For whatever reason, this past week I’ve been playing my Death Knight.  I guess now that I have my shaman and druid maxed and geared a bit, plus Aurik at 77 for ease of farming ore, I can now sit back and play whatever.  Originally I had intended to play my hunter when was done with those three but I was feeling a bit burned out when it came to Northrend – I was missing the ‘warmth’ and bright colours of Outlands.

My little Death Knight hit level 70 in Netherstorm whe I was just finishing off the first round of quests from Area 52 (where I realised there was a barbers and couldn’t resist getting Yjin a haircut).

But why stop there, I thought, I don’t have to go to Northrend yet if I don’t want to! So I didn’t.  I finished off Netherstorm – hitting 71 – and then went on to do about half of Shadowmoon Valley -  what I could of it without doing all of the group quests.

As soon as I hit 70, though, I also started doing dailies.  Why dailies? Well, the quest-hub on Quel’Danas is all very compact, the mobs are over level 70 and I just like the Island.

These quests (click for bigger image) listed give 8% of XP at level 70, take about 45 minutes and are in the lovely setting of Quel’Danas.  I managed to do three rounds of them whilst levelling from 70-72 and actually dinged 72 on them.

Here are the zones I did from leaving the Death Knight starter zone until level 72:

• Hellfire Peninsula
• Half of Zangarmarsh
• None of Terokkar
• Most of Nagrand (skipping several group quests)
• All of Blade’s Edge
• Most of Nethestorm (again missing the harder group quests)
• Half of Shadowmoon Valley
• 3 x Quel’Danas Dailies

I have a feeling that if I’d done Terokkar I could likely have stayed in Outlands longer but by the time I was getting to the end of level 72 levelling in Outlands was beginning to feel a little slow.  A lot of people seem to dislike Shadowmoon, too, so if they want to stay in Outlands longer I’d reccomend doing Terokkar -  I love how the zone looks but I just don’t like the quests!

Caveat – As you might notice, I’m using the [Polished Spaulders of Valor] – most of my XP was coming from quests but I’d guess the extra 10% counted for a fair bit of XP along with any rest XP I had, both of which would go quite a way in extending the ability to level in Outlands.

If you do decide to stay in Outlands I’d reccomend getting a flying mount – even just a slow one for now – as it makes many of the quests in Netherstorm and Shadowmoon easier to do.  As soon as Yjin hit 70 she grabbed her flying skill and was scooting about on a (very, very slow) carpet!

I never noticed until taking these screenshots that Draenei female’s tails stick out of the back of their cloaks in the crouch position.  Hehe. Their feet also stick out underneath carpets, for that matter /grumble.

Eventually, though, I’ve had to take the plunge and bring my little Death Kight ever closer to meeting her maker…