SPOILER: This advice is only for achieving lvl 100 in minimum time.




The fastest way to level up to 100 is to mass kill easy (normal) mobs with AoE's. These specs are only for grinding purposes, not farming.

Recommended specialization -
Mage
Pure base intellect
Intellect/Endurance/Shadow dps gear bonuses

The best quickbar setup i've found -
Shadow Lightning, Ring of Fire, Gaseous Blast, Unnerving Shout, Dark Wizardry, Gym Freak, Coach Potato, Imp. Shadow, Mental Prowess, Spirit of Hare.

Best Camps -
1-20: I didn't find any special camps at these levels, just run the Algernon sequence dungeons.
20-25: Algor the Snow Chieftain - enter his lair, run straight to the 3rd group (boss group) and AoE everything then reset/repeat.
25-43: Widows Lair - enter her lair, run into the generator room halfway between both doors, gather all the skeleton mobs and AoE. Should be around 150exp in as little as 15 seconds, I never continued on to the widow, just reset/repeat.
45-100: Fade Caves - Off of Shadow's Embrace 7 - enter caves, run past 2 groups of mobs, aggro 3rd group then run back to where the 2nd group spawned (keeps aggro on all 3 without mobs ghosting back), AoE rinse/repeat (about 70 mobs in as little as 1 minute)

from 43-99 i wore all yellow gear and never spent time farming bosses or doing quests, i didnt bother looting anything that wasnt an upgrade or rainbow..

every level took less than an hour of grinding..

must be fun O_o

Yesterday I come with a technique to get about 5k/15mins in Obsidian Cave, which allows me to make a lvl up in less than a 45 mins xD (i'm level 58 now).

is 20k in 1 hour, in Fade Caves I could get as fast as 20k in 37 minutes.

Gah, feels like I get 45 exp in 20k hours instead!!

by the way you have 11 skills there so get rid of couch potato and im also thinking replace unnerving to shadow bolt of similar e.g fire or ice for the right click for finishing off them runners at the end so it goes like this

{LEFT CLICK}Shadow Lighting,Circle of fire,gaseous blasts,dark wizardry,bookworm,gym freak,improved shadow lighting,mental pro,spirit of hare,shadow bolt[RIGHT CLICK]

Look again, where in his build do you find Bookworm? Keep away from yellow snow, it's affecting ya.

In mid levels i suggest using bookworm though. Later on when your mana is high enough, skip it for couch potato instead (to gain some HP).

nice... i shall try there

im pretty sure i only listed 10, and unnerving shout helps maintain the mobs that flee after GB/RoF strike, it keeps mobs together and helps hit more mobs with SL.
shadow lightning is fine for spare mobs, it never misses and does pretty nice damage.

yea, unless you're insanely low on mana bookworm's not worth the hp loss, just use more mp pots

Nice guide. I wonder why a detailed guide like this, to my knowledge, wasn't posted before by a level 100. A post about the Shadow Queen, the best and fastest spot for farming mythics, hasn't been posted yet --- to my knowledge. Even I don't know the ins and outs of farming her like some of the other 100s.

Quick guide to farming bosses: Highest DPS on single target as possible ^.^

Nice

Could I do it with a warrior and then respec at lvl 100?

yes sky alot of ppl are going mage till 100 then respecing

Eldritch, how did you get the money for upgrading skills with just AoE-grinding? I´m always out of money

I have also found that gold stays static for the most part if you are grinsing quickly like this. What I do is take a break everyonce in a while and will grind HDoL stage 6 or the Creation Room on Insane mode (35-50k a run).

I´m lvl 8

just keeping farming like Drew Valley or Algernon

I'm using a very similiar setup, with a few minor adjustments and it's working very well for me.

[Shadow Lightning] Ring of Fire, Gaseous Blast, Putridous Shot, Toxic Talent, Offensive Gesture, Mental Prowess, Gym Freak, Bookworm [Noxious Blast]

Level 28 Enduring Apprentice Venom Mercenary
Str : 10 + 6 = 16
Agi : 45 + 16 = 61
End : 55 + 175 = 230
Int : 65 + 60 = 125
Health : 8,307
Mana : 4,242

Being lvl 28, i dont have Imp Shadow atm, but it's planned.

Basically I herd groups and use gaseous blast initially, following up immediatly with noxious blast (aoe poison shot) and then Ring of Fire. I use toxic talent when i've got an especially large group. Shadow Lighting does well for taking care of ranged attackers outside of my poison blast. Putridous shot is my stun/knockdown skill. Useful for stopping hulks that continuously interupt you or just plain fun for bowling over an entire train of mobs. I switch to Poison Shot when dealing with single targets, like Algor, after you've cleared the fodder and heroes. Offensive Gesture is there primarly because it's damn funny to curse and shout after killing 50 guys, to curse at your friends for no good reason, but also can be helpful when in a group and you find you're losing packs of mobs to a party member.

With my current setup, I typically run from place to place, and only really stop if i find the quest mob, or I've attracted 50+ mobs together. Places like the Grave Forge are excellent, can wipe that entire place in 2 pulls. I also focus all of my gunfire on mobs in ranged distance, I let poison and dmg reflection take care of anyone in melee range. With 8k health, my only worry is large quantities of knockdown mobs, in these cases I use thickheadedness.

Currently my stats are focused towards End/Int/Agi in that priority. I use a shotgun with high End/Int Bonuses and melee dmg reflection (I currently have 90% melee dmg reflect). I also invested in some decent resists to ensure I wasnt getting murdered by ranged spell attacks.

A little tip for AoE'ers, sometimes running in circles will force mobs to close in on you, even ranged, this often is a great way to condense everyone in a pack to use an aoe poison attack on them. Oftentimes mobs will step out of melee range if you are swarmed by too many others. This is useful if those wandering away are heroes, but not good if you're going for maximum aoe dmg.

Eh, maybe in a few more lvls I'll make a player guide for it myself!