With the right planning and strategy, an experienced World of Warcraft player can hit level 50 in World of Warcraft in around 15 hours, or maybe even 10 if they really know what they're doing. It has taken Reddit user TheSlapperfish considerably longer to achieve the feat with his Goblin character, Nobb, although there's a good reason for that: he has yet to leave the starting area.
To say the Redditor's journey to level 50 has been an arduous one would be an understatement. He killed over five thousand Tunneling Worms just to reach level 30, and then switched to completing pet battles to make his way through the next 20 levels. Now, with the same pet battles only providing around 12 percent of the XP they did at level 49, he's asking the community for suggestions on how he can reach level 60 in a sensible amount of time.
It may seem like he's not far off from reaching this milestone, but the amount of experience required to level up in World of Warcraft increases exponentially as players become stronger, meaning he still has a long way to go. It takes around 1.5 million XP to reach level 50. Level 60, on the other hand, requires just shy of 3.4 million. By the player's own estimation, if he continues to gain XP at his current rate, it will take around six weeks of grinding just to reach level 51.
While impressive, Nobb the Goblin is just one of many great grinding-related tales to have graced WoW in recent years. In late 2020, a WoW player reached level 60 just by picking flowers, and in 2018 another named DoubleAgent was able to hit the level cap without leaving the Pandaren starting zone. On that occasion, the team at Blizzard were so impressed that they added a special NPC into the game to immortalize him. Grinding-related challenges aren't just limited to World of Warcraft either.
In 2017, a GameFAQs user named CirclMastr made Final Fantasy 7 history when he reached level 99 with both Cloud and Barett before completing the first Mako reactor; a feat which took more than 500 hours to accomplish. A few years later, Twitch streamer AeroneousGaming achieved something similar by hitting the level cap in Kingdom Hearts 3 without leaving the game's first world.
Many may wonder why anyone would choose to subject themselves to such torture in pursuit of what is ultimately a fruitless task, but the answer is usually simple: to prove that they can. Whether TheSlapperfish has the dedication required to complete his journey remains to be seen.
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is available now on PC.
Source: Reddit