Levelling up in Anthem can be time consuming if you’re not doing it the quickest way possible. If you play in Free Play, for example, you’ll gain XP at an extremely slow rate. The XP in Anthem is strange, you don’t get XP for killing enemies and it’s never actually explained how to gain XP other than ‘complete missions’, which is odd considering you can gain XP without completing missions or doing World Events in Free Play. Anyway, after a lot of trial and error we’ve found the best ways to gain XP and hit level 30, so we’re now passing that information on to you. In order of the best XP return, they are as follows:
Completing the Campaign
If you haven’t completed the campaign yet then this is by far the best way to level up. Some of the missions are quite short too, but they don’t give you much less XP than the longer missions. The campaign isn’t very long though, so these XP gains won’t last for long and you’ll still be a long way away from level 30 by the time you’ve completed it.
Quickplay (joining random missions)
When completing missions in Quickplay you get roughly the same amount of XP as you do when playing through the campaign for the first time, so once you have completed the campaign yourself this is the quickest way to level up. What makes this even quicker is that you can be put into a mission that has already started and you still get a good amount of XP for finishing it, even if it only takes 5 minutes. The only problem with Quickplay is that you’re playing all of the same missions again which can be a bit repetitive, and you also can’t choose the mission, so you might be thrown into a long mission with cut scenes that you’ve seen several times before.
Strongholds
Once you have finished the main campaign you unlock two more Strongholds. One of these is just a duplication of the last mission of the campaign and it takes quite a while to complete; in our testing we discovered that if you’re only playing for XP and not loot then the best way to farm XP in Strongholds is to play the first or second Stronghold. You do receive slightly less XP than you do on the last (harder) Stronghold but it’s made up for by the less time it takes to clear them. Strongholds don’t provide as much XP as Quickplay though, so if your only goal is to hit 30 then stick to Quickplay, but if you’re looking for both XP and new gear then opt for Strongholds.
Contracts
If you have Contracts available in Fort Tarsis they can provide a decent XP return, but this largely depends on the Contracts you get, as some of them take a fairly long amount of time to complete and don’t provide you with as much XP as Quickplay missions do. Some, however, are extremely short and will most likely give you a better XP gain rate; however, during our testing, once you hit level 30, Quickplay missions do provide more than Contracts when tested over time.
Free Play
Free Play is the slowest way to gain XP in the game, which is actually quite frustrating because it essentially makes exploring in Free Play and completing World Missions a bit of a grind when you need to do so for quests (such as the legionnaire quests). For every hour in Free Play you can earn almost double the XP in a mission, so unless you have quests to do avoid it. I think the reason Free Play is so poor for XP gain is because the World Missions take a fair bit of time (especially when playing solo) and you don’t get XP for kills. Hopefully in future game updates we’ll see the XP gain in Free Play increased so we have a better reason to explore before you hit level 30.
So, that’s all the ways you can earn XP in the game. In Anthem I would suggest pushing to level 30 as quickly as possible, and playing in Quickplay is the quickest way to do this as I mentioned above. Once you hit level 30, XP isn’t really an issue and you’ll be on the hunt for better gear which is best obtained in the Strongholds (on the highest difficulty you can manage). You’ll also be on the lookout for coins, which are best obtained by completing the daily, weekly and monthly trials.
Leave a Reply