Leveling seems very slow? < total noob

[Garmon Fever]

Hi guys. I got the game and started playing on a multiplayer server as this experience seems better with other players around =) However,I noticed that my guy, sucks hard. And I can tell I will grow up to be a formidable survivor over time both in game and out of the game as a player. However, I noticed that my skills level terribly slowly. I've survived for 9 hours and I barely even got halfway through the skills I've been using. I patched myself up many times and i barely see an increase in first aid for example. Sprint shows a little more progress but its still abyssmal.

Tl;dr: Is leveling incredibly slow or am i missing something?

[THIS PROJECT IS RETIRED]

you can level up quickly by reading skill books that increase the multiplier for skills

[Zorak]

When creating a character you need to choose your specialization. If you start a game with a snigle point in some skill you will get big xp boost (75%). You can start with more starting points to increase that bonus up to 125%. On top of thatyou can take fast learner trait to get 30% xp bonus to all skillls and read a books to get xp multiplier.
So if you start your character without any skill points in given skill dont expect to level it fast.

[darkrajin]

You can also go to sand box mode, one of the things you can select is EXP gain rate.

[Albino Noodle]

It is very slow considering the life expectancy of a character, I quit my save game
when i saw that I would have to cut down and saw something like 500 trees to lvl
my carpentry skill to 4 so I could make rain collectors.

It would take about 10 hours lol, who wants to do that.

[DeadlyDanDaMan]

This is why Fast Learner is pretty much a must have trait for me:)

[soullos]

It is incredibly slow. It's a slow grind and it's not fun IMO. I wish the base rate were increased across the board. But maybe for singleplayer only, just a thought.

[darkrajin]

I just want to re add. If you find leveling to be too slow. You can make a sandbox game, when you edit the settings for the sand box mode, you can change exp multiplier, so that way you gain more experience for skills. I set my game to a multiplier of 10, meaning my skills level 10 times faster

[Pl3kP0t]

The devs wanted to prevent people making characters that were jack of all trades. The normal rate for XP is 0.25 now. If you want to play at the original rates you could put the XP multiplier at something like 3. Now you basically have to take a trait that gives you points in eg carpentry if you want to level that, otherwise it will take you EXTREMELY long to level them.

[Garmon Fever]

Well as I originally mentioned, I liked the multiplayer aspect of this game's idea which is what I play. So the sandbox doesn't really apply to me. I think most online serves use the default settings even if they can modifty it. .
So besides either starting with the skill you want to level or finding books, there is nothing to be done for the abysmmally small leveling rate, and even that will only bring it up to a normal-like speed.

this sucks :(

[Doom-Slayer]

XP gain has been lowered for basically everything. What it does now is force you to take an Occupation to buff particular skills you want. And for lesser skills you take the skill based traits that give slight XP gains.

Fast learner is also a must, and never level a skill without having read the book.

Do that and you are fine. With the right combos you can level Carpentry to lvl7 in about 1-2 weeks in order to make good rain barrels then you are set.

[soullos]

If fast learner is a must, that sort of confirms that the leveling is too slow without it. Either fast learner is OP or the base leveling system needs some balancing to be less grindy.