So as someone who played in the open beta, I've started leveling up a character a few times. Now that the finished game has come out, I'm already over level 10 in around two hours and I'd like to share some tips that players new to MAG can use. It would also benefit new players for anybody else to share their own tips and suggestions.
First thing you'll want to do is to do the training level. It's really easy and will familiarize you with the controls and feel of shooting the base assault rifle and throwing a grenade among other things. However, the biggest reason you want to do it is that you'll get some free XP for doing it. I noticed that I was at level 2 after I finished the training. So with those 2 free skill points you can spend on upgrades, you might be thinking about upgrading your reload speed, or getting an improved sight, or something like that. Well... DON'T!!! Your first two skill points should go into getting the medical kit upgrade. This is an improved ingector gun that you have to go to your armory and equip and with it you'll be able to not only heal yourself like the starter med kit can, but you can also spray a healing mist on hurt allies to heal them for XP. Your cursor will light up when you're facing an ally who can be healed.
With the medical kit, keep on playing the game and healing hurt allies when you can. Make sure to save your skill points because your next two will go into the resuscitation ability. Resuscitation allows you to use your medical kit to revive fallen allies who haven't bled out yet. This is a very important ability because not only is it handy to keep players fighting longer, but you also get a 10xp for each revive compared to the mere 5xp you get for a kill and it's so easy to do, just walk over to a downed ally and your cursor will light up and an icon will appear in the center of the screen letting you know that you can use your med kit to revive that person.
This leads to the next topic of Frag-O bonuses. You might notice that getting kills near the objective gives you not only 5xp, but also a bonus 5xp which is in yellow text. This is called a Frag-O bonus and any XP you get in the area of a Frag-O'd objective will double it. If your objective is to attack or defend A, it'll benefit you and your squadmates to work towards attacking or defending that objective because that's where you can gain tons and tons of your XP to fly through the grinding process of leveling up. Thus, with the ease of using the resuscitation ability, you can get 20xp for every revive and revive ally after ally after ally in a very short time.
That does it for my suggestions of what you should spend your first 4 levels upgrading. I think it'd be great if others can come in to chime in with their own tips and suggestions.
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*edit 1*
On the upgrade screen, you have to spend two skill points in a tier to open up the next tier in that row. Thus, you can't open up the second assault rifle tier until you spend two of your skill points in the first tier. You'll want to plan upgrades accordingly.
If you do mess up down the road, you have the option to respec. However, you have to have earned 3,000xp before you can even do your first respec. To make matters worse, every time you respec, the cost of the next respec increases so you want to make sure that you REALLY want to respec if you're going to do it.
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If you have the space for it, it's a good idea to bring some smoke grenades into the battle. They'll cut down on visibility and can help to disorient the enemy so a bunch of allies can charge into the area.
A warning though, it will take a little while for the smoke grenade to become effective after being thrown. Not only will it take a little while to start spewing smoke, but the smoke will take a little while to build up and become an effective screen.
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This is a suggestion for new Raven players.
If you haven't noticed, the starting assault rifle for Raven, the Hollis A3, isn't that good. It has a long reload time and a low stopping power. While it may seem like a grind, DON'T upgrade anything else except the medical kit and resuscitation for your first 4 levels. You might not get a ton of kills, but the XP you can otherwise achieve by reviving fallen team mates makes up for it. Depending on what faction you're going up against, I recommend picking up the Valor M4 or SVER AK-74U starter assault rifles instead. While the M4 will do, what you'll really be happy to find is the AK-74U as it's a very effective weapon, but it has a little lower rate of fire and accuracy.
Once you level up enough, I suggest getting the hand grip instead of increase reload speed. I say this because this opens up the second assault rifle tier and you can grind the next three levels so you can upgrade to the much better assault rifle, the ATAC, and your Hollis will handle better with the hand grip. The ATAC is your assault rifle of choice because it not only has a high rate of fire and accurate, but you don't have to equip a hand grip on it because it already comes with one that's automatically equipped at all times!
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