So what is the fastest way to level up? (2024)

Before total 5k, pester Blaanid in Dunby for Memory content. Showers you in massive exp gains.

After total 5k and doing Blaanid's content, it gets a little more complicated.
Leveling requires you to take part in the mythological activity known as actually playing the game.
(And I don't mean shadow missions, you gotta expand your horizons quite a bit and train skills accordingly.)

As an example, my leveling routine is high end commerce, dailies, and raids until level 60~
After that, I do Baltaine until level 100, or above that if I find an Elite Pass.
Any more will only be out of having rebirth potions, but 100~ levels per rebirth is fairly decent for me.

Shadow Missions are mostly just good for grinding gold drops out of the ones that spawn lots of monsters, so Shadow Wizard or Sulpher Spider. Sadly the Shadow Mission system hasn't been rebalanced properly for a long time and nearly all monsters in hardmode and some in elite will end up having lower combat power then you after ranking up most of your skills and provide 0 mob exp due to being a weak mob. Although with a good party (the more humans and giants using Final Hit and Fullswing respectively the faster it will go, keeping in mind there are 8 spawn points so each player should solo his or her orb for minimum clear time), lots of shadow crystals and unrestricted passes, spamming Shadow Wizard elite can provide pretty good EXP per hour, especially during 2x shadow mission EXP events which are sadly much rarer than they should be in favor of afk events.

On the other hand dungeons did get revamped a while back and give decent exp, the best being Rundal Advance Hardmode and Alby Advance Hardmode, this can be enhanced with EXP potions, GM Cleric in party with "All to Finish" EXP rule set (you can join a GM cleric party via the party board after dropping into the dungeon), and the Enlightened Vision passive for Divine Link, a very important skill that you will obtain upon completing G20. Soloing those hardmode dungeons early on will be difficult and time consuming however so you may want to focus on getting skills up and gear made before attempting it, or running with a party or guildmates. (that does mean splitting exp with the other players due to BAD GAME DESIGN that

in an MMO by splitting mob exp per party member)

You will need Crusader levels to get Enlightened Vision to level 15 for the maximum +45% mob exp boost though so you'll want to join in your server's daily Apostle raids as well as running the basic mode baltane missions Siege Weapon and Counter Attack for their crusader EXP potion drops once per ingame day and elites for them when they drop, you'll also be able to get elite baltane passes for Nowhere to Run and Gatekeeper at a higher rate in those missions which will allow you to level to 150 with minimal effort, benefitting from the same boosts as dungeons as well as the baltane EXP crystals sold by Shuan and dropped by the giant crystal monsters. It's also worth considering using Training Bombs which are dropped by the giant crystal monsters and also sold by Shuan as well since Combat Power affects drop rates, baltane mission spawns will scale to your combat power unlike Shadow Mission monsters so you will always get EXP from them, but the Training Bomb makes them a combat power level higher than you, which increases drop rates and can be stacked with tendering potions.

Depending on the skills you choose to use and how much you've focused on getting your damage up with them, after you've reached 5000 and beaten G22 you'll be able to get the most EXP per hour by repeatedly doing the first 3 non-heretic rooms of Revived Illusion on Advanced benefitting from all of the same mob exp boosts as normal dungeons, you will fairly easily get more EXP killing one of these monsters than completing an entire Shadow Mission without a shadow crystal.

TL;DR summery that's still long and contains afterthought points:
Early game: Blaanid as suggested by the others above, rebirthing every quest with the free blue rebirth potions for 123 levels per quest, you can either mass stockpile exploration artifacts from par normal or ignore exploration levels entirely for this process. You will obtain 7 day expiration yellow rebirth potions from the Potential system while leveling from Blaanid and these can be used AFTER 5000 total unlike the blue rebirth potions, you may want to try and plan ahead for using those in a timely manner so as not to waste them.
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Early-Mid~5k+ game: Daily SMs and/or SM spam parties + Daily Apostle raids to 60+ and then baltane basics to 100 doing Siege Weapon/Counter Attack every game day when they reset (6am ingame) for higher baltane elite pass droprate to get to 150 with little effort. Hardmode Dungeons with EXP multipliers from 1-200 is viable if you have a lot of time to play and want to try for rare drops and enchants. For exploration levels par normal still works but you may be confident enough to sketch Arc Liches, however par remains viable due to not having restrictions on the days and time it's available. Grandmastering Adventurer talent is a good goal at this point to boost the exp gain from exploration artifacts and quests by 1.5x.
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Late-Mid~7k~15k game and ~beyond~ (depends a lot on what you ranked and how much cash you're spending on reforges in some cases): Revived Illusion Advanced Tech Duinn mission soloing first 3 rooms w/o heretic and re-entering from 1-200. At this point you're probably strong enough to do Avalon Purification raids which drop 5,000 exploration EXP artifacts and let you get easy exploration levels while you grind for Erg upgrade materials. Field raids are also pretty viable at this point although the exp isn't amazing the drops you can get for making better gear will make leveling faster, and this point and beyond more and more of your character growth which is directly tied to how fast you can level is dependant on better gear.

Some final word of advice and personal experience on the subject of leveling in Mabinogi from someone who's been playing the game for about 9 years and has a good 52,000~ levels between characters, don't burn out grinding things you hate doing, if you find some content more enjoyable to do then do it even if it might give less exp because if you burn out and stop doing anything you're getting a hell of a lot less exp than doing that more enjoyable thing and wont be motivated to do the less enjoyable things when events make them "too good not to run" eg adv hm dungeon with 10x mob exp event. Enjoying the game is the most important part of leveling

nah it's not to hard to get to 150, getting to 200 is to much unless your ranking skills or have everything maxed and just want to stay at it for stats, 150 is my go to for just rebirthing weekly. before you rebirth just farm baltane siege mission/ baltane counter attack for an elite no where to run or elite gate keeper pass, after getting one of those try to find one of them 30 minute combat x2 exp pots, usually selling on the ah, or buy 3 of those x2 10 minute combat pots for when you're in the baltane mission. for 1-60 i'd do shadow wiz hard mode, can get to 60 pretty easily in there, probably 2-3 runs.

then after that you'd hop into baltane elite no where to run or gate keeper with a x3 baltane crystal, x2 30 minute combat exp pot, divine linked with crusader points in exp boost and that's about it. obviously getting to the point where you can get all that is the actual challenge l0l. getting to 100 should be no problem though if you just spam no where to run, but divine link will make your life much easier.

Hawkblade wrote: »

Thanks for the tips. I've got most close combat skills at Rank 1 so my combat power's fairly high, but I'm not sure what else I could rank up that grants strength. Most other playstyles don't interest me aside from maybe Chain Slash, Ninja and Archery, and I made a character specifically for magic so I'd rather not rank magic or alchemy. Might have to look into life skills or something.

Some life skills for strength are mining, carpentry, transformation mastery and rare mineralogy, at least these are the ones that give the most strength there's also the potential points you get for breaking cumulative 1,000 each 10 levels.

Hawkblade wrote: »

These memoir quests are actually disgusting with how much exp they gave. Why is the level cap to start G22 so high?

Unless your combat abilities are above average, you will learn VERY quickly why you need those levels.

Hawkblade wrote: »

Does G22 have group missions? I'm on G20 and I really miss the group dungeons that were in earlier generations.

Sadly no, but the quests you get afterwards to start unlocking techniques can be done as a group if that helps at all.