Wetlands or Duskwood? Which is the better leveling zone in WoW Classic SoD?

When you hit level 20 as an Alliance player in WoW Classic’s Season of Discovery, you’ll be met with a choice of two zones, and you’ll have to decide where you should level next.

At this point in the leveling process, the two most prominent zones for Alliance players are Duskwood and the Wetlands—and it’s possible, if not likely, that you’ll be splitting time between them. The Alliance leveling experience in Classic WoW lends itself to time-splitting, with many zones requiring you to make multiple visits on your hunt for experience. With not as much narrative and fewer step-by-step quests in chains as there are in modern WoW, the Classic experience is more about fragmented visits to different zones—and the same case can definitely be made for the Wetlands and Duskwood. 

It’s also likely that you’ve already been splitting time between the dwarven zones in the northern section of the Eastern Kingdoms and the human zones in the southern portion of the continent. Just as you likely went back and forth between Westfall and Loch Modan between levels 10 and 20, you’ll be doing the same with the Wetlands and Duskwood from 20 to 25 (and further once the level cap increases in SoD phase two). 

Should I level in Wetlands or Duskwood during WoW Classic SoD? 

The Wetlands are a relatively monotonous and boring zone to level through, with many of the experience-rich quests there taking a long time to complete, and the grind being immense on theme. But if you’re someone who revels in the idea of simply killing the same mobs over and over again, you’ll passively gain experience while grinding out many of the quests in the Wetlands. Quests like “Fire Taboo” and “Digging through the Ooze” are extremely boring and will make you go across the entirety of the Wetlands in search of low-drop rate items whose mobs will inevitably cause your experience bar to bound upward. 

Duskwood, on the other hand, has more straightforward quests that require you to kill set numbers of mobs and collect items in condensed locations. For what it’s worth, Duskwood is the better-designed zone when it comes to the level of convenience you’ll experience with the quests there. 

We recommend doing the “Night’s Watch” quests in the southeast and far west segments of the zone. The quests that originate from Sven’s camp in the northwest corner of Duskwood are also solid sources of experience. Besides, many of Duskwood’s quests require you to be in your upper 20s, and with the leveling process capping out at 25 in the first phase of the Season of Discovery, it’s going to be worth holding off on completing some of Duskwood’s tougher quests until the game physically allows you to be more capable.

All told, we recommend splitting time between the Wetlands and Duskwood if you’re looking to level up to 25 as an Alliance player in WoW Season of Discovery. There aren’t enough quests and experience sources in either zone to warrant a full run-through of either of them at this point in time. With the level cap being at 25, anyway, you’re going to likely want to hold off on completing many of the quests in these two zones until the second phase of SoD.