Congratulation to Ironstarfall on becoming our 12th Battle for Azeroth Iron Man Challenge Champion! Bwonsamdi completed the Iron Man Challenge with Ironstarfall in 5 days and 16 hours with a /played time of 2 days and 3 hours.
When we asked Bwonsamdi what leveling path they took with Ironstarfall they shared with us the following: “I played a Night Elf Hunter and stuck with the Night Elf areas till the end of Darkshore, the quests are fairly easy and simple. From there I go to the human areas up until halfway through Redridge due to elites being a danger. Then I go do all (of) Duskwood but not stitches, he hurts a lot. Then I do Dwarf areas until 63 then I go to Hellfire and finish at 70 at Zanger, dodging a lot of named quests and sticking to safe easy ones. Then (in) Northrend I stick to Borean and do almost all of the zone, then split into Dragonblight Keep area and stop at the crypt(don’t do the crypt) then finish out in Grizzly for good vibes(81-82) then I entered the Jade Forest, did some starter quests then explored Pandaland while collecting most treasures(85) then I finish up my journey in Valley(87-88) then I went to Mt Hyjal and get to 89 when I finish up in Uldum(91) then I do the difficult task of collecting treasures in Draenor until about 101. Then I had to ask my awesome guild to guide me to start Legion (I’ve never gotten this far) then I just went around exploring and doing all possible safe quests I could. During my 114s I was able to do a Legion invasion in Stormheim and was able to do most of the event aside for 2. BfA was a big change and used the same strat I used in Legion, minus the invasion. I leveled with the understanding that I might be forced to grind boars as my guild loved to ask when the boars would go extinct. I only had to do this towards the end of 119. I had found a quest that if I auto attacked and then threw the bola it would kill the bird and give me full XP.
A lot of challengers choose the leveling path they take for an assortment of reasons. The reasons behind the leveling path Bwonsamdi chose were “because it limits a lot of the danger quests and gives a lot of XP. My vanilla path is my favorite because the early 1-20 zones are made without mounts in mind so they all are close together and are super simple(kill 10mobs) (collect 6 items). My BC (path) is a lot of grindy quests that are not very fun or hard. Wrath is a lot of easy quests that are also fun. Cata/Pandaland is some treasure hunting and challenging quests that are doable. WoD is mostly just treasures. Legion and BfA for Irons was new to me. I had to find the quests and get the treasures for XP and just be careful due to the huge jump in difficulty.”
Challengers and close calls are no strangers. Many of us have had a few over the years. The same goes with Bwonsamdi and Ironstarfall, “I only really had 2 major close calls while leveling, the first one was during legion, I was “fighting” an elite boss during the Stormheim Legion invasion when I got dced, my pet was the only one doing the fighting but I was worried that I would log in dead, but I was safe and even still got the rewards for completing the world quest. The 2nd close call was really close, I was 113 and fighting lizards in BFA when I noticed my screen flash red, my pet died and I feigned death at about 10-15% HP and found out it was an invisible mob that had almost killed me.”
For those leveling away on their on Irons or those looking to get started playing the Iron Man Challenge, Bwonsamdi had a few tips they’d like to share with you: “Some tips I have would be to try to do all the low-level zones (1-10) you can, they are mostly very safe and offer great XP if you were to say in your 40s they could get 7 or so levels in about 2-3hours. Collect all the chests you can!!! Especially if your 90+ I was able to get from 90-101 from treasures alone thanks to the current XP buff (Winds of Wisdom), toward the legion chests, some can give XP but a lot won’t, almost all the BfA chests give XP at about half a quest per(very helpful).”
Bwonsamdi plans on taking a break for now and then maybe trying to level an Iron Warlock or perhaps a Green Man to scratch that transmog itch.
Congratulations once again Bwonsamdi on reaching max level with Ironstarfall and becoming our 12th Battle for Azeroth Iron Man Challenge Champion and good luck on your future challenge endeavors!