Are you on a mission to power level your ultimate be fully prepared for the upcoming Phase 3? The Joyous Journeys buff has landed, which means 50% more experience from quests, PVP, and grinding.
New Things Coming In WotLK Phase 3 Trial of the Crusader Raid
Leveling up in the open world with the Joyous Journeys buff is your golden opportunity to ensure you’re not left in the dust when Phase 3 drops. Try all the grand Trial of the Crusader Raid rolls out on June 22nd. So, time is really running out.
This guide is your comprehensive resource to all things about Joyous Journeys. I factor with strategies to maximize this limited time buff. There’s even an extraordinary technique that catapulted me up to 2 million experience in a mere five minutes.
So, Blizzard is on a quest to rally as many players as possible to get to level 80. They want you primed and ready for Icecrown and Wrath endgame. There’s the newly minted Trial the Crusader raid. There’s the new Argent Tournament update and the fresh Onyxia raid. These are all meticulously crafted to accelerate players’ progress once they hit 80.
They’ve even introduced the brand new Titan Rune Beta dungeons, which we’ll be showering you with max Ulduar 10 gear like it’s going out of style. And let’s not forget the pre-crusader orbs, Emblems of Triumph and, of course, the hard mode loot.
Phase 3 is set to breathe new life into the game. World Tours are even more ways to make a grand comeback reminiscent of the launch days. Blizzards even added the new Titan Rune dungeons to the Group Finder to streamline the process of finding groups for newly minted level 80s.
All this shiny new ketchup content would all be for naught without reaching level 80. After all, there’s no such thing as free Onyxia loot at level 20.
Why Use Joyous Journeys?
To catch you up, Joyous Journeys is a new 50% XP bonus that went live May 22nd.
Joyous Journeys is engineered to catapult players to level 80 at breakneck speed. The idea is to enable players to dive into the endgame as quickly as possible. That being said, you’ll only have until June 19th to take advantage, so you have to start leveling now.
Best Joyous Journeys Strategies
So, what strategies can be used to maximize the Joyous Journeys buff?
First, no matter what your current level is, heirlooms will make your leveling a lot faster. You have three Heirlooms in Wrath that will give you a straight up bonus experience. There are the chests, the shoulders, and the rings. Of course, you probably only have access to the chests and shoulders for that 10% extra XP per piece.
I mean, unless you won the Kalu’ak Fishing tournament and although everybody hypes up the bonus XP from Heirlooms, actually using the Heirloom weapons and armor makes leveling feel a lot smoother, too.
In this phase, you can primarily really get PVE Heirlooms from Eemblems of Heroism. If you don’t have any heroism left, you can always downgrade at the newly streamlined exchange NPC in the Dalaran Sewers.
You’ll also be able to get Heirlooms from Champion Seals next phase. So, make sure to stock up. With your Heirlooms in hand, we have a choice to make. We’ve got questing, boosting, or grinding.
Secret Leveling Strategy
But before we talk about those methods, there’s another method I never see anybody talking about.
There are two repeatable quests with the Waterlogged Recipe and the Sealed Vial of Poison. Each of these quests typically gives 22,000 experience. But with heirlooms and the Joyous Journey buff, you’ll actually be getting over 37,000 XP per turn in. If you can snipe enough files or recipes on the Auction House, you can skip from level 70 all the way to 72 or higher. That’s exactly what I did on my Death Knight.
Questing
Another option you have is questing. Questing is surprisingly easy and mindless, especially if you have a leveling guide. Guideline, for example, has a really nice and free leveling guide you can use or you could use rested XP if you want things to be plug and play.
The biggest thing is to make sure you get epic flying as soon as possible. You also want to mail over a Tome of Cold weather flying, so you can cheese all the north run quests at level 68.
Nowadays, questing feels a lot like retail. But you can make it even easier if you want to. I like to use things like potions, engineering nades, and buffs. For example, I ran Mongoose on my Warrior with food buffs and Dynamite. I was dominating every quest in the Outlands. Just think about anything that can increase DPS and then do it.
Also Read: WOTLK Classic Phase 3: Start Trading Your Investments Items Now!
Boosting
Though if questing isn’t working for you, boosting is a great option as well.
Although boosting was technically nerfed heavily, it’s still extremely effective in Northrend. The best way to find a boost is to press I and list yourself on the Custom channel.
On my server, people aren’t really advertising boost, so I started dming random Paladins and Mages to find a group. There are also boosters that twink out characters specifically to do lower-level dungeons.
Typically, you can expect to pay over 10,000 WOTLK Classic Gold to go from 70 to 80 via boosting. But my recommendation is to combine boosting with questing. That way you can scoop up easy experience in places, like Borean Tundra and once you’re slightly over level for the area.
Grinding
If you don’t feel like questing or boosting, your other option is grinding. And grinding can mean things like AOE farming Seals or farming Trolls. But grinding is surprisingly effective at low levels as well.
One grinding trick I like to do is to put my geared Boomkin’s Thorns on my low-level characters. Then, I can destroy mobs in one second and still get full experience.
At higher levels, though, my favorite way to grind is to combine something like seal grinding with Alterac Valley. Unfortunately, this Joyous Journeys, we won’t be getting an Alterac Valley Call to Arms until June 16th.
But I still wouldn’t fault you for saving a character for that week to jump from 71 to 80 effortlessly. There’s really nothing wrong with procrastinating unless you’re looking to achieve your golden gear dreams next phase.
