High Level means very little. Skill Points are far more important.

[Lapinoire]

I thought this might be pretty obvious to most people, but after just skimming through the threads again and seeing people wanting to be high leveled without realizing the downsides to it, I thought I may as well just post this here(though I suppose I could create a short guide). There is also the problem of people not knowing how others can kill high-end bosses(or endgame bosses) in seconds and this elucidates that.

Levels and You

Higher level looks nice, but only does a handful of things for you:
1- Very minor increase in stats
2- Slight increase in damage modifier against targets lower in level

SAO:HR does not have level restrictions on equipment like plenty of RPGs do, therefore level matters very little, as it only makes you do a little bit more damage.

If anything, keeping your character at a controlled lower level as you play through the game actually does more for you. Why? Two words will answer that:

Skill Points and You

How do you get Skill points, and what is the importance of Skill Points?
1- Skill points are NOT obtained through levels, but through Weapon Mastery, such as 1H Sword SKILL LEVEL and Rapier SKILL LEVEL, found on the leftmost side of the skill tree. As you gain skill levels for a weapon, you gain more skill points. How do you raise skill levels fast? Simple. Hitting enemies higher than you in level with the specific weapon you want to raise up.

The fastest way to take advantage of this is with Nightmare mode in multiplayer, against the Boars in the first area(or anywhere, really). Personally, I would train weapons on enemies that drop rare materials such as Insectoid Gold Wings and Demonic Remains for legendary weapons.

The issue in doing this is that you will gain EXP at a rapid rate, and soon overlevel the monsters you are farming. There is one way to solve this problem: Buffer EX Skill tree. In it, there is a skill called "Trainee", which gives ALL of your EXP to your party member(s), meaning you will not gain a single level, and will be able to raise the level of your AI Partners to make them more durable in battle and such.

By following these simple steps, one can easily gain skill points for the skills they want to get.

2- The importance of Skill Points is not only to unlock offensive skills, but the true endgame skills: Buffs. There is a term that most people call "Buff Dancing", which i'm sure a good amount of players are familiar with. Simply put, it's using most of the buffs they have to gain incredibly high DPS, Regen, etc, to make boss fights incredibly easy compared to those who struggle against bosses due to the lack of buffs.

By raising Weapon Skill Levels, and gaining more skill points, a player can pick up important buffs like Overdrive, Ephemeral Strength, Brave Soul, and so on. Maximizing the amount of damage you have allows even a level 20 with adequate gear for their level to fight and defeat HNM bosses that are level 90 or higher, even on Nightmare difficulty, and defeat them quickly to further upgrade their equipment.

While sticking to one weapon is not inherently a bad thing, it is not a good thing, either. Once you gain access to Skill Fusion, damage will be through the roof with minimal effort, and SAO:HR will quickly reach its climax.

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To summarize, all one needs to do is raise their weapon mastery levels to at least 250~500(higher is always better) to get a lot of Skill Points to learn buffs and do tons of damage.

Levels are less important than Skill Points.

[ea$ym0ney]

An amazing article, but idk if i missed the point, is there any effect about the Technique Level of a single skill ? Like if i maxed my Level of a skill does it upgrade its effects or something ?.

[Lapinoire]

Sorry, I can't really help you. This is a 5 year-old post, and most of what I knew about Hollow Realization has been forgotten.

This is also an old post, and isn't relevant to the updates Hollow Realization has had over the years; you can't buff dance like you could in the past, as you are locked to whatever EX Skill Tree you've set during certain missions and such.

But going by general game knowledge, increasing skill level typically increases things like power, duration, number of hits, etc.