Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is an absolutely massive game. It’s the kind of game that you’ll likely spend weeks (or months) plowing through to uncover all of its secrets, legendary gear, and powerful abilities.
Even if you focus specifically on the main story you can easily spend upwards of 30 or more hours in this iteration of Ancient Greece and you can expect to double that if you venture off the beaten path more than a few times. And despite is length, its infectious stories and downright addictive gameplay make it a journey worth obsessing over.
But everyone that plays open world RPGs like Assassins Creed Odyssey knows that getting through it all is more about efficiency than brute force. There’s nothing more infuriating than that feeling that what you want to do is too far above your level so you’ve got to go grind until you’re strong enough. Since the game scales with you in level, hitting those sort of brick walls can and will happen if you’re not smart.
Luckily for you we’ve put together this quick and dirty guide on how to level up fast — and efficiently — in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey to become the most powerful mercenary this side of Mount Olympus.
Gather Quests In Bunches
This is a no-brainer for anyone that’s played an open world RPG before, but it’s worth repeating: you should gather quests in bunches. Meaning, when you discover a new town, scour the streets and surrounding area for quest bubbles, accept them all, and then knock them out in bunches. Hit the closest ones first and just follow the icons on your map like breadcrumbs.
A great way to pile up lots of quests quickly is to go to the message board in town (a black logo with white lines on your compass) and grab all of the bounties and side quests you can.
Many of these can be completed en route to larger quests or even sometimes as part of other quests naturally, such as collecting resources or killing a certain number of enemies.
Explore The Map and Unlock Fast Travel Points
One other likely known tidbit is to utilize fast travel as much as you can to cut down on travel time. Unlike in most other Assassin’s Creed games, you don’t need to climb to the top of a tower to synchronize an area.
Instead, the synchronization points are scattered about on a variety of landmarks such as Zeus, iconic trees, buildings, and even mountains themselves. Once you find one of these points, you’ll unlock fast travel for the future.
In addition to these points, don’t forget to hold down on the D-pad to call for your mount. You can keep running while you call your mount and you’ll automatically swing yourself up onto it without ever breaking stride. You can even tell the horse to automatically follow roads and go directly to your quest marker. That’s super helpful to travel efficiently.
Clear Tombs, Caves, and Crypts
While you’re out exploring you’ll come across a ton of optional side content like caves, crypts, and tombs. If you go inside and explore these areas, finding all of the loot, and killing the enemies you can get a nice chunk of XP. But more importantly, some of them will even award you a free skill point if you find the Steles inside.
One crucial ability that you need to unlock as soon as possible is the Revelation ability. It’s the bottom right ability in the Assassin tree and when used emits a radar-like pulse around you that displays minerals, treasure, enemies, and much more.
It’s probably the single most useful ability in the game and helps make sure you don’t miss a thing.
Prioritize Higher XP Reward Quests
Not all quests are created equally in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. If you check your quest tab of the main menu, you’ll see that the “XP” reward is color-coded. Gold-plated quests offer the most XP, followed by purple and then blue.
If you want to be as efficient as possible as you level, focus on them in that order. This menu will also show you the types of other rewards on the table such as how much money and which gear tier to expect.
Complete All Objectives at Forts and Bases
When you’re first approaching a base, you’ll probably notice that there are a ton of enemies wandering around, patrolling. It can be overwhelming at first.
But if you’re comfortable mixing your stealth, ranged, and melee abilities together, assaulting keeps and clearing them out can actually be some of the best content in the whole game. You’re free to approach them however you want. Sometimes getting your swords out and just taking on entire groups of enemies is a blast.
But actually killing enemies isn’t the best way to get XP, unfortunately. Instead, before entering a base, use ikaros to fly in and do some recon first. This way you can identify enemies, leaders, treasure chests, and key objectives.
When you’re near the base, hold down L3 and this will show your core objectives. If you complete all of those, then you get an enormous XP bonus that makes it all worthwhile.
Fight at the Arena
Around Level 20 you can head over to the Arena for a rough and tumble good time. When you kill your first mercenary you’ll automatically start the They Just Want Cruelty side quest that directs you to the Arena, found in southeastern part of the map in Pephka.
There are five champions at the Arena that you can fight over and over. The first champion is Level 22 and gives a beefy 16,000 XP bonus once defeated, or 8,000 XP bonus each time after that.
You’ll probably want to only challenge champions within two levels of your own level or else they’ll just be too powerful. We’d also advise that you focus on Warrior damage with your gear since Assassin and Ranged aren’t viable inside the Arena.
Conquest Battles
After you get to around Chapter 3, you’ll unlock Conquest Battles. These are large-scale skirmishes on the map that pit two armies against one another, such as Athens vs. Sparta. In most cases you’re actually free to pick sides and you can gain advantages by taking out enemy camps and forts before waging battle.
The fights themselves don’t yield a ton of XP, but if you’re quick about it, the big bonus at the end is certainly worth it.
Ubisoft Club Two Hour Boost
If you’re new to Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, you can actually register as a member of the Ubisoft Club for a special XP boost that will help you level up fast.
All you need to do is spend 10 U coins (which you likely have saved up just from playing other Ubisoft games) and you’ll get a 25% XP boost for two hours.
Make sure you’ve got a lot of quests to do or turn in during that time to get the most out of it.
Worth noting as well, is that in addition to this XP boost, being a member of the Ubisoft Club has other perks for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey too. For example, you can get exclusive ship skins for your sails and even recruit lieutenants themed after characters from other games.
Buy The Permanent XP Boost With Real Money
Finally, since this is the world we live in now, the best way to quickly level up in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is, frankly, to crack open your wallet and pay with actual cold hard cash. That’s right — for 1,000 Helix Credits (or about $10) you can buy a permanent 50% increase to all of your XP gains. Everything. That’s borderline insanity.
Unless you intend on seeing just about everything this game has to offer, it’s actually a pretty good value for something like this. The time saved alone is pretty significant. But… you’re paying cash to level up faster in a $60 game you just got. Feels a bit slimy.
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That’s all you need to know to level up fast in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Stay tuned to GameSkinny for more tips and tricks on this new entry to the Ubisoft series, and be sure to read our review here.
