What is the fastest way to level alts in WoW Dragonflight?

If you’re satisfied with the progression of your main World of Warcraft character and are looking to make an alt to accompany them at max level, you’ll have to level through the Dragon Isles all over again. Thankfully, Dragonflight is an extremely alt-friendly expansion, and that friendliness is definitely on display during the leveling process. 

After you level your first character to 70 this expansion, you’ll be able to unlock a new leveling path for any future characters. This means the Dragonflight campaign will be optional moving forward, and you’ll be able to level in any of the four Dragon Isles zones immediately upon arriving on the continent at level 60. 

Here is the best leveling route you can take whenever you bring a new alt character to the Dragon Isles. 

Most efficient Dragonflight leveling zones, ranked

1. The Azure Span
2. Ohn’ahran Plains
3. The Waking Shores
4. Thaldraszus

The Azure Span is easily the most effective leveling zone for your alts in Dragonflight, as it has an absolute surplus of quests in comparison to some of the other zones on the Dragon Isles.

Completing all of the Azure Span campaign chapters, as well as all of the zone’s optional storylines, could bring your character nearly to level 70 without having to go through any other zones. Additionally, the Azure Span has plenty of fast quests that only require you to complete one or two objectives—like defeating a single named enemy near Camp Nowhere or doing a simple task in Camp Antonidas. 

Related: The most powerful items in WoW Dragonflight season one

The other three zones in the Dragon Isles—Ohn’ahran Plains, Waking Shores, and Thaldraszus—are each moderately paced in terms of questing, but won’t give you as much experience per hour as the Azure Span.

We’d recommend staying away from the Waking Shores and Thaldraszus until you’re absolutely in dire need of experience, largely because they aren’t as effective as the other two zones. The Waking Shores’ opening quests are a bit too slow, as their goal is to introduce players to the Dragon Isles, while Thaldraszus doesn’t have enough quests in the zone to justify it as a first choice.

Are Dragonflight dungeons optimal for leveling?

While running dungeons was one of the fastest ways you could level your character to 60, the final ten levels of the leveling process aren’t as friendly to the dungeon-only strategy. If you only run dungeons from 60 to 70, you’ll be crippling the pace at which you gain levels, as dungeons yield significantly less XP per hour in comparison to quests.

Dungeons should realistically only be entered when you have a quest to defeat the final boss of the instance. These quests are usually obtained after questing through a certain zone’s storyline, and the finale of the line can be experienced in the dungeon. The “Decayed Roots” storyline in the Azure Span, for example, can be completed in the Brackenhide Hollow dungeon, while the storyline “In Defense of Life” can be wrapped up neatly in the Ruby Life Pools. 

How long does it take to level an alt in Dragonflight?

Questing through the Dragon Isles on an alt character shouldn’t take you too long, especially if you’ve already run through the campaign before. Having access to high-XP quests off the jump certainly helps, too. In total, it should take experienced players somewhere between 8-10 hours of questing to get an alt from 60 to 70.