Tutorial:Leveling

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This is a guide to leveling your ship girls effectively through sorties.

Suggested places to level:

1-5: Lower level Admirals who haven't cleared 2-4 yet. Good place to level DD/CL early on.

3-2A: Often the default place to level. Features decent xp gain and very easy enemies. Is very versatile and can be used to level all types of ships.
4-3: A more challenging place to level with a focus on leveling ships with ASW capabilities (DD, CL)at a faster pace.
5-2:
5-4A: High base XP. A good way to level up the expensive Yamato class. 2 CV/L goes to easier node and SS can be used to tank most of enemy fire.
5-4: High base xp and relatively easy. Can be cleared for both HQ xp and Ship xp.

Overview: A relatively easy map. Increases in difficulty at HQ levels 40 and 80 with higher chance to get SS as drop. Map overview. Suggested Composition: DD/CL Tips:

All the non dead end nodes are composed of SS.
Use the formation Line Abreast as this is the strongest ASW formation.
Third node has the possibility to drop SS

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General Tips

Maps have a base XP, which is typically the same for all nodes. Higher base XP maps can be faster leveling and/or more resource efficient.
Leveling speed, cycling ships
Resource cost: Submarines, Destroyers and Light Cruisers have relatively low consumption.

Other notes and tricks

Submarines as tanks

Submarines draw fire from all ships that can target it (DD, CL) This helps to prevent damage to other ships and lowers your repair costs as submarines have very low repair costs. Early on, submarines can be obtained through construction or on the map 1-5. They have low sortie costs.

XP Mechanics

Flagship gives 50% extra xp

MVP gives double xp. Can be combined with Flagship bonus for total of 3x bonus.

MVP is awarded to the ship that does the most total damage with ties going to ship in highest slot.
S rank gives 20% extra xp; C/D- ranks have xp penalty

Placing a ship at flagship and achieving MVP grants the most XP. This is useful for quickly leveling up a single ship or focusing XP on more resource expensive ships to reduce the resource costs of leveling it up.

Morale considerations

Morale affects ship performance like accuracy and evasion which can affect rank and help influence MVP -CVL premptive strike is not influenced by morale

Difference between HQ XP and Ship XP

HQ XP and ship XP are different things.

HQ XP increases the most when you achieve victory at a boss node.
Earlier on, It can help to try to reduce HQ XP gain as certain maps like event maps can get more difficult at certain HQ tiers.
More details on the topic can be found on the Experience and Rankings page.

Other ways to level

PvP - can give high amounts of XP with no need to repair and low HQ xp gained.
- Only refreshes twice a day for a maximum of 10 opponents per day.
- Targeted admiral might change his fleet composition while you are initiating attack.
Expeditions - Can be a source of xp for lower level ships.
- Expeditions 22, 23 focus on xp instead of resources, but these specific expeditions are not recommended in general as they are very slow and resource inefficient as well as taking away the use of a fleet in gathering resources.
- Sparkling can help achieve Great Sucess, which doubles the XP gain
  - It can be useful to combine leveling with sparkling to help increase your resources.