2017 Power-leveling for new players / alt characters

[tacos2day]

After power-leveling a few classes on my main and an alt character I figured I'd put together a guide on how to efficiently power level and boost from 1 - 75, and possibly even beyond. I haven't seen this information posted anywhere cumulatively so I figured I'd attempt to put something useful together for my fellow Noobs



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Levels 1 - 30
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New players and new alts want to make their way through arks quests / free fields while doing Hans Daily / Faina Daily Client Orders. Even if it is an alt you're probably going to need those arks quests open at some point to complete limited NPC Client Orders so now's a good time to get some of them out of the way. You may also want to go through the Matterboards for Eps 1 to 3 while you do this. There are a plethora of Tri-Boosts to be had as well as some decent units (Hiei, Gloam), although it takes quite a decent chunk of time to run through all 3 episodes. Get in the habit of doing emergency quests as they pop up. They offer unique bonuses and boosts as well as decent drops. If you haven't already, once you get near level 30 you want to unlock the featured quests by completing the first story quest of Ep. 4 and then finishing the Tokyo arks quest line (Phantom Repulsion, Train Ghidoran Suppression, Exploration). You can also do the rest of Episode 4 and on for even more Tri-Boosts whiles you're at it. Now I want to cover the various ways to boost the amount of XP you gain.



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XP Boosts
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Okay so time to explain how XP boosts work. There are at least 8 different ways to boost your XP that I know of

1. Quest bonus
One featured quest always has a 200% XP bonus. Hopefully you aren't bored by repetition, because you are going to replay the pants off of that quest. Fortunately it changes daily, unfortunately some are much simpler than others and thus much easier to complete quickly. Wolf Engulfed in Shadows is hands down the best one at the moment IMO. I was bringing in around 800K xp every 5 minutes or so using these XP boosts.

2. Party bonus
For all you Kirito Jrs out there thinking its cool to be a solo player, wrong! A full party of 4 players offers you a 40% tri boost (XP, Meseta, Rare Drops) or 10% per player in the party.

3. Tri-boost items
I'd say your best bet at farming these are the matterboards / story board / login rewards. (If anyone has a better method that you are willing to share I'd be more than happy to edit it in and give you credit). These come in the 50%, 100%, 125% (SG exchange), and 150% variety. You can only use one variation at a time, however you can use multiple of the same one to stack your TIMER, not you XP bonus. For example, you can use three 50% tri boosts so you have the 50% bonus for 90 minutes uninterrupted instead of just 30 minutes. This timer does not run in the lobby, only during quests. You will be prompted when the timer for boosts starts

4. Experience Gained+75% items
These are much more easily obtainable than tri boosts. You can buy them directly off the player shop, or from the photon drop exchange store. These work much like tri boosts as far as the timer goes, however the XP bonus DOES stack separately from the Tri-Boosts. So to clarify, if you use a Tri Boost 150% and an Experience Gained 75%, you would be getting a 225% XP bonus for 30 minutes.

5. Live Concerts
Live Concert events offer a 2 hour 30% tri-boost that once again stacks separately from the aforementioned boosts. Check bumped.org out for Emergency Quest schedules and when they are. Take advantage of them if you can.

6. Daily Boost
You can get yet another 50% bonus by maxing out your daily boost gauge. Every day there are 3 quests that up this gauge 5% each for a total of 15% per day. It drops at a rate of 5% a day, I believe correct me if I'm wrong. It's worth getting it to 50 and keeping there, it's practically a gimme. You do not have to turn in the CO the day you accept it to get the boost. So if you're already at 50% you can wait to turn in / finish those COs until you need the boost.

7. Premium drinks
If you have Premium. there is a drink for 20,000 meseta that offers you a decent attack buff, rare drop boost and xp boost. It doesn't specify how much but it's not more than a 10% boost. I usually only use it for Emergency quests, as the payoff doesn't typically justify the expense.

8. Exp boost affixes
I don't use these too much in later levels as it would be ridiculously expensive and wasteful to put that on higher level gear, but for your first 40 levels or so it doesn't hurt to pick up a cheap weapon with Exp Boost II on it. It's yet another 7% bonus.

It's really not all that difficult to rack up a 400% Xp bonus if you play your cards right. Just remember that Tri-Boosts aren't exactly unlimited in supply. I suppose you could continuously make and delete alts but that's just a hassle. Make the most of the one's you have.



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Levels 30-40
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So now that you know about all the different kind of XP boosts, it's time to take advantage of it, sort of. As these are all percentage based modifiers you get the most bang for your buck on higher difficulties. Personally I don't use too many of the consumables until level 50, however it will still certainly speed things up. You definitely want to party up with as many people as possible on the featured quest with the XP bonus. There aren't typically as many people playing on Hard but you should still be able to find a couple, the more the better. These quests are a pain to solo or run with only 4 or 5 players if you aren't super well geared. Use however many of the aforementioned boosts as you see fit, and run that quest on Hard until you're level 40. Complete Koffie's CO to unlock Very Hard difficulty.



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Levels 40-50
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This is around the time you want to start beefing up your gear. Save your old gear. You can reuse it for alts and you can also reuse those units when you level other classes on your main. Saving gear makes this process a lot smoother if you're planning on leveling multiple classes / characters to 75+. You should have at least 3 sets of units by the time your 75. One for the beginning, middle, and end level ranges. Check out this excellent guide by Qualia if you haven't already. Once you have some upgraded gear jump right on into very hard. Same basic strategy as Levels 30-40. Just on a higher difficulty. When you hit 50 you have a decision to make. You will unlock Super Hard difficulty automatically upon hitting Level 50, however you will suffer an XP penalty on super hard until you hit level 55. Some people stay on Very Hard til 55, I prefer to jump straight into Super Hard. I honestly can't even tell you which is more efficient, it's mostly a matter of preference.



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Levels 50 or 55+
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Whenever you do make the jump to Super Hard no need to hold back any more. Use any and all of the boosts you have and get that percentage modifier as high as possible. Upgrade gear as needed, but even if you're severely undergeared a strong room can carry you until you can contribute. Just make sure you pay it forward when you get the chance This should take you all the way to level 75, maybe even 80 if you don't want to level your sub-class to 75 yet (and unlock Extra Hard).



So hopefully this helps somebody. It took me a little while to figure all this out and it would have been really sweet if I would have know this from the start. Cheers and happy grinding

[Aexorcet]

For 1-30 I personally just use XP tickets. Obviously a brand new player can't do this, but tickets might be available for a first alt. You can also use PSO2 ES to get 5-6 free XP tickets (and 1 SG) everyday just by logging in. My reason for skipping these low levels is that it's less fun with no skills and because I don't like holding on to low level gear.

Speaking of gear, look for high level stuff that relies on DEF as it's equip requirement rather than ATK or DEX. These tend to be far easier to equip. You can pass these on to alts early and not have to worry about upgrading. Right now I'm using Astra weapons + Zein units to level chars, which can be equipped before level 50.

[Dark Mits]

Nice guide. Just a few notes:

- You forgot to mention the Team Tree exp buff (10% for a maxxed team)
- Party boost is: 10% for non-solo group, 5% per extra NPC, 10% per extra player. This means that if you can't find a group to join, just form your own filled with NPCs, and make it open so that others join in. A group of you and 3 NPCs is 25% boost.
- Concert buffs are 10%. It has been 30% special for these 2 last weeks. Unless Sega mentioned it's a permanent change.
- All bonuses are additive. This means that if, for example, you have maxxed daily boost (50%), maxxed group (40%), Team Tree (10%) and triboost 100% active, using exp 100% doesn't double your exp income but instead increase it by a relative 33%. This means that excluding content that rains exp, you're best off NOT stacking triboost tickets and exp tickets.
- And talking about content that rains exp, doing featured quests has a chance of dropping keys. Too lazy to type info for them here, we all know them anyway. Tokyo Gold keys are content where stacking exp, triboost and EX exp and EX triboost is recommended despite previous note.
- Shifta drinks at the campship have a chance to give EXP boost even for the non-Premium option (the 1200mst one). Deband, PP and Random have a chance to give RDR boost. Guts has a chance to give Untekked Droprate (this is by far the most op broken buff, getting minimum 30 unidentified items per one Deus run). But most of the time you get something that's 'meh'.

[Anduril]

Nice guide. Just a few notes:
- All bonuses are additive. This means that if, for example, you have maxxed daily boost (50%), maxxed group (40%), Team Tree (10%) and triboost 100% active, using exp 100% doesn't double your exp income but instead increase it by a relative 33%. This means that excluding content that rains exp, you're best off NOT stacking triboost tickets and exp tickets.

Just a minor correction, the EXP portion of Party boost is multiplicative. It works like this, for the sake of Booster calculation, normal EXP is 100% and each Booster adds on to that 100%, with the exception of the EXP portion of the Party Boost which is multiplicative; using the Boosters you have there (Daily-Tri+50%, Triboost+100%, Team Tree+10%) you end up like this: ((100%+50%+100%+10%)x1.4)=364%EXP rather than just 300%EXP. Because of this, I would disagree with you regarding not using EXP Boosters alongside Triboosts, especially if you are just using the easily obtainable EXP+75% because even with just NPCs, that can be a significant boost in your total bonus: ((100%+50%+100%+10%+75%)x1.25)=418.75% versus ((100%+50%+100%+10%)x1.25)=325%, and although it is only a minor boost relatively, this can easily get you leveled more quickly over time.

[Dephinix]

Cool Stuff

Thanks for elaborating, clears up a lot.

[Loveless62]

So...no mention of Advanced Quests (AQs) in a powerleveling guide?

I don't have time to really add much of a guide for it myself, but advanced quests offer a +100% experience bonus. They are similar to ARKS quests and free fields, but often have a very high density of enemies. They also offer one of the fastest (if not the fastest) methods of gaining experience via PSE exit bursting, and are available starting at level 40. There are some nuances to them, however: they each cost Advanced Capsules to enter, and you have to use certain methods to keep AQs sustainable through your Advanced Capsule income.