Most efficient XP grinding

[Cappucirno]

I'm at the point where I'm trying to get silver and gold promotions on all my dwarves and I've been wondering what the most efficient way to gain XP is, so let's discuss.

Setting aside obvious answers like double XP missions and joining late games which I consider unethical, has any of you tested which missions are best? Obviously if you can reliably win on Lethal rather than Extreme then you get a nice 33% bonus but that's only beneficial if you can manage to win over 75% of the time, which I can't say I'm able to pull off on Lethal. There's also the matter of Warnings which give increased XP (I forget the exact number), so if you can find one you should go for that obviously. But all this obvious stuff aside, is one type of mission better than another, are 3/3 missions worth the additional time for the additional XP they give? Feel free to share your experiences.

[Dwarfurious]

Probably PE w/ bosco just rush the aquarqs as driller or scout

[suetca]

I would say playing any short with low complexity missions is the best for your purpose. Since average value for simply completing those mission is about 3-4k and they take around 8-10 minutes.

[keller]

Joining late games is your answer and you've got a strange sense of morality if you think it's unethical. You're often helping newbies finish up games they should have finished much sooner when you late-join and they don't lose anything from it besides. There are zero negatives for anyone. I'm glad when people late-join my games. I'm giving them free progression that costs me nothing that I wasn't already doing anyway. It's systemically optimal community xp gain.

Outside of that I think blasting through hazard 5 missions with a group of 4 skilled and speedy players is probably the most efficient grinding method. It's also way more fun than being a vulture, so it has that going for it.

[King Fossil]

Definitely point extraction. You can clear a max length haz 5 point extraction in like ten minutes if you try. Way better than any other option.

[Bleydoka]

Always host your games, so the host can't dc or kick you for some random reason.
Either play with 3 friends or solo for max exp grind.

[Shot of Depresso]

Originally posted by Cappucirno:

I'm at the point where I'm trying to get silver and gold promotions on all my dwarves and I've been wondering what the most efficient way to gain XP is, so let's discuss.

Setting aside obvious answers like double XP missions and joining late games which I consider unethical, has any of you tested which missions are best? Obviously if you can reliably win on Lethal rather than Extreme then you get a nice 33% bonus but that's only beneficial if you can manage to win over 75% of the time, which I can't say I'm able to pull off on Lethal. There's also the matter of Warnings which give increased XP (I forget the exact number), so if you can find one you should go for that obviously. But all this obvious stuff aside, is one type of mission better than another, are 3/3 missions worth the additional time for the additional XP they give? Feel free to share your experiences.

Golden bugs hands down

[Vash(88)]

...x2 xp missions

[{O|G} Juvenal89]

The only thing I can see that could be considered "unethical" about late-joining would be if you're not capable of competently handling the Haz level.

But if you know how to play the game well enough to be an asset vs. a detriment, I see no reason not to join on whatever game you want.

I've had games where a late-joining, experienced player turned the mission around.

[717]

why tho

[Nightwolf]

x2 xp goes without saying
but as far as the most amount of xp per mission? unless you are preparing a 24 hour grind session its mostly a waste if you are joining other peoples games where skill level will vary wildly

ideally host your own, what you are shooting for is 1000xp per min when you are taking random players into your game so get the primary and secondary objs and watch the clock, anything with over 1000 credits as the main obj payout will usually net you around 9000 xp, closer to 10,000 xp if you get the missions with 1200 credit payouts. so anything over 10 mins and you run the risk of burning out more time than you get the xp for. you also want max cave complexity and difficulty, modifiers like no shields help but give then randomness of the missions its not something to count on

games like 20,000 xp for a 9 or 10 min game are where you get the most bang for your buck

ive been routinely hosting games just grinding out player levels and ive been marking where my best xp trade off is coming

spending 40 mins mining every little mineral for a measly 11k is a waste of time

you can go haz 5 but you are basically trading more enemies for only marginally more xp and when youre talking about random players now with the fresh injection of sale players, most of them are going to be low player levels that started playing 10 mins ago and drag out your mission time

Haz 4 is less a pain in the ass for roughly the same xp and you can turn them over faster and low level randoms are more easily able to handle it as opposed to 5 where they die every 3 mins

stay away from dreadnaught missions, they can award more xp than the others ive seen but killing 3 dreads quickly takes a touch more skill than the average playerbase has atm, so it just takes ages to kill the thing with some groups, not worth the gamble.

this is all assuming random players

get a pro team together where people can handle their business, and you can turn over 2000xp per min in even haz 5 without a issue

long as you keep to that 1000 xp for every minute ratio on average youre doing pretty well, ive popped promotions several times in a night with it

[Vivianite]

i prefer morkite mission personally, they're simple, easy, and with the dark morkite drink you can complete it quicker due to higher yields, which also can cause a small gain in xp due to overabundance.

the real answer here is depending on your abilities as a player and how fast can you path through and from your objectives, how much gold/nitra/special resources can you amass, and your ability to do the secondary objective as well on a hazard setting you can do reliably. i typically can breeze through hazard 3 but if im feeling giddy i man up and do hazard 4.

doing a max complexity, max length will add a 40% hazard bonus on top of your hazard setting bonus. doing red mutations also adds to this, about 15~30% depending on what it is. the yellow mutators do not add a hazard bonus.

having other dwarves accompany you and make it out alive also results in generally larger gains than what bosco can do.

[phittte]

Egg hunt with 4 eggs can be done very quickly as a driller as it only takes less than 10 minutes on haz 5 if you're quick and there is only one swarm you have to fight (sometimes even no swarm for some reason). It's also easy to have a win rate of 95%+ on haz 5 solo.

Elimination can also be done super quick with a driller, especially on lower difficulties. For a while I tried to speed run it on haz 3 for fun and my record was under 4 minutes (for a 2 Dreadnought mission). Drill to the egg, destroy it, blow up the armor of the DN with an explosive charge and finish it with the epc. Drill to the next egg, rinse and repeat. Whether it takes 4 or 5 minutes depends on the where the drop pod lands.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1871448630