Horde Leveling Guide: Level 70-80

Introduction and Basics

With your journey into Northrend, you have the choice between two starting zones. The Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord. The zones are at the opposite ends of each other on Northrend and ultimately both zones will take you to Dragonblight when you complete them.

For the purposes of leveling quickly, I personally recommend starting in The Borean Tundra instead of the Howling Fjord. Still, I will outline their differences further below to let you decide.

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. We've taken a great deal of time to make sure you don't get stuck at any places and to keep questing routes optimal, 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.
• 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.
• Log out at an Inn or Capital City. Between leveling, always try to logout at an Inn or Capital to build resting experience.
• Use only one weapon type. Leveling weapon skill every time you switch weapons is very time consuming and I advise strongly against it. Some quest along the way will reward you with a better weapon of the same type at some point so be patient.
• 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.
• Don't level professions With the exception of First Aid, I don't recommend leveling any professions since it takes time away from gaining experience. Even with First Aid, I only level it when I am waiting for boats, zepplins or other points where you need to wait.

Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord?

From a questing perspective the Borean Tundra has approximately 150 quests while the Howling Fjord has around 105. This difference alone makes questing in the Borean Tundra more worthwhile. The difficulty of both zones is approximately the same with quest rewards being similar in quality.

There are some distinct advantages that the Howling Fjord has. You're less likely to engage in PVP battle with the layout of quests and the terrain. If you are on a PVP server, this may be one element to consider. The Borean Tundra has many neutral quest hubs that are shared by both sides with guards that will not intervene in any PVP combat. The Howling Fjord is also less likely to be overpopulated, it's entry point is from the zepplins outside Undercity while the zepplin outside Orgrimmar takes you to the Borean Tundra. On most servers, the large majority will probably start from Orgrimmar.

So while I consider the Borean Tundra an ideal starting zone for the Horde, PVP and overcrowding can potentially make things less than ideal. Ultimately I leave you the reader the choice... If you're like me, you'll eventually end up doing both sides anyway ;)

Borean Tundra Guide

Howling Fjord Guide

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.