WoW Shadowlands leveling is one of the highest praises players have given the expansion, but once it's time to level your alts, you have choices - Threads of Fate, or doing the main story again.
At the end of the day, is Threads of Fate fasters for leveling in WoW Shadowlands?
Let's break down what Threads of Fate offers, and its results.
Shadowlands Leveling
While the WoW Shadowlands leveling experience is amazing, it's much more linear than previous expansions, and heavily dominated by main story content.
Players go through each Shadowlands covenants main story in a row, beginning with the Kyrian of Bastion, then going to the Necrolords of Maldraxxus, Night Fae of Ardenweald, and Venthyr of Revendreth in order.
While the story is amazing and the experience is fantastically immersive, doing it a second time can be a bit of a drag. This is because the main story quests must all be complete to progress your Shadowlands leveling experience.
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But this isn't your only option for leveling an alt in Shadowlands.
Blizzard also offers the Threads of Fate leveling path.
Threads of Fate in Shadowlands
Threads of Fate is another choice characters have if you have already completed the main story of Shadowlands.
This path doesn't take characters through the main story at all, in fact it disables these quests entirely.
Instead, for Threads of Fate, players must level through world quests, side quests, bonus objectives, dungeons, and other Covenant activities (and choose their Covenant immediately when they enter Oribos).
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While this sounds perfect for players wanting to not have to go through the entire main story twice to reach level 60, what seems to be designed to be a faster experience isn't all it's been cracked up to be.
Is Threads of Fate Faster?
WoW Shadowlands Threads of Fate on the surface level seems like a faster leveling experience to get to level 60.
Unfortunately in practice, it very rarely is.
This is because the rewards for world quests and bonus objectives don't properly make up for the time lost doing story quests back to back in a single line. This gets worse with side quests, which can take players all across the zone in Shadowlands with seemingly no rhyme or reason.
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While some classes can dungeon spam their way to max level with ease - if players can take that many dungeons in a row - this mainly applies to healers and tanks who have lower average queue times for Shadowlands dungeons.
Even with dungeon spam, however, Threads of Fate tends to be slower than the main story quests for leveling to 60.
So why do Threads of Fate at all?
Perks of Threads of Fate
The first and obvious perk of Threads of Fate in Shadowlands is the ability to control your own path to level 60, without having to do the entire main story on the way.
But with how jagged the Threads of Fate leveling experience is for most players, it ends up not being a preferable play experience for many.
The real perk of Shadowlands Threads of Fate, however, is the rewards you gain along the way.
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With Threads of Fate, players are able to catch up on a lot of end-game mechanics on their path to 60. This includes leveling up their Covenant reputation, and gaining Renown with their Covenant for completing things like Shadowlands dungeons. This also includes rewards like Anima via world quests and having access to their Covenant choice from the second they touch down in Oribos.
This may catch players up on the many end-game activities in WoW Shadowlands.
Is Threads of Fate Worth Doing?
With the pros and cons in mind, it's hard to say that Threads of Fate is the better choice for Shadowlands leveling.
The experience is disconnected, strangely paced, and all around an unenjoyable mess for most players.
While it may not be a blast playing through the entire Shadowlands main story twice, the linear fashion of the quests and experience along the way seems to vastly outweigh the Threads of Fate leveling experience.
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In the end, we recommend sticking to the main story.
This of course offers you the option to switch to Threads of Fate whenever you'd like, where choosing Threads of Fate from the beginning is a final choice that cannot be reversed.