New Level Ranges: Dungeons and Battlegrounds

There have been a lot of changes with the 4.x patches, and with so many changes it’s often easy to overlook some them. Recently my wife has decided to level a Hunter and in our quest to get her some good one-handed weapons from dungeons we found out that the level requirements for one of them in particular (RFK) had changed.

That led me on a quest to find out which dungeons had changed their level requirements on us, and I happened to stumble onto such a list this morning. A lot of them stayed the same, or at least close enough that it doesn’t really make that much of a difference, while others took on pretty big changes.

And remember, the racial tabards are available to all of your toons. So if you’re going to do a lot of random dungeons then you might as well slap on a tabard and get your reputation and Ambassador achievements early on. It only takes about 10 dungeons in your level range to get from Neutral to Exalted with each race.

Instance Name	Level Range	Minimum Level
The Deadmines	15-21	10
Ragefire Chasm	15-21	10
Wailing Caverns	15-25	10
Shadowfang Keep	16-26	11
Stormwind Stockade	20-30	15
Blackfathom Deeps	20-30	15
Gnomeregan	24-34	19
The Scarlet Monastery – Graveyard	26-36	21
The Scarlet Monastery – Library	29-39	21
The Scarlet Monastery – Armory	32-42	21
The Scarlet Monastery – Cathedral	35-45	21
Razorfen Kraul	30-40	25
Maraudon – Purple Crystals	30-40	25
Maraudon – Orange Crystals	32-42	25
Maraudon – Pristine Waters	34-44	25
Uldaman	35-45	30
Dire Maul – East	36-46	31
Scholomance	38-48	33
Dire Maul – West	39-49	34
Razorfen Downs	40-50	35
Dire Maul – North	42-52	37
Stratholme – Main Gate	42-52	37
Zul’farrak	44-54	39
Stratholme – Service Entrance	46-56	37
Blackrock Depths – Prison	47-57	42
Blackrock Depths – Upper City	51-61	42
The Sunken Temple	50-60	45
Lower Blackrock Spire	55-65	48
Upper Blackrock Spire	55-65	48

Most of the low level dungeons didn’t change a whole lot, though we did see a small drop in Gnomeregan’s level. The most surprising one to me was Razorfen Kraul which jumped up to a level 30-40 instance which pushed it’s companion instance, Razorfen Downs, up to a level 40-50 instance. I’m not sure what the reasoning was for those changes unless they just felt there weren’t enough options in those brackets.

As we push on into the mid-level range of vanilla instances we also see a drop in Marauden’s level as well as Dire Maul. One of the most surprising changes of all for me was seeing Scholomance as 38-48 when that was always one of the top instances in vanilla to me.

Moving on to the later levels we see much of the same, though several off them got slight modifications to level ranges. Stratholme dropped a few levels which makes me really happy as I actually have a chance of getting it in my random queues while leveling now. Blackrock Depths jumps up a bit as does Sunken Temple, and Upper and Lower Blackrock Spire cap us off as the highest level dungeons.

Most of these changes don’t mean a whole lot for leveling your toons except that you’ll see a few new faces while leveling if you’re a fan of LFG (like me). If you also share my love of hunting down specific pieces of gear while you level though, then you might see some familiar pieces now have either higher or lower level requirements in addition to having their stats changed.

And here’s a heads up for those of you who do like to hunt down those specific gear upgrades via LFG – the Wowhead database isn’t fully up to date yet, so some items you find there that note a specific level requirement or certain stats on their website aren’t necessarily what the item actually has in the game. Most of it is right, but I’ve found a few that aren’t. Or rather, I found a few that weren’t when I got them. Wowhead gets their data pretty fast, but after a major patch with significant overhauls some things might be off here and there.

Battleground	Minimum Level
Warsong Gulch	10
Arathi Basin	10
Eye of the Storm	35
Alterac Valley	45
Strand of the Ancients	65
Isle of Conquest	75
Battle for Gilneas	85
Twin Peaks	85

The other thing I wanted to mention for today’s post is the changes to battlegrounds. As Cynwise mentioned yesterday, the battleground brackets have now been cut in half, so that level x0-x4 toons will find themselves grouped together while x5-x9 toons will be grouped similarly. So you’ll see a lot more balance (generally speaking) in battlegrounds as the level ranges are chopped in half.

The other change you’ll see is that some battlegrounds are now opened to lower level brackets than they were previously. My favorite change here is opening Arathi Basin to the level 10 bracket. By the time I had started playing and had a desire to PvP for fun rather than a way of life, the level requirements for mounts had already been dropped enough that AB always had mounts in it. I didn’t get to experience it without mounts until this change and I absolutely love it.

Eye of the Storm drops down to level 35 which will be a welcome change to some. I have a personal hatred for this battleground, but maybe allowing people to get more practice with it from a lower level will make it suck less…maybe.

Alterac Valley opens up at level 45 which is another change I very much look forward to. AV is a great source of both experience and honor, and it’s just plain fun to participate in as well. AV is another one of my favorites because of how the map is laid out and how it works.

Strand of the Ancients opening up to level 65 toons means I can effectively flip half of the Outlands the bird while I farm Mining and Herb nodes for experience in between SotA queues for even more experience. Outlands is getting old where I used to enjoy it quite a bit, but now I’ll likely stay in Azeroth until level 60-62 and then finish up parts of Hellfire or Zangar Marsh to get the other few levels I need to queue for SotA before moving on to Northrend.