How to level up fast in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt can be a brutally difficult game if you have Geralt saunter into an area he’s not prepared for. You need to level up consistently to stay ahead of the game and be able to battle the upcoming encounters effectively. This guide explains how to level up fast in The Witcher 3, so you never need to worry about getting into a fight again.

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The Witcher 3 level up guide | Tips level up quickly

The Witcher 3 is a massive game full of adventure, interesting characters, insightful quests, and treacherous combat. But the start of the game can feel difficult for new players because of how much time it takes to level up a low-level Geralt. He doesn’t have too many skills unlocked, and his gear is not the best, making for a difficult time to fight the nasty monsters. Below, we’ve outlined a few methods you can follow to ensure you level up alongside the game’s requirements and can get through each battle with just a few scrapes.

Focus on side quests, and avoid the main story

The world of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is absolutely massive. While the main story pushes your forward through each major hub, there’s a lot to see and do between the major story beats. We recommend playing a few main quests but then putting that questline down for a while so you can explore, pick up side quests, and earn some experience. There are hunts, bounties, and small, interesting quests to take on everywhere.

You’ll often pick up these side activities naturally as you move through each town. Make sure you stop at boards to pick up everything you can find and chat with every NPC that you can to see if they’ll trigger a new quest. Usually, a small task in a town has much larger repercussions, and you don’t want to miss out on those by ignoring a few side quests early on. If a side quest or activity has a higher level requirement than Geralt’s current level, explore and fight the local wildlife, or tackle lower level quests until you’re a high enough level. If you consistently engage with the side content in this game, you’ll never find yourself wanting for things to do.

Get the Gourmet ability early

When you’re leveling up Geralt and acquiring abilities, a good one to get early is the Gourmet ability. This will give Geralt the ability to regenerate health for 20 minutes, making powering through quests and killing enemies far easier. You don’t need to worry quite so much about dying and losing progress when Geralt can take a breather and regenerate to full after eating a pie or two. This doesn’t directly boost your leveling up, but it will make you a lot faster at everything else. Leveling up faster is just a nice bonus in this case.

Grab the signposts

You’ll encounter signposts everywhere as you explore the world around you in this game. They’re useful because they’re a crucial part of the fast travel system. While Roach is a fast horse, you can’t beat traveling from one signpost to another instantly. But you also can’t do that if you don’t collect signpost locations.

If you’re darting around the map, completing quests all over the place, it pays to have the fast travel system as complete as possible. This will allow you to pick up a bunch of quests, move around the map, finishing or advancing them, then return to the same town to hand them all in and collect your rewards. Most of us play open-world games this way, picking up all the side activities in an area before moving on, so we’re completing everything around us as we move slowly across the map. While this isn’t for everyone, it is a great way to help you level up much faster and see more of what the game has to offer in each session with it.

Visit every town

Small towns are the best places to find collections of smaller quests to complete. These are mostly self-contained and separate from the main story, but some play into the wider story arc. All of them are also mostly low-level activities or require a level lower than the next main quest. They’re the perfect tasks for you to take on to level up quickly and efficiently without grinding out experience fighting enemies or stealing cowhides. A great way to make this even faster is having as many signposts unlocked as possible because then, as we mentioned above, you can travel around quickly and complete tasks in no time at all.

Upgrade your gear often

As you visit towns on your journey through The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, you’ll have a great opportunity to visit all the vendors they’re home to. Blacksmiths and merchants are great because you can sell off any unwanted gear that you’ve moved on from, putting coin in your pocket for even better items. At times, it’s actually better to sell the gear you’re using in favor of something a vendor is selling because it has much better longevity. Even just upgrading your gear can help it last a little longer and get you through a few more quests before you need to start thinking about hunting down the best stuff.

Even if you are chasing the best gear in the game, you need to chase Witcher School gear like the Serpentine, Griffin, Feline, Wolven, Viper, Manticore, and Ursine sets. These push you to complete more tasks, kill more enemies, and hunt around the world in a depth you’d never achieve naturally. This will all add experience and ultimately level you up faster, so you’re ready for the big fights.

Complete all of White Orchard

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White Orchard is the first town you’ll enter in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and it serves as a bit of a tutorial for the rest of the game. This area is perfect for getting to grips with main quests, side quests, and all the various activities you can participate in. We recommend doing everything in White Orchard from top to bottom so you have a decent level before you move on with the main quest. Leave no stone unturned, no task incomplete, and you’ll be in good standing for what comes next.

Look for Gear With XP Boosts

There are items and gear in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt that have a green color to set them apart. If you check the descriptions on these items, you’ll see that they also have some additional stats that make them better or more useful than other gear you might run with. For example, you could pick up a silver sword that earns you a bonus 20% boost to experience from killing monsters. Check every green item for a description to see which ones will be most useful to you for battle or for leveling up. Roach also has trophies you can equip that will boost the experience earned in certain circumstances. Combine these items early in the game to boost your level far quicker than you’d be able to without them.

Of course, you can swap these items out for those that give you damage bonuses if you really need them for bosses or specific battles. On the whole, though, these items will help you push Geralt’s level up to be way higher than the next main quest requires long before you reach it.

Farm Drowners

Drowners are a perfect enemy to farm if you want to earn a lot of experience fast and level up even faster. They appear around most bodies of water and are relentless. They’ll spawn pretty much every time you show up, and they each give you a decent chunk of experience when they die. Even more, if they’re a higher level or if you have enemy level upscaling enabled. If you’re going to farm, do it right and do it with an enemy; you don’t have to put too much thought into fighting.

Enable enemy level upscaling

Most players don’t mess with this option, but it’s great for leveling up early. You can tweak The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt settings to turn on the enemy upscaling option. This ensures that every enemy you face is at your current level or above. While this makes the game much more challenging, and it does, it also awards you more experience. Therefore, you could take on a few side quests, kill some much more powerful enemies, and emerge ready to take on the main quest very quickly. You can always turn enemy upscaling off once you’re at the level you need.