how do you reach level 30 even playing ng+ or xp and very little i'm level 25 118k to go up a level

[Dorfo]

the game should have a dungeon that gives more xp

[Army of Optimists]

That'sTheNeatPartYouDon't.jpeg

[VertVentus]

I was able to reach Lv. 22 doing 100% before the final boss with the Tome of Knowledge equipped immediately.

1. In NG, you can grind for some of the remaining levels in the final dungeon with the 2 encounters between the 2nd and 3rd campfire. Aside from leaving the area, exiting to title will respawn enemies.
At Lv. 22, you'll get ~11K per trip. On Switch, each trip is like 2 minutes and 37 seconds (Steam probably has better load times).
At Lv. 23 (101200 Next EXP), you'll get ~9k EXP per trip. 11 trips total?
At Lv. 24 (110400 Next EXP), you'll get ~6.6k EXP per trip. 17 trips total?
At Lv. 25 (120010 Next EXP), you'll get 4k EXP per trip. 30 trips total? From Lv. 22 ~ 26, that's at least 58 trips for roughly ~2.5+ hours.

At Lv. 26 (130000 Next EXP), you'll get 1.6k EXP per trip (81 trips?, for roughly 3.5 hours), so now quantity matters more than quality.
2. The right exit from Coral Cascades can be done quickly for 416 EXP. Enter area, boost charge Resh'an's basic attack (becomes AoE if timed) with Lucent Crystal and apply Adamant Shard to guarantee the timed hit and just wipe out the enemy without any MP management, leave and re-enter area.
You can acquire a second Lucent Crystal at Jungle Path in NG+ (Solstice Mage Ring, Spirit of Ninja, and Cornucopia can't be reobtained twice, but Reaper's Mercy from Gold Arena can...) to start the battle with 3 BP.

3. From there, you can also boss rush NG+ for EXP. Make sure to grab the Signet of Clarity at Glacial Peaks and Blue Leaf at Clockwork Castle, the 4 Data Chips for a Cosmic Cape for Resh'an and the Solstice Shrine Island in Seraï's World for a second Celestial Ray.
At Lv. 26 (130000 Next EXP), mostly every boss in NG+ has given me 7800 EXP that I leveled up at the 4 Acolytes fight (15900).
Now I'm Lv. 27 (140400 Next EXP) and close to Lv. 28 with every boss giving me 8424 EXP (12636 for the Triumverate of Eminence). I know 597 got to Lv. 30 with just a second playthrough, but I'm also confused how, but it's probably grinding a large quantity of enemies as everything regular encounter is like 100 ~ 400 EXP.
Lv. 28 requires 151200 Next EXP, so I think I might have to NG++...

There is "Throes of the Watchmaker" DLC on the way that may have higher level enemies, flesh out the statue in Bamboo Creek, and flesh out the interactable clock in the Watchmaker's room.

[597]

Originally posted by VertVentus:

I know 597 got to Lv. 30 with just a second playthrough, but I'm also confused how, but it's probably grinding a large quantity of enemies as everything regular encounter is like 100 ~ 400 EXP.

Exactly. I already posted a less detailed version of this on Discord:

I did Fleshmancer's Lair til 27.

At 25, the 2x Sleuth fight gives 1000 and the 4-mob fight gives 3000.

At 26, the 2x Sleuth fight gives 312, and the 4-mob gives 1352. So I stopped doing the Sleuths and just spammed the 4-mob one. In retrospect, maybe it would have been better to do just the 4mob fight the entire time. I wasn't comparing my run times yet at this point.

At 27, Sleuths give 324 and 4-mob gives 648. It was at this point that I decided I could probably find some low level mobs I can kill quickly enough without wasting time to respawn them.

Your Resh'an method is probably a lot better. How many seconds is one cycle?

What I did:

Go to Wraith Island Docks. Put the -1MP cost accessory on Valere, as well as the one that restores +1MP on normal attacks.

Kill the 3 mobs with a single Crescent Arc, which should only cost 5MP. Then next 2 mobs you quickly kill with normal attacks, picking them in the order so they never get a single turn. You kill one with Valere to get 4MP back, the other with a fast attack animation on another character. I went with Seraï. I had ATT accessories and the spa upgrade for Seraï at this point so it was easy one shots without wasting time on trigger.

Then walk left to Hortence, set sail, immediately start turning the ship during loading screen and disembark as soon as the screen loads. Reenter, rinse and repeat.

This is a 47 second cycle with my load times. So you're killing 5 mobs every 47s at the cost of only 1MP.

When Valere is under 5MP, you can either cook and eat (or save and free heal or both). What I did was use Seraï's Venom Flurry (without extending it, it's only a second slower than CA) for the 3 mobs, so Valere gets +4MP that run without spending any.

So next 4 runs she has enough MP to CA each time again. Then Seraï goes once again.

So this 47s cycle is 5 x minimum exp.

At 27, minimum exp is 108 (it's actually 54, double your level, but Tome of Knowledge doubles that further at these high levels for some reason. 20% my ass).

At 28 it's 112.

At 29 it's 116.

(note: For each of these levels at 27 and later, the Fleshmancer's Lair mobs gave 1.5x that minimum exp. But they were still way too slow because of time wasted traveling and respawning them).

So exp/h actually goes up a bit as you level up. Getting the 160k that is needed at 29 would have been 3.5 hours of the Docks.

But I didn't stay at the Docks long at 29, instead opting for a NG+ just out of curiosity about how much exp bosses would give cos I remembered they gave about 5k on a NG+ when I was in the early 20s.

At 29 bosses were now giving 9744 most of them, so the exp they give goes up every level at high levels, just like each mob's minimum exp does.

Only exceptions were:

Wyrd, who gave 1044
Rockie solo fight before Malkomud I didn't see how much because a kitten started climbing up my leg
Aventry and each of the Acolytes individually gave 4872 (so the 2x acolyte fights were 9744, and the 4x Acolyte was 19488)
Dweller of Woe, Torment, Leaf Monster, and Erlina&Brugaves gave 0.

If you don't want NG+ items, bosses are very bad exp/h compared to Docks. Docks was 45k/h at 29. I'd have to kill 4.5 bosses per hour. No matter how much I tried to speedrun I couldn't get even close to that efficiency.

[VertVentus]

Originally posted by 597:

Your Resh'an method is probably a lot better. How many seconds is one cycle?

I got 40 seconds with one cycle for Coral Cascades given Switch load times, 416 EXP at Lv. 26, 432 at Lv. 27, and 448 at Lv. 28, since it's 3 Angler Fish and 1 Croube.
I can also use Resh'an to kill these 3 + 2 Wraith Island Docks enemies, one cycle took me 1 minute and 1 second for 560 EXP at Lv. 28.
So that hourly difference for me on Switch is like... 40k at Coral Cascades vs 33k EXP Wraith Island Docks?

You more or less get 24 bosses with that 7800 ~ 8424 ~ 9072 ~ 9744 EXP value (Level 26 x 300 ~ 27 x 312 ~ 28 x 324 ~ 29 x 336) in NG+ up until Phase Reaper, so needing to beat the game within 5 hours and 20 minutes (or less) does sound a bit impossible and worse off.
The Next EXP formula is like Level x (Value + 200), so
Lv. 19 x 3600 = 68400
Lv. 23 x 4400 = 101200
Lv. 24 x 4600 = 110400
Lv. 25 x 4800 = 120000
Lv. 26 x 5000 = 130000
Lv. 27 x 5200 = 140400
Lv. 28 x 5400 = 151200
you need 16 ~ 17 of those bosses to level up, but the random encounters along the way gets you close enough to 2 levels per NG+. You're just more rewarded for delaying it to the final 3 ~ 4 levels since you can actually grind up to Lv. 26 normally.

[Hannibal Lahr]

Is there really any reason to get to level 30? I just got the kats of the achievements and my characters are level 22.

[NeoRizer]

It's called: Use a trainer.

[597]

@Vert

Hah! It never occurred to me to even hit a single low level enemy with Resh'an. I just put his attack in the "low damage, but great AOE lock breaking" category in the back of my head and ignored him for exp cheese...

Tried it now. So, your method makes for about 25-26 second cycles on Steam with my load times. Let's say 25.5, at what would've been 464 exp per cycle at 29.

65.5k /h, so it's about 47% more exp/h than what I would've got at 29. Almost the same ratio at 27 and 28. Could've saved a bit over an hour per level there.

Your formulas will be useful at DLC launch if they raise the cap. I didn't notice half these patterns.

I do wonder, though, what run times will be like for the best speedrunners once they settle in. Turns out 30 requires surprisingly few playthroughs.

Originally posted by VertVentus:

You can acquire a second Lucent Crystal at Jungle Path in NG+ (Solstice Mage Ring, Spirit of Ninja, and Cornucopia can't be reobtained twice, but Reaper's Mercy from Gold Arena can...) to start the battle with 3 BP.

Oh, I have a second Spirit of Ninja, from a chest in the marsh. No idea if the effect can stack.

Originally posted by Hannibal Lahr:

Is there really any reason to get to level 30? I just got the kats of the achievements and my characters are level 22.

Not much reason other than curiosity really. Artful Gambit runs mostly negate the stats while default first playthrough difficulty is low for accessibility, in line with this studio's general consumer friendly design philosophy, so it doesn't matter.

I predict that it will matter for speedruns, to avoid having too many categories, they'll probably hard divide into clean slate categories and existing file categories capped at 30 for an even playing field.

[VertVentus]

Originally posted by 597:

Oh, I have a second Spirit of Ninja, from a chest in the marsh. No idea if the effect can stack.

Aw, what the heck? I think I got an Alumni Token for the Solstice Mage Ring and 3x Obsidian Ore in the Spirit of Ninja Songshroom Marsh chest based on the collectible guide here, but I actually mistook the latter for the chest below. Brain fart on my end (I stopped caring to redo 100% by after the Ancient Crypt), so now I need to backtrack through my NG+ file. And I was just about go through NG++ too, dodged a bullet.
Since Lucent Crystal stacks, I wanted to hope Spirit of Ninja stacks for more Item Roulettes (boosted piggy bank for 300G) or Arcane Barrages (turn delay), but in practice it doesn't seem any better than just having 1 equipped. Shame.

But yeah, good to know that トリー's early EXP farm guide here ends up being the best post-post EXP farm guide route. Since those boss EXP values are like Level x (Value +/- 12), that explains why at Lv. 20 ~ 22ish you got a projected 4560 ~ 5040 ~ 5544 EXP, so it's either
1. Grind very hard to Lv. 30 without doing NG+ once.
2. Grind hard to Lv. 26 and do only 1 ~ 2 NG+ at max for MP accessories on Resh'an (& B'st) and to get those final 2 ~ 4 levels.