[00:00] Hi, I'm Hazel. It's Saturday today, which makes it time to sit down and catch up on what's going on in WoW. This week, we're in Midnight Early Access, so first of all, happy Midnight launch to the Epic Edition purchasers.
[00:16] This week, I want to focus on Midnight leveling tips. So, whether you are leveling away in Early Access or waiting to get going next week when the game launches properly, hopefully I've got a leveling tip to help make things go a little smoother for you.
[00:30] Now, I will say, I personally, not a fast leveler, I get distracted, I get lost, I get turned around. As of recording this, I'm level 85, which I feel is an accomplishment.
[00:44] But my Gildy Flabby is 90 on his main, and his first ult has already passed my main. So I asked him to compile his tips for how to level quickly in Midnight, so that I can pass them on to you.
[00:57] First of all, he says clear out your bags of everything that you do not need before you start. He says he usually only keeps consumables, flask, food, HP pots, DPS pots, and augment runes.
[01:09] I looked at that and I went, maybe that's why you're 90 and I'm not, because I kept food and felt pretty proud of myself. So if you happen to have all of those potions and runes left over from the War Within, send them while you're leveling.
[01:21] The next tip is to consider leveling in War Mode. It is a 15% bonus experience for being in war mode. It was higher, but it was nerfed. 15% is still nothing to sneeze at, though,
[01:33] and you may never actually get into a fight with another player, so it could be just like a flat 15% bonus. I personally did not do this because I am chronically risk-averse,
[01:46] but it seems to me that the smartest thing, if you wanted to be smart and not chronically risk-averse, is to turn on War Mode, level away, and then just turn it off if it's a problem.
[01:58] Chances are most of the other people that are in War Mode right now are also doing it for the leveling buff and don't want to slow down their leveling to ruin your day. Can't speak for everybody, but it's probably going to be fine.
[02:11] The next tip was to set your Hearthstone to the new inn. Comes in very handy for getting back to Silvermoon and skipping the flight back if you've made your way super far to the edges of the zone. and a lot of the quests tend to send you back to Silvermoon
[02:24] to kind of reconvene with your forces. So having your Hearthstone there helps you kind of like skip that and save time. When it comes to what to do at a level, the answer is to focus on the campaign first because you will need that done anyway
[02:37] at least once to unlock stuff. But make sure that you do a handful of side quests or other activities also because the campaign story is not going to be quite enough XP
[02:49] to get you to 90. and in fact it not even enough XP to get you into the last part of the campaign story Starting the final zone campaign requires level 86 and doing the storyline up to that point will get you somewhere in the 85 to 85 range
[03:04] So dungeons, delves, or side quests can all help make up that difference, and you may want to do them anyways, especially if you'd like to unlock static flying by completing the new Midnight Pathfinder achievement.
[03:16] It's crazy that they make you unlock static flying. but it is what it is. The next tip, you'll notice while you're leveling that the campaign occasionally asks you to do a dungeon.
[03:29] When you get to that point, there will be a very tempting-looking button saying to queue for a follower dungeon, and you can do that, and it would work for your quest, but oh boy are they slow.
[03:41] The Den of Nalarak in Zolomon is notorious for this. you can easily spend an hour trying to do that dungeon with the NPCs, whereas even if you're in a DPS, it is probably much faster to just get in the queue,
[03:55] do some side quests while you wait in that queue, and then do the dungeon with actual people because they will be faster. All of these things are optional, and there's no wrong way to level, of course, but if you value speed, just queue up for the dungeon.
[04:10] Next, there is a bunch of experience available for doing the first crafts in your midnight procession. Ideally, you want to wait until you're level 88 or 89 before you start doing that,
[04:23] so that that first craft experience gets you over some of the slower, longer levels at the end, as opposed to the easier, faster ones at the beginning, especially if you have gear that was pretty good to start with.
[04:36] It seems like you're looking at about 65 to 75% of a level from first craft, so it's not going to get you through like a couple levels, but it is a meaningful boost. Now, bear in mind, stuff is expensive right now,
[04:51] so this may or may not be worth it to you depending on how valuable your gold is to you and whether or not you would be doing these first crafts anyways. Another idea related to professions, especially if you do not have or do not want to do crafting professions,
[05:05] is to consider gathering, specifically mining and herbalism. I have heard some reports that gathering XP from picking mining and herbing nodes is juicy, with as few as three herbs being the equivalent to completing a quest.
[05:20] I wouldn't like to lead a profession for it, especially if you spent a bunch of time getting, like, the core recipes recently. But if you're leveling a character that doesn't have professions, or, you know, you've got gathering professions, lean into that and don't be afraid to pick the flower.
[05:33] It is worth it. So those are the main tips There are two more that were going around that are no longer valid to update you on One of them was waiting for Darkmoon Faire to maximize reputation gains It looks like there some hot fixes going in to make it so that at least this first Darkmoon Faire can speak to the later ones but the first Darkmoon Faire that buff is not going to benefit Midnight Reputation
[05:58] So, I know that sounds sucky, but basically they're just taking out the incentive to play super weird and hoard a bunch of quests until Sunday. With this hotfix in mind, any quest drawn is a good quest to do.
[06:10] Just turn in whatever you've finished. Don't worry about stocking stuff up for Darkmoon Faire. I do think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the experience buff is going to be fine. So by all means, go pick up the Darkmoon Faire buff on Sunday to boost your leveling,
[06:24] but don't expect it to give you any massive gains to reputations. And then another thing that got fixed, there was some endgame BOE gear that was equippable very early. They have fixed that now, so you can no longer equip it at level 80.
[06:37] There was some very strong BOEs dropping, but that's been sorted out, so don't worry about it. Other things that might assist you on your leveling journey. I want to show you two add-ons that I get asked about a lot on stream.
[06:49] I've showed these before in the video, but just in case you haven't seen them. They won't make you quest faster, but they will make your questing look nicer, which might help you stay more focused. The first one is Dialogue UI, which looks like this. It just makes the quest interface a bit nicer, more readable, it can hide the rest of your UI.
[07:07] There's a lot of options to let you customize this to exactly the way you like it. If you've been enjoying the storytelling in the new zones, or if you would like to, this add-on might help you get more immersed. And then Waypoint UI re-skins the waypoint, which can make it much easier to figure out where you're going.
[07:22] Less clicking a quest in your quest tracker will make it active, and the waypoint will show you the way to wherever the objective is. Waypoint UI just skins that with this nice visible beam of light, which I found to be a beacon.
[07:35] As a sleep-deprived gamer, it was much easier to follow. So, moving along, I'd like to highlight a couple of activities that are not available just yet in early access, but are coming very soon with the full launch of the game on March 3rd,
[07:49] just in case you were wondering why you can't do it yet, that's why. Heronier are not playable yet, but they're coming very soon on March 3rd, so make sure you finish your Heron Bar campaign if you are itching to make a Heronier alt.
[08:02] The Arkentina is also going to be coming out at that time, That's the new feature they've been advertising where visitors come by and get quests. Profession weeklies will not start until then, so no stress if you haven't found them. It's because they're not in yet.
[08:14] The harder difficulty of Prey will start March 3rd, and also Mythics Zero. The main things to do that are available right now in Early Access are just leveling, profession leveling, and then maybe getting into normal dungeons,
[08:26] normal delves up to kind of level 7, and normal difficulty Prey is available. I think you could easily spend all of early access just leveling your first character. It is notably slower than it has been in the role within.
[08:39] Other things that caught me by surprise while I was leveling I noticed when I finished the Zolomon campaign that the achievement unlocks a mommy troll customization for darkspear trolls I had no idea this was going to be a thing I had never
[08:54] heard of it. I got kind of excited. I logged on to a darkspear troll to take a look at these options, and I found out that it's really just a couple of skin and hair colors. I can't really be disappointed about something that I only just found out about. There were no expectations to
[09:11] crush, but eh, come on, dress up like a hairstyle or something. The dark spear troll with just the skin color change feels less like a new customization and more like a wicked tie-in.
[09:24] She's giving Elphaba. Other things going on, we have an early preview of the upcoming March Trading Post. Good time to go shop from those February vendors if you haven't done so yet. The March Trading Post, I kid you not, has a live, laugh, love theme, although I, looking at this,
[09:40] I have no idea how that tranquils into these items. I do like the flying quilt mount that we're going to get for filling the bar, and there are some lovely red butterfly items that might go nicely with the new Silvermoon-themed sets.
[09:52] And it's just now occurring to me that for a place called Silvermoon, they really did lean into gold. As far as what I've been up to, I have been streaming. A huge thank you to everybody supporting my Midnight Latch streams
[10:06] and giving their gift subs to me for the support of Streamer. massive, life-changing very encouraging, thank you very much that promotion is running all month long so if you want the Fishmonger main pet you can pop into a WoW streamer's channel
[10:20] anytime before March the 26th while they're live and gift two subscriptions to get the pet, could be me it could be somebody else but you know, I'm live Wednesday through Sunday 9 in the morning until noon Pacific
[10:32] it's a little skin for me the other thing that I've been doing lately is I finally tore down the inside of my wow house to start over. I'm redecorating. I did a little mud room, which I'm not quite happy with, but it's getting there.
[10:46] But I'm very happy with this streaming room. I have recreated, more or less, my real-life office in my RoboGore craft house. This took somewhere in the neighborhood of eight hours to do.
[11:00] I think I might put together a little video at some point showing all the bits and pieces. the monitors are made out of that Zillow promotion doormat item if you turn it around it makes a real good looking blank screen super happy about this the rest of the house is completely empty but it'll come together eventually and
[11:15] that's been the week thank you so much for watching feel free to share any other midnight leveling tips that you have in the comments for people to use happy leveling and I hope you have a wonderful wonderful day
[11:33] Thank you.