Dying Light 2 opens up as you unlock new skills and abilities giving you creative ways to get around. But, that requires getting enough experience to level up your Combat and Parkour skills consistently. Otherwise, you’re stuck wondering how to level up fast so you can unlock more fun abilities to play with.
Who doesn’t want to dropkick a zombie off a building or get a skill to prevent fall damage? Using our tips and tricks you can learn many of the best ways to level up quickly. This will also help you reach higher ranks for better weapons and gear. Continue reading our extensive guide for tips on leveling Combat, Parkour, and activities for both.
How to Level Up Fast in Dying Light 2
Increasing Your Combat Level
While you can get some experience fighting Renegades, it’s going to take much longer than other leveling methods.
While you can work on your Combat level by just fighting zombies and bandits, this is probably the worst way. You’ll only get a small chunk of experience from fighting them even if you exclusively focus your time on it. This is where you’re better off focusing on certain quests and activities instead.
Did you know you can get thousands of Combat experience from activating a metro subway station? You don’t even need to kill a single zombie to benefit from it because the experience is in the reward. Plus, you gain access to fast travel points all around Dying Light 2’s city of Villedor.
GRE Anomalies are a good way to change things up every now and then while also getting great rewards.
Another fun way to level up your Combat fast is to focus on GRE Anomalies. These are essentially boss fights with special zombies that have their own little arena. You’ll need to visit these marked locations at night since the special zombie won’t be there during the day. Regardless, you can get a few thousand Combat experience and even inhibitors from killing one.
If you’d prefer to engage in combat with bandits instead of zombies, you can find plenty of Combat experience this way too. However, your opportunities are a little more limited similar to GRE Anomalies. You’ll need to search for Bandit Camps that you can clear to create a safe zone. These can give a few thousand Combat experience alongside some Parkour experience too.
You can funnel special zombies into a trap if you find the right rooftop setup.
One more recommendation for leveling up your Combat in Dying Light 2 revolves around night-time. While you can do this for Parkour as well, here’s how to take advantage of night-time for Combat. You’ll gain extra experience for all activities at night, but you can stack multipliers on top of that during chases.
Chases start when a Howler spots you and screams to alert other zombies. A bar will appear on your screen showing what level the chase is and it will increase over time. As long as you don’t escape or enter a safe house, the chase will continue. The main issue with farming Combat experience this way is that the zombies get tough and overwhelming quickly.
Here’s an example of how powerful UV Flares can get when upgraded. This is an Artifact UV Flare I looted.
If you want to work on your Combat experience by taking advantage of chases, you’ll need the right setup. This can be as simple as having upgraded UV Flares or standing near a safe house. I like to stand on rooftops near Nightrunner Hideouts and stomp zombies as they climb up. As long as you don’t get surrounded, this works well.
Increasing Your Parkour Level
It’s always worth your time to climb windmills even if you’re not doing it for the experience. But, as you get farther in Dying Light 2, you will also get more experience.
While you can do parkour movements to gain experience, this isn’t the best way to level it up quickly. Similar to leveling up Combat, you’ll want to search for certain activities that give you a large amount of experience. However, you’re more likely to come across opportunities in the second half of the game than in the beginning.
Keep an eye out for Windmills with your binoculars since these are a good place to start for getting Parkour experience. The lower rank ones won’t give as much, but you’ll eventually get into at least 1,000 experience rewards. And this is worth doing to gain a safe house anyway.
Radio Towers can be a pain to climb especially if you don’t have some extra stamina. However, certain Parkour skills like Fast Climb can help.
Once you can start clearing activities like Military Airdrops, you’ll want to knock some of those out as well. This will usually give you a little more experience than Windmills as well as other nice rewards. The main issue is that these can take a while to climb once you get into the Central Loop.
The main way to level up your Parkour fast is via Radio Towers. But, this requires being far into the main story. So you won’t be able to take advantage of these early on. However, you’ll get anywhere from 2,000 to 3,500 Parkour experience depending on the activity’s rank.
Considering your goal with Nightrunner Trials is to complete them quickly, this can work well with your parkour experience.
Facilities are also a decent way to get Parkour experience while unlocking faction benefits for a region. Plus, you can gain new ways to heal if you activate a water tower. It’s worth mentioning that Electrical Stations often take a while to activate since they have puzzles to complete. These can feel satisfying to solve, but they will take some time.
The only time I recommend doing parkour to get experience is when completing challenges. You can find them on rooftops where you’ll gain experience based on your time. This can be a fun activity, but it may prove difficult if your stamina is low or you don’t have the right skills. If you combine your parkour experience with the challenge reward, it starts to add up.
Farm Combat and Parkour Experience in Dying Light 2
Encounters are typically a quick side activity that can reward you with a few hundred experience for Combat and Parkour. Later in Dying Light 2, the experience can get significantly higher.
Now that you know how to grind experience for Combat and Parkour, here are methods that benefit both. One great way that doesn’t take much time at all is completing Encounters. These are random events that you’ll come across almost too often in Villedor to help people. Here are some quick examples:
- A survivor may shoot a flare into the sky and yell for help. Usually, they only need a UV Shroom or Immunity Booster.
- Fighting a group of bandits or even chasing one bandit down.
- Rescuing a prisoner from a group of bandits.
- Rescuing a survivor from a zombie grabbing them.
- Killing special zombies like Bolters.
Just keep an eye out for blue markers representing Encounters nearby. More often than not, you’ll see a flare or hear someone yelling even though they’re a short distance away. You can use your Survivor Sense to track them down more easily. While Encounters don’t give a ton of experience, they come with small rewards and don’t take long.
Here’s an example of a high-experience reward from a Dying Light 2 mission. Descriptions have been blurred to avoid spoilers.
One of the best ways to level up fast is by completing main quests and side quests too. You’ll typically gain large amounts of experience in Combat and Parkour depending on how far you are. Since you need to make progress anyway, it doesn’t hurt to take advantage of it.
A slow way to get a lot of experience is by scavenging inhibitors from GRE Quarantine Buildings. If you take advantage of our tips and tricks, you’re bound to have a few scouted. The best time to search these buildings is at night when fewer zombies are sleeping inside. You can get anywhere from a thousand experience to a few thousand for Combat and Parkour.
Hitting a level four chase can be a quick way to lose all your night-time experience. So make not to wait too long before escaping!
And finally, let’s take a moment to talk about chase multipliers at night more in-depth. If you can’t keep up with the difficulty of high-level chases, you can try to spend your time escaping with parkour instead. This will help you gain experience while also having an adrenaline-inducing adventure. Here’s how each chase level multiplier works:
- Chase Level 1 – 2x experience
- Chase Level 2 – 3x experience
- Chase Level 3 – 4x experience
- Chase Level 4 – 5x experience
This is the last thing you want to see when farming for experience at night. Especially if you’re already in the middle of a chase.
While getting a 5x experience multiplier can sound really nice, chances are you won’t survive for long at this level. The developer throws swarms of enemies at you as well as tough volatiles. They’re much tougher than the original Dying Light when you also throw in other unique zombies too. Just when you think you’re safe or fight back, a zombie will drop you to the ground with a dive.
That’s all there is to this long Dying Light 2 guide on how to level up fast. If you have some tips and tricks of your own, feel free to share them in the comments below. While you don’t need to race to unlock every skill, speeding up the grind can be nice.
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.