Death Knight Leveling Guide

Introduction and Basics

The Death Knight is available to players as a new character if you have a level 55 or higher character on your account. You are restricted to creating only one per realm. Death Knights start at level 55 and begin their journey in Archerus: The Ebon Hold, a floating citadel sitting above Eastern Plaguelands accessible only by Death Knights.

In addition to starting at level 55, Death Knight's start out with an uncommon quality set of gear, 4x[Deathweave Bag], 270 Artisan First Aid Skill and Expert Riding Skill. There is also Undying Resolve, a zonewide buff that will have a Val'kyr Battle-maiden resurrect you every 10 minutes in case you die.

There are very unique quests that drive the Death Knight story line, cool spells and when you finish the starting zone, you're left with a rare quality set of gear, a free epic land mount and all the flightpoints already available for Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. With all of this available, it's easy to see why so many players would consider rerolling one as their main character.

Addons

While you can do just fine without any addons, I do recommend at the very least installing a map coordinate addon. There are many available out there, I personally use cMinimapCoordinates which is lightweight and small (only 5kb) and will tell you your location on your minimap and main map.

Basic Leveling Tips

• Follow the Instructions. You cannot skip most Death Knight quests so don't get clever trying to. We've taken a great deal of time to make sure you don't get stuck at any places, provided you're following directions ;)
• Spec for damage and less downtime. Put talent points into talents that will reduce your downtime and increase your damage. For the Death Knight, this means speccing Blood. I recommend a build such as this one or something similar.
• Turn on auto-looting. Press ESC, go to Options, Controls and turn on "Auto Loot". This will save you time when looting bodies.
• Don't waste time finding groups. Everything described in this guide can be soloed. Only group with people when it's convenient. If you find other players at an elite quest mob when you get there, that is convenient. Waiting for a player that's across the zone to arrive and kill a mob isn't.
• Use only one weapon type. Leveling weapon skill every time you switch weapons is very time consuming and I advise strongly against it. Considering that Death Knights start out with a sword, I recommend sticking to Two-Handed Swords for the remainder of your leveling.
• Avoid PVP Dying will slow you down while leveling. If you can avoid it, don't confront and avoid enemy players. Even if you are well geared, your chances dying at the hands of a player are far greater than dying world mobs and dying just slows you down. Killing players won't get you any XP either.

Other Notes

This guide is based on data from build Beta 3.0.2.9014 (9/30/2008). This guide will be updated as new builds are released. The Blood tree in Beta 3.0.2.9014 got some pretty significant nerfs making Unholy a clear cut high DPS leveling tree. Most of the guide still has talent recommendations for Blood and I won't be updating my recommended talent spec until near release since Death Knight talents are being changed every 5 days or so.