Leveling up in Darkest Days is extremely important, because the higher your level, the higher the level of the weapon and equipment you can craft and use. When you craft any equipment using the Forge in your Shelter, you always get an item of the same level as your character. Also, leveling up unlocks new regions on a multiplayer map, where you can meet other players and even fight them.
At the moment, the highest level in the game is 40, and you can see it in your character panel along with the number of XP points required for the next level. Pay attention, though, that you still can equip high-level items, but their effectiveness will be reduced according to your current level. There are several ways to level up fast in Darkest Days.
Completing Missions
Some missions give you XP points, and some don’t, so you need to check first. Open the map (M) and press the Journal icon in the top right corner of the screen. Here you can see your missions and their rewards. Choose any mission with XP among the rewards and complete it as soon as possible.
Despite the fact that completing missions is not the most effective way to level up, you shouldn’t ignore them, because they gradually lead you to unlocking new opportunities in the game.
Grinding Zombies and Unsafe Areas
At the moment, the easiest and fastest way to level up your character in Darkest Days is to clear houses from zombies in the world. If you open the map, you can see plenty of houses with a skull icon, and each of those houses is filled with zombies. By killing zombies, you obtain a small amount of experience. For example, if you kill a zombie of level 14, you will only get 12 XP, which is not that much. But the trick is, if you clear locations of your level or 1-2 levels lower, you will be able to kill mobs much faster.
In addition, when you kill all the mobs around a single house, it’s considered as “Safely Secured”, and you get additional XP (for example, 85-120 XP for houses of level 14-15).
So all you need to do to level up fast is just to clear houses as quickly as possible. This way, you can reach 10-15k of XP in less than half an hour.
How to Kill Zombies Fast
In your Shelter, you have residents (Esc → Residents), who you can take with you in combat. They will automatically follow you and shoot enemies around, and you will still receive the same number of XP points and Milla coins.
The thing is, you need to level up your residents and craft for them better weapons, in order to make them easily kill mobs. I recommend you choose 1 resident (e.g., Oliver Rance) and level him up as high as possible. Also, craft for the NPC a weapon of your level.
After this, you will have a very strong companion with you. Even if you’re struggling to shoot Elite zombies on a mobile device and often die, your companion will deal with them for you, making grinding much more fun and easier.
