Fastest way to level up legitimately?

[moonglum]

Is it doing long jobs or lots of short ones?

[luZk]

Long jobs, high value, hazardous cargo and fragile. But for starters I would go mostly fragile because those are lighther loads and you dont have upgraded truck. Unless you can find fragile high value combos. Stuff like yachts, tv's, computers ect. You deffo want to put skill points into long jobs first.

[The Pitts]

I don't entirely agree with the previous comment - if all you want to do is level up (no interest in revenue) then your key element is XP and therefore the bonuses that affect it because without those your XP gain is one per kilometre driven.

Therefore you need to spread your skill points to start with so that you have one in each of long distance, high value and fragile plus two in just-in-time and possibly a point in HazMat 4 (which is the only one that can combine, with fragile in the case of Nitrocellulose and Potassium, to stack the bonuses). You are then looking for urgent jobs (30% to XP gain) that are some combination of fragile (22%), high value (18%) and HazMat (21%) and are at least 250 miles (which adds another 25% bonus).

Longer journeys probably earn you better XP per real world minute (because you are likely covering the ground faster when not collecting or delivering the load) but as long as the original land distance shown on the job selection screen is 251 miles (I wouldn't rely on 250 being long enough because the actual value is in kilometres and 250 is not guaranteed to be over 403kms) then you will earn the bonus and each kilometre driven will be worth one and a quarter XP (even without factoring in the other bonuses).

The aforementioned HazMat 4 loads as urgent and over 403kms are clearly the best bet for XP gain, but might be tricky to find on a regular basis. Cargoes that are both fragile and valuable are much easier to find and if you're after lucrative too then simply taking urgent truck dealer jobs (with the odd Space Container thrown in for variety) would do it too.

[Thirstyverk]

Long distance first therefore you are covering more towns, cities so more cargo and then hazmat.

[TheLightLOD]

From what I understand the first level of a number of skills give bonus XP, whilst the later levels give bonus income. If that is true you want lvl1 for most skills (skip fuel efficiency since it doesn't increase xp gain).

Long range is an interesting one, whilst higher levels increase the money gained significantly and appear to also increase XP. But they also take much more of your time, thus I think you might be better off doing shorter trips that use as much skills as possible. In my case I went for oversized cargo (construction and farming vehicles) transport a lot, even though that makes driving quite a bit more difficult (imagine a trailer that exists in 3 sections and is about 10-20% wider).

[Nimir-Raj]

Just mouse over the skills if you want to see what you gain per level.

[The Pitts]

Originally posted by Thirstyverk:

Long distance first therefore you are covering more towns, cities so more cargo and then hazmat.

I take it that you didn't read the post immediately above yours because this advice is simply wrong. By increasing long distance without touching any other skills all you are doing is hauling low margin cargoes over increasingly longer distances whilst earning no bonuses other than the long distance one (which in XP terms only requires that first point). What raises XP the fastest (both in real world playing time terms and in game elapsed time terms) is stacking the bonuses.

[luZk]

Originally posted by The Pitts:

Originally posted by Thirstyverk:

Long distance first therefore you are covering more towns, cities so more cargo and then hazmat.

I take it that you didn't read the post immediately above yours because this advice is simply wrong. By increasing long distance without touching any other skills all you are doing is hauling low margin cargoes over increasingly longer distances whilst earning no bonuses other than the long distance one (which in XP terms only requires that first point). What raises XP the fastest (both in real world playing time terms and in game elapsed time terms) is stacking the bonuses.

No you're wrong. Repeating yourself does'nt equal you beeing right.

You get more xp the longer the haul, instead of spending your days driving to and from pick ups and deliveries, spend the time actually putting down miles and earning xp.

The xp you get for short hauls is negligible compared to long hauls. You want to be able to pick up ~530 miles hauls ASAP to fill a hole day without stopping.

Ofcause you will want to put a single point into all haul types to get the xp bonus, but also to have more options.

[4speed318]

dont use auto park, even more so when you get your own trailer
back in to load, and back in to unload, that will earn you extra points

[Dwarf80]

man i hear ya, cant wait to be able to park a trailer, i dont even trust myself when trying to back up a trailer, i notice everyone starts screaming and yelling at me when i do so, and no i dont have any idea where that big scrape came from down the side of your bright red vette !

* think i need a Truck driving training simulator and be able to pass a driving test before hitting the highway ?

[The Pitts]

Originally posted by luZk:

You get more xp the longer the haul

I am not disputing that fact - XP is directly related to miles driven - what I'm disputing is putting all of your skill points into long distance before improving anything else and I'm disputing it especially in relation to XP.

If you are level 4, put all of your skill points into long distance, and take a job of 1,600 miles then you will earn 2000 XP. If you are level 4 with a point in each of long distance, high value, fragile and just-in-time and you take four important Western Star truck loads of 400 miles each you will earn 2960 XP because of the additional bonuses.

Now quite clearly once you have levelled up to where you can earn the bonuses and cover the distance, then longer journeys are almost certainly more lucrative and more than likely earn you more XP for minutes spent playing the game, but by spreading the skill points at the beginning rather than obsessing on long distance you will be levelling up nearly 50% faster than someone that follows the "put skill points into long jobs first" advice.

Originally posted by 4speed318:

dont use auto park, even more so when you get your own trailer back in to load, and back in to unload, that will earn you extra points

I used to follow this advice religiously but then I worked out that 40XP could be earned in less than 90 seconds on the open road, even with the WoT speed limiter in force, and started just taking the quick easy parking option and moving on to the next job. Now maybe I am just rubbish at parking, especially when switching between ATS and ETS2 seems to confuse that part of my brain enough for it to take me twice as long to get it done in both games, but it pretty much always takes me more than 90 real world seconds to get the trailer lined up to my satisfaction.