• Guide

How to earn experience and level up quickly in Atlas

Learn how to gain experience and level up your character quickly in Atlas.

Josh Hawkins

January 10, 2019 11:00 AM

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As you explore the world in Atlas, leveling up will become vitally important as it allows you to unlock new skills and attribute points. If you’re struggling to get started, then powering through some of the earlier levels can make your life easier. Luckily, we’ve put together this handy guide which will show you how to earn experience and level up quickly in Atlas.

How to Level up Quickly

There are a number of things which you can do to gain experience in Atlas, including hunting and gathering. If you want to prioritize leveling, though, there are a few things you can do to increase the rate that you’re earning experience, which will in turn allow you to level up more quickly.

Complete Treasure Maps

Treasure Maps are one of the best ways to gain experience in Atlas. These items can be found in glass bottles around the outer edge of islands. They’re usually quite plentiful and can even be found around the edge of Freeports, where you spawn. These maps do have a decay rate, though, which you can halt at any time by putting them on your hotbar.

To see where the Treasure Map is, look at the description. This will point you towards a specific grid, which you can travel to and then search for the island that matches the map’s image. When you find the island, be sure to have the Treasure Map in your hotbar, as this will cause a large red light to jut out of the ground when you get closer to where the treasure is located. This light can often be seen as soon as you touch the shore, depending on how far away it is from your landing area.

Hunt Alpha Animals

Alphas are some of the strongest variants of regular animals you can come across and they will often have levels upwards of the 100 range. While these animals can be extremely dangerous—like Alpha Rattlesnakes—you can often set up a “cheese” spot and then hunt them from safety. You don’t really even have to kill them to earn experience. Simply damage them with a ranged weapon and you should earn some form of experience. Of course, more hostile alphas are going to earn you more experience, so try to look for animals like Alpha Rattlesnakes, Alpha Crocodiles, and so on down the line.

Discover New Parts of the Map

One of the biggest draws for a massive open-world game like Atlas is the room for exploration. In fact, discovery plays a huge part in the progression system built into Atlas and you’ll want to build a sloop as quickly as you can so that you can get out there and start exploring. If you’re playing on Official servers, or just playing on a private server that hasn’t changed the level cap, then you’ll probably notice that your level is locked until you leave the Freeport area that you spawn in. This is to push you to get out and discover new parts of the map. You’ll also receive a bit of an experience boost when you land on a new island for the first time, making it a perfect time to hunt for some higher-level animals.

Now that we’ve discussed how to level up quickly, make sure you also check out our other Atlas guides to get a peg-up on the competition while out on the high-seas.

Josh Hawkins

Guides Editor

Joshua holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and has been exploring the world of video games for as long as he can remember. He enjoys everything from large-scale RPGs to small, bite-size indie gems and everything in between.