Both protagonists in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 have been fighting crime for a while by the time the game starts, but what fun would it be if they started with all the skills in the game?
Most of the best abilities and moves from Marvel’s Spider-Man and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales are back, but there are plenty of new techniques for our heroes to unlock. While you will earn tons of materials like Rare Tech parts, City Tokens, and Hero Tokens, everything you do will also give you varying amounts of XP.
XP is still the only way to level up, which means it is the only way to get skill points you can use to unlock new and improved abilities. The villains this time around aren’t messing around, and leveling up your heroes is the only hope you have of keeping up with them. Here are the best ways to level up fast in Spider-Man 2 so you can fill your role as the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
How to level up fast in Spider-Man 2
There are a lot of tasks that become available as you go deeper into Spider-Man 2, and the later ones tend to have higher XP rewards than the ones in the early chapters so you may want to hold off on grinding until you get some of the more lucrative ones unlocked. That said, since some activities aren’t available until later, some of these methods could be considered spoilers. We won’t detail any story moments or go into detail about how or what some things are, but just know we will be listing their names and the gist of what you do to complete them.
Main missions
It’s rare for a game to make anything but the main missions give the most XP, and Spider-Man 2 generally doesn’t break from this trend. We say generally because each main mission will vary on how much XP you earn based on its length. There are some that amount to little more than a cutscene and only give you around 300 XP, but for the big, meaty ones, you can expect 2-3,000 by the end. Early on, you can reliably just mainline the story and keep a good pace with leveling up with the challenges until some of the better secondary methods open up.
FNSM requests
FNSM (Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man) requests are the first and most common side quest type in Spider-Man 2. These are typically little narratives with a couple of steps to complete, such as going somewhere, getting into a small fight or solving a small puzzle, going somewhere else, and then one final stop to complete it. They’re certainly not the most engaging story content in the game, but they’re quick and at least have interesting scenarios to make doing them feel less like a slog.
Corruption
The last open-world activity that opens up in the game is Corruptions, and they can sometimes be more valuable than main missions for XP gain. Each one you do pays out with 1,200 XP, and is not all that time-consuming either. They are essentially defense missions where you set up a device and need to protect it from waves of enemies until the time runs out. While you do have to worry about making sure you and the device don’t die, it isn’t all that hard since the device has quite a lot of health, and enemies are generally slow to attack it. You also get a nice indicator when it is in danger to zip over and get the attention of whatever enemy is damaging it.
Side missions
Peter and Miles each have their own set of side missions, with Peter focusing on a returning character from the first game and Miles’ on his school and struggles to figure out college. While not as reliably high in how much XP you can get for each based on the time some of them can take, these are fully fleshed-out missions that feel almost on the level of a main one. You’ll use all the mechanics of the game, and get a much deeper look into both Peter and Miles that helps fully build out their characters without interrupting the flow of the main game. Like basically all side activities, you will be gated off from doing them all at once, so take a break between main missions to continue these stories when they show up to get a nice XP boost and some more story.
Tricks
This is only on the list if you remember to do it consistently throughout the game. Any time you’re swinging from one place to the next, make sure you do your tricks! Whenever you’re freefalling between web swings, pressing Square plus a direction (forward, back, left, or right) will have Peter or Miles do a different trick. Tricks alone are only worth 1 XP but can be comboed for a little more. That’s obviously not a lot, but when you consider the amount of swinging you do in Spider-Man 2 over the course of the game, that can add up to multiple levels worth of XP if you’re trying to hit max level.
