Mass Effect 3: How to Level Up Faster Now That You’ve Promoted Your Characters

Ok, with less than 12 hours left to go for Operation Alloy, if you’re like me, you’re probably already annoyed that you’ve promoted your characters.  There’s nothing worse than getting kicked out of random Gold/Platinum matches for trying to play with a Level 1 character :)

So, here are some tips to speed along the process – keep in mind that leveling from 1 to 20 takes 2,500,000 XP:

1.  Buy Recruit Packs!

If your only goal is to level characters and you don’t care what weapons/gear/etc. you get with the pack, then Recruit Packs are the way to go.  They’re only 5,000 credits each so a single Platinum run should let you buy around 25 packs.  Each pack is guaranteed a Character card that gives you XP (62,500 or 125,000 XP depending on the card).  It would take 20-40 packs to level a single character from 1 to 20, but keep in mind that you have 6 character classes, so the spread could be greater if you are unlucky.

2.  Buy Spectre Packs

So far, my hit rate with character cards has been about 5% with Spectre Packs, but the cards that come in SP’s and PSP’s give you 250,000 XP each.  If you care what weapons/equipment/etc. you get with the Pack, go for the Spectre Pack rather than the Recruit Pack.

3.  Don’t Wipe After Wave 10

You get 15,000 XP for the full extraction and it’s an extra two minutes of your life.  Do it.

4.  Vary Your Gameplay

Don’t just shoot at enemies with a single gun.  Do some melee kills, switch weapons, revive your partners, get some headshots – varying your gameplay will earn you more medals and more medals means bonus XP.  The Bronze level of an award gives +500 exp, the Silver level gives +1000 exp, and the Gold level gives one of two bonuses, +1500 exp for weapon kills, and +2000 exp for anything else.  Don’t forget that using your missile launcher will get you easy Killstreak bonuses.

5.  Don’t Play Bronze Matches

Seriously, waste of time.  It will take you forever to level back up if you just do Bronze matches.

Level 10 and under – Play some Silver matches and buy some Recruit Packs until your character is level 10-ish …

Level 10-14 – … and then go to a Firebase White/Geth farming match on Gold.  If you’re lucky, the other people in the match will carry some of your lower-level slack for the match.  Since farming is pretty easy anyway, you’re less likely to get kicked by your fellow players on FBW/G/G for being a low level, especially if you already have some of the good weapons.  You’ll earn way more XP and credits that way.

Level 14 and over – Come on, you know you can handle it.  Once you’re about level 14 or higher, you should be able to do Unknown/Unknown/Gold successfully.  The 15% and 10% XP increases are totally worth potentially not getting to extraction in the end.

Do you have other tips for leveling your character quickly?  Post them in the comments!