Rise of the Tomb Raider: How To Earn More XP (The Easy Way)

In Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara continues to grow into the tough as nails adventurer players have come to expect. Here’s how to gain XP quickly so that Lara can become the ultimate hero faster.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is the sequel to 2013’s reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise. In the first game, young Lara Croft, voiced by Camilla Luddington, has begun her first expedition aboard the ship Endurance. The seaworthy vessel is headed off the coast of Japan, towards the Dragon’s Circle, with the crew intent on finding the lost kingdom of Yamatai. Everything goes as wrong as things possibly can when a powerful storm strikes the Endurance. The crew of the ship finds themselves shipwrecked on a mysterious island. From here on, a naive and inexperienced Lara Croft finds herself relying on instinct, intelligence, and grit to help her friends find their way home and uncover the mysteries of the island along the way.

In Rise of the Tomb Raider, players join Lara Croft a year after the last game. She’s tougher, a little more world-weary, and her moral compass may have begun to veer into gray areas. Lara, an archaeologist by trade and competent adventurer, looks to her late father’s work for answers to the traumatic experiences of the year past. His research details his search for the secret of immortality, which is said to be hidden in the lost city of Kitezh. Croft goes on an expedition to Syria, in hopes that she may find the tomb of a prophet who has a connection to the legend of Kitezh. Trinity, a fanatical shadow organization, attempts to kill her as she explores the tomb.

Lara escapes by the skin of her teeth and eventually makes her way to Croft Manor. While there, she flips through a Russian book of religious history and finds the same symbol she saw on her way out of the Syrian tomb. Croft discovers it also has a connection to the ancient city of Kitezh, with the trail leading to the far reaches of Siberia. Because Lara can never catch a break, a Trinity assassin breaks in and steals the book after failing to take her life. Croft and her friend Jonah chase the book to Siberia. During the player’s adventure through Rise of the Tomb Raider, they’re going to need to gain XP so that Lara Croft can accomplish feats of increasing impressiveness.

Basic Actions that Earn XP in Rise of the Tomb Raider

As Lara Croft performs actions in the game and progresses the story, she earns XP. When she gains enough, she receives a Skill Point. Skill points can be spent on one of three Skill Trees to unlock new abilities, give a boost to her stats, open up different types of attacks, and give her other assorted bonuses. Players gain XP by completing campaign objectives, completing side missions, stealth killing enemies, dispatching bad guys with combat kills, and hunting animals. Lara earns bonus XP with headshots, and in nearly all combat encounters where she accomplishes her goal without being detected by her enemies. Croft can also gain bonus XP when taking a closer look at artifacts that she finds during her travels.

Skills That Help Lara Gain Bonus XP in Rise of the Tomb Raider

There are nearly 60 different skills to be unlocked by earning skill points. If players want to help Lara gain XP faster, and otherwise improve her chances of survival, they’ll want to unlock specific abilities on the Skill Trees.

Lara Croft can earn Bonus XP in Rise of the Tomb Raider by gaining the following Skills:

• Finesse – Found in the Hunter Skill Tree, this skill provides bonus XP when stealth kills, death from above kills, and headshots are chained together. Bonus multipliers increase when Lara successfully pulls off longer chains. There is no time limit to this bonus multiplier, so it can be used to gain some XP quickly.
• Avid Learner – Located in the Survivor Skill Tree, Lara earns bonus XP from Relics, Challenges, Survival Caches, and Documents.
• Duelist Reflexes – Found in the Brawler Skill Tree, this skill allows Lara to gain extra XP for performing a dodge counter kill and increases the available time window for Lara to execute a dodge counter.
• Resourceful Combatant – Located in the Survivor Skill Tree, Lara can use this skill to gain more XP for taking down enemies with crafted items, whether they are knocked out or killed.

How to Gain XP for Quickly in Rise of the Tomb Raider

Sometimes players want things fast and choose to make use of game glitches to accomplish otherwise tedious tasks like gaining XP as quickly as possible. There’s nothing wrong with this. Everyone enjoys their gaming experiences in different ways.

To take advantage of one of these glitches, players must get to the Logging Camp Base Camp at the Soviet Installation. If the player has not spent much time exploring, they will arrive here at about an hour and a half into play. From here, they should fast travel back to the Train Yard Base Camp.

Have Lara run back into the building she recently set on fire, through the interrogation room, and to the room where she must shimmy through a small hole in the wall. Run towards the back of that room. Look for a clear patch of ground in the rubble, to the left. It is on an incline. Jump on it and slide down. Shimmy back out of the room and back towards the interrogation room, where an autosave should be triggered. Reload the game and repeat the process until satisfied or bored.

Some more versions of the game may require additional steps to trigger this glitch. The trick may also stop working at some point. This glitch does not work on the Extreme Survivor difficulty, as there is no autosaving at checkpoints. In some versions of the game, the player must run back to the Train Yard Base Camp and reload the game there. Some other versions of Rise of the Tomb Raider require the player to push ahead to the next Base Camp, the Logging Camp, then fast travel to the Train Yard and reload from there. The simplest method of performing the glitch, which involved autosaving and reloading at the interrogation room, currently works on PC.

Lara Croft has lived a life of danger between the first game in the Tomb Raider reboot series and this one. She is an experienced explorer with exciting adventures under her belt and many more ahead. Fans of the game series will love the evolution of her character, the gorgeous graphics and set pieces, puzzles and intense action found in Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.

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