The Grind to Level 50

[Paulo]

So I've been playing since a week or two after launch and have a little over 50 hours in game, I've beat the story and have driven over 2000 miles, currently I'm trying to 100% the achievements and one of those is getting to Level 50. Currently I'm around level 21 on the recommended difficulty and I noticed that in the xp and cash updates xp gain has been significantly reduced compared to when the game first came out. I understand as I level up more that I'll need more xp to level up but at this point it's starting to feel like grinding for the sake of grinding instead of being realistically achievable. It doesn't help that (and I may be mistaken on this) I can't see anywhere what the expected xp gain from a job would be. Does anyone have this achievement? Does anyone know how long it should take to unlock? Other than the grind to level 50 I really enjoy this game and find it to be very relaxing, just wish the grind didn't feel so unobtainable.

[Growler Guy]

The more you level up your skill tree the more exp you get for that load.
A Fragile 1 will give less exp than Fragile 3, and so on.
Try to combine multiple contracts on the same load for max exp.
Heavy, long distance, valuable, multi trailer...ect....

[Paulo]

Originally posted by Growler Guy:

The more you level up your skill tree the more exp you get for that load.
A Fragile 1 will give less exp than Fragile 3, and so on.
Try to combine multiple contracts on the same load for max exp.
Heavy, long distance, valuable, multi trailer...ect....

Yeahhh it probably doesn't help that my only tier 3 skill is valuable loads. Initially I thought it'd be smart to spread out my tree progression but now I'm starting to think that was a mistake. As for the multi skill jobs, that's the only thing I've found to help with the grind lol. Guess I need to keep on trucking and get all my tier 3s if I want to make this take any less time. My currently available skill to unlock (next level up) are perishable 3, heavy 3, and just in time 3, which do you think I should grab next?

[Madkine]

Whichever one you think you'll see more often. I've taken JIT to 3 personally.

[Growler Guy]

JIT loads can be tricky.
I did valuable, heavy, oversized, long-distance, multi-trailer most of the right side other than fragile.

[Zalym]

(To be clear the game is fun to play and I'm well aware that a pure grind mentality is not required, or even helpful etc., but that's not my discussion point here.)

General Answer to the Question:
Once getting into the 40's you're pushing up towards 30,000XP need to level.

This means, AT THE VERY LOWEST likely amount, between 30-60 trips which would be between 300-600 minutes PER LEVEL (that's approx 5-10 hours PER LEVEL just on trips in a best case scenario.

Meaning even in the ideal scenario you are looking at around 50-100 hours just to get from level 40 to 50.

TL:DR--I want to find the more efficient XP gains. There's seemingly minimal XP gained through bonuses when compared to real time spent to justify taking the longer or harder jobs. This, along with nothing to earn/upgrade etc. after level 32, leads to a tedious 1-2 sector at a time "power-grind" with a huge real-time investment for minimal in-game rewards. Star Trucker expects players to drive across many sectors at times and to often do more than just drive around and fuel up like a traditional trucking game. However, it doesn't reward them for that extra work.
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I'm working on this achievement as well. What I'm trying to learn is how to determine the "crossover point" for the most efficient grind in terms of distance of a trip/real time spent on one job/icons and XP earned. I don't think it is a very high number before XP bonuses/time hit diminishing returns.

As I've been paying more attention to my XP, I am becoming concerned with this level-50 grind. I'm beginning to believe that it might be better to leave it behind for now, once I get to level 25, until they hopefully change XP gain for the better again (which they've talked about).
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I understand that multiple icon boosts can stack for bonus of approx 100-125 XP each.

So, let's say I have 3-4 icons on my next trailer. That's approx. 300-4/500 additional XP. So I get approx. 800-1,000XP total for a trip (I've seen others getting as much as 1,200XP with 6 icons on one job, but that would likely be an outlier and a small one at that).

However if it is a long-haul trip (especially 4+ sectors), that would quite often mean the real-life time spent on that one job would be greater than if I just found two separate shorter jobs to earn two of the base 500XP jobs.
(Raw distance is not a bonus qualification. You get the same bonus for 8 sectors as you do for 3, currently.)

This time problem obviously becomes exacerbated as you drive through sectors with environmental factors that slow you down.
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Such an imbalance between real-world time spent and gameplay rewards creates a substantial issue for end game leveling.

It leaves the player with a tedious "power-grind" that is filled with 1-2 sector hops. Furthermore with the story ending so soon, the upgrades being purchasable quickly, a skill tree filling up around level 32, and no XP granted for activities other than hauling trailers, it is literally leveling solely for an achievement and nothing more. That's not a good grind system.

Hundreds of thousands worth of XP will ultimately need to be earned 500-800 points at a time, on average, with even a short trip potentially taking around 10 real-life minutes.

Once getting into the 40's you're pushing up towards 30,000XP need to level.

This means, AT THE VERY LOWEST likely amount, between 30-60 trips which would be between 300-600 minutes PER LEVEL (that's approx 5-10 hours PER LEVEL just on trips in a best case scenario.

Meaning even in the ideal scenario you are looking at around 50-100 hours just to get from level 40 to 50. And that's obviously excluding time to get to level 40 as well as all of the repairs, return to the job boards, fuel, shop visits for resources, and traffic and environment issues etc. And JIT loads are really out of the question, imho.
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This game simply does not have the content at the moment to support or justify hundreds of hours, which brings me back to my thoughts about shelving it for now until they do something to fix it.

(I'm 75 hours in and just getting to level 25. I will easily have 80-100 hours in-game before getting to 40.)

To be sure, and it is intended but, this game is NOT like ATS--a game I've spent hundreds of hours in and continually enjoyed chasing achievements for years.

That game allows you to casually drive, pick up loads as needed/wanted for achievements and/or fun and drive. The game comes to the player as it rewards skill and or difficulty appropriately as it is focused on the driving.

Star Trucker (and there's nothing wrong with this) has far more to manage and worry about--adding to the slog of the XP grind.

Most importantly, this game is not JUST about the driving but it fails to reward players for handling all of the "extra" compared to a traditional trucking sim--that's where the crux of the problem presents itself (again, imho).

[✪✪ Sgt Rakov ✪✪]

I decided to simply wait, devs promised XP rebalance so there's a good chance we get better XP in the future.

Originally posted by Paulo:

I noticed that in the xp and cash updates xp gain has been significantly reduced compared to when the game first came out

Because of bug, XP and money bonuses were swapped. So you got a lot of XP but not much money. Now it's fixed and you get tiny XP bonuses just as planned.

Originally posted by Growler Guy:

The more you level up your skill tree the more exp you get for that load.

True but XP bonuses are still tiny, even when multiplied. TBH if you're going solely for XP, I think it's better to just do shortest jobs, as largest part of XP "payout" is base 500xp that doesn't depend on distance.

[✪✪ Sgt Rakov ✪✪]

Maybe we could reach out to devs and ask for huge XP bonuses on pristine multi-trailer cargo deliveries? Multi-trailers are quite hard to deliver with no damage (you have to watch your turn radius and not wiggle too much), so a large bonus would be fair.

[Overseer]

I only have the level 50 achievement left while being level 34 in game. My observation: it's going to take a couple of months of doing a couple of jobs each day (don't want to start hating it - a few runs per day are fun). I mostly do 1 or 2 jump jobs while trying to get as many traits as possible, usually those jobs have 2 or 3 traits (multiple trailer one gives a bit more xp). I avoid just in time jobs because double gate loop takes even more real world time and ruins immersion. Fact is each job has flat xp (500 or 600) + 100 per trait. Doing a 6 jump job with 5 traits is not worth it compared to a 1 jump 2 trait job. Also I try to chain jobs by also accepting second job that starts at the destination of first one. If you're lucky the second cargo is next to the drop zone of the first one and you save time because you don't have to visit the station. Anyway, best of luck to you fellow truckers aiming for 100% :D