Different methods exist for grinding co-op EXP. They earn levels at different rates. We will have a look at how fast and efficient they are compared with each other. But first let’s set the known facts.
Known Facts
| Item | Number |
|---|---|
| [Cumulative EXP to level 15] | 1,045,000 |
| [Cumulative EXP to level 90] | 18,367,500 |
| All commanders level 15 | 18,810,000 |
| Cumulative EXP to 54 prestiges | 56,430,000 |
| Basic EXP | 20,000 |
| Full Bonus EXP | 2,000 |
| Brutal Difficulty Bonus | Basic EXP + Bonus EXP |
| Brutal+6 Bonus | (Basic + Bonus) * 3 |
| Random Map Bonus | (Basic + Bonus) / 4 |
| War Chest | (Basic + Bonus + Difficulty + Random) / 2 |
| Stim Pack Bonus | (Basic + Bonus + Difficulty + Random) / 2 |
| Faster speed time | Real time * 1.4 |
To proceed, I will need to make some assumptions for this exercise. Please note that these assumptions are estimated across all strong and weak commanders, from level 1 to level 15.
Assumptions
| Grinding Method | Time |
|---|---|
| Average completion time | 24 mins |
| [Arcturus Rifts to Korhal] Time | 13 mins |
| Average Lock & Load Time | 15 mins |
| Average Void Thrashing time | 17 mins |
| Menu+Loading Screen Time | 36 secs |
| [Cradle of Karax] time | 39 secs |
| [Cradle of Artanis] time | 48 secs |
| [Abathur Power Grind] time | 8 mins |
Using these assumptions, we end up with these estimates:
Normal EXP:
War Chest OR Co-Op Stim Pack:
War Chest AND Co-Op Stim pack:
Regular Brutal
Nothing special here. I set this as the bottomline for grinding. There are short maps and long maps, but on average, 24 in-game minutes should be fair. It's tilted longer because of long maps like Mist Opportunities and Temple of the Past, but also for the fact that low level commanders are less likely to complete shorter maps faster.Arcturus on Rifts to Korhal
This is available starting on level 6, with Toxic Tyrant. I recommend this if you yourself have a level 6 Toxic Tyrant with no party on the server. The best advantage this has is that you can use this to level Arcturus yourself much faster than the solo queue. This is even faster than Lock & Load, because your ally cannot hold you back by ignoring the last lock as he throws away his entire army thrice over at the bonus.
On average, your ally should be able to kill one of the bonuses by the time you eliminate the last Void Shard, so I added that. 13 minutes is also a good estimate if you’re on-point with building and retargeting Earth Splitters.
Lock & Load
This one is the trickest to estimate. It’s a mixed bag since you get allies who are decent and help you capture the last lock on time. On the other hand, you get allies who delay the map by 6 minutes by tunnel-visioning on the bonus.
The bonus objective adds 10% EXP, so it’s only worth getting if you’re adding at most 10% time. So if your ally is starting to capture the last lock at 10:00, you have until 11:00 to both kill the bonus AND capture the last lock. The bad news is that most allies don’t understand the concept of sending a single unit to the lock while the rest of the army is throwing itself at the bonus, so it averages out at around 15 minutes.
I estimated 1,000 bonus EXP for this map because half the time, your ally does succeed at getting the bonus. The other half he just sort of gives up after his first army dies there.
Void Thrashing
This is the go-to method of people who dislike waiting on allies. Strictly speaking, it’s slower on average than is Lock & Load. However, avoiding the headache and irritation of waiting on useless allies throwing their army away at the bonus might make up for it. As another perk, the bonus objective is relatively easy to complete on this map, so I added the full 2000 EXP.
It’s fast to complete for strong commanders who have good strategies, but it will average more around 17 minutes because commanders at level 1 are pretty weak, and don’t have powerful top bars or heroes to clear the objectives fast.
Cradle of Death
This is by far the most efficient grinding method. There is a little time investment required at the start by rolling for a good set of mutators. As a rule of thumb, you want to avoid stuff that increase the effective health of constructs like Just Die!, Barrier, and Diffusion; as well as stuff that slow down your truck like Concussive Attacks; or stuff that make it easier to mess up your targeting, like short-sighted.
Karax is the fastest here since 8 shots to each construct instantly kills them. His benchmark is 37-39 seconds, depending on what Stone’s initial dialogue is. He can start doing this at level 78. Arkship Commandant Artanis is slightly slower at 48 seconds, and slightly trickier. However he can start doing this at level 48.
Even though you only get about 1/4 of the EXP from regular games, you cycle games around twenty times faster. This effectively makes you 4 times more efficient at levelling, and can help you reach level 15 in less than an hour if you have the war chest or the stim pack, and a blistering 42 minutes if you have both the war chest and the stim pack.
Noteworthy is how in the time it takes players to get all nonprestige commanders to level 15 using random brutal, Cradle of Karax players would already have all commanders with all 54 prestiges, and almost reach level 90!!
Obviously both allies need to be competent to be able to use this strategy. If you trade power levelling with your ally [alternate between who is playing Karax] and divide the EXP by 2, it’s still twice as efficient as random brutal, and still much more efficient than any of the previous methods.
Abathur
I assumed around 8 minutes on average here because that’s right around the tme you get on Scythe of Amon. On Lock & Load, Zerg and Protoss can be done from 6-8 minutes, whereas Terran can be done around 9-10 minutes.
This method is much more efficient than the first four methods, but more difficult by far. You need a fairly skilled Abathur player who is willing to carry your low level commander through a fast map like Lock & Load, or Scythe of Amon. You also need to be on point with things like sniping static defense or securing the last lock. Also, if you want to alternate with your ally, you need to be pretty effective with Abathur yourself.
Nonetheless, this is the most efficient grindable method outside of Cradle of Death Brutal+6.
Mutation Prestige Trick
This is really a one-time thing each mutation, unless you’re some sort of weirdo who does the weekly mutation on all 4 servers. The numbers are only relevant down to the total games to finish because the way the prestige trick works means you can’t really do it more than once per prestige.
than random brutal.
99% of the time, guaranteed!