Casual levelling diary - week 1

Since cataclysm launched WoW has become even more casual friendly than before. Not everyone can find the opportunity to play for hours at a time, but it is more than possible to level to maximum level while just playing in 30 minute periods. Not only can you reach maximum level but by spending some time on the auction house each day it is possible to have a nice amount of gold.

Of course if you can never play for more than half an hour a lot of content while remain out of reach, however it probably is possible for most people to find longer periods of time occasionally.

To this end I created a new character on a realm where I have no other characters and I am levelling just playing 30 minutes each day. I hope to post each week my daily progress.

Day 1
I waited until a realm I had no characters on became one designated for ‘New Players’, so fate selected Terokkar EU as my home. I selected alliance as my faction and because I will be making use of the daily quests which are in Stormwind I created a Human character. The other alliance races can also reach Stormwind quite easily. Because this is going to be my only character on this realm I picked a class that had good survivability and was reasonably fun to play. So I created a Paladin, they have good self healing from quite a low level and can fight multiple mobs when it is required.

An experienced player can go from level 1 to 5 in under 30 minutes simply by doing the quests in the start zone. I still had enough time to run to Goldshire and visit the profession trainer there. To speed my journey to level 10 I selected two gathering professions that give xp, Herbalism and Mining. These professions also improve survivability although I planned to drop mining for inscription at level 10.

Day 2
I picked up all the quests available in Goldshire (which I also made my home) and sorted them by difficulty, most quests are nearby at this point and I want to get XP quickly. By the end of my first hour I was at level 7. With my bags filling up I started put a few things into the bank in Stormwind. Later on I will sell the ore I have gathered on the auction house while keeping the herbs to level inscription to 75.

Day 3
I reached level 8 and was well on my way to level 9.

Day 4
I didn’t quite make it to level 10 but should be able to do my first cooking and fishing dailies the next day.

Day 5
I reached level 10 and made Stormwind my home. I learned cooking and fishing and bought a fishing pole and a shiny bauble for use in my first fishing quest. It is worth getting your fishing skill to at least 25 the first time around. I noticed that the horde seem to have better luck with fishing in the capital as I collected a lot of grey items fishing which never happened on my Horde characters. I finished up by selling Ore and a couple of green items on the auction house.

Day 6
After doing my dailies I spent the rest of my time levelling inscription. After selling things on the auction house I had just over 15 gold and I had to buy some extra herbs to get to 75 inscription. I made Enchanting vellums and Moonglow Inks to level. At level 75 Minor Inscription Research and I use this every day to unlock extra glyphs. I had to buy the herbs to make midnight ink and this used up most of my gold, the herbs used to make midnight ink are selling for 35-50 silver each which means a stack is 7-10 gold so cashflow is an issue. In hindsight maybe I should have kept mining for a few more levels.
The first glyph I learned was Fading so I made one and put it on the auction house, the current price was 29 gold.

Day 7
Competition for my one glyph was pretty tough and demand low so it would be 6 days before I sold my glyph(for 15 gold) and the price of herbs stopped me from being able to buy stacks but just a few here and there. It is probably a better idea to keep two gathering professions until you have enough gold to buy a few stacks of herbs to make a number of glyphs rather than just one.
After doing my dailies I still had around 15 minutes left for questing and during this I collected some more herbs to help raise a little extra gold. I reached level 11, things will get easier from here on in Goldshire. I don’t intend to leave this zone until I have completed most of the quests as the mobs will still give XP up to around level 15. Once I leave Goldshire travel time will start to become a factor. I found that I used up most of my rested XP in around 15 minutes of questing/gathering