In the first week of the CN beta, one argument keeps flaring up: are dungeons still worth running? The answer has changed twice in two weeks, because Forever nerfed dungeon XP twice in early October. Here is what each nerf actually cut, what is left on the table, and how to schedule dungeons while levelling.

Scope notes: all numbers come from beta testing and official forum statements (9-21 through 10-04). The CN beta and the live game may be tuned further — in-game values govern.

Before the first nerf: dungeons were an XP paradise

First tests on 9-21 put dungeon quest XP at roughly 2-3x the classic vanilla baseline. "Accept every quest, then enter" became the community consensus, and dungeon-rush levelling routes were born.

First nerf (10-01): the bonus layer got cut

The October 1 beta patch sharply reduced dungeon quest XP by trimming the bonus portion above the normal quest baseline; base quest XP stayed intact. A community worked example: a quest with 6,000 base + 2,000 bonus went from 8,000 total to 7,000 when the bonus halved. First clears still paid — just not absurdly. The same patch nerfed quest reward item levels: a full Hall of Thanes run is about 16.7k XP (roughly 1.5 levels at 13), Ruins of Lordaeron about 35-36k (roughly 2.5 levels at 15). The community grumbled.

Second nerf (10-04): the bonus layer halved again

The October 4 patch cut dungeon quest bonus XP by another 50%, and this time we have a hard number: Shadowfang Keep quest XP dropped from 32,200 to 19,800, with reward gear nerfed alongside. At this point dungeon quests no longer hold a qualitative edge over regular outdoor quests.

Kill XP: about 10% of outdoor

The harsher cut is kill XP. Designer Kris Zierhut confirmed on the official forums (10-02) that dungeon kill XP is roughly 10% of outdoor — an anti-farming measure. The immediate consequence: AoE dungeon grinding (tank gathers a floor, the party blazes it down) fell from a level per hour to a level per three hours — on par with, or slower than, plain questing.

What's left: blues and blueprints

Kill XP is gone, but drops remain: every boss drops a blue item plus a campsite blueprint recipe — the real payoff of a first clear. Repeats do have a ceiling, though: community testing shows a dungeon's returns approach zero by around the tenth full clear.

The takeaway: first clears yes, second clears no

The correct launch-window dungeon routine fits in three lines:

  1. Accept every quest before you enter — mind the sharing rules: quests without prerequisites can be shared; chained ones (like "Hidden Enemies") cannot once a teammate has done them;
  2. Run each dungeon once — collect the quest XP, the group's blues and the blueprint, then leave;
  3. Let outdoor quests be your main XP — in a levelling route, dungeons are a roadside supply station, not an XP factory.

For which dungeon fits which level band and what to accept in each, see our dungeon cheat sheet and the per-level route tables; the early weapons worth chasing are on the starter gear page. Horde players will soon get a dedicated dungeon-marathon ordering post.

In one sentence: dungeons have been demoted from "levelling engine" to "gear supply point" — accept that, and your launch actually gets faster.