In World of Warcraft, a character “rests” when it spends time in a city or inn. If the character rests long enough, it begins to accumulate a bonus which doubles the amount of experience (XP) it earns per kill. You can tell if you’re rested by looking at your XP “meter” at the bottom of the screen. If it’s purple, you’re not rested. If it’s blue, you are. Just “how” rested you are is indicated by the presence of a small “tick-mark” or “slider” on top of the XP bar. If you don’t see that tick-mark, you’re rested at least until you complete the current level you’re working on. If you do see the tick-mark, you’re rested until your current XP reaches that mark, at which time you’ll cease being rested.
I’ve heard players ask if it’s better to log out in a place where you are resting or not. The answer generally comes back as “no, it’s not worth it” but that’s really NOT the correct answer. The correct answer is, “It depends on how frequently you play that character.” Let me explain.
Let’s say that you play WoW every single day without fail, for several hours per day, and always log off in a place where you’re gaining rest. Odds are that you won’t accumulate that much rest during the few hours per day that you’re not playing, so the benefit you get from being rested is probably minimal compared to the time it takes you to get from the place of rest to the place you enjoy questing or farming or PVPing. For a person who plays a single character on a very regular basis for long periods of time, resting is probably more trouble than it’s worth. So in that sense, the common answer is the correct one.
On the other hand, let’s imagine that you’re more like me. I play WoW a few times a week at most, with long breaks in between where my job and personal life prevent me from playing as much as I might like. Sometimes I travel for vacation or business, and I can’t play WoW for several days at a stretch. In those situations, if I log out in a city or inn, my character gains “rest” even though I am not playing. When I come back a few days later, the character may have accumulated enough rest so that it can complete an entire level earning double XP. Was it worth it for me to rest? You bet! It will take me half the time to gain my next level because I took a moment to log out in a place of rest. So, for me personally, it’s very worthwhile to rest my characters. Also, since I have more than one character, I always make sure to log the alternate characters out in a place of rest. That way they, too, accumulate entire levels worth of “rest”. So in this case, the common answer of “rest isn’t worth it” isn’t true. Because I am not in-game for long-ish periods of time, my characters accumulate enough rest that when I AM in the game I can level much faster than I would otherwise.
How do you know when you’re resting in WoW? Look at your character’s portrait in the upper left corner. If you can see your level number inside the little circle at the bottom left of the portrait, then you are NOT resting where you are. If you see “Zzz” instead of your level number inside that circle, then you ARE resting and accumulating “double XP” time. Generally speaking, you will “rest” inside of the major cities like Stormwind, Ironforge, and the like. You will also rest in certain inns and locations outside major cities, but you won’t know for sure unless you check your level indicator and note that it is filled with Z’s.
