DangerMæn’s guide to leveling up fast in Fallout 76.

  
Updated 18.09.2020

How to level up fast in Fallout 76 is a recurring topic on Reddit. Here is a quick

guide on how to do it.

DangerMæn’s guide to leveling up fast in Fallout 76. 1

Who is this guide for? 2
The experience curve and earning experience 2
Setting your character up for maximum XP gain 3
Setting your character up for dealing damage and survival 4
Get good guns 4
Good XP farming areas and events 6
 1. Who is this guide for?
If this is your first playthrough I do not recommend rushing for the higher levels. This game is at
it best when you are exploring the map for the first time. Just play the game, do the quests and
relax. You will level up soon enough that way.

If you are planning a second or seventh character you might have good reasons to want to grow
up a little faster. Or maybe, like me, you are leveling up your mules to get access to weight
reduction perks. If this is the case your main (first) character can be of help. In the following we
discuss ways of utilising various resources to level up faster. Your main character will have easy
access to many of these resources. Use that advantage!

You may be stuck in the main quest around level 20-30. Rose has you doing missions in which
you encounter a lot of tough. This is frustrating and you want to add some muscle to finish this
part of the story. We’ve all been there. If this is the case this guide can hopefully help you gain
some levels.

Finally, with the onset of legendary perks, you may wish to increase the speed of leveling on
your high level character. If this is the case the tips in chapter 3 may help.

2. The experience curve and earning experience

To level up you need to earn experience (XP). A new level is rewarded at given intervals.
Between lvl 1 and 50 an increasing amount of XP is needed to reach a new level. The XP curve
has been datamined and you can see how it works ​here​. You will reach level 2 at 200 xp. For
each level up to 50 the requirements increase gradually. After level 50 and up to level 100 you
need 7880 xp and after level 100 you will have to earn 15880xp to gain one level.

Experience is gained mainly in three ways:

- Killing monsters
- Doing quests and events
- Crafting

You can craft your way, actually. Crafting e.g. one board costs 1 wood and 1 leather and nets
11xp. If you have the materials you can easily craft your way through the first levels at least. I
tried it. It was incredibly boring. A friend of mine used to level his mules by crafting hats at one
cloth each. I don't remember which hat this was atm, but the point is to find something you can
craft at low material cost, which gives some meaningful amount of XP.
It’s the killing monsters part we will focus on in this guide. Killing enemies that give the most XP
and doing it fast. This used to be all about killing high level enemies, but the One Wasteland
update made this a bit difficult, as most enemies now scale to your level. Most, but far from all.
You can still find enemies far above your own level, specially in the Cranberry bog, Mire and
Savage Divide, but it’s a bit random, in my experience. More about this below. Before we
discuss the killing, we will look at how to set you up for max XP per kill.

3. Setting your character up for maximum XP gain

Boosting the XP gain in Fallout76 is easy. Here’s a few available strategies:

- Lunch boxes. ​Lunch boxes grant the “very well rested” bonus, up to 100% bonus XP. In
order to get this on your low level toon you either need to have a friend open them for
you - or you can earn them on your main character and claim the reward on the low level
one. This is not a bonus you can expect to keep running all day, but it's a big deal when
you can. Jumping on event like “A colossal problem” or “Scorched earth” aint a bad idea,
as a lot of players will open the lunch boxes as these are about to start,
- Inspirational perk.​ This perk gives you 5-15% added xp and is under the charisma
category. Only works on a team. Join a public team and equip this as soon as it’s
available.
- Sleep.​ Sleeping increases XP for the next two hours by 5%. Make a bed in your camp.
Don’t sleep on a mattress on the ground, as you are likely to catch a disease.
- Canned meat stew.​ Do the event Feed the People, at Mama Dolce’s in Morgantown
whenever it pops up. The event will reward you with 5x Canned meat stew. Canned
meat stew increase your XP gain the next hour by 5%. This is a public event and fast
traveling there is free.
- Cranberry Relish. ​Craft ​Cranberry Relish​, which also gives a 5% XP boost. This is a bit
tedious, as you need to grow the gourd at your camp and farm the sugar. Luckily the
cranberries themselves are easily available at Aaronholt Homestead.
- Leader bobbleheads​. Pick up any and all Leader Bobblehead you come across. They
add 5% XP for one hour and this stacks with any other XP boost.
- Intelligence.​ The Intelligence S.P.E.C.I.A.L attribute will increase the XP gained. You
may see conflicting reports on this online, but ​this video​ by BadCompanySarge is pretty
compelling evidence. I recently tested this and it still works (It just works!). Intelligence
may not be your first choice to level up early on, but a few points will help. You can also
buff Intelligence by:
- Berry Mentants chems (+4)
- Intelligence Bobble Heads (+1)
- Any armor piece with a +1 intelligence major effect
- Unyielding armor
- Shielded Vault 76 Jumpsuit (+2)
- Joining a casual public team (+1-4)
 - Path to Enlightenment Event.​ The event is easy enough and at the end The Wise
Mothman comes to hang out. You can “commune” with him/her by interacting and this
will give you a 10% XP bonus for the next hour. The problem is the event itself is time
consuming and the time spent completing the event means less time killing stuff. The
solution is to wait and hopefully someone else will get the event started. Keep an eye on
the map. If you see a handful of players working on the event - give them 10-15 min to
get it started. Then you join in on the end and help them complete it and get the reward.

Using these XP-boosts you can easily stack up a 25-30% XP bonus. Inspirational perk,
Cranberry relish or Canned meat stew and sleep bonus are low hanging fruits and you should
have these active at all times. If you can get lunchbox bonus and leader bobbleheads we are
looking at 130% added XP.

4. Setting your character up for dealing damage and survival

Now that we’ve set you up for maximum XP gains let’s take a look at dealing damage and
survival. You will want to be efficient at killing stuff and not die too often, as dying takes time.

Dealing damage at low level

Dealing damage at low level is no different from doing it at higher levels. Here’s a few tips:

- Give priority to perk cards that increase damage.​ This should go without saying, but
surprisingly many players neglect this.
- Mod your weapons for max damage.​ When you find the gun you are using in the
game. Pick it up and scrap it. That’s how you learn the mods. Modding your guns for
damage, recoil and accuracy is probably a good idea.
- Do drugs. ​Drugs are good, m’kay? Chems like psycho will boost your damage
significantly for a short period. You will find plenty of these in the game. Pick them up
and put them on the favorites wheel. Then pop one just as battle starts.

Get good guns

Having a good weapon is the single best investment you can make to boost your damage
potential at any level. The easy way to go about this is to have your main - or someone else -
fully mod out a low level version of your favourite weapon. Starting the game with a Hunting rifle
with a .50 receiver, long scope, silencer and the works makes a huge difference.

The hard, but much more fun and rewarding, way of doing this is by getting a low level
legendary weapon. Even a 1* weapon with a good prefix (effect) will do wonders at early levels.
If you can find an Instigating rifle or an AntiArmor weapon this will be very helpful. Getting your
hands on an AntiArmorExplosive (AAE) gun or something like that will make a world of
difference. Any ranged explosive or swing speed broom will help as well.

Naturally you can’t expect the game to drop one of these. Farming for one is hopeless as that
would take a lot of time and time is what we are trying to gain here, not spend. You will need to
trade for one. If this is a subsequent playthrough you will use caps or items from your main to try
to get your hands on one. Go to ​www.reddit.com/r/Market76/​ and make a post. Low level stuff
sell for anywhere between 500 - 10.000 caps, depending on the weapon type and the legendary
effects. Unless we are talking about something like a Bloodied Explosive rifle or something
equally well rolled you should not spend more than 2-5000 for a good leveling weapon.

Avoiding damage
Buffing your defensive abilities is arguably not as important as dealing damage. If you get killed
when farming XP that won’t matter as much, as long as you don’t carry any valuable junk.
However, it will make the process a lot smoother and there are some very simple measures you
can take.

Assuming you have a high level main character - or a friend in the game - you should try to start
of the adventure outside Vault76 with the following:
 - One full set of Heavy Leather Armor, with a dense modded chest and ultra light or deep
pocketed limbs
- One shielded underarmor, BOS, Raider or preferable Vault 76 for the +2 INT bonus
- 10x or more Marsupial serums
- 10x or more Radshield.
- Full set of level 15 Raider Power Armor

The armor and under armour will make you snub off any level appropriate enemies. The
Marsupial serums will help you avoid any enemy trying to reach you with melee attacks. As you
don’t have access to starced genes perk until level 30 you will use radshield to keep radiation
low and having to pop the serums too often.

Here’s my leveling set up for leveling up from lvl 1-50​. You don’t have to go overboard the way I
did, of course.

5. Good XP farming areas and events

To farm XP you want an area densely populated by enemies that give decent xp rewards. This
is more or less a question of finding super mutants. Super mutants yield good xp and are fairly
easy to kill, at least when they are scaled to your level. There are a number of locations where
you can find large groups of them.

Super mutant locations

● New Gad. ​At the southern border of the forest region lies a dried up lake. Smack on the
lake is NewGad which may spawn Super Mutants or Scorched. Kill them all. Good place
for sniping.
● Westek. ​Another farm staple. Always spawns a large number of super mutants. It can
get a bit gritty inside with some hard close quarter combat. You will find several Mutants
outside, both in front and at the back. These you can snipe easily. WesTek may or may
not spawn super mutants above your level.
● Grafton Steel Yard.​ Loads of super mutants. Good place to pick up some junk as well.
The enemies are a bit spread out. Sneaking around and sniping them is too slow for my
tastes. Make some noise and the super mutants will come look for you.
● Harper’s Ferry. ​Classic farming grounds for both XP and legendaries. This place will
spawn Ghouls, Scorched and more importantly Super Mutants. The place is very
suitable for snipers, with lots of roof and places to gain high ground. Pick up all the guns
and scrap them at several workbenches for added steel and mods. Harpers ferry may or
may not spawn enemies above your level.
 ● Eastern Regional Penitentiary. ​Old prison, now inhabited by Ghouls, Super mutants
and plenty of them.​ ​The ghouls are inside. The super mutants are out in the prison yard.
Kill them all until they die!

Notable events
Events offer a welcome break from running through the locations mentioned above and can be
good sources of XP and rewards as well.

● Feed the people Event.​ ​This event takes place in Morgantown, at Mama Dolce’s. It’s
very important for it’s reward of Canned meat Stew, which boosts XP. Always do this
event when it pops up. It’s also a great place to stock up on food, as this is everywhere.
● Radiation Rumble​. ​Endless waves of ghouls to shoot at. Take place on the barrels, next
to the turrets and tag as many of the ghouls as you can. Very good.
● A Colossal Problem​.​ Lots of enemies. Can be tough though. Popular time to open a
lunch box, while waiting for the path to collapse. Don't worry about dying. If you do, don’t
expect the high level players to come revive you. Embrace death and respawn into the
event.
● Scorched earth.​ ​Not the best event for XP, actually. The number of enemies to tag are
not as high as it used to be. However you will often have people opening lunch boxes
and the improved repair kits are very welcome, as they