Overview
This guide will showcase the best tips to level up any character the fastest way possible, pure and simple.
Step 1: Your Equipment
As you should probably know the character is only as good as is the arsenal at their disposal, so with that in mind I imagine you all probably have leveled one character pretty high by now and are intending to level others, so you should have some pretty good weapon parts available. These parts will make low level weapons a lot more deadly since they don’t suffer a reduction in levels as weapons do. Usually if you gave a high level weapon to a low level character, the weapon stats would go down but the weapon parts stats are left unaltered. So keeping this in mind, no matter what parts you have, I suggest using your highest level parts.
Now I highly suggest you use a sniper rifle or a magnum (preferably have both if you got 2 weapon slots) as your main weapon as these will kill everything in one shot if aimed for the head or two for the body. We want a weapon that kills quickly since it is speed we are after here. The problem with these two weapons is the lack of ammo so equip the weapon with a “Capacity” and/or “BSAA” weapon part so you can take more bullets with you on the mission (especially useful if it is a magnum as the ammo reserve is highly limited).
Here you can see I upgraded my magnum with “Capacity” and “BSAA” and I got a magazine size of 16 which is bigger than the actual ammo reserve of 12, that you have by default. An easy trick to get more bullets without having to get the “Magnum Master” skill.
This is an essential part of leveling up quickly as it boosts the EXP you get from killing enemies significantly. A level 6 “Soul Eater” part gives a 92% boost which is almost double the experience you would get. No matter what level the part is, first thing you want to do is equip the highest level part on your primary weapon (either the sniper or the magnum). After this equip any other weapon you are gonna use with any other spare “Soul Eater” parts you have left.
And this is how the part looks as an album before evaluation.
Now an important thing to note is that it will only give you the extra EXP if the enemy dies from the bullet itself, so don’t melee them when they are stunned or down, shoot instead! And never use a “Fire ammo” part as this can lead to burning and if the enemy dies from the fire, even if you shot it, you will not gain the extra EXP.
Step 2: Early Leveling
You need to have Episode 3 and have unlocked Gauntlet VI at least on Normal difficulty to be able to do this. If you don’t have access to the stage, then skip this part.
If you are doing this then you can use ANY weapon you want and the “Soul Eater” part is not that important yet but it would help a little bit.
The mission we are gonna do is Mission 4 in Gauntlet VI, preferably on Very Hard difficulty as that will make it even faster but Normal works too.
Now watch the video below, it has all the intructions written on screen. Skip to 0:50.
You want to repeat this till you reach Level 15 at least (you can easily do this up to Level 20).
Step 3: The Missions
Now that you hopefully gained a few levels from Step 2, you should have plenty of SP to acquire and level up some skills to help you with further character leveling. I suggest spending them on “Sniper Master” or “Magnum Master” since these are the weapons you should be using if you want to kill stuff quickly and with that also level up quickly (unless of course you are purely leveling a character to inherit a skill to another, in which case just spend all the skill points on the skill you want to inherit, it should help you in one way or another to level up the character).
Moving on, you should always do the Daily Missions and I mean always, even the Character specific one, as you will gain Life Crystals which will help you with leveling up quick. If you die, don’t be afraid to use a crystal as this will let you respawn on the spot with full ammo and herbs, saving you the time it would take to restart the mission. Most importantly you suffer no EXP penalty for doing so.
The main reason you are doing Daily Missions though is because they give the most EXP in the shortest amount of time, by far! The downside is you only get one a day (two if you get lucky with the character specific one). So always come online at least that one time a day for 10 minutes to do these missions. It will save you a lot of time.
One little additional note here, if you are about to level up, do a Normal Mission to gain that little bit of EXP to reach the next level before doing the Daily Mission, as the EXP for the Daily mission is based on the character level, so this will increase the amount.
As a rule you want to do a mission that has a recommended level 1-3 higher than your current character level. This difference gives you the ‘most EXP / shortest time’ combo which is what we are after. Doing a stage 5 levels higher, will just take too ong and doing a stage on a lower recommended level, will give too little EXP for the time you spend on it.
Also, never do the same stage twice as you will receive a EXP reduction by doing so. Grinding the same stage is not an option in this mode. I suggest simply going through a gauntlet, mission by mission, this way you will also not get bored that much. Once you complete a gauntlet, find the next one with a recommended level within 1-3 levels of yours (there always is one on some difficulty).
Step 4: The Enemies
Whenever possible you want to do the Very Hard missions because these will contain more Elite Enemies (the enemies with icons near their health bars). An enemy can have up to a maximum of 3 skills. With each icon, the EXP bonus for killing an enemy is increased, this is the reason why you want to be facing as many of these enemies as possible and higher difficulties as a rule mean more of them.
On a note here, it does not matter which skill an enemy has, any 1 icon will give the same EXP bonus, any 2 icons will give the same EXP bonus and any 3 as well.
These enemies are the ones you need to keep an eye out for because they give approximately 15 times the usual amount of EXP. Any enemy can have this skill, on pretty much any mission. The problem is it is entirely random and they might not spawn at all. I once had 5 of them spawn in one mission, the most of the time there’s not even one. It is purely luck based but what you need to keep in mind is to always kill them with a weapon that has the “Soul Eater” part for massive EXP boosts.
These enemies never have additional skills, so their appearance will always be the same, completely covered silver bodies as you can see in the screenshot above.
Usually this Elite would be your worst enemy as he grants additional skills to other nearby enemies but for this leveling guide he is gonna become your best friend because the skills he grants to any nearby enemies, come with the usual EXP bonus you get from a normal Elite. So what you want to do is lead the enemies to the “Booster” and then kill them, while ignoring the booster up until he is the last enemy left. This is a free and quick EXP bonus at no additional cost. “Boosters” spawn randomly but there are stages that always spawn a booster, a good example is the catacombs stage on Gauntlet V with the “Booster” Giant Whip Spiders.
The “Booster” icon is the third icon on the enemy with 3 icons. As you can see the purple/pink threads indicate the enemies that have been given extra skills by the “Booster” (in this case the 2 Tanks with red icons).
Recommended Main Missions
So you did the Daily Mission and got a ton of EXP but you are still hungry for more and there’s so many Main missions that you wonder which one you should be doing for the most gain? Well I got the answer for you right here. In this section I will list the best of the Main missions that are suited for leveling up quickly along with some explanations. Of course, the higher the difficulty, the more EXP for any of these so you want to be doing them on the highest difficulty you have unlocked/can handle.
This is the first of the good missions you will have access to and also probably the best one. Why you might ask? Because there’s 63 enemies on the stage and all of them are always Elites, no other stage has such a characteristic. And as you should know by now more Elites = more EXP. If that wasn’t good enough already, then the enemies will be below your level unlike with most missions meaning that could can kill them 1 or 2 shots with the right weapon. I highly suggest using a sniper rifle and the passive “Crouch Power” Skill as it is a big stage with open view, so you can just sit in one place for the most part and just pick the enemies off one by one before they even reach you. Crouching with a sniper rifle steadies the aim for those long range shots while using the “Crouch Power” skill will also boost your damage.
Now this stage is the opposite of the previous as it is small and has only 27 enemies but all of them are either hunters, napads or slingers and there is also one boss. In other words, enemies that give great EXP. Napads can soak up quite a bit of damage though and it can get a bit tricky with the slingers, if you keep missing their weak spot it will waste valuable time and ammo, so keep your aim straight if you want to do this stage.
The last mission but my personal favorite. There are only hunters in this stage along with 3 bosses that give great EXP, 27 enemies altogether. Like the previous mission, this one is much faster than than V-02 and still grants amazing EXP as long as you kill the bosses with a weapon that has the “Soul Eater” part on it.
Additional Tips
Here will be some additional tips that you should take note of if you want to do things fast. They might be obvious to some but might be overlooked by others, so have a look and take note.
- Beating the 2nd Gauntlet on Normal difficulty will unlock the Toolbox in the Shop for purchase. Buy it and the Red Toolbox will now be next to the weapon table. Use the Toolbox to upgrade parts to higher levels, including “Soul Eater”.
Beating the 4th, 6th and 8th Gauntlet on Normal and Mission Omega will unlock upgrades in the shop for the Toolbox so you can upgrade parts to a higher level, so do these first as you will be able to get high level parts by combining low level ones even before doing the Harder difficulties.
- After every mission the store will change the items that are up for sale, have a look if there’s any parts that you need or you might be able to combine at the Toolbox.
- Don’t open the Treasure Chests in Stages if you are playing lower level Missions than is your highest level character because you will get low level parts and weapons that you don’t need.
The worst part is you will waste time, clicking the “ok” button on every item at the end of a stage AND then going to the Jukebox to evaluate every item individually since otherwise you are gonna run out of space AND still after that you need to go to the Weapon Table to sell the unwanted items.
It is just a huge waste of time when you are going for speed, so ignore Treasure Chests altogether if you are doing low level missions, instead use the Store in the Raid Lobby Room.
