RAF Leveling Guide - Solo or With a Friend

Ok, so you've made sure you can load up three clients at once on your computer. You will need these three clients if you plan to RAF by yourself; if you have a second PC or are RAFing with a friend, make sure ONE of you has a high level character to run you through dungeons.

Your strategy here is going to be:

1. Set up your accounts
2. Get from level 1-10
3. Get good bags
4. Head to the first dungeon (Deadmines for Alliance, RFC for Horde)
5. Run dungeons til your face turns blue

Yep, prepare to spend the next bit if your life in old world dungeons. RAF instance level methods are simply the most efficient way to maximize your RAF time. Remember, if you are doing this on your own and do not want to have to pay beyond the initial 30 days for your RAF account, you need to get all the characters you want to 59 within one month.

That's easy though. Even if you only get 5-10 levels a day, it will only take you about a week to finish out your duo.

Note that for every level your RAF toon gets, you can grant a level to your normal account characters.

What that means is that when you get a RAF toon to 59, you get to grant levels to any character on the original account so long as it is in the same area as the RAF character, and is below level 59. Do not use this to grant levels to a level 1! Instead, maximize the efficiency by getting a character to level 31, then granting levels with the RAF so that character gets to 59.

Important: The RAF bonuses end when a character reaches level 59. The second you ding 60 on a character, they lose all RAF bonuses. DO NOT LET YOUR CHARACTER GET TO 60 BEFORE YOU HAVE GRANTED LEVELS WITH THE RAF.

Ok, your duo's level 10 and you're ready to start dungeoning! Here's the plan (for the sake of simplicity we will be using Alliance-accessible dungeons as an example, though many of the following are also applicable to Horde. For a detailed Horde dungeon guide, see INSERT)

1. Deadmines from levels 10-15
2. Stockades from 15-20 (or 25 if you choose, though you can get into SM at 20)
3. Scarlet Monastery Library or Armory from 20-25
4. Scarlet Cathedral from 25-35
5. Zul'farrak from 35-40
6. Blackrock Depths from 40-45ish
7. Stratholme or Scholomance (if you have the key!) from 45ish-59

REMEMBER, STOP AT 59. THE SECOND YOU DING 60, ALL BENEFITS ARE LOST.

Sorry for the caps -- but that part's really, really important!!

Congratulations - you've made it to 59 with your first pair! Now we're done, right?

Sorry, not just yet. There's still a little more work to do!

To maximize the leveling granting benefits of RAF, you need a level 31 character on your original account for each duo you get to 59.

This gets confusing, I know! Best way to keep track of your RAF level plan is to decide what toons you want to level (for example, you really want to get a paladin healer up quickly, or maybe you want to skip leveling a warrior the old-fashioned way), then put down your plan into a word or google doc. This way you can keep tabs on exactly which characters you need to get to 59, and what the RAF toons are that are associated with them.

So for example:

1. You create John the level 1 warrior on your original account.
2. You create Tina the level 1 priest on your RAF account. She will be paired with John for RAF benefits.
3. You get John and Tina to level 59 using the RAF leveling instance strategy outlined above.
4. You then create Max the level 1 paladin.
5. Arthur the level 1 priest is going to run with him on your RAF account.
6. You powerlevel Max and Arthur to 31 so you have RAF benefits.
7. You grant levels to Max (original account) from Tina (RAF account) to get Max to 59 in about... 30 seconds. (Yes, RAF is hax!)
8. Congratulations -- you now have a level 59 warrior and a level 59 paladin on your original account -- and the RAF characters should you choose to keep the new account!

You can repeat this process as many times as you like. Using the strategy outlined above, I made it very easily to 59 with five different characters on my original account. From there, it's just a matter of blowing through Outlands and then Northrend -- which are easypeasy if you use Zygor's leveling guide (the only one worth getting IMO).

The work isn't quite over yet. Yes, you still have to get from 59-80 the old fashioned way, but you can keep running Outland and Northrend dungeons if you prefer to skip leveling through quests all together. This gets tough when you get to Northrend though, because unless you have a live friend able to DPS and/or heal for you, it's going to be hard to effectively solo your way through all those instances.

Here's how to get from 59-80 within the week after you RAFed 4 characters up to 59.

Are the benefits of RAF leveling really worth it

That, my friend, is a very legitimate question. You've basically spent $15 on a fresh WoW box, and lots of arduous hours running dungeons, so you can have 4 characters at level 59. You still have to get 'em all up to 80. Is it worth it to do it the refer a friend way instead of the regular old questing way?

It's a question of time. If your guild's begging you to level up a paladin healer and you would just so like to oblige them, RAFing is fantastic. You can easily get that pally up to 80 within a couple weeks using these strategies. However, if you just want to relax and move your way slowly through the content and various WoW expansions, it's much easier to just level normally.

RAFing is for efficiency. That's the bottom line.

There's no point to do it if you want to be casual. Only invest in refer a friend bonuses if you want to burn through levels fast, want multiple characters at 80 in the time it would take you to level one, or if you just really hate old world content and want to skip it all.

If you do choose to RAF, don't forget to collect your shiny zhevra mount at the end -- and enjoy your new 80s. :)