In the past few days, I’ve been busy doing multiple 80-85 speedruns in WoW Cataclysm Classic to uncover the fastest leveling route. I’ll explain my final route in this guide, which guarantees you can reach Level 85 in 10 hours or fewer. If you have enough WoW Cataclysm Classic Gold on hand, let’s start the journey!
Level 80 To 82
From Level 80 to 82, you’re presented with 2 completely different zone options: Mount Hyjal or Vashj’ir. Before discussing the route in a bit more detail, I’ll just let you know that Mount Hyjal is significantly faster than Vashj’ir. During my speedruns, I tested both zones multiple times, and doing the entirety of Vashj’ir takes roughly twice as long as Mount Hyjal.
Vashj’ir
This means that Vashj’ir will be a highly inefficient zone whether you’re a new player or an experienced one. If you do have your heart set on leveling in Vashj’ir for whatever reason, there is small piece of advice I have to give you. Vashj’ir is divided into 3 subzones – Kelp’thar Forest, Shimmering Expanse, and Abyssal Depths.
The first 2 zones, while slow, are not that much worse overall when compared to Mount Hyjal. The real-time loss involved in Vashj’ir questing comes towards the end of Shimmering Expanse when you begin completing quests as a Naz’jar Battlemaiden.
This chain has a lot of forced wait time that massively slows down questing, but it also leads straight into the final zone, Abyssal Depths, which is the worst of the 3 by far. This third and final zone is the main reason why Vashj’ir takes twice as long as Mount Hyjal.
If you instead opt to just do Kelp’thar Forest and the first half of Shimmering Expanse, and then spam dungeons until Level 82, you won’t end up too far behind the players who level in Mount Hyjal.
Mount Hyjal
Now, we can discuss what should do if you choose to start your leveling journey in Mount Hyjal. The main way to reach this zone is by picking up the quest off your faction’s mission board and then taking the portal to Moonglade within Orgrimmar or Stormwind City.
You’ll then need to wait a few minutes while a Green Dragon slowly flies you up to Hyjal Summit, and you can begin the actual questline. Alternatively, Druids are able to teleport directly to Moonglade and begin the questline there, or you can just fly straight into the zone and speak with Ysera.
For most players, the first method will be the easiest and the fastest, but I wanted to at least acknowledge that there are other ways to reach the zone if you so choose. Every single quest chain within Mount Hyjal is worth completing, and most of them are fairly straightforward.
The only other noteworthy thing about Mount Hyjal questing is you may want to stop towards the end and do a few dungeons in order to reach Level 82. Just like in Vashj’ir, the later stages of Mount Hyjal can be a bit slow, especially when you reach the quests where you go undercover as an agent of the Twilight’s Hammer.
To be clear, while this part of the zone is a bit slower, it is still significantly faster than anything in Vashj’ir and is a perfectly valid way to reach Level 82. However, if you enter the zone at exactly Level 80 with no additional experience, you’ll already be Level 81 and a half by the time you reach this section, and that is the best possible time to queue for dungeons.
Dungeon Leveling
When it comes to dungeon leveling in WoW Cataclysm Classic from 80 to 82, we can end up clearing the dungeons insanely quickly, the total leveling time only ended up being marginally faster than my solo questing times in Mount Hyjal. While it may initially appear like dungeons are a slower method of leveling, this isn’t necessarily the case. Dungeons are only slow if you spam them and do absolutely nothing else.
They’re actually not that bad if you run them only a handful of times in between traditional questing routes. This is because the bulk of the experience you gain from a dungeon will come from the one-time quests, so every run of a dungeon after your first will be far less efficient.
From levels 80 to 81, the only 2 available dungeons are Blackrock Caverns and Throne of the Tides. Upon reaching Level 81, you’ll be able to access both the Stonecore and the Vortex Pinnacle, both of which are very fast and have multiple quests for you to complete.
While I wouldn’t advise spamming dungeons at this point, it is absolutely worth doing Blackrock Caverns, Vortex Pinnacle, and Stonecore at least one time when you having a large number of WoW Cataclysm Gold.
Level 82 To 83
Regardless of which method you’ve used thus far, upon reaching Level 82, all roads will lead to Deepholm. In order to access this zone, you’ll need to return to Stormwind or Orgrimmar and complete a short roleplay questline that takes you into the Maelstrom.
This next level is extremely straightforward. You want to complete each and every quest you encounter within the zone of Deepholm. Not only are the quests here just generally efficient and easy to complete, but it’s also required in order to unlock the Therazane reputation, which is how you’ll obtain epic shoulder enchants at Level 85.
If you switch over to Deepholm instantly upon reaching Level 82, then completing all of the quests within this zone should get you to roughly Level 83 and 1/3. It’s also not a bad idea to complete the Therazane daily quests after you finish the zone since you want to be doing these at max level and they still offer decent experience.
You’ll also have a bonus dungeon quest for the Stonecore after finishing Deepholm, so if you haven’t completed that dungeon by this point, it may be a good idea to stop and do it before you head to the next zone, Uldum. Then, just buy Cataclysm gold and step into Uldam.
Level 83 To 84
Uldum will be unlocked after you’ve reached Level 83, and unlike the previous 3 zones and you won’t receive any free teleports from the questline. You’ll instead need to fly down there yourself. When you reach this zone, there are multiple sets of quests will become available. Each one will direct you to a separate subzone that contains many additional quests. While you will need to complete all of these eventually, the order in which you tackle them is entirely up to you.
For the most part, Uldum will play out quite similarly to Deepholm in that the quests are relatively linear. They’ll take you on a path across most of the zone, and after finishing them, you should be close to reaching Level 84.
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Also Read: A Deep Dive Into Boss Mechanics In WOW Cataclysm Classic Grim Batol – Normal & Heroic Mode
Level 84 To 85
Once you finish the main questline in Uldum and reach Level 84, you’ll be able to enter the final zone, Twilight Highlands. Of course, don’t forget to bring some gold with you.
While Horde and Alliance players will follow completely different questlines at this stage, they’re both fairly linear and will follow a similar theme. You’ll eventually establish your faction’s main town within the zone, and the questline will then open up a bit and provide you with multiple paths.
A large part of this is because of Twilight Highlands, which is not only a colossal zone in terms of quests but also slows down a lot towards the end due to roleplay. Although the initial quests within the zone are decently efficient, the questing speeds will slow to a crawl towards the end.
You’ ll ideally want to have reached Level 85 before you’re forced to do the quests at the Maw of Madness in the northern section of the zone, as everything beyond this point is exceptionally slow and tedious. Additionally, while the Horde quest line remains decently efficient for the first half of Twilight Highlands, this is not the case at all for Alliance. For these reasons, you’ll want to look for alternative methods to reach Level 85 once you’ve exhausted the efficient quests within Twilight Highlands.
The first and most obvious method would be to run additional dungeons, and this is an especially good idea at Level 84 since you get three new options in the random dungeon finder. These are Grim Batol, Halls of Origination, and Lost City of the Tol’vir. While these dungeons are on the slower end, they’re going to be worth completing at least once because of the quests.
In addition to this, there are a few extra quests that you can complete within Twilight Highlands that aren’t part of the main chain. For starters, the Crucible of Carnage is an extremely efficient set of quests in the center of the zone. Early on in the expansion, there should be tons of people looking to form groups to complete this questline, so you should have no trouble knocking it out for a bunch of free experience.
While this final level may feel a little difficult, if you follow these steps, you should be able to break through and reach the highest level in WoW Cataclysm Classic.
