Fastest Level 50

[macskull]

33 minutes ago, Hexquisite said:

. . . see, no matter how many times I hear this, and not matter how much detail people go into about why, it still boggles my mind.

 

Journey over destination, for me. Speed is the least of my concerns. I like setting out with a goal and working my way there, and power-leveling doesn’t give me anywhere near the satisfaction and of making my way to 50 through actual story content. That feeling of reaching top level after so much time and effort is incomparable. 
 

Not saying you or anyone else is wrong for your preferred methods; by all means, play the way that is most fun for you.
 

It’s just one of those things in life I’ll never understand. Like algebra.

My post was more directed at the person asking "how fast can you do it in normal content?" It seems a bit weird to be asking how quickly you can get to 50 and then put artificial limitations/qualifiers on that statement.

 

I'm pretty much the opposite of you. If I have friends playing the game I'll occasionally level a character the "old fashioned" way just to play with them but that's pretty rare these days. I've played through the game so many times that I'm totally over the low-level slog of not having enough powers, slots, or enhancements for the game to not feel like a total drag. Most of my gameplay happens at or near 50 so levels 1-49 are just a hurdle I want to get over.

[Dazl]

1 hour ago, Jolly Ogre said:

Ok?? But how fast can you do it without AE? That is a real test.

Before I had my farmer and a few 50's under my belt the normal way, I found it was pretty easy to hit 50 fast without farming. If you use the xp boost, run DFB to 15, then focus on doing DIB, SBB, the TF's, MSR's and ITF's you get there real fast. Of course +4/8 teams help too.

[Coyotedancer]

1 hour ago, Jolly Ogre said:

Ok?? But how fast can you do it without AE? That is a real test.

I actually leveled my main fire-farmer outside of AE... I just dual-boxed him with Semnai, my favorite non-farming brute, as I ran her through regular scanners, tip missions and some of the PI mission arcs. She runs solo at +4/x8, so it didn't take all that long to get Harry to 50 as a tag-along, or to do his Incarnate unlocks. It was only a couple of weeks of fairly casual play, as I recall... If I'd been pushing things, I could have done it faster I'm sure, but as it was, it took me a lot longer to plan Harry's build and gather all of the bits and pieces I needed for that (He has one of the most expensive builds of any character in my entire crew, by quite a lot-) than it took to level him.

[Sir Myshkin]

4 hours ago, Hexquisite said:

Journey over destination, for me. Speed is the least of my concerns. I like setting out with a goal and working my way there, and power-leveling doesn’t give me anywhere near the satisfaction and of making my way to 50 through actual story content. That feeling of reaching top level after so much time and effort is incomparable.

Think of it like this:

 

Two families go on vacation, both will be gone for seven days, both are going to the same highlight destination.

 

Family A is driving, will have planned stops at sight-seeing points along the journey, and take three days to get there, spend one day at the highlight location, and take another route back  over the next three visiting more places along the road home.

 

Family B is flying directly to the destination and will spend the entire vacation there. They will spend more time doing social highlights and activities centralized around the destination before they finally fly home at the end of the seventh day.

 

In the end both families can say they went to [Destination], and both will have stories about what they did, one will be focused more about their trip along the way, and the other’s will be about the fun they had there. Both will have had an enjoyable vacation, but from two different perspectives.

 

 

While I myself don’t particularly seek to farm my characters and still typically level them up through play, the real game doesn’t start for me until they’re 50. The time playing with others is the experience I’m after, not the leveling process. I generally hate leveling and if I could insta-50 I’d do it in a heartbeat, as such I also dislike sitting in the same mission map over and over and over again to farm one up. There is a tremendous amount of freedom in being able to play anything with a character rather than be level locked because it hasn’t met some arbitrary point yet.

 

I am a “Family B,” you are a “Family A.”

[Dollmistress]

In the old days, when Villain Epic archetypes first went live I got a Night widow from 1-50 in about 20 hours while continuously PUG teaming with others who were also racing to reach max level with their shiny new toys. We literally didn't stop, it was madness.

 

About a year later some people made very strange AE farms that had the effect of provding one entire level of xp for each EB defeated or object destroyed. My memory is a bit hazy but I think the key was those Nemesis drill vehicles. Something like that. I only experienced that farm once but I remember it levelled a random alt of mine from 1-50 in about 45 minutes. Never experienced anything close to that before or since.

[DSorrow]

I'd say on average my characters hit 50 in ~25 hours of gameplay, mostly doing TFs with DXP on. Fastest on HC was probably just a hair under 20 hours.

[Frostbiter]

Totally not the thread for me. I'd tell everyone how long it took to get my latest to 50 but I don't want to go back to the short bus.

[Jolly Ogre]

The reason I asked about doing it without AE is for those of us who can't dual box or have multiple accounts. I don't see how it's possible to lvl say a defender solo in 2 hrs or so in normal content. I wanted to know how fast are you able to do it without AE.

 

But then again I see these new 50's and they don't know how to play. Even now last week I was with a lvl 50 blaster that did not know he could use t1,t2 blasts while mezzed.

[fitzsimmons]

8 minutes ago, Jolly Ogre said:

The reason I asked about doing it without AE is for those of us who can't dual box or have multiple accounts. I don't see how it's possible to lvl say a defender solo in 2 hrs or so in normal content. I wanted to know how fast are you able to do it without AE.

 

But then again I see these new 50's and they don't know how to play. Even now last week I was with a lvl 50 blaster that did not know he could use t1,t2 blasts while mezzed.

Multiple accounts are free and you can dual box on most computers but certainly there will be some out there who can't do it.  But the multiple account thing, a non issue.

 

You can use t1,t2 blasts while mezzed?  No shit.

[Frostbiter]

3 minutes ago, fitzsimmons said:

Multiple accounts are free and you can dual box on most computers but certainly there will be some out there who can't do it.  But the multiple account thing, a non issue.

 

You can use t1,t2 blasts while mezzed?  No shit.

Yes, that's built into Defiance now. If you slot Defiant Barrage into your T1 or T2 blast it can even free you from mezzes if it procs while you're held.

[Tsuko]

16 hours ago, Jolly Ogre said:

Ok?? But how fast can you do it without AE? That is a real test.

Without ae, back in the days, it was around 4/5 hours solo if i remember well.

[Bill Z Bubba]

17 minutes ago, Tsuko said:

Without ae, back in the days, it was around 4/5 hours solo if i remember well.

Took me 4 months to solo BZB to 50 the first time around. And even then, it wasn't 100% solo. Unsure if Issue 2 dropped before I got there or not.

[nihilii]

38 minutes ago, Jolly Ogre said:

The reason I asked about doing it without AE is for those of us who can't dual box or have multiple accounts. I don't see how it's possible to lvl say a defender solo in 2 hrs or so in normal content. I wanted to know how fast are you able to do it without AE.

I suppose it depends if you have a specific AT in mind, but AE doesn't necessarily involve dualboxing.

 

In fact, I have yet to be able to level a /fire character *without* AE. Inevitably, the easy pull of early 90% fire res pushes me to jump in an asteroid map. You start soloing it at +0/x8 lieuts, then bump it up to bosses by level ~16, +1/x8 by level ~22, and so on.

 

For normal content, I'd guess if you're dedicated, you're likely looking at under 10 hours on most ATs. x8 is available to every character and for every mission, and luck insps are there to let you handle the incoming damage.

 

Heck, I think my pure solo street sweeping Sentinel, no teaming and no indoor missions ever, got to 50 in about 12 hours. Insps, and amplifiers! The latter are cheap at level 1, cram 8 hours of all 3 and you will only have to replenish them once in your journey - or at least, they'll have carried you to lvl 30+.

[America's Angel]

If anyone wants to dual-box without melting their PC. Use this macro in game:

 

/macro FPS "maxfps 60$$maxInactiveFps 1"

 

Click it once when you log into the character. It lets you dual/triple box with minimal GPU strain.

[Coyotedancer]

3 hours ago, fitzsimmons said:

Multiple accounts are free and you can dual box on most computers but certainly there will be some out there who can't do it.  But the multiple account thing, a non issue.

 

You can use t1,t2 blasts while mezzed?  No shit.

 

That was added fairly late in the Live days, IIRC... It's not a thing that was possible for years back-in-the-day or anything like that, so I have no trouble believing that there are people who don't know about it. 

[Hexquisite]

17 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

Think of it like this:

 

Two families go on vacation, both will be gone for seven days, both are going to the same highlight destination.

 

Family A is driving, will have planned stops at sight-seeing points along the journey, and take three days to get there, spend one day at the highlight location, and take another route back  over the next three visiting more places along the road home.

 

Family B is flying directly to the destination and will spend the entire vacation there. They will spend more time doing social highlights and activities centralized around the destination before they finally fly home at the end of the seventh day.

 

In the end both families can say they went to [Destination], and both will have stories about what they did, one will be focused more about their trip along the way, and the other’s will be about the fun they had there. Both will have had an enjoyable vacation, but from two different perspectives.

 

 

While I myself don’t particularly seek to farm my characters and still typically level them up through play, the real game doesn’t start for me until they’re 50. The time playing with others is the experience I’m after, not the leveling process. I generally hate leveling and if I could insta-50 I’d do it in a heartbeat, as such I also dislike sitting in the same mission map over and over and over again to farm one up. There is a tremendous amount of freedom in being able to play anything with a character rather than be level locked because it hasn’t met some arbitrary point yet.

 

I am a “Family B,” you are a “Family A.”

 

I do, to some degree, understand that different perspective. Where it falls off for me is that I find the 50+ content more satisfying after I've taken the long road to reach it. I can see and trace the character's journey from their beginning, watch how their experiences along the way changed them and developed their personality. I can't see that without the journey behind them, and I don't feel the connection. And it doesn't matter how fun the high-level content is, if I don't feel the connection to the character, I don't have the desire to play them.

 

But I also realize that not everyone plays like that, and that's cool. Like I said, I may not understand it, but I don't have anything against it.

 

However, I'd be completely against an 'insta-50 option.' I've heard people express a wish for it before, here and in-game, and that's not something I'd be cool with. With power-leveling through farms and other methods, people are at least working their way up. An instant-50 option, I feel, would be the death knell of the game.

[Xanatos]

4 minutes ago, Hexquisite said:

However, I'd be completely against an 'insta-50 option.' I've heard people express a wish for it before, here and in-game, and that's not something I'd be cool with. With power-leveling through farms and other methods, people are at least working their way up. An instant-50 option, I feel, would be the death knell of the game.

 

That's never going to happen. Don't worry. :-)

 

[fitzsimmons]

26 minutes ago, Hexquisite said:

 

I do, to some degree, understand that different perspective. Where it falls off for me is that I find the 50+ content more satisfying after I've taken the long road to reach it. I can see and trace the character's journey from their beginning, watch how their experiences along the way changed them and developed their personality. I can't see that without the journey behind them, and I don't feel the connection. And it doesn't matter how fun the high-level content is, if I don't feel the connection to the character, I don't have the desire to play them.

 

But I also realize that not everyone plays like that, and that's cool. Like I said, I may not understand it, but I don't have anything against it.

 

However, I'd be completely against an 'insta-50 option.' I've heard people express a wish for it before, here and in-game, and that's not something I'd be cool with. With power-leveling through farms and other methods, people are at least working their way up. An instant-50 option, I feel, would be the death knell of the game.

The insta 50 option is no bueno.  Several people aren't working their way up however.  There's a handful (may be significant, may be insignificant) that sit in AE and ask for a PL in local, broadcast, LFG and tells.  I'll give 'em a ride every now and again but there's certainly a bit of that going on.

 

I had a tell the other day asking for a PL. He was lvl 45.  I suggested that at 45 he run a couple of ITFs at +4 and bingo/bango, he's done.  He replied with "thanks for the advice!".  He then sent my other account a tell asking for a PL.  I told him that the same advice applies.

 

Why do I PL?  I'm glad you asked.  I enjoy making builds and also enjoy scouring the forums to look over some of the truly great builds others have made or shared.  If I think I might enjoy it, 2, 2 and a half hours later, it's done.  Another 30 minutes later, it's slotted.

 

I only PL myself so as not to burden others.  It also gives me complete control.

 

Regards,
Dave

[Glacier Peak]

7 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Took me 4 months to solo BZB to 50 the first time around. And even then, it wasn't 100% solo. Unsure if Issue 2 dropped before I got there or not.

I want to say 40 was the level cap until issue 2?

[Twisted Toon]

On 9/22/2020 at 8:24 AM, America's Angel said:

If anyone wants to dual-box without melting their PC. Use this macro in game:

 

/macro FPS "maxfps 60$$maxInactiveFps 1"

 

Click it once when you log into the character. It lets you dual/triple box with minimal GPU strain.

I set that up in the options for launching the game in Tequila.

Although my max inactive FPS is set at 5.