The Leveling Route I Actually Use

I've leveled enough characters at this point that I stopped winging it and settled on a route that actually minimizes wasted time. This is the plan I ran most recently, on a character I was leveling specifically to support my main with gold and professions, and I want to walk through it zone by zone rather than just say "level efficiently."

1.The core idea: stay ahead of the zone, not behind it

My rule is to be two or three levels above the zone I'm questing in, not under-leveled for it. Going in over-leveled means fewer deaths, faster kills, and less time wasted on quests that would otherwise take multiple pulls to finish safely. The tradeoff is you sometimes outlevel a zone's quests before you've done all of them, which is fine — skip what's not worth your time and move on rather than finishing every last quest in a zone for its own sake.

2.Gathering professions alongside it

I leveled Mining and Skinning on this character the whole way up, picking up ore and skinning every kill along my questing path rather than detouring for it. It costs almost no extra time since you're already moving through the zone, and by the time you're 80 you've got a real head start on both skills instead of having to catch them up separately later. It also means every zone change doubles as a fresh set of nodes and skinnable mobs you haven't touched yet.

3.Dungeon boosts aren't what they used to be

I want to flag this because it surprised me: Warmane has nerfed the XP dungeons give when there's a level-80 character in the group, specifically to stop pure power-leveling through boosts. I noticed it directly — the XP gain was nowhere near what it should've been for the dungeons I was running. Queuing normally through the dungeon finder is still worth doing for gear and gold, but don't plan your leveling speed around getting boosted through instances anymore; quest normally and treat dungeon pops as a bonus when they happen to queue up.

4.The zone route I actually followed

• Early zones with light competition for gathering (I used Westfall specifically) to get Mining and Skinning skill levels up early without fighting other players for the same nodes.
• Stranglethorn Vale, then Tanaris, then Un'Goro Crater — Un'Goro in particular is efficient because the quests loop in a circle around the zone, so you're never backtracking.
• Silithus before heading to Outland — farming Rugged Leather off the worms there while questing is a real double-dip: XP from kills, gold from the leather, at the same time.
• Into Outland at level 62, not the "intended" 58, specifically to stay ahead of the zone's mobs rather than even with them.
• Hellfire Peninsula's raw materials (Fel Iron, Netherweave) don't sell for much, so I didn't bother farming there beyond what dropped naturally while questing.
• Nagrand has a real time-saver: find someone doing the Nagrand Arena group quest and ask to tag along AFK — it's worth close to a full level of XP for effectively no effort.
• Northrend starting in Borean Tundra, which I'd recommend over Howling Fjord specifically if you don't have a flying mount yet — it's the better of the two zones to level through on the ground.
• Cold Weather Flying trained around level 77 in Sholazar Basin, right before heading into Zul'Drak.
• Zul'Drak through to 80, selling Cobalt Ore and Borean Leather along the way rather than hoarding it.

5.The gold you actually end up with

Selling everything gathered along the way isn't automatic money — my first big auction house dump only cleared about 4,200 gold because a lot of the Cobalt Ore got undercut before it sold. A second pass a bit later, once the market had thinned out, brought in enough to comfortably afford both the fast flying mount and a few glyphs on top. The lesson: don't expect your first dump of mats to sell cleanly, and don't panic if it doesn't — relist and try again once the glut clears.

6.What I'd tell you before you start

Pick your gathering professions before you start leveling, not after — retrofitting Mining and Skinning onto an 80 means grinding node-density zones purely for skill points instead of picking it up for free while questing. Stay ahead of your zone's level rather than exactly on pace with it, and don't build your leveling plan around dungeon boosts anymore; they're not the shortcut they used to be.