Leveling Challenge: The Early Teens

In the interests of scientific inquiry, Liala rolled a brand new priest on a brand new server: Liala the Second was born on US-Drenden without a penny to her name. Without heirlooms, without alts, without money of any kind, Liala II is an experiment in leveling a priest in 3.3.5 using wits alone. Follow along, if you dare…

Status: See Liala II’s progress on the Armory

Time To Level

• 9 – 10: 23 minutes. At this point I’d pretty much had it with Eversong Woods, which bores me to tears, so I hit Silvermoon to pick up my new priest spells (Renew, Lesser Heal, Resurrection; Fade, Mind Blast, and Shadow Word: Pain). The Translocation Orb for Undercity just so happens to be right next to the Priest trainer, so I hopped on that, took a zeppelin to Ogrimmar, another to Thunder Bluff, and ended up in my favorite leveling zone- skipping the hated Ghostlands in their entirety. I had to ask a level 80 raiding priest for directions to the Thunder Bluff zeppelin, and she was perfectly charming about it (WTB flight points). I waited. And waited. And WAITED for that damned thing. Seriously, you can get to and from Northrend every three minutes, but two blocks down to Thunder Bluff takes ten?
• 10 – 11: About three hours. I diddled around running to Mulgore (where I love to level), leveling a bit of fishing, cooking and first aid, visiting the Auction House, and generally pootling around. I also remembered very late in the process how much faster you level taking a whole slew of green quests rather than desperately hunting one or two orange ones. Without heirloom gear, this is the way to go.
• 11-12: 1 hour, 20 minutes. When fighting alone, it’s important to remember that you can Shield yourself and drag the enemy you’re fighting out of the path of a potential, roving enemy. Better to take a few hits from one as you run than to pull two at a time- not a priestly strong point.
• 12-13: 3 hours. At this point, I pretty much wanted to lay down and die. I couldn’t kill anything even remotely my level without taking a serious breather afterwards despite pressing danger, like a fat man on a fire escape. Ice Cold Milk. Ice Cold Milk! ICE COLD MILK! Things were not helped by logging onto my hunter and accidentally gaining two levels in 45 minutes. We still can’t use the LFD and self-leveling is, to be generous, extra-grim.
• 13-14: At least four hours. Urge to kill… rising. No longer attempting to stifle screams of rage and tears of frustration. At some point I make a banker character, which does nothing to assist in the leveling process.
• 14-15: At least five hours, including time spent clutching the Crossroads mailbox weeping copiously. I begin to see the background music. The Donner party’s actions now make complete sense to me. Loss of bowel control. Weeping continues uninterrupted. PvP is attempted and proves to provide even less XP than standard leveling practices. Seppuku seriously considered.

Rotation

Smite to get their attention. Mind Blast. Self-shield. Shadow Word: Pain. Smite. Smite. Smite. Whack with stick.

Statistics

Total Deaths: 16
Money earned: 17 gold, 46 silver
Alchemy: 39
Herbalism: 53
Ice Cold Milks Consumed: 87
Creatures killed: 432
Quests completed: 73
GearScore: 6

Conclusion

Nothing could ever, ever suck as much as this.

If you are actually starting a lone, boost-free priest, it’s insanely difficult to get through these first 15 levels.  If you want to heal in LFG dungeons, though, you won’t have the money to respec and so must start out as you wish to continue. The monotony and difficulty of these pre-LFG disc priest levels cannot be overestimated. Godspeed, noble Disco.