Is using Archive Missions a good way to level?

It seems quite slow to me, as it takes quite a few individual missions to level. Would it be better to take the standard missions (fast length and hard difficulty) from your organizations contact? I haven't got a chance to compare XP gain.

you know, I'm not to sure about that, but I will say one thing. if you talk to the collectors for the story completion tokens they have some very cool rewards. (machine, merovingian, and zion investigators). But, the xp gain is fairly sizeable from my experience.

I'd say yes they are a good way to level, they are more interesting than your regular 'go here/kill him' type of missions, plus there is a sense of satisfaction completing a token and getting a reward item (System Suit and Merv Trenches are especially cool)

Plus there are some archive missions that you can keep redoing that involves no fighting and gets you full xp (But i wouldn't suggest as a new player just doing that, as you won't get any clothes or fighting experience that way - but they archs to do would be Merv 7.2.1 and 7.2.2, Merv 8.1.1 and 8.1.2 (avoiding one phase with bad guys) and Merv 8.2.1)

Though it's personal preferance really and always good to have some rep for later quests/items with your chosen org through regular missions

Ooh, they're a great way to level: I ran the last five levels on Sieges by running all the Merv missions I'd missed out on, plus the Zion and Machine ones.

Archive crits give very good xp but certain ones can be pretty hard to complete solo. They are also by far the most interesting to do. If you are paying attention to the story, don't forget to check our the cinematics in the loading area that kick off almost every subchapter. And if you're real hardcore about it, do a search on the Live Events Forums by Chapter number so you can read through the events that took place between the missions.

XP in missions is a constant. It is determined by how many stages there are in the mission. The archive critical missions tend to have more stages in them so you get more XP. Standard missions never have more than three stages. Archive crits are always on hard difficulty. If you run standard missions on medium or easy you get less xp per stage. A three stage standard mission on hard will give the same XP as a three stage archive critical mission.

Info in missions is always the same so it doesn't matter how many stages or what the difficulty setting is.

If you mission with a higher level player, you'll get more xp too but the NPCs will be scaled up higher and you won't be able to do much except avoid dying. So if you like the fighting and working through the continuing story from all three sides, the archive crits are most excellent. Even more fun if you team up with some players your same level as the mission will scale more NPCs into the fight.

They're interesting, but I'm trying to complete all three orgs archive missions so I can get the special effects from the collectors. It's good to see the story from three different perspectives, but the difficulty is getting considerably ramped up by putting me in more hostile neighborhoods with tougher enemies and such.

I like seeing the different parts of the story, but missioning can get quite stressful under these conditions and it's hard to get on with the flow unless I'm very close to a gaining a new level and I want to finish it right away.

Flint wrote:

Is using Archive Missions a good way to level?

It seems quite slow to me, as it takes quite a few individual missions to level. Would it be better to take the standard missions (fast length and hard difficulty) from your organizations contact? I haven't got a chance to compare XP gain.

Yes the archives are a very efficient way of levelling.

The main bonus to this aswell as the raised XP is the rewars that can be attained after collecting so many of the tokens.

Now some are better than others but my personal favourites are:

• System Shades
• System Suit
• Ninja Scarf
• Flame Virus
• Code Eyes

Some of the others are a little pointless but none the less are all equally cool when activated together.

I would recommend Whilst doing the archives do them in a logical order IE 1-11 etc and actually read what is flashing up on your HUD it will not only give you a good background of the once existent storyline but will actually get you involved in what you are actually doing and not make you think what the heck? When bendy sati's are shooting at you!

In summary

Archives FTW

(Unless you got an UBER faction that does sleepwalker boxes all the way to 50. In that case GF NUB!)