I would blast through the main story and save the side quests for later.

I hit lvl 50 before act 3 and I wish I would've done more of the main story first.

The horse is a game changer and I would've saved a lot of time.

I’m by no means an expert, and have a similar amount of play time. I opted to push through the main story since all quests scale the same and you need to get to Act IV to unlock the horse.

I’m just now doing some of the 50-100 stuff and while doing that I’m going through and getting some more of the flavor by doing side quests in the areas that I’m spending time in.

@DV8. It doesn’t really matter what order you do things in. I mostly stopped doing side quests once I reached the point for each elates where they stop giving you renown rewards until world tier 3 and then picked them up again afterwords, although I did keep doing enough side quests to keep from having the max number of side quests so I could keep picking up new side quests as I came across them.

I did the main quest line with only minor exploration and + sidequesting and ended up slightly underlevel for the final quest, but it was completely doable

Some of the sidequests are well written and some are whole questlines. So far I played only the main story with a mage ending it with about level 47. Mostly without sidequests but with a lot of exploration/events and so on. Since leveling up my alts was a little bit tedious befor the last patch, I switched to the sidequests from time to time.

It's more like a personal preference to take time and go grab something while the world is struggling for saviour. Levelwise it doesn't really matter.

Depends on what you want. I did a lot of side quests on my first character, but I had to because I had the habit of just accepting everything - until I ran into the 20 sidequest cap… This forced me to do side quests when I wanted to continue the main quest, because I would at least want to be able to accept the side quests that are outside & harder to find, if I were to come across them.

On my second character I did exactly that. Just did the main quest and accepted all the side quests that were on my way but away from any waypoint. And I gotta say, the campaign boss fights were so much easier on a lower level. I'm not super sure whether I finish all side quests on that character though. The exp you get for them is typically pretty low and I don't have a need for the herbs or leather packs they give you at this stage anymore either.

So yeah, my recommendation is to focus on the main quests & just pick up stuff you find outside the towns. Do sidequests when your quest book gets too full but otherwise only afterwards.

The side quests aren't going anywhere. There are way too many to do. Enjoy them for the lore -- some of them make the game world feel more alive and fleshed out. Okay whatever part you enjoy the most. Even the story is structured so you can skip lore by powering through vs look at the side nooks and crannies for journals and paintings.

Everything scales with you, and there are limited ways to get items/account rewards without finishing the story 1st. I like to do everything as I get it, but that put me way behind in gear.

I've been taking it kind of slow. I'm not exhaustively doing every side quest but it's more like when my build sucks, I do non-main-arc stuff hoping to improve my gear ahead of the act boss.

And I just like exploring. I also do those class-specific dungeons whenever I see one. Presumably they'll come in useful at some point?

I followed the rule of getting enough renown to get the region progress bonuses up to the third level for a total of 2 skill points and 1 potion capacity in each area. Otherwise as others have said, progressing to where you earn your mount really speeds even that up since you can traverse the map quicker.

Ok so I was in the same boat.

Quite happily plodding along at a leisurely pace, helping the locals with their errands and what not.

This is nice but you won’t get much in the way of loot. Side quests are great for levelling but the better drops are after the campaign.

Helltides, Nightmare dungeons etc. Oh and a horse.

Do sidequests as you like, but get through the story. You'll have to finish that to play the seasonal content and it'll get you more skills and items quicker. It makes the game a lot more enjoyable tbh.