Archeage 101-Section Six: Leveling
Key Terms in this Section
Leveling
Leveling in Archeage is no different than leveling in any other Theme Park MMORPG. It’s pretty much a series of quest hubs where you pick up several quests, complete them and one of them is going lead you to the next quest hub and so on. Normally the quest that leads you from area to area is Green Quest (Main Storyline or Racial), but this not always the case.
You will want to follow your main storyline and racial storylines through to completion. The main storyline is a great source of Gilda Stars
Character Level vs Skill Tree Level
The only unique part about leveling in Archeage is that you have an overall skill level (Level 1 - Ancestral 34) and then skill tree levels (from 1-55 and 10-55 for all other skilltrees).
Other than at Character Level 55 when you have to make conscious choice, and invest 1 Honorforged Medal, you will always been working on character levels. This process will not stop until you have reached Ancestral Level 34. While you are at Level 55 you will simply stay there until you decide to jump into Ancestral Levels and then the leveling process will resume.
By contrast, you only level your skill trees while they are active. So if your skill trees are not one of the three you currently have in, they are not earning xp.
Overachieving
In Archeage, when you have a quest that requires you to kill a specific number of mobs, you can usually kill 50% more than its required and overachieve the quest.
What overachieving is supposed to do is “grant you an additional reward of 100% of the promised XP and 300% of the gold.” Only the gold portion is working. While I didn’t think it was working properly, on my 4 January show we proved it live.
Crates and Experience Tonics
A change that occurred at some point in Archeage is that low level crates now grant Experience Tonics. As I am an advocate of maxing Larceny, I recommend opening crates as you are leveling. You will get XP from opening the crates as discussed in the proficiency section, but you will also acquire Experience Tonics, which grant XP which varies depending on character level, but it is free XP and free XP is good.
The nice part about the Glittering Experience Tonics is they can be used to bring all your trees up to 55, even if your character is at max 55, but not if you have rolled over to Ancestral 1. If nothing else, stack up a full 100 of these, and then when you reach Level 55, swap in 3 new trees and burn all 100.
If you want to really speed up the process on your other trees, you could open enough crates to get another 100 and turn all those, although it is just as easy to level up other trees to 55 while working on getting from Level 55 to Ancestral 34.
Labor
As discussed in the proficiency chapter, spending labor grants XP, so while you are leveling you want to make sure that you are focusing on one or two proficiency so you can get your proficiency up to get bonus XP.
Praying
When you die you lose 5% of the xp required for the next level. When you spawn at the nui if you invest labor to pray, you can recover 90% of what you lost. This will result in a minimal xp loss upon every death.
With leveling knocked out, we will now discuss Gear and Gearing up