Brighter Shores: How to get to Level 60 fast
Brighter Shores has a very gamified objective at the end of Episode 1 — get to level 60. This is a hard requirement for unlocking the Town Gates to Hopeforest, i.e. Episode 2. The next area unlocks vastly more accessible resource-banking, giving players a good incentive to get to it. That said, the game hands you this task very early on, where player leveling has not been explained very well yet.
In this beginner-friendly Brighter Shores guide, we'll elaborate upon what is arguably the most cost-efficient and time-efficient way to reach level 60 and unlock Episode 2 in Brigher Shores.
Best way to reach level 60 in Brighter Shores, explained
Your player level in Brighter Shores is the sum of your Profession levels. In other words, you have to reach a total of 60 Profession levels across five skills: Guard, Forager, Alchemist, Chef, and Fisherman.
Of these, you have to get the Guard Profession to a minimum of level 15 to advance the main quest. To do so, start with The Obelisk sidequest, which gives you over 10k Guard XP for completion and is also needed for the main quest to progress. Afterwards, grind it out till lvl 15 by taking on Irritable Goblin Chiefs at South Wall.
Although Forager and Alchemist go hand-in-hand, Alchemist is generally the most useful and relevant skill for the future. But thanks to the Chef's Bounty system, which presents the highest amount of bulk XP you can farm per hour, the fastest one to level by far is Chef.
Another thing to note is that all Professions are much slower to level once you hit lvl 20. The same lvl also unlocks passive XP farming through activities unlocked via Knowledge Points to offset that slowdown, but from a speedrunning perspective, this is not very useless.
The absolute fastest way to get to lvl 60 is to put the most levels in Fisherman and Chef, and invest a little time in the early levels of Forager and Alchemist. For our purpose, the level spread should be the following:
- Guard 15
- Forager 5
- Alchemist 16+
- Chef 18+
- Fisherman 6
The first thing you need to do is discover the full Hopeport map by exploring it. Next, start cooking in the Delectable Dab with ingredients purchased from Kevin at Stone Street. The dishes to spam should be Bacon Sandwich (lvl 1-4), Omelette (lvl 4-8), and then Vegetable Stew (lvl 8-11). The break point here is lvl 9, which unlocks Chef bounties.
At this point, take a short detour to unlock fishing till lvl 2, where you will get access to Eels. Save up a few full inventories of Eel and stash them at the kitchen Ingredient Bank, which will give you enough XP to get to about Fisherman 7.
Also Read: Complete Brighter Shores Fisherman Profession guide
Next, get to the East Beach and Jellyfish Point to pick up some Kelp. A full inventory's worth should get you to about Forager lvl 3-4. However, we won't be picking up the next foraging tool (Secateur) to unlock Creamy Wallplants. Instead, you'll want to store about three full inventories worth of Brown Kelps in the Reagants Bank at the Apothecary Shop. Use some of these to cook 10% Healing Potions till lvl Alchemist 2, and then sell them to Ebsworth.
After that, go back to the Delectable Dab and take on all the Chef bounties. If you want to do it in one sitting, you have to take them all regardless of how far they are. If you want to take a break, you can be a bit more picky with what you choose. However, the main thing here is that the bounties are a great way to make a lot of money while also getting your Chef Profession to level up.
This ties into the next step: the Alchemist dip. After you're done with your four-bounty rotation, you should purchase a full inventory worth of Creamy Wallplants from the Reagents Vendor at Town Square. You want to use the stored Kelps with this to produce 20% Healing Potions to sell to Ebsworth.
A few rotations of this, alongside the bounties when they're up, will give you enough seed money to buy reagents and level Alchemy.
At lvl 4, switch to White Periwinkle and Horn Shells to cook 5% XP potions, which you can also occasionally pop for more XP. At lvl 12, switch over to brewing 3-Minute Fear Potions, which can steadily take you to lvl 16 without burning much money.
Keep doing this rotation till you're level 16-18 in both Alchemist and Chef, which should get you across the lvl 60 threshold. At the end of it, you'll have some leftover seed money to take to Hopeforest. You can also take some 3-Minute Fear potions to help you through early exploration there.
However, you'll need to revisit Hopetown later in the long run. Keep in mind that this guide gives you by no means the best-equipped start for Brighter Shores Episode 2, just a relatively faster way to unlock it.
Your mileage may also vary with this, as personal preference plays a part. For example, we skipped foraging as much as possible in this guide, as it takes up a lot of time and causes a relatively slower XP curve. If you want to take an alternate route involving this profession, check out our more detailed Alchemist Profession guide.
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