World of Warcraft players are leveling their new Earthen characters without fighting or questing, simply by flying around and exploring.
Introduced in the recent The War Within expansion on September 3, the Earthen race, which looks like Dwarves, became available after players completed the main storyline and some side quests. Quickly, players discovered that the Earthen’s racial ability, Wide-Eyed Wonder, gives a massive 200% XP boost for exploring new areas on the map.
Usually, exploring gives only a bit of XP, with most XP coming from battles or quests. But playing as an Earthen changes that, tripling the XP from map exploration. This lets players level up by just flying around and discovering new zones instead of fighting.
Players on the WoW subreddit shared their experiences, including Rykin14, who said it took about eight hours to reach level 71 by exploring. They suggested focusing on continents like Outland, Northrend, Pandaria, and Draenor for the best results.
While leveling this way can be peaceful, the downside is not having any gear or gold at higher levels since no quests were completed. However, with the new Warbands system, players can transfer gold and items to other characters on the same account, making this method less problematic later on.
We love seeing creative ways to play games!
Unconventional leveling isn’t new in WoW. The factionless Pandaren Neutral Agent has famously reached level caps by just picking herbs and mining ore. For The War Within, it took them 10 days and 10 hours to hit level 80.
The Earthen might not be the only new race. Players speculate that the Haranir, currently minor characters in The War Within, could become the next allied race. According to GameSpot’s review, this expansion is one of WoW’s best, offering solo endgame content and a richer story.
Blizzard also announced a huge 20th anniversary update coming soon, which will reintroduce some of the game’s most iconic armor sets.
