time to not only do the introductory dragon riding quests, but also fast-pace through all the areas to pick up all the dragon glyphs. A fully unlocked dragon tree doesn’t take that long – 25 minutes if you’re skilled enough to stay in the air the whole time, and have a map/orientation add-on to help you – and it’s absolutely brilliant when it is completely leveled.
If you’re leveling with a friend, you can take turns picking up glyphs when you need a break. If you visit the town of Valdrakken first, at any level, you can speak to the dragon trainer Lithragosa for the option of taking you on as passengers. It transforms the person who accompanies it into an adorable little dog. With a little work on in-flight positioning, you can both get the glyphs at the same time, while one of you gets a chance to snack.
None of the weekly locks for professions, dungeons, or PvP are available until the first weekly reset. Going to 70 will give you a bit more time to work on your character, but won’t give you a huge advantage, so leveling times are less rushed than usual.
What to do if you’re not in a hurry
If you want to kick back and read it all, but don’t want to fight for your quest mobs, you can avoid mobs by doing the opposite of speedrunning. Do every side quest hub. Explore each valley to find rare and collection nodes. Get all those Dragonriding glyphs. Take the time to fish with the Tuskarr. Smell the proverbial roses. Disconnect during peak hours and reconnect during off-peak hours, with the benefit of having a rested experience to burn. The mobs will overtake you and you’ll still get to 70 in around 14 hours of gameplay.
