Have to Level a Weapon? Go Solo!
by Mike Schramm 
Aug 7th 2006 at 8:00PM
Here's a cool tip a guildie shared with me a little while ago. Say you're a human warrior (don't laugh, Horde, it happens), and you have a thing for swords, so throughout your journey through Azeroth, you hack and slash away with your trusty longsword. But suddenly, right around level 40, you're rolling through SM, and all of a sudden the Ravager drops and you win the roll. Suddenly, you've got one of the coolest axes in the game, and not a single axe skill point to your name.What do you do? Well, you could head back to Goldshire and chop up a few low level mobs for an hour or two. But as long as you're chopping without earning experience, here's a better idea: run an instance solo. Almost any class above 40 won't have too hard a time rolling through Deadmines or Wailing Caverns, and once you hit 50, you can even rock Blackfathom Deeps or Shadowfang Keep all by yourself. Not only will you level up your brand new weapon, but you'll get all kinds of loot in the process, including low level blues and greens that you can sell for big gold to twinkers, or lots of cloth you can hand on down to your alts, auction off, or even use yourself to up a profession you've been neglecting.
Personally, I've done this twice now-- when my shaman found a great mace, I ran Shadowfang (and found a blue sword that I sold for 40g to a twinker). And last night, Kang dropped for me, so I took a trip through Blackfathom, and had a great time shutting down the Twilight's Hammer (and Aku'mai) all by myself. When you get a great new weapon, and you've got to grind it up, there's no better place to go than a solo instance run.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Greg Aug 7th 2006 8:51PM
The other best way to level up a weapon: get your friendly neighborhood warlock to banish a demon/elemental for you. Beat away on the banished demon, doing no damage but increasing your skill. Rebanish as needed. Move to higher level demons as you go along to keep the points rolling.
There's also always the option of using those mobs in Blasted Lands that can't be killed as long unless you also destroy their crystal thing, but if I recall correctly, that was ruled an exploit.
mike Aug 7th 2006 9:34PM
Almost any healing class can also sit there and wail indefinitely on a lower-level mob, too, healing when necessary. But that's not nearly as fun as taking on Van Cleef all by yourself.
bliSSter Aug 8th 2006 10:10AM
sad but true - i originally leveled my mace skill on my rogue, wielding dual wirt's third legs (not sure why they're not unique :P), on rats in the tram outside of SW...was on my way to ironforge with my new maces when i realized i had a paltry skill of 13 in maces...so i whacked a rat, then another, and a third...by the time i hit the third rat, the first had respawned...the resulting rat pile was fun to see as well
steve Aug 8th 2006 11:17AM
Another approach: buy the lowest damage weapon of the same type you can find, then use that low damage weapon on the lowbie mobs in a starting zone. That way, you can get as many as 10 or 20 skill points out of one mob. It is still monotonous, but you can do it with minimal attention to the game if you want to multitask, chat with guildies, whatever.
Tryst Aug 15th 2006 12:12AM
I guess I'm a little late on this post but I leveled my 17 NE Priest on wands, unarmed, maces and staves to 80 on a bugged reef crawler in Darkshore. Took about....20 minutes. Best way to level a weapon EVAR.