A hands-on approach to leveling up

Although grinding can be automated, you want to play manually until you're stuck having to backtrack or grind repeatable quests. This means making meaningful decisions in combat is very important. These are four habits you need to level up much more quickly during main quests. Let's talk about them.

Pull! Hitting a monster makes them follow you around for some time. So attack 5 or 6 different monsters, walk away so they all approach you from the same direction, then strike with all you've got. Every skill you cast connects with the whole mob. You end up completing quests at least three times faster than you would normally would by simply leaving auto-combat turned on.

Get social! Accept and send party requests in dangerous grind areas. Once you're nearly level 40, mob difficulty ramps up so much because you've reached a point in the game where grinding becomes necessary. Even special grinding areas like the Magical Plaza get so much tougher at level 40, you have to seek cooperation if it's available. Otherwise it takes up too much time and too many resources to hunt effectively.

Speed up! Earn your mount through main quests as soon as possible, then once you're riding, tap the boost button. Covering distances is half the gameplay in a mmorpg, so you save up a lot of time if you were going to stare at the screen anyway. Teleportation scrolls aren't that hard to come by either, so don't be afraid to spend them when you're backtracking for side quests in old areas.

Don't be cheap! Every town has merchants selling potions. Set up your skill and potion frequency at high frequency, so you never run out of mana. Proper positioning combined with spamming skills means you're using money to save time. Don't wait until you run out of lower grade potions before using the next quality tier.

None of this is as important when you're already high level, comfortably grinding away all the darksteel you can, but you have to get there before getting cozy. You can only move on when you're done preparing, so if this income is meaningful to you, do your best.