Roomso

Solid run, could be improved just a bit in some places but better than most that I've seen :)

Running from Crossroads to Orgrimmar and then UC/Brill wont take long enough for your HS to come back up.

Nice, what was your playtime when you hit 5? The quest A Regugee's Quandry might seem simple but just keep in mind that you need to loot 3 different items that spawn on the ground, and only in 1 specific location each. I'm assuming those will be even harder to get than mob's. But we'll see, should be quick to notice when you are there.

There are points to explore in western elwyn (where you kill hogger and a farm). Not sure if you take them early but otherwise maybe you should run to goldshire from westfall and grab those on the way. That way you will save your HS.

You are assuming that there will be little competetion for mobs outside of the starting area. If that is the case then yes, grinding mobs will be quicker. You can probably get almost 200 xp/minute during your first 5-6 levels and that is solid. If you however have to wait a lot between kills that is time wasted. Some runs get almost 100xp/minute without killing anything. The runs I've done with no mob-kills have to be considered a worst case scenario. For about 30-35 minutes of my run there might be mobs at level 5-6 around and grabbing as much as you can from those will ofcourse be worth it. It's not all or nothing. It's about finding a way to maximize leveling under the given circumstances. I was there for Kronos 2 release and it was chaos. Every mob from the staring area and around the first town (was Kharanos in Dun Morogh for me) were being farmed, either buy solo players or groups. I'm assuming it will be even worse here.

I was able to use General chatt once i got to level 8. Have not tried whispers or Trade.

Did you quest like normally? Or was that just exploration exp and fedEx-quests (i.e. no mob kills)?

Managed to get a dwarf priest to level 5 with no kills, in 46 minutes. Not sure if it's possible to do much faster without any mobs. Doing a few fedEx-quests in Dun Morogh, SW, Elwyn, and the priest quest you get at level 4.

No, at level 4 you can grab a quest (from the guy you finish the last coldridge valley mail delivery) to deliver a mug of some drink in 5 minutes to Anvilmar (timed quest), that gives you 230 XP and you get the followup "Return the mug" which gives 450 XP. I've been going into LM through the northen gate pass and straight down towards wetlands (after the first tunnel you get one exp point and turn around). When you exit the tunnel again you turn left and discover a mine, and the big damm. Its tricky to avoid the kobolds though but I've managed several times. After that you die, ress at Thelsamar, run to the lake edge to get that point. Then you run back to Dun Morogh through the southern pass (don't forget the exploration point where you kill kobolds south of Thelsamar). As soon as you enter DM again from the southern pass there is a Boar there which you can attack so you die and spawn at the IF graveyard :) It takes a long time to do every run so I haven't tried it to much but I've maped the time between all the exploration points and I end up with about 100xp /min

If you explore from Kharanos all the way to loch modan and die just as you come back into dun morogh you will spawn at the IF graveyard making the run quite efficient. If you are at Steelgrill's Depot in Dun Morogh and do a circut through the eastern part of the map + LM you can get an extra 14 exploration nodes that all give 70ish XP each if you are level 3. Also, if you intend to go to lakeshire from elwyn i would try to die as soon as you get the point The Three Corners as you will save some time by spirit ressing there. If you manage to get to level 4 before you leave coldridge you can do 2 simple fedex quests there that gives you 680 XP.

It's the perfect crime!

I played on the launch of Kronos2 just when the server launched. I was one of the absolute first players in since i was refreshing the loginpage like a nutter. I managed to get a few mob kills inside the starting area but when I noticed that it was getting so packed that it was almost impossible to grab mobs I asked 2 guys that were close to me and we went outside at level 2.5ish and started grinding together. We stuck around all the way through the first zone by doing quests as soon as they were available to us (3ish levels to high to so solo would not really be possible) and grinding orange mobs. It was not optimal but we were among the top 15 on the alliance side when we left the first zone at 9-10ish. I don't really remember how long it took so it's hard for me to know if it will be faster to try and do that again or if my exploration run will be more efficient.

Horde will probably be more difficult. One advantage Alliance have (atleast gnome/dwarf/human) is the closeness of SW and IF. Maybe you can go across the mountains to the west from Durotar into ratchet and explore some areas there quick? One other good way to level is to grab 1 or 2 friends and go outside the immediate starting area and grind mobs 3-4 levels higher than you together. It won't be optimal and it might still be kinda slow but you will probably have a higher chance of tagging those mobs.

Bumping this old post since I myself have been looking for a solid exploration route as gnome/dwarf. There are a few videos on Youtube discussing this but none seem really optimizied. I've tried out some runs and I manage to be level 5 in Kharanos as a dwarf priest at 50 minutes without killing any mobs. This works out to almost 100xp/minute. I also tired to just grind in the starting area on Nost PvP during a time of zero competition. During 11 minutes of grinding (no quests at all) I managed to get 160xp/minute. It's probable (assuming I can't find a better exploration route) that I will have to kill 2 mobs per minute during the fresh release for it to be worth it not to do my exploration route. If someone have been trying out routes then feel free to msg me and we could compare!