Learn to balance speed and difficulty to level efficiently in this dungeon crawler.
In Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance each character levels separately, so you’ll want to know how to quickly level if you plan to get all four Companions to level 20 in as little time as possible. There are a couple of factors that’ll dictate your overall pace, and a few things you can safely ignore if you are here to simply level as fast as you can in Dark Alliance.
Quickly level in Dark Alliance by speedrunning through levels and tackling harder Challenge Levels.
To quickly level your characters in Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance you’ll need to speed through the various levels in the game as quickly as possible. This may sound a bit counter-intuitive, since the number of enemies defeated and the optional objectives completed will increase the amount of experience earned at the end of each level. Thing is, we’re here for speed, and hunting down as many enemies as possible and clearing all the optional objectives takes time.
Maps in Dark Alliance are fairly straight-forward, but they have many branching paths and hidden areas. Most of the optional objectives are tucked away in these areas and side paths, and exploring them will extend how long you are in a particular map. You want to level quickly, not stop and smell the roses, and the amount of experience earned from optional objectives doesn’t match the time spent. You don’t get any experience from partially completed Optional Objectives, so if you are speedrunning feel free to skip them.
The same goes for enemies: the majority of foes in any given map will be along the critical path. To quickly level in Dark Alliance you want to focus only on these enemies, and you want to be able to kill them at a decent clip. If each encounter is taking your five or more minutes to clear you’ll want to drop down a Challenge tier. This may also seem counter-intuitive, since you get more experience the higher the Challenge tier. Again, we are going for speed here, and that means we need to weigh experience earned against time spent.
That said, enemies don’t chase after you in Dark Alliance, so if you really want to go as fast as possible you can skip the packs the dungeon mission doesn’t require you to kill. You’ll miss out on some experience, but if you’re quick you can blitz to the boss and wrap up the dungeon in under ten minutes. I expect this to change eventually, but for now this method of completing dungeons may become the meta.
Speaking of Challenge Levels, if you are one or two-shotting standard enemies you are in too easy of a Challenge tier. The experience earned at the end will not be enough to quickly level you, even if you blasted through the map in ten minutes. To quickly level in Dark Alliance and to reach level 20 as soon as possible you need to climb the Challenge Levels, but you don’t want to go to the highest available as soon as you can: it will be difficult and it will take you some time to clear. A good rule of thumb is to tackle the second-highest tier available to you.
Finally, if you want to quickly level in Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance you will want to play with a group of like-minded players. There is an experience bonus for quickplay, but you need to remember people use that matchmaking method to fill-out their parties, period. Don’t go and ruin their time by entering and cracking the whip. If you are eager to level as quickly as you can, create a premade party with people of a similar mind: you’ll all be on the same page, and you won’t have to worry about directing randoms who are looking for a different gameplay experience.
That’s how to quickly level in Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance. Only kill enemies on the critical path, push to the boss as fast as you can, and play in Challenge Levels that are just below the highest you can push. Don’t forget to play with friends, yet don’t rely on Quickplay groups to keep up.
Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance is available June 22nd on Xbox Game Pass for PC and Console, PC (Steam), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.
- This article was updated on June 21st, 2021
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