One of the easiest and most fun ways to level any World of Warcraft toon is instance leveling. Thanks to the recent dungeon finder system, it’s become even easier. It wasn’t very long ago that finding a group to do instances with could be pretty tedious—sometimes it would take so long that you just didn’t feel like even playing anymore. Now all a player has to do is get in the queue for whatever dungeon they want, and the dungeon finder does all the work of finding a group by snagging players from your server group and pairing them with you.

Even though the process of actually finding groups has been simplified, what about the process of finding good instances? Any veteran World of Warcraft player is aware that not all instances are made equal. Here’s just a few of my top picks by level of the best instances:

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Hellfire Ramparts (Level 58-61) – This is a very nice instance that can rake you in a lot of experience fairly easily. Although you can start queueing for this dungeon at a minimum of level 58, you will have to do some pre-requisite questing before you get access to the Hellfire Ramparts. The quests required can be found in an instance leveling guide.

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Blood Furnace (Levels 61-63) – Although you don’t need to do any quests to be able to queue for Blood Furnace, you will need to complete a few prerequisite quests in order to unlock the Blood Furnace quests. I suggest unlocking these quests as soon as possible as many are extremely valuable and time saving.

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Slave Pens and Underbog (Level 63) – You probably won’t stay on this instance for long—I only did a few runs through it myself before moving on to the Mana-Tombs. They both look pretty similar and can be pretty boring, but it’s easy and good experience for fast leveling.

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Mana-Tombs (Levels 64-66) – For some toons, the Mana-Tombs can be pretty frustrating. If you use a lot of mana in your class, you may find this becoming one of your least favorite instances. It’s important to have a good class balance in this one—you don’t want too many MP burning classes as you will constantly be struggling for mana. Despite the hassle, the equipment bonuses are very worthwhile.

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Sethekk Halls, Auchenai Crypts, The Steamvault: Auchenai Crypts and Sethekk Halls (Levels 66-68) – These instances carry on the Auchindoun storyline and can be done right after you finish with the Mana-Tombs. You can do any combination of the quests and have the same result in the end.

Crowd control is pretty important in all of these instances. The drops here are lucrative enough that many players come back to farm at level 80 for gold.

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Northrend Instances (Levels 68-70) – As soon as your toon hits 68, it’s time to make your way to Northrend. This is the land of fast leveling, and 68-70 will go by pretty fast here. The monsters will be pretty high leveled comparatively, so you will want a strong party with you if you are still in the 6x level range. Almost any instance you pick will be worth your time here as Northrend instances have high stakes in both experience and drops for lower leveled toons.