I started working on my warrior again the other night, finishing up the Jade Forest and moving into Valley of the Four Winds. When I completed most of the Jade Forest, I managed to hit level 87. Mind you, my warrior also has mining that I work on simultaneously whenever I find nodes, which provides some additional experience. With the Valley of the Four Winds, I managed to hit level 88 right around doing quest for Halfhill. Since you’re able to receive the quest to visit the Temple of the White Tiger, which opens up your faction’s city in Pandaria, I decided to skip everything and head straight to that quest and proceed into the city as a level 88 and have paused at the moment.
The thing is that I can go back and finish Valley of the Four Winds then do my usual route and head to the Krasarang Wilds. However, my belief is that with the 30% experience reduction, you’re essentially wasting time fiddling around in the Wilds. Instead, I’m going to level within Kun-Lai Summit since the area is aimed for level 88-89. Around this point, you’ll start finding better green gear overall. My warrior up until this point mostly had reasonably high end gear from Cataclysm, roughly around the 384-399 mark. Most have been upgraded to a minimum of 399 from the quests in Valley of the Four Winds so the Krasarang Wilds would not really provide me anything better overall.
Another thing is that the experience in Kun-Lai Summit will exceed both Valley of the Four Winds and Krasarang Wilds so it’s just better overall to skip the remaining areas and try to hammer out level 89 in Kun-Lai Summit and move towards Townlonge Steppes once this region is complete.
For me everything feels a bit off at the moment since I’m so used to moving in such a sequential fashion between Mist of Pandaria zones. I’m certain if I continued working through my normal routine, I would more than likely end up hitting level 90 within Kun-Lai Summit and just skipping Townlonge Steppes altogether. It’s a little awkward in some ways because I feel a bit undergeared still and will be missing out on a lot of gold. Prior to patch 5.3, leveling to 90 would net me maybe around 4k worth of gold with a good chunk of that eventually going for Pandaria flight. While I can afford the flight right now, missing out on such a huge chunk of money makes me feel a little empty.
Another thing that’s bothering me a little is the feeling that I might be missing out in opening up higher level quests later on. For instance, if you don’t complete the Dread Wastes at all, you pretty much won’t have access to the Klaxxi faction dailies. I’m not sure by skipping a zone like Krasarang Wilds if I’ll be missing a critical element later. This might end up hindering a new level 90 toon looking to maximize their daily content.
Overall, the experience reduction is pretty big and I can feel and see the effects. If anything, I’ll save a bit on time and possibly can avoid certain painful questing spots. One other thing is that I’m avoiding using dungeons for experience grinding. I know there are some gamers who found techniques to quickly level their characters, but I think that those techniques in the long term and even instance grinding end up hurting you. You really miss out on the gold, professions and materials you gather while questing. I think instances here would be more effective if you’re on the edge and just want a quick level and be able to obtain some higher level gear.