The Leveling Plateau (40-60)

As of the last blog post I was level mid 40s. I stalled out quite a bit in the mid 40s when I had finished all of the quests in Field of the Dead and wasn't quite sure what to do so here is my "38-55+" which turned out to be a huge success. 47-55 coming in one day. I did a big chunk of this Friday and have managed to make up quite a lot of ground on the power leveling folks with 100% playtime while working 9 hours a day myself.

IMPORTANT NOTE: A lot of people are experiencing crashes in Field of the Dead. To correct this, BEFORE you enter the zone disable your sound via the ingame audio options and put your shaders to version 2.0. This should stop you from randomly locking up.

38-45: Noble District / Field of the Dead
This is the particularly dry and uninventive portion. You want to do a mix of the Noble District (Old T) and Field of the Dead (off of C Valley.) In what order you do this is up to you but due to the close rez points in the Noble District I would recommend leveling there first as you'll be fighting mobs a few levels above you. Around 40-41 you will run out of quests that are available at your level in the Noble District, I would recommend a little grinding to ensure that you hit level 41.

Next, you should head to Field of the Dead. You will do quests in the first three Field of the Dead camps and around 44 you'll hit a plateau where you don't have any quests but you aren't quite high enough for the next round of quests (and the Haunted Forest.) Grind to 45 at one of the camps with humans, ones that you can take down 1-3 at a time with little to no rest which usually means they'll be even level or slightly below.

45-49: Field of the Dead
This level range will be a mix of the eastern camp, the small camp above the haunted forest and misc leftover quests from before. You want to spend most/all of your time in the haunted forest as the mobs are relatively easy, solo pullable, grindable, respawn quickly, and there are quests that you can complete.

49-53: Eiglophian Mountains
At 49 things get really really interesting and this is when you can really start to take off. To begin with I would suggest doing the quests at the small starting camps and the other misc quests that send you out and about. That's not what this guide is about, though. There is a settlement in the northern center of the map, Settlement of Dinog. There are "wanted" posters here for Cannibals of the West/East (later on North), etc. What these posters do is give you a repeatable quest that requires you kill 25 mobs. When the 25th mob dies, you get a XP bonus for the quest which is around 4750 XP. If you're getting 800 XP per mob, every 25th mob is worth 6.75 mobs (himself + 5.75.) adding about 20% to your experience with little to no additional travel time.

You want to start with Cannibals of the East as this camp is the closest to the settlement and will allow for the fastest turnover. So obtain the quest from the wanted poster and head east to the Cannibals and begin your slaying. This is basically grinding with a bonus experience modifier From 49-53 you can do approximately 1 level per 1 hour and 30 minutes using this method, solo.

IMPORTANT TIP: While doing this is look for additional open instances periodically in the instances list. Often times you can switch to the new instance before it becomes populated and have the area to yourself. This means faster killing, which means faster quest finishes, which leads to faster leveling.

53-55 Eiglophian Mountains
At or around 53 the experience will slow down from Cannibals of the East, it may be overcamped, or you may be bored. Either way, at 53 a better leveling option opens up and it has to do with the White Hand camps in the mountains to the north. At 53 you can get *three* wanted poster quests for White Hands north of Dinog. One comes from Dinog, the other two come from the mountain Hunter Camp up near Cannibals of the North on your map. The method here is similar to what you did from 49-53 or 54 but there are more steps. First, you obtain all three quests and head up to the White Hands and complete all three. After you complete all three, suicide yourself and rez at the Hunter Camp and pick up the two quests from the wanted poster again, jump off of the Hunter Camp and suicide again, rez in Dinog and pick up the third White Hand quest and head north and do it all over again. You're using the same method but you're stacking quests at the same time which ends up being profitable and also makes the grind mentally tolerable. Two of the three quests where you kill White Hands both count towards the quests. This means that each "run" to the White Hands you will kill 50 mobs (they're worth around 1k each at this point) and receive an extra 16,500 XP. An astounding 30% gain over grinding just by suiciding twice every 50 mobs and making a 1.5 minute run (or less) back up to the camps.

So far doing this I'm 55 and it was by no means slowing down, taking 1:15 to 1:45 per level depending on deaths and how many times you accidentally rez at the wrong camp!

NOTE: I've heard and red about a lot of people grinding in the Cannibal Caves in the Eiglophian Mountains. I did do the quests in that particular area, but I didn't find the grinding (even without having to travel) to be comparable to this method mainly due to the fact that two of the quests stack making those 25 kills worth a lot more.

56+ Eiglophian Mountains
At 55-56 you become capable of killing the level 58-60 humans that are north/northwest of the hunter camp and you also can do the repeatable snow ape quest from the 'stand alone' wanted poster on the left side of the hunting camp building. This quest requires you only kill 15 snow apes (compared to 25 white hand) but there are only ~10 or so spawns at the camp. These mobs are around 1200-1300 XP per kill which is 20-30% over 1k/kill so better/equal to the white hand method except you don't need to suicide and the run is a lot shorter. Grind on the humans and kill the snow apes as they pop and you'll be leveling in no time.

What do you have to look forward to?
-My next blog will go over a few PvP encounters I've had in detail and how I escaped and or dealt with the situations. Screenshots of the terrain, etc.
-When I hit level 80 I plan on doing an in depth combo analysis with the 'cast time' and 'average damage' of each combo using 4 different specs which will be detailed at the time of the testing to see which combos are best, which combo rotations are best, and for what situations (burst, sustained dps, etc...)

Best of luck to everyone on breaking through this difficult leveling bracket, once you hit 60 (and I will hit 60 tonight) you'll really feel like you're making progress and moving towards that end goal of 80.