EXP Farming Methods

This is a quick guide listing some of the ways (more relevant to 2019) for beginner and mid-level players to get the skills they need as quickly as possible ingame.

Skill Tips

Especially when starting out, there's no use getting levels quickly if you don't put them towards useful skills, especially since the costs of each only grows with each level. Although you should get whatever skills fit what you want to do in Shartak, generally your first 10 levels should be pretty static between playstyles, with class differences.

Level 0 - You should spend your first ~30 AP searching for Healing Herbs in your camp's medical hut. Warriors and Soldiers may also want to spend extra time in the Weapons Hut to find extra poison darts/bullets. Then you should head to the camp's trading post and make a trade, ideally, for a Wooden Club (the best weapon as a beginning player). If one's not available, trading for ammunition, healing items or even just gold is fine. This'll grant you 100 XP and take you to...

Unethical Life Pro Tip - You can spend a lot of your AP on your first day focusing on killing other players, just make sure they're not players from the same camp as you (i.e: if you're from Wiksik, any Outsiders/Pirates are safe to kill, as are any Cannibals and/or Natives from Raktam or Dalpok. Characters from your camp give you very little XP as an incentive not to kill them, also it's easier for them to revenge-kill you). Even if you don't plan to focus on killing other players ever again afterwards, killing 2 players plus the trading bonus should get you to Level 4 (or close to), which sets you up really well for the slow rise after the first day. Imo, even if these players hold a strong grudge and take you out the next time they come across you, it's worth it for that leg-up.

Level 1 -

• Cannibal - Body Building
• Warrior - Blowpipe Training (recommended) or Body Building
• Soldier - Body Building (recommended) or Firearms Training
• All other classes - Body Building. Body Building is better if you have a Wooden Club, and equal otherwise (arguably a little better since lots of mobs have 3 HP), even though a lot of guides used to recommend taking Close Quarter Combat first.

Level 2 -

• Warrior - Advanced Blowpipe Training (recommended) or Close Quarter Combat
• Soldier - Close Quarter Combat (recommended) or Advanced Firearms Training
• All other classes - Close Quarter Combat

Level 3 -

• Warrior - Exploration (recommended) or Advanced Close Quarter Combat
• Soldier - Advanced Close Quarter Combat (recommended) or Exploration
• All other classes - Advanced Close Quarter Combat

Level 4 -

• Warrior - Trekking (recommended) or Exploration
• Soldier - Exploration (recommended) or Trekking
• All other classes - Exploration

Level 5 -

• Warrior - Basic Blowpipe Use (recommended) or Trekking
• Soldier - Trekking (recommended) or move to the next set of skills you prefer.
• All other classes - Trekking

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After Level 5, your choice of skills opens-out a bit. Warriors & Soldiers can consider getting the weapon proficiency they didn't yet (melee or their class weapons). Villager and Settler should get Scavenging at Level 6, as it's an amazing skill. Otherwise, it's best to choose a path.

Firearms-using Soldiers - Train your melee skills (except Glancing Blow). This is the best way to go whether you're focused on killing animals or other players, as the rifle will be your luxury weapon for saving AP and getting through dangerous encounters rather than your main weapon. Skip Balanced Stance until after you've gotten First Aid/Natural Medicine.

Hunters and Healers - Take Triage, then First Aid/Natural Medicine, then Balanced Stance. This is the best skillset for keeping yourself and your friends alive. After Balanced Stance, the damage per AP of the Machete is slightly higher than the Wooden Club, but you should still use the Wooden Club against enemies who have 3 HP (like rats and bats) or a low HP that is a multiple of 3 (small and large deer).

Blowpipe-using Warriors - It's not as important to train melee skills as it is for Soldiers, but if you're not exclusively focused on player killing, being reliant on poison darts shackles you to being near your home camp (and is often overkill versus some animals, they're best saved for animals which deal bleeding wounds). Don't delay them any longer than after getting Triage - Natural Medicine. Haggling is a useful skill, but usually you're bound by the number of darts the trader has rather than your ability to buy them.

Villagers/Settlers - As mentioned, get Scavenging as soon as possible.

Player Killers - Get Stamina, then if you plan to kill mostly within your home settlement, start buying the Tracking skills. If you plan to kill in other settlements, it's best to get Triage - Natural Medicine as normal, and also work towards getting your Faith Skill as early as you can.

Player Killing Cannibals - Get Ritual Feast at Level 9, then Ritual Gluttony at Level 10 (Ritual Feast by itself is pretty bad). Cannibals not focusing on PKing should avoid these skills entirely until late levels (they have no utility for non-PKers outside of rarely getting to feast on other people's leftover kills.

Pirates - Get Plundering at Level 10 (an amazing skill which is basically identical to Scavenging). The Pirates' other skills are technically useful, but very AP inefficient - they're mostly to allow you to go berserk and kill several people in one day if that's ever needed, but requiring several days of set-up to do so. Nowadays, that's not particularly handy as some camps only even have a few people in them. Lead Belly essentially makes Fungi Juice give you a small amount of free AP. Advanced Pistol Training makes your pistol shots be 50% to deal 4, which is superior to the machete, but having to spend an extra AP loading a bullet per bullet makes the small improvement in damage much less appealing.

Scout/Explorer - Get Trailblazing as soon as you find yourself having to move often through jungle tiles with a density of 7 or higher often, or in general after getting Triage - Natural Medicine - Balanced Stance. Trailblazing makes Scouts and Explorers very safe if not typical Player Killing classes, as you can save-up an extra 5 AP and come steaming through tiles that make everyone else want not to bother.

Shaman - Shaman have many unique class skills which follow through the Sixth Sense skill tree. They're based on dragging spirits in a wide area to your position, and then using them to deal lots of damage to everyone else in the tile (and also to counter enemy shamans doing the same, or just people trying to kill as spirits). Unfortunately, in 2019 it's very difficult to wield enough spirits to deal worthwhile damage - you also can't really take advantage of wreaking havoc on massive stacks of people, as the max you'll ever see in one place will be 4 or 5. Unless you're very interested in using Shaman skills or for the roleplay factor, you should leave them until later levels.

Spirit Killing - Although less powerful than it used to be, dying and returning as a spirit solely to inflict damage on people with Banshee Wails can still be a decent way to rack-up kills and XP, although definitely not the most efficient. While you can't get huge wails off against big clumps of wounded people anymore, there's also less shamans running around exorcising. Banshee Wail is cheaper if used as a single-target weapon, but it still struggles to deal enough damage to kill anyone (with Stamina, which is most active players left) within 75 AP. If you want to play like this, you absolutely have to go Ghostly Whisper - Haunting Scream - Shocking Shriek - Banshee Wail as soon as possible, as everything below Banshee Wail is basically useless.

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After Level 10 or so, things open out even more, but this is also where the 'grind' really sets-in - although there are still singularly useful skills like Swimming and Native/Outsider Knowledge that you might not have, a lot more of the skills you want will be in long trees where they're fairly unhelpful until you put four levels into it; like the speaking and tracking skills, and each level costs exponentially more XP.

I always liked having a fairly detailed skillbuild reference, so hopefully that helps. The rest of the body's going to help instruct you on how to rack-up that XP quickest should you want.

Hunting Animals

The simple act of finding NPC animals scattered across the world and killing them with any weaponry to hand in order to level. However, not every settlement and area of Shartak offers parity in terms of targets to kill - accordingly, the efficiency of this can greatly vary from as much as ~3.25 XP/AP to <1 AP/XP.

Special Hunts: The Rat Tunnels

The Rat Tunnels, also known as the lowest-level of Mt. Shartak[1] are a confined tunnel area located in the tunnel network between Dalpok and the Mountain Path area slightly northeast of Sacred Space. The Rat Tunnels have an incredibly high spawnrate of rats, often 4 or 5 per tile, making fighting there more of a hack-and-slash than a true hunt.

Advantages:

• Best XP/AP ratio in the game - since there's no set-up needed and very little movement required, this is generally the best way to level in long sessions. Each successful strike should give you 7 XP.
• Both entrance areas to the Rat Tunnels can safely be hidden in overnight, since the spawnrate of rats in the tunnel leading towards Dalpok is very low (and also includes a pool for extra safety and HP recovery if the player has no more healing herbs), and the exit towards Sacred Space goes into a safe spot (below a Giant Spider cave which is definitely not safe!), the only animal that can enter it is a Shargle which would have to move from 3 levels above - possible, but very unlikely.
• No requirement for healing herbs, as there's no bleeding mobs and there's a fresh water source nearby.
• Very unlikely to be harassed by PKers.
• Equally good for every class, since 3 damage is all you need.

Disadvantages:

• Geographically-isolated - Sacred Space portals are about 50-60 APs of walking away. Dalpok is ~70 away. Resupplying isn't often necessary, but is a huge pain to do.
• Unsuitable for low-level players - Since it has to be travelled to and requires maxed combat skills to be efficient (plus it helps to have a stuffed inventory), this isn't a place to get your first 10 levels and core skills, it's better-suited for grinding through the trees like Foreign Speech, Tracking Mastery and Banshee Wail.
• Very Boring - There's nothing you can do here other than kill rats over-and-over.
• Must retreat at the end of each day - Unless you stop (to let the rats come to you) a lot, you'll have to save about 6 or 7 AP to get to the closest safe-spot - if you go for a nap down there, you will wake-up dead. This also means logging-in to spend about 30-40 AP or so is pretty unviable.

Special Hunts: Guard Dogs

Now that the population is so much lower than it used to be, camping in your hometown (or another town's) Trading Post and killing the Guard Dog as often as possible when it spawns can be a very efficient way to earn XP. Guard Dogs always spawn at five minutes past and usually (but not always) respawn at around 35 minutes past the hour.

Advantages:

• Can be done in any trading post, which makes it particularly good in camps surrounded by areas with poor spawnrates (like Durham).
• Great XP/AP ratio between killing the dogs themselves and healing yourself up (since the combination of the dog and trader will deal good damage), self-healing being an efficient XP-earning method by itself.
• Rewards players for logging-on and playing a little bit multiple times per day.
• You can attack and resupply without even moving! Or even if you don't have things to trade, the Medical Hut for more Healing Herbs is only a few AP away.
• Good method for low-level characters to gain experience - all that's needed is a good weapon skill and/or healing skills. This is generally not best done on your first day since you have to use up your well of AP to gain more while waiting, but it's a good way to grind for the first week after.

Disadvantages:

• Unviable method for people who prefer only to log onto Shartak once or twice a day to use their AP.
• Leaves the player extremely open to PKers as you have to stay in the trading post for long periods of time, which is generally the first or second place a local or roaming PKer will look.
• Repetitive.

Overworld Hunting

For most people, the most obvious option - especially when just starting-out - will be to explore Shartak and wipe-out anything that crosses their path. This can be a decent method in itself - walking and fighting from one camp to the nearest one, since there's a cool 100 XP bonus for trading with another camp's trader having last traded elsewhere. But for focusing just on hunting, some places are a lot better than others. Here's a (very non-exhaustive) list of particularly good and bad areas for fighting.

A - Grasslands Northwest of Wiksik These grasslands have a particularly high spawn of parrots and bats, but also noticeably more tigers. Being located next to a water source and being very close to Wiksik (one of the safest camps at current) makes refilling Healing Herbs or dying to animals much less of a chore. There's also a roaming shaman generally northeast of this area.

B - Area Northeast of Wiksik Unlike the grasslands, this area is better for low-level players since it spawns lots of 'safe' animals (that aren't aggressive and don't cause bleeding) like deer and stags, with only the occasional elephant.

C - Swamp Far Northeast of Wiksik This swamp has an absolutely huge spawn of alligators. However, as alligators cause bleeding wounds, a player should collect many Healing Herbs in Wiksik or their home camp before coming here, as this swamp is isolated from everything except for a Sacred Space portal nearby.

D - Grassland North of York Whee, I forgot to put this in the map. For location reference, it's just southeast of G. This is very close to York and has a decent mix of mostly non-hostile animals, with a seeming lack of tigers. The decent spawnrate and very convenient location makes it worth noting.

E - West Mountain Paths The spawn of Shargles here is much higher than on the eastern paths. Shargles inflict bleeding wounds, meaning a player must stack Healing Herbs in advance, but being so close to Sacred Space makes the location quite convenient once you have the Faith Skill. The worst part about here is that Shargles roam a lot (even to other levels of a path), making it decently likely you'll be sliced-up by them overnight.

F - Turtle Beach Turtle Beach is only an okay hunting ground overall, but the area around Durham has such bad pickings that this is probably their best choice. Turtle Beach has a lot of turtles on it, tanky non-aggressive enemies. The respawn rate is somewhat slow after a lot of turtles on the beach have been killed.

G - York/Dalpok Swamp As with C, there's quite a lot of alligators here. Alligators have good XP efficiency but also make you chug through your Healing Herbs. An advantage with here is that the areas just outside of the swamp/lake bit are almost entirely safe, so you don't have to waste much AP daily wading through lake or swamp tiles.

H - River Area South of Sacred Space This area is very accessible, especially after the Faith Skill. The spawn here is good, but most of the mobs present are quite dangerous - usually a mix of alligators, elephants, and occasionally tigers and shargles. There're relatively less tame enemies like deer. Although all of Shartak is quite quiet nowadays, people are more likely to travel through here than most wilderness areas, so be wary of an opportunistic PKer.

Areas to Avoid

• Durham's entire peninsula has a very low spawnrate of everything.
• As the Newcomer Guide says, 'opportunities for earning XP on Skull Island are scarce'. The spawnrates of animals near to Rakmogak are below-average, so its in a new Cannibal's interest to get themselves killed and respawn at the nearest roaming shaman (this is a lot quicker than walking through the tunnels to the mainland).
• The grasslands around Dalpok have poor spawnrates, and it's generally better to head towards Mt. Shartak to fight.
• The jungles from Durham heading towards Dalpok are very high-density (which slows you down) and have low spawns as well.
• The jungle areas north of Raktam are mostly high-density and have low spawns.