The best ways you can currently get experience in Rift are: quests, instances, PvP, rifts and grinding. Each of these has its pros and cons, and it’s likely you will be combining all these ways to level up in order to reach the level cap, which is currently set to level 50.

As you will notice this is a free leveling guide aimed at beginners, and as such will not include a list of particular quests or quest guides.

1. Quests
2. Rifts
3. PvP
4. Dungeons
5. Grinding
6. Conclusion

Quests

Leveling up in Rift is done primarily through quests. Quests are given to players from a variety of NPCs (non-player characters) which can be found throughout the world of Telara (the world in which Rift is set).

Even though you could technically level up without doing many quests, typically it’s the simplest and fastest way. In addition to experience, by doing quests you will also gain equipment (weapons and other items) which are used to increase your characters fighting power.

The downside to doing quests is that you can often run out of them. Even though there are many, if you focus on questing all the time you will have to resort to other leveling methods as you will soon get quests which are hard to complete due to the level difference. Additionally, while quests can be easy to find, they are not the fastest or most effective way of leveling up, but they are convenient.

I strongly suggest you take a look at this Rift leveling guide if you wish to follow step-by-step quest guidelines or additional tips.

Rifts

One of the main selling points of this great game are rifts. Rifts are NPC invasions in Telara: every now and then a rift will open up in some areas from which various monsters will come through. You will have a hard (if not impossible) time defeating them on your own, but that’s why there’s always several other players in the vicinity with whom you close down the rifts and prevent invasions.

Zone-wide rift events / invasions are announced in your chat window. When they happen (typically every two hours) an entire zone will be flooded with enemy monsters, and players have to work together in order to defeat them and close the rifts. After you’re done clearing the weaker mobs, a boss will spawn which has to be killed. Be sure to participate in as many monster killings and rift closures as possible and especially the final boss fights, as the rewards are given depending on how much you personally contributed to the fights (damage and healing). You can find where the boss is by opening up your map and looking at the tooltips of each invasion points.

When you finally fend off this zone-wide invasion, you may get up to one level worth of experience points, and typically it doesn’t last much longer than 30 minutes. It’s a quick and easy way to level up, and most importantly it’s fun.

PvP

PvP, or player versus player combat in Rift is very dynamic and most players find it fun. Even though some avoid it entirely, it does help with leveling greatly, and outsmarting other players is always fun in any game.

Aside from world PvP, the main way to fight other players is in Warfronts. Warfronts are instances battlegrounds in which players can fight the other faction, but most importantly complete Warfront-specific objectives (such as capturing the flag or holding specific key-points for a set period of time).

You get a daily PvP quest (meaning you can complete it only once in about 23 hours), in addition to other one-time PvP quests. The daily quests are an excellent source of experience and some much needed Favor, which is used to purchase equipment.

Even if you dislike PvP combat, I suggest you try doing it at least once per day. You will learn a lot about other classes and how to play together with them, and get really good rewards in the process. Most importantly, you get a decent amount of experience which will contribute to your faster leveling.

Dungeons

Instances or dungeons are specific areas in which you will come across rather powerful elite NPC monsters. You will have to group up with other players in order to finish dungeons, as not only are the monsters too strong for you to handle, but there are also several bosses inside which are hard to defeat even for a 5-man group.

You won’t come across any instances in the first few levels, but later on you will see players looking for groups quite frequently, and if you feel up for a challenge pay a visit to one of them. The experience you gain in instances is not the greatest, but if you happen to have a really skilled, knowledgeable and effective group setup you should be able to clear it rather fast, in which case it’ll be definitely worth it.

In addition to experience from killing monsters inside the instance, you will also gain significantly better equipment than you would otherwise. While quest rewards are typically green item quality, you will mostly get blue quality items from instances which are much more powerful. More powerful items = more damage or healing = easier questing / PvP.

The downside to doing instances is that sometimes it may be hard to find a group to run it with, and most importantly sometimes they players won’t know the tactics or simply put they play badly, in which case finishing the instance may take longer than expected.

Grinding

Grinding is an inevitable aspect of any MMORPG game. Grinding is when you repeatedly kill the same monster or monsters in one area because of their higher than normal experience gain or item drops.

If you followed the above leveling steps and if you’re not just focusing on one way to level up, you likely won’t have to resort to the boring grind. If however all you do is quests and completely ignore PvP or rifts you will sooner or later run out of quests to complete, or they will simply be too difficult. Finding a party for instances may not always be easy or quick, so your options are either logging off for the day or grinding.

The upside to grinding is that occasionally you may find a particular monster that is worth farming over and over again because it either gives a lot of experience for almost no effort, or drops very good items. There are such spots, and if you want to know where I suggest you follow this link and read a good Rift leveling guide. They are usually packed with a list of monsters with higher than normal rewards.

The downside to grinding is obvious: it’s repetitive and very boring.

Conclusion

If you’re still wondering which way to level up in Rift is the best, I suggest you read this article again. Basically, there is no best way. I recommend mixing out every one of the above mentioned leveling methods and you shouldn’t have much trouble getting to the level cap.

In many ways, Rift is similar to World of Warcraft, as well as other games. For example, many of the mechanics are similar to WoW, but with the addition of something which is similar to Warhammer Online’s public quests system, and more. Basically, another MMORPG game, but this one will not be released unfinished and with hundreds of annoying bugs. The developers are making sure of it, and while it’s still early to tell, Rift might very well be a worthy competition to WoW.

Leveling in Rift works pretty much as in other MMORPG games. It’s nothing innovative and groundbreaking: the same old process of doing quests, killing X amount of monsters and grinding. You can however speed up the process a great deal by following a quality leveling guide, which is exactly what this page is about. I’ll be reviewing ALL Rift leveling and strategy guides and help you figure out which one is the best.

Currently, there’s quite a lot of different leveling guides available for Rift, some of them good and some even bad. Make sure to read the reviews below carefully before you purchase one.

1. Killerguides Rift Strategy Guide (review) – rated 5/5
2. Xerxes Rift Mastery Guide (review)  – rated 4/5
3. KFGuides Rift Leveling Guide (review) – rated 3/5
4. Rift Blueprint Guide (review) – rated 2/5
5. Rift Domination Guide (review) – rated 2/5
6. Fero’s Rift Strategy Guide (review) – rated 2/5
7. MMO Guide Mart’s Leveling Guide (review) – rated 2/5
8. Kalmar’s Rift Guardian Leveling Guide (review) – rated 1/5
9. Catari’s Rift Defiant Leveling Guide (review) – rated 1/5

1. Killerguides Rift Strategy Guide

Rating: ★★★★★ 

A very, very frequent mention on this site, Killerguides was once again the first to publish a guide for Rift. It received several updates since then and overall is extremely detailed and helpful and definitely my top recommendation.

It includes battle strategies, equipment breakdown, solo and group tactics, raiding techniques and guide, as well as a leveling guide. However, most of the stuff in Killerguides Rift Strategy Guide is just beginner information, unless you get all 5 Rift guides by Killerguides. The guides specific to callings, namely Rogue, Cleric, Mage and Warrior have more advanced and useful information, however they do come at a higher price than most other guides (although you do get a large discount if you purchase them all).

Overall Killerguides deserves a 5/5 rating, however it would be much nicer to have all the info packed in one single guide rather than have five different ones. Nevertheless it’s chock full of great contents that will help both new and veteran players get a better grasp of the game and I highly suggest you check it out.

2. Xerxes Rift Mastery Guide

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Xerxes guide is my second favorite guide for a number of reasons. First of all the leveling guide is the most detailed one and includes an impressive amount of screenshots and maps to guide you through quests. Some other guides (although not all) have maps and screenshots but it’s not nearly as much as in Xerxes.

Xerxes Mastery Guide also has really insider stuff about callings and souls. Some guides just post the beginner stuff inside with a few additions, but Xerxes clearly has a lot of experience playing all classes and his recommendations on equipment, stats, soul builds, soul pairings etc. are invaluable. This really is the professional, expert advice you will want to read.

This guide also includes a ton of additional bonuses, all of which are really useful: dungeons, professions, PvP, puzzles, platinum making, the list goes on. Overall Xerxes guide no doubt stands out from the competition and you won’t regret if you get it.

Note: Xerxes guide is no longer available!

3. KFGuides Rift Leveling Guide

Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

KFGuides is in fact a very decent leveling guide. It includes maps and screenshots and the quest info is nicely outlined and easy to follow. The only issue is that it’s only for the Defiant faction.

Another bad thing is that KFGuides Rift Leveling Guide doesn’t have any additional bonuses to make it a worthwhile purchase. The few guides they do have can be viewed for free anyway, and aren’t really that useful (mostly dungeons and puzzles).

4. Rift Blueprint

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

Rift Blueprint has enough content to make it a decent guide but not enough for me to recommend it over any of the guides above. Simply put the content and guides aren’t as detailed and useful. It does have a ton of beginner guides but it simply doesn’t cut it: these tips won’t help you stand out from other players too much.

The leveling guide inside is not even a leveling guide but rather a few notes about quests and doing rifts. The most useful part is the comprehensive dungeons guide giving you boss strategies and locations, but the same can be found in Xerxes guide, therefore there’s no reason why you would want to download Rift Blueprint.

5. Rift Domination Guide

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

Similar to Blueprint and Fero’s guide, Rift Domination doesn’t really have anything useful which would make me recommend it to anyone. Beginner guides won’t do much good to anyone, and the lack of any other useful content makes me not want to even write a more detailed review.

I do have to give at least some credit to Rift Domination guide though, as there are far worse guides (see below), but unfortunately I can’t recommend it. It won’t help you dominate.

6. Fero’s Rift Strategy Guide

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

Fero’s guide is almost identical in quality as Rift Bluprint. It doesn’t have any secrets or all that many useful tips and strategies. Again, beginner guides, the same dungeons guide as you can find elsewhere, and a few tips and notes that won’t really do you much good.

I recommend you skip Fero’s guide.

7. MMO Guide Mart’s Rift Leveling Guide

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

MMO Guide Mart is a new website which will apparently publish guides for MMORPGs. However, their very first guide is the one for Rift, and it’s extremely lacking.

MMOGuideMart’s Rift Leveling Guide is an incomplete leveling guide, with only a few beginner guides as bonuses. The only good thing about it is that it’s cheap and has a nicely designed cover, but that’s really no reason to download it.

8. Kalmar’s Rift Guardian Leveling Guide

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ 

Kalmar’s guide does have step-by-step quest guides which I can’t say for all other guides, but the guide is currently incomplete despite being advertised that it is. The only thing Kalmar provides is a 1-19 leveling guide for the Guardian faction, and even that isn’t that well done.

Personally I much prefer to have Xerxes guide which has a ton of really useful bonuses, and a more detailed and complete leveling guide — for both factions.

9. Catari’s Rift Defiant Leveling Guide

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ 

Other than KFGuides this is the only Defiant faction specific leveling guide, and it ain’t a good one either. Incomplete, with absolutely no bonuses whatsoever.

If you didn’t notice yet, Catari’s guide comes from the same author as Kalmar’s guide, and as such suffers from the same issues. Skip it.

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Summary

Xerxes guide is hands down the winner here. Massive amounts of useful content, and the most detailed leveling guide. Best buy, highest rating, top recommendation, etc. Download Xerxes, you will love it.