If you missed the Winds of Wisdom buff, don’t worry because XP costs per level just got nerfed into the ground

If you didn’t manage to get all your alts leveled to 60 in World of Warcraft over the past few weeks when the Winds of Wisdom buff made it faster than ever to level, don’t worry. I know how it is — you fully intended to make use of the Winds of Wisdom buff that increased all XP gains by 50%, but maybe you ran out of time because you have ten billion alts (a slight exaggeration, but for some of you, it’s only because you can’t have that many characters), or because real life got in the way. And now Winds of Wisdom is gone, and you’re staring at that level 53 Paladin and cursing that you have to get them to 60 without the Winds of Wisdom beneath your wings.

Feels pretty crummy.

But do not let yourself despair, because the XP requirements in Dragonflight have been slashed significantly, particularly between level 50 – 60. The experience required to level from 50 to 60 have crashed so dramatically that you can hear the droning sound effect of a descending aircraft from a 50’s black and white movie while looking at the new numbers. Starting with phase 2 of the Dragonflight pre-patch, experience costs from level 50 to 60 ranges from 22% of what it was before to 26% of what it was before. On average, expect leveling through this range to take about a quarter of the experience it used to.

According to Wowhead, that means you can go from 50 to 60 in about two hours. [Ed’s note: I imagine normal people like myself will still take longer.] This is very good news for people who parked a bunch of alts in Oribos after getting through the intro quests — now can get those characters to 60 and start farming up gear for them in the Primal Storms invasion event. And if you don’t want to do invasions for XP, you can now run Chromie Time up to level 60.

But there’s good news for lower level alts, too: while XP requirements aren’t reduced as much for lower level characters, it’s still been cut significantly. Wowhead reports that a level 38 Rogue went from needing 71,210 XP to level and now only needs 47,185 XP.

And not all of the XP buffs are gone: the 18% XP buff for WoW‘s 18th Anniversary runs through November 27, the day before Dragonflight goes live. Overall I’d say this is good news for anybody looking to level up a character  — including a brand-new Dracthyr — before Dragonflight goes live.