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How to REALLY Make XP

(Disclaimer: This text told the truth for a long time, but it is very old now, and some things may have changed. Maybe read it more like a historical document? 😅)

Some questions are asked every single day, and most of the time you'll get that infamous 'guidelines' link because a simple search would have given you the answer.

Yet there is one question I swore to myself I'd answer every single time I encounter it, because, yeah, you can use the search function for that one as well, but you'll find a lot of wrong or at least misleading answers.

In order not to waste your time, I'll give away the answer right now. If you agree with me, you can just close this tab and move on. Because it's actually really simple.

Okay, here it comes:

XP are earned by doing challenges.

That's all. If you're not surprised by this, you can go now, this text is not for you.

But what about aaaall the other ways to earn xp?

Okay, what we're collectively trying to do here is (not earning xp but) learning to code, right? One important factor of that is that you have to always look for the most efficient way to solve a problem. Not just any code will do - if there's a way to achieve the same result with half the code and/or half the processing time, that's usually the better choice.

Yet when it comes to Sololearn challenges, suddenly people seem to stop comparing and just dish out whatever gives you even one xp! And how does that make sense? No, just like in coding, we have to compare the methods and choose the most effective one. And as we would do with an algorithm, we would assume worst case.

But let's still make a few simple assumptions: You know one language reasonably well. Let's say you have completed the tutorial and spent some time actually writing code, for example by doing these assignments. Because if you don't know a language at all, you'll hardly be able to win a challenge, can we agree on that?

So you are ready and start to do a lot of challenges. For a while you'll make big cash, but it thins out quickly. Because the xp you earn are determined by your weapon xp vs. the opponent's weapon xp, and the longer you play, the worse it becomes.

To a point! Because no matter what, you will at least get 1 xp for every correct answer. Even if you never win because you always end up with a 5:5, you will get at least 5 points. Yeah, you sometimes lose, too, and sometimes you'll win, but you'll see: The riddles repeat, you'll soon know many of them by heart. In the long run you'll end up about always drawing out.

One complete challenge takes about 3 minutes max. Let's say you do ten a day, it would take half an hour of your time, and you'd earn 50 xp daily.

50*365: 18,250. That's what you get in one year.

Now to be honest, you won't use all your time, because many riddles are simple or you already know the answers, so you just click and go, and manage to do double or even triple of that in a year. That would be about double platinum.

And that is really all there is to it. Whenever you encounter a level 17 sololearner, look at his profile and you'll see they did a huge number of challenges.

I don't want to draw this out too long, but let's look at a few badges and compare. The main disadvantage is that you get them only once, while you can do the same set of HTML challenges forever, over and over. But some numbers look nice.

Illuminator gives you 1,000 xp, also Code Ninja. But we also have to look at what we have to do for it. For Illuminator, you need 50 of your answers in q&a upvoted 5 times. Code Ninja's the same with written codes.

Since you can't control who's upvoting what, you'll probably do a bit of work to get all these upvotes. You can't write Hello World over and over, and a simple 'Nah, not gonna work, bro' will probably also not help you a lot. Estimate this for yourself: What takes longer, doing 200 challenges or writing 50 upvotable codes?

Well, you might play the popularity card: Follow everybody on sight in hope they guilt-follow you back, type a lot of emoji, choose a bikini girl avatar, maybe partake in that likestorm insanity etc etc. Sounds like a lot of work to me. Even if you do it, remember: You still get these badges only once.

EDIT: We have got Code Coach now, which is a nice source of xp income. Nonetheless, it's one of the sources that will eventually dry up - while you're still gonna get at least 5 xp for every challenge you don't lose.

If you still have doubts, I encourage you to do some calculations yourself. Whenever you hear of a method to cash in xp quickly, compare the profit with the necessary work.

But doesn't that mean the levels have little value? Yes, that's exactly what it means! Quite often you'll encounter a level 8 guy who's a better coder than, let's say, me. Because they don't feel like wasting their time clicking at answers they know by heart but instead concentrate on studying and practicing by writing code.

So this whole text is no recommendation - it is just an explanation how to get xp if you want to get xp for whatever reason.

Live can be so simple: Just do a bunch of challenges daily and level up quickly. It's ridiculous: I've even been downvoted for giving this answer in q&a!

But you (should) know better now.

If you feel like it, help me spread the message until this question, someday, is always answered truthfully.

How To REALLY make XP