However, there are still many people who will want to level quickly. They might do this for the feeling of achievement upon reaching maximum level, or because they want to do higher level instances, or to catch up to their friends, or just to make lower level content easier. Regardless, here are a list of my top suggestions for improving your leveling speed.
- Minimize your time killing monsters. This is probably the single biggest point I can make. For example, at level 60, I can get about 100 experience for killing a monster. Completing a quest gives me about 2900 xp. Quest experience dramatically outweighs the experience you get for killing, so focus on completing quests, not on killing monsters. In fact, make a general rule of not killing any monster you don't need to, except to get the daily "monster variety" achievement. Note that critters like rabbits and rats also count towards the variety number.
- Improve your quest completion time. Every quest has multiple ways of completing it. Each way contributes a certain % towards completion- your job, as an optimizer, is to find the most efficient combination. This can either be spamming a low contribution but reliable method (e.g. feeding a cow) or looking for a few high contribution, "riskier" methods, such as finding a relatively rare, scattered item. Look at how much your completion bar moves when you complete an objective vs. the time involved, and make a decision whether you should try something else or just stick with that one.
- Learn to "tag" monsters. This is critical, and the second most important point behind minimizing your time killing monsters. Tagging a monster could practically be an article to itself. Basically, you want to "hit" a monster with enough damage that the game considers you a contributor in its death. A simple example is that you are walking along and you see a stranger fighting a boar. You don't need that boar for anything and you don't want to waste time stopping to fight it, so you hit it with an instant spell (no channeling) that does a bit of damage as you run by. You keep going, and five seconds later the stranger kills that boar and you get experience for virtually no work. This concept applies to dynamic events and quests extremely well. For example, if the quest were to kill centaurs, and you enter an area with three centaurs and a few stranger, you should NOT try to kill any of the centaurs. Instead, hit each centaur once, then try to finish one off. The reason being is that if you kill one centaur while the strangers kill the other two, you only get credit for 1 kill. If you hit all three, then focus on kills, you get credit for all of them. For dynamic events this is INCREDIBLY useful. It's a better idea to hit a group of mobs with a low damage aoe then kill a single one with high burst damage. Focus on "tagging" every mob before it dies rather than trying to kill any of them. I should point out that you should NOT do this in dungeons, when tagging is irrelevant and focusing fire is key.
- This is probably one of the dirtier tricks, but it's worth knowing. When doing dynamic events, get a feel for how much you need to contribute to get "gold" and then walk away. For example, if it's a huge boss fight event, I might stick around for 30 seconds pummeling it, then walk off and complete a quest and a half on the other side of the zone in the time it takes them to finish the boss, thus racking up a ton of experience in a short time. After you get a gold medal any additional help doesn't give you anything extra. I find that the gold medal point is usually the "one-third" point. If you need to defend against 9 waves, kill 3 waves and then leave. If you are killing a boss mob, stay until you drop about 33% of its health and then walk away to continue questing. Make sure to use tagging (see above) to maximize credit for kills. Also, if the event is chained, make sure to come back to get credit for the next section too. Also don't leave an event if it doesn't look like success is likely without you.
- Look for synergies between dynamic events and quests. It's extremely common that you can complete a quest simultaneously along with an event. If you've run an area before it's even easier because you know what kinds of events run in that zone.
- Look for overlapping dynamic events. Sometimes you can get gold medals for three events simultaneously, AND continue questing.
- When crafting, save up your materials for big crafting sessions, preferably being enough to get you to the next tier of items (0 to 75, 75 to 150, etc.). ALWAYS USE A CRAFTING BOOSTER WHEN DOING LARGE CRAFTING SESSIONS. This is not only to boost your xp gained, but it reduces the number of mats you need to burn because you level your skill faster. Don't have a booster? Use cash to buy a gems on the market, then buy a booster and use it.
- Focus your traits and specialization around improving your movement speed. Generally speaking, increases in movement speed give you far faster leveling than increases in damage. Running around 20% faster makes a much bigger difference than doing 20% more damage, because you spend relatively little time actually fighting mobs (even less if you follow the tips above). Switch your weapons/trait selections around when you run instances or when you hit level 80.
- When approaching POIs, vistas or skill points, decide whether you can just run through and grab it. Often they are placed in camps or caves full of enemies (especially POIs), and unless there is a quest related to the killing it's more time efficient to run in, get the exploration credit and then run out. Increasing your movement speed (above) helps this greatly, as does having instant crowd control spells like cripple and blind.
- Be constantly gathering. Not only do you get decent experience from gathering, but it moves you towards the daily achievement goal of gathering, which is a substantial xp reward.
- Kill critters as you run by. They contribute to both your daily achievement for "total kills" and "kill variety", and if you use a skill that doesn't require you to stop you don't even lose time.
- If you have the choice between playing a lot on one day or a little on multiple days, spread it out. The daily achievements give huge experience bonuses, and they have incremental awards as well (i.e. you get experience when you get 25%, 50%, 75% of the way to the goal).
But my important tip at all- don't do boring things to level. No matter how efficient a system you have for leveling, don't take away from the fun of the game by doing something boring and repetitive. There's very little reason to power level in this game, so sit back and enjoy the ride!
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