[2019] I leveled to 30 in the Starting Zone for Science. It took a While. Would not Recommend.

I'm not kidding. It took a long while.

Associated Pictures: https://imgur.com/a/e8neNeQ

I always wondered what would happen to the game if you somehow landed in DC as Level 30 right off the bat. Would enemies in front of the White House be dramatically underleveled? Would it just become basically an NG+ where everything's Level 30? So I set out to get to Level 30 in the starting zone to test that.

The optimal way to do this requires no shooting, and very little playing, on your Haven character. Haven, in case you didn't know, is the starting zone's name. Instead, you farm the hell out of apparel cache keys. You need 12.5 blue cache dupes worth of XP per level. Purple and Gold give a bit more. However, due to the massive size of the loot pool, this... still took a while. I estimate that I opened 400 caches. Today I got my last 3. So that's where my time was mostly spent. Farming proficiency caches for fragments, farming apparel events for extra keys, farming, farming, farming. Would not recommend this to a friend.

Leveling in the starting zone is unreasonable because there's no missions or significant play area. The area is a single fight, with approximately 25 enemies before spawns stop and you have to suicide to get more. You need to kill about 1800-2000 per level if that's your only source of XP. Sometimes, if I was close to leveling, I'd try shooting it out just to see how it played, but it gets boring fast and I'd go back to key farms.

The only loot you get is from level up Proficiency Caches, which thankfully guarantee one gun per level, but unfortunately, your gear will be ragged for days, and enemies outscale your gear armor real fast so you'll actually start dying faster as you level simply because the only stat that grows for you is HP.

Interestingly enough, I also unlocked the Anomalous Mission where you meet the Hunters, in the starting zone.

I also got an MMR around Level 12 or 13, which gave me access to the one singular mod you can obtain without finishing a mission, the 12x scope.

TU6 also added a new feature that was not present previously, as well as changed the tutorial a bit. Instead of environmental tutorials, the context screens now pop up, and you get a free Pulse when you enter combat, for what it's worth. Not huge, but they definitely changed the introductory mission to be a bit more beginner-friendly.