Entries in legacy (1)
Damn It Feels Good to be An Alt!
Many people, including us at Project Lore, find monotony in playing at level 80. Without the overall goal of leveling up, you can feel misguided. Many people decide to create alts so they can again have that purple (or blue) experience bar on their screens. You may find that it is much easier to level than before! With a recent patch, more than 60 new graveyards now scatter Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. There have been a few new flightpaths added over the past few months (Un'goro, Ratchet, Mudsprocket), ghosts move faster as of 3.0.8, and the amount of experience required to level has been slashed repeatedly. The XP required for 10-60 is less than half of its original value, and 60-70 has been slashed by just as much since the release of Wrath. In the case that you have high level friends on other servers, you can now make a new level 55 death knight on their server (provided you have a level 55 on your "home" realm). I've already taken advantage of this and now have death knights running around a half dozen realms. If you have an active level 80, you may want to consider getting a few Heirloom items if you plan on leveling any alts. These items are "bind to account" and can be mailed between your characters. Their stats scale with the level of their owner, and even their armor type in limited instances. Perhaps most importantly, the shoulder pieces give you an additional 10% experience gain from killing monsters. This means you have to do about 10% less stuff for every level from 1 to 80. That's like requiring only 90% of the normal experience required level (provided all your experience comes from killing monsters). Not to mention, shoulder pieces don't really start appearing until the mid 20s, so its a good extra boost in power by putting something in that otherwise empty slot. You can pick up a pair of these shoulders in many flavors for whatever spec of whatever class you want for either 200 Stone Keeper's Shards (for pieces with resilience) or 40 badges of heroism (for pieces with more PvE stats). I'd use the Shards personally since most people will have many more of them than badges, but if you are swimming in badges and already have tier 7.5 gear, you might want to use some of those badges on heirloom gear. There are a couple cool trinkets too. They can be bought for 50 emblems of heroism and give you 2% of your health or mana back when you kill something. Additionally, they offer some stats. The Swift Hand of Justice gives you 2% health when you kill something and haste, while the Discerning Eye of the Beast gives you 2% mana when you kill something and spell power. These can greatly reduce your downtime while leveling. I'd personally pick the Swift Hand of Justice first since anyone can use haste and gives you flexibility to change your mind with which alt you want to level. In addition to these pieces, you can find every flavor of weapon, off-hand, and ranged weapon. The stats scale well with level, and it keeps your alts well-geared without having to worry about tracking down every last piece to keep them powerful. If you can convince your friend to start playing WoW with you, you can use the refer-a-friend program and get 3x the normal experience when you play together (provided you are both under level 60 on the characters you are leveling and are within 5 levels of each other) along with many other nice benefits, like the fancy zhevra mount. They don't even have to pay until after either 10 days or if they want to level past 20. Lastly, you may want some addons to help you track the rest experience status of all your characters. If you use FuBar, check out RestFu, which shows you the rest status of all your characters, time to fully rest, and more. What tricks and addons do you all use to enhance your alt experience?