While I love leveling guides, and wouldn’t give mine up for the world, I often forget how people new to guides can react to them.

New players, who are starting a level 1 to 10 character LOVE them. There’s no question there.

But more experienced, or higher level players? Reactions can be mixed to say the least.

The most common problem these players have is syncing up a new guide to their current position in the game. They’ll look at the guide, then look at their current position in the world and just decide its all too hard.

“I can’t be bothered getting those two flight paths I’ve never been to before,” they’ll say to themselves.

“I have to go to a new continent, then do 5 quest chains and other prerequisite quests before I can even resume at the level I’m supposed to be?” and so on.

Its no wonder I get email from people asking me what gives.

The problem is this:

There are two or three ways, or paths, in WoW that will level you the fastest. If you don’t happen to be on those paths when you begin using a leveling guide, then you need to suck it up and get on that path.

Its simple, but its not easy for people who are promised to level to 80 in a week (that’s /played time everyone!!) who find they have to spend hours of time backtracking.

Ready to click away from this “how to” already?

That’s fine – this quick how to is for people who are willing to put in a few hours now to save themselves DAYS of leveling time down the track.

If you ARE willing to make a sacrifice of leveling speed initially, read on.

How to Overcome The Top Leveling Guide Problem:

Told to start leveling where the guide tells you to, but you can’t accept many of the quests you’re told to accept?

Or even worse, have you find that in order to accept some of these quests you’ll have to go back and accept a bunch of low level quests so that you can sync up to a 5 step quest?

Why is this done?

Guide owners know that multi step quests give the best experience and best item rewards, and therefore will include these long quest chains into their guides.

I personally have started using guides on a bunch of different characters that were advanced in level, and this is the strategy I’ve come up with to help sync with any leveling guide.

First up, download LightHeaded.

Lightheaded is a WoW addon which attaches itself to the right hand side of your quest log, and provides information on each of the quests you’re on right now. But more importantly, lightheaded also allows you to search quest text for quests you’re not on right now…

So, if you start up your leveling guide, and you find that you can’t accept a quest you’re told to do, check lightheaded. Simply type in the name of the quest you’re told to accept in the top search box, and you’ll either get 1 or 2 results (2 results for quests that both Horde and Alliance can do).

Once you find the entry for the quest, you’ll find that lightheaded will display the entire chain of quests. Click the quest you need, look for the start and finish NPC, click their name, and you’ll get a set of coordinates which your waypoint arrow will then direct you to.

So lets say you’re on the Defias line of quests in Westfall, and you start half way through.

Simply type in the name of the quest step you’re told to do into lightheaded, look for the first quest in the line, click it, and then click the name of the person that gives out the first quest.

Your leveling guide’s waypoint arrow will then direct you the rest of the way, and you can follow along in lightheaded until your guide syncs up.

Why not just use lightheaded for leveling then?

Because “LH” can’t tell you what order, or what path of quests is the most efficient. It does a great job of helping you sync up with a guide though if you happen to be unlucky enough to be way off, and its also very handy if you just happen to want to try out a quest that isn’t on the guide’s fast leveling path.

ALTERNATIVELY: Just ditch the quest string. If your guide wants you to do, say, step 8 of 12, I’d generally ditch the quest and look for others which I can accept right away. There’s no great harm in not completing a string, and you probably won’t miss the reward in 5 levels time anyway.

The other major problem I’ve experienced syncing with a new leveling guide is that you may not own the flight paths associated with the quests you need to do, or you’re told to do quests which are over the other side of Azeroth, AND which you don’t have flight paths for.

Again all I can suggest is to use lightheaded to find any quests you don’t have prerequisites for, and just suck it up!

Even if I knew it would take me a DAY of play time, I’d still spend that day getting the flightpaths & quests I needed to sync back up with a guide.

Simply do this and you’ll find that while it might take you many hours to sync up with your guide, the time you save at the end of the day will be well, WELL worth it in the long run.

Don’t just assume its broken. Suck it up and sync up with the guide. You’ll be very, very glad you did!

Jon has thoroughly used and reviewed many of the web’s best leveling guides. If you’d like to read more about Jon’s favorite guides, visit his Ultimate WoW Guide Review, or his Questup Review.

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