Making An Alt?

[Amedis]

For those of you that may not be savy on the nerd terms in an mmorpg, creating an “alt” is making an alternate character to play through the game. Everyone does it and each person chooses their path a little differently. This guide is intended to allow you to level multiple alts efficiently without sacrificing too much time.

This guide is part 3 of a 3 part guide which includes Smart Muling, Smart Tradeskilling and Smart Alt Progression. Each guide builds upon foundations and recommendations made in the previous guide.

Creating Your Alts at the Same Time

The key to smart alt progression is to make all your alts at one time and then stagger their playing times. The reason we do not create one alt, level it to 10, then create another alt is because we miss out on a few key opportunities, such as accumulating resting bonus and passing quest items. If you’ve read the previous two parts of this guide, you should understand the importance of proper passing of items by now. If you do not have all of your alts created right at the start, you may miss your opportunity to mail items to alts which can really burden your pack space.

Resting Bonus

Smart alt progression runs off the resting bonus you receive when your character is not in-game. Depending on your level you can accumulate quite a large amount of resting bonus (I’ve heard up to 4 levels, though not confirmed it). This is the reason why it is important to stagger your playing times of each alt, so you can ensure that when you are playing each alt they have the maximum amount of resting bonus and will receive double xp whenever anything is killed.

Remember, resting bonus does not lessen when a quest is completed so you can proceed questing with that alt and receive double the xp for each mob you kill. If your quests involve killing mobs, then it is safe to assume this method could increase your xp intake by 100%. Once you’ve used up your resting bonus during each play session you can choose to logoff or keep playing through the night.

Remember not to let a character sit for too long as he receives resting bonus. Resting bonus does eventually cap and your alt could potentially waste xp because you didn’t log him in and play through some of his rest. It’s a good rule of thumb to eliminate each alt’s resting bonus at least once a week. This will ensure that they won’t be hitting the resting bonus cap and waste any bonus while not in-game.

Also, it is VERY important to note that you will get much more resting bonus if you logout inside an Inn or in a major city. Just make sure you see your name’s box (upper left of the screen) flash in yellow before you logout. That is the indication that you will receive maximum resting bonus. If you logout in the wilderness, you won’t get near the bonus as you would inside a major city or Inn.


Passing Quest Items

One of the major benefits from Smart Alt Progression is the passing of quest items. Each zone has a handful of quests that require quest items that are not soulbound. These items can be handed down as one alt progresses past the quest that uses these items.

In other words, as you use your first alt to play through a zone and you received 2 extra items for a quest you just completed, rather then throwing them away you mail them to the alt that will be completing the quest shortly. This gives your alt a quick quest reward without having to do the killing.

Some people may argue that you’ll be wasting the xp it took to acquire these items by not killing the monsters that drop them. Yes, you will not gain that xp. However by receiving the quest items from an alt, you have now given your character the freedom to choose where he gets to make that xp back. For example, as opposed to killing boars for xp (and obtaining the quest item), he can now kill Humanoids, which potentially drop linen and better weapons.

By passing quest items to alts you’re just allowing for more versatility in where you’ll be gaining xp while you are one step closer to finishing a handful of drop quests in each zone.

Passing Weapons / Armor

By creating all of your alts up front, you now know what classes each of your alts are. So if you find a great lvl 5 sword you can quickly send it to your Warrior. Or perhaps you find a Blue lvl 18 Mace, send it to your Paladin. This will allow your alts to have very powerful items once they hit certain levels and you didn’t have to purchase them in the Auction House nor hunt and peck for them on each character.

The same applies for armor, but going further into the tradeskilling aspects you can always craft weapons and armor for alts with your blacksmith. This gives you a lot of versatility and while you’re leveling your smithing you’re also making your alts more effective and thus, faster levelers.

Starting a Zone Ahead of the Level Requirement

While zones don’t have required levels, you should not go into a new zone without being eligible for 90% of the quests. For example, you should not go into the Crossroads at lvl 9 nor Redridge at lvl 15. Though you may qualify for a handful of the quests, you’ll find yourself trying to get xp on mobs that are much higher level then you. You get frustrated and end up logging or going back to the zone you were previously in to gain a level or two before moving on.

I personally enjoy going into a zone 4 or 5 levels above the minimal requirement. This allows me to blow through the first half of the zone in an hour or two because I’m much higher level then the mobs I have to kill to complete any quest. This of course gives me more options if I intend on soloing the quests or grouping to kill faster.

Blizzard has done such a wonderful job of balancing that if you do all the quests in each zone and killed all required monsters, you’ll always be walking into the next zone within a level or two of the requirement. This of course if offset depending on the amount of monsters you killed during the questing process, but unless you strictly grinded for more than an hour, you’re still within the 1 or 2 level range of the level requirement for that zone.

So how do you enter that next zone ahead of the level requirement? Resting Bonus! Yes, by staggering your playing time between alts you’ll always get in two or three levels of double xp allowing you to get well above the curve of the level requirement for each zone. It’s always so much fun going through a zone with no deaths, no problems and killing mobs with just a few shots, rather then having epic battles for every single quest item.

Grinding vs Questing

Without resting bonus you’ll have to grind for a level or two to get higher then the minimal level requirement for each zone. Questing will only get you to the bare minimum to move on to the next zone, grinding will always put you out ahead.

Depending on your playing style you may not enjoy grinding, which makes this system just as beneficial for you. Though grinding players will always out-level questing players in World of Warcraft, with the resting bonus non-grinders can minimize on play time but still gain the double xp bonus.

To couple the grinding method of leveling with our strategy here, you’ll have no problem grinding out a few levels of double xp while you move on to each zone. There’s no detriment to the grinders, unless you logout outside of an inn or major city.

Conclusion

This concept is pretty easy to understand but hard to follow through. You have to be comfortable with playing multiple characters at once and not concentrating on any one character for too long. You also must remember to play each character at least once a week, to use up their resting bonus to ensure they are always accumulating it when they are logged out.

Using this method coupled with Smart Muling and Smart Tradeskilling, I’ve gotten multiple characters up to 25 in a week and a half. Each of these characters are between 150-200 on each tradeskill and each character has much better then average gear that was accumulated through tradeskilling and monster drops. I’ve not paid for any gatherable resources for any tradeskilling and I enjoy playing with each character for different reasons.

Though it sounds complex and far too nerdy, it works for me, and perhaps it may work for some of you as well.