Is athletics leveling progression working as intended?

[Ayinde_Palmer]

Gentlemen, i quote all those posts to increase the chances each of you will read the following - which is likely to solve your problem with Athletics skill.

Berserk + melee combat - gives massive amounts of Athletics XP. Each hit on an enemy while under Berserk effects - gives Athletics XP, and i have the impression the more the damage is done, the more Athletics XP is given per hit.

Something like 100k / hour of Athletics experience is doable with this method, i recon.

So, the best way to level Athletics i know of - is the following:

- in order to be able to do quick grind loops, play in 1.12 (in 1.2, they disabled quick mobs respawn). My favorite grind loop is to the south from Valentino Valley fast travel point, consists of 9 groups each being 3 valentinos (no 6th street gangs at all), and takes a bit under a minute to complete if played well, during which time all 9 groups respawn;

- in order to remain alive despite all the hasty melee combat, be sure to go for this at level 50, with 5k+ armor, health boosts and as many defensive perks (including Cold Blood tree) and cyberware as you can get;

- in order to get the most Athletics experience out of this, use some melee weapon which insta-kills your enemies with regular attack, use highest grade Berserk unit your Body stat allows to get, and depending on your situation also consider using berserk unit mods and/or cyberware which increase berserk duration and/or reduce Berserk cooldown.

P.S. CDPR nerfed mobs respawn in 1.2 to make fast "grind loops" impossible, i hear; but this would still work times better than any other method to grind Athletics even in 1.2, you just do it together with your melee-weapon-skill grinding by either just running around through neighbourhoods (no closed loops) and mopping up gangs, and/or you use berserk+melee during main and/or side jobs as well.

you don't need to hit enemies, just expend stamina.

So the fastest way is pop berserk, swing heavy punches as much as possible. For this purpose, the berserk with the highest uptime compared to downtime is key. This is the only way its feasible to level athletics.
also you get like 100 per Door forced open, but berserk is faster.

 

[maniak6767]

You can force open doors and dismantle turrets via strength, it can give you a lot of xp.

 

[Fins_FinsT]

you don't need to hit enemies, just expend stamina.

So the fastest way is pop berserk, swing heavy punches as much as possible. For this purpose, the berserk with the highest uptime compared to downtime is key. This is the only way its feasible to level athletics.
also you get like 100 per Door forced open, but berserk is faster.

Got me a strong impression hitting enemies gives lots more experience to the skill. And yep, like i said above, duration / cooldown reduction for berserk is important. Highest uptime berserk is not possible to get for many builds, though, as better berserk 'ware requires quite high Body stat me thinks.

 

[Baldys_Quattro]

does the beserk trick not still work . Where you activate beserk do a dodge slide and pause to the skills menu midway through the slide and and your athletics stats just go up while you are in the menu because you get unlimited stamina in beserk mode . not tried this since the 1.2 patch.

 

[Gali_Cat]

does the beserk trick not still work . Where you activate beserk do a dodge slide and pause to the skills menu midway through the slide and and your athletics stats just go up while you are in the menu because you get unlimited stamina in beserk mode . not tried this since the 1.2 patch.

1.2 Patched this out. So there is literally no way to level this up in any useful sense. After 100% completion of the game my athletics was only level 10

 

[msxyz]

Running constantly, jumping and swimming will increase athletics. So will also forcing doors open, tearing down turrets or punching people. But it's a very slow process. Realistically, even running and jumping throughout the map the whole time won't get anybody above level 7-8

 

[LeKill3rFou]

Running and jumping only, it's very, very slow.
But if you fight with bersek and gorilla arms, you will gain so much more. With legendary gorilla arms (animal knuckles + black market battery) is pretty fast to up your athletic skill. (and it's relatively fun )

 

[Ayinde_Palmer]

1.2 Patched this out. So there is literally no way to level this up in any useful sense. After 100% completion of the game my athletics was only level 10

do you still get more exp while berserk, or not? Or do you just mean the game pause exploit.

the berserk method and swinging heavy blows gives like 1k per 30 seconds, so it should be possible to get high level, as easy as most other skills anyway

 

[Braag]

I wonder the same thing. Only way I got it to start leveling was sliding all over the place and even then it was extremely slow. Running and jumping barely gives you any exp. It's easily the most frustrating skill to level up.

 

[batouyukinawa]

There's perk in body if you take it you won't run out of stamina hardly ever. This happens to be how the game levels up your athletics. It's actually kind of realistic because your body wouldn't acclimate to anything differing to your standard threshold unless you began pushing it beyond it's limits.

 

[Bassdeff]

Yeah, I just used downloaded a mod for that because athletics leveling is total BS.

 

[JoE_Smash]

The devs SERIOUSLY need to rebalance Athletics.

It is FUBAR.

20 frigging XP for jumping for 60 seconds straight is bull crap.

What the hell are they thinking?!

My Body is 10. I can level annihilation from 9 to 10 by killing like 10 guys with a shotgun. I can level brawling from 9 to 10 by beating 10 guys with a bat.

To level Athletics from 9 to 10 I need some way to auto-push X on my PS4 controller for 2 hours while I sleep in real life.

Fix it [...]

 

[Ayinde_Palmer]

The devs SERIOUSLY need to rebalance Athletics.

It is FUBAR.

20 frigging XP for jumping for 60 seconds straight is bull crap.

What the hell are they thinking?!

My Body is 10. I can level annihilation from 9 to 10 by killing like 10 guys with a shotgun. I can level brawling from 9 to 10 by beating 10 guys with a bat.

To level Athletics from 9 to 10 I need some way to auto-push X on my PS4 controller for 2 hours while I sleep in real life.

Fix it [...]

I have said this before, but the main method of leveling athletics is using berserk mod, and spamming heavy melee attacks while its up. If you have a good berserk cyberware, you get like 30 seconds with like 30-60 second cooldown. (I forget, and the tooltips are wrong sometimes). This gets you like 1k exp per cooldown, which is similar or faster than killing.

 

[cecoates]

I have said this before, but the main method of leveling athletics is using berserk mod, and spamming heavy melee attacks while its up. If you have a good berserk cyberware, you get like 30 seconds with like 30-60 second cooldown. (I forget, and the tooltips are wrong sometimes). This gets you like 1k exp per cooldown, which is similar or faster than killing.

Two replies before you mentioned they patched it out.

It can still work, however, as of 1.23. You have to activate berserk AFTER you've expended some stamina. So do a few attacks, then activate berserk before the stamina bar fills back up, then shadowbox until berserk runs out. Heavy versus light attacks doesn't seem to matter. You can just wildly spam attack.

The thing that seems to gain exp is maintaining your stamina at that weird little white dot that appears on the stamina bar when you're draining stamina. With berserk on, your stamina will never go below that point. It's kind of confusing and still feels exploit-y, but it's definitely still the lowest leveling skill without that method.

Depending on the berserk model, you can get anywhere from around 600-2000 exp per minute. Or 45ish seconds if you have cooldown cyberware and mods. Although weirdly sometimes it just drops off for me and I can't find a rhyme or reason to it. Like I'll be getting exactly 1440 exp consistently, then suddenly it's around 800 exp, then sometimes it's like 2400 exp. Also, sometimes randomly in a fight I used Mantis Blades a lot I'll get a bunch of athletics exp, but not every time (berserk or otherwise).

Berserk exploit aside it definitely doesn't feel consistent or natural, which is a shame because there are some nice bonuses and lots of perk points locked in the athletics tree.

 

[Ayinde_Palmer]

Two replies before you mentioned they patched it out.

It can still work, however, as of 1.23. You have to activate berserk AFTER you've expended some stamina. So do a few attacks, then activate berserk before the stamina bar fills back up, then shadowbox until berserk runs out. Heavy versus light attacks doesn't seem to matter. You can just wildly spam attack.

The thing that seems to gain exp is maintaining your stamina at that weird little white dot that appears on the stamina bar when you're draining stamina. With berserk on, your stamina will never go below that point. It's kind of confusing and still feels exploit-y, but it's definitely still the lowest leveling skill without that method.

Depending on the berserk model, you can get anywhere from around 600-2000 exp per minute. Or 45ish seconds if you have cooldown cyberware and mods. Although weirdly sometimes it just drops off for me and I can't find a rhyme or reason to it. Like I'll be getting exactly 1440 exp consistently, then suddenly it's around 800 exp, then sometimes it's like 2400 exp. Also, sometimes randomly in a fight I used Mantis Blades a lot I'll get a bunch of athletics exp, but not every time (berserk or otherwise).

Berserk exploit aside it definitely doesn't feel consistent or natural, which is a shame because there are some nice bonuses and lots of perk points locked in the athletics tree.

the method they mentioned involved pausing the game and getting exp afk, the one I'm talking about is just using berserk and using strong melee attacks. As far as I know that method still worked after 1.2, and i believe it has to be the way they intended you to level it, because the only other two methods are impossible.

its clear the game pause method was a bug though

doors and turret ripping gives athletics, but there is a finite amount of both, and its only 100, and using stamina jumping running would limit people to like level 7 in a 200 hour playthrough.

 

[cecoates]

the method they mentioned involved pausing the game and getting exp afk, the one I'm talking about is just using berserk and using strong melee attacks. As far as I know that method still worked after 1.2, and i believe it has to be the way they intended you to level it, because the only other two methods are impossible.

its clear the game pause method was a bug though

doors and turret ripping gives athletics, but there is a finite amount of both, and its only 100, and using stamina jumping running would limit people to like level 7 in a 200 hour playthrough.

I just tried and tested it multiple times, on multiple characters. As of 1.23 it unfortunately doesn't work the way you're describing anymore. I wasn't referring to the pause menu thing.

What you have to do is first drain the stamina bar BEFORE activating berserk. It doesn't have to be much, just enough so that berserk activates before it fills up completely again.

If you activate berserk while stamina is still at 100%, you gain nothing or next to nothing now, even if you use heavy strikes the entire time.

So, to clarify for anyone who comes later trying to make it work. Once you've installed a berserk operating system and equipped a melee weapon or cyberware arms:

1) Use up some stamina. Heavy strikes, light strikes, you can even just run around, it doesn't matter, just drain it a bit.
2) Before it fills up again, activate berserk.
3) Start wildly swinging. Heavy or light strikes doesn't matter, whether or not you're hitting anything doesn't matter, just keep attacking with melee until the berserk needs to cooldown again.

Then you can wait and repeat. One less tedious way to work this into your routine is to do it while running to a new objective. So while berserk is cooling down, keep running. And then once it's ready, stop and repeat.

Because it does seem they tried to patch it out (since it no longer works the way you described if stamina is at 100%), that's why it's entirely possible it could still be considered a bug or exploit and not working as intended. Even if it's currently the only practical way to raise athletics right now.

 

[CS554]

I just tried and tested it multiple times, on multiple characters. As of 1.23 it unfortunately doesn't work the way you're describing anymore. I wasn't referring to the pause menu thing.

What you have to do is first drain the stamina bar BEFORE activating berserk. It doesn't have to be much, just enough so that berserk activates before it fills up completely again.

If you activate berserk while stamina is still at 100%, you gain nothing or next to nothing now, even if you use heavy strikes the entire time.

So, to clarify for anyone who comes later trying to make it work. Once you've installed a berserk operating system and equipped a melee weapon or cyberware arms:

1) Use up some stamina. Heavy strikes, light strikes, you can even just run around, it doesn't matter, just drain it a bit.
2) Before it fills up again, activate berserk.
3) Start wildly swinging. Heavy or light strikes doesn't matter, whether or not you're hitting anything doesn't matter, just keep attacking with melee until the berserk needs to cooldown again.

Then you can wait and repeat. One less tedious way to work this into your routine is to do it while running to a new objective. So while berserk is cooling down, keep running. And then once it's ready, stop and repeat.

Because it does seem they tried to patch it out (since it no longer works the way you described if stamina is at 100%), that's why it's entirely possible it could still be considered a bug or exploit and not working as intended. Even if it's currently the only practical way to raise athletics right now.

I'm on Xbox One X and I completed my first playthrough with day 1 to 1.06.1 version of the game. I just completed my second playthrough with game version 1.23.

I used method called Berserk glitch after I read about it and I think game version was either 1.04 or 1.06. Glitch involved using pause and it doesn't work with game version 1.23 anymore, I don't know which patch / game version changed this.

I didn't get this this exploit to work on Xbox either but that may be due to that I didn't get timings right and I really didn't put that much effort to it. I however recommend using whatever methods there are available to level up Athletics, without sinking abnormal amount of time to running, puching air or whatever action that really doesn't involve progressing in story.

I especially recommend it for players whom also invest in Tech, as Engineering appears to be another skill that is difficult to level up, thus leading missing Perk Points from both Athetics and Engineering skills, and needing to sacrifice Perk Points from other skills, for example Cold Blood and Blades, to unlock skills from Attribute tree.

My character build for my second playthrough had 13 Body and 18 Tech. From the top of my head, I ended missing at least 3 Perk Points from Athletics and another 3 from Engineering with my end game level 50 character. With Body / Athletics, and Tech / Engineering builds situation is also further complicated by Athletics experience and Tech experience having few opportunities to gain experience and disabling turrets by either Body / Athletics or Tech / Engineering, spitting experience available between the two.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

I especially recommend it for players whom also invest in Tech, as Engineering appears to be another skill that is difficult to level up, thus leading missing Perk Points from both Athetics and Engineering skills, and needing to sacrifice Perk Points from other skills, for example Cold Blood and Blades, to unlock skills from Attribute tree.

I don't know if it's useful, but for me engineering is not too low and not the worste
I hack the cameras & turrets, but after that I use my tech skill on them. In view of the number of turrets and cameras (cameras are everywhere), that's not bad at all.

 

[CS554]

I don't know if it's useful, but for me engineering is not too low and not the worste
I hack the cameras & turrets, but after that I use my tech skill on them. In view of the number of turrets and cameras (cameras are everywhere), that's not bad at all.

Thing is, I did the same and I completed all, but few missions in City Center, my Engineering was at 7 or 8 and completing those five or six remaining missions wouldn't had made any difference regarding Eng exp. What comes to turrets, I didn't come to think, I could use Body (rip off for Athletics exp) after using Tech skill. If that actually works, that would be a very good tip.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

Thing is, I did the same and I completed all, but few missions in City Center, my Engineering was at 7 or 8 and completing those five or six remaining missions wouldn't had made any difference regarding Eng exp. What comes to turrets, I didn't come to think, I could use Body (rip off for Athletics exp) after using Tech skill. If that actually works, that would be a very good tip.

I'm level 50 since a good while
I was level 35 when a start "Ghost Town" and "Automatic Love" with "only" NCPD Scanner Hustler and some minor Side Quest (Delamain/Heroe/...)
And I'm level 15 in engeneering and I have some GIGs and a few Side Quests left (mostly those with Padre and Dino).
But I use tech skill on each cameras that I encounter (even in the "wild", like in Pacifica, there are plenty of cameras).
Little important detail, I generally don't use tech weapon or grenade (just a shotgun at the very beginning when stealth is not that great).

And for turrets, yes it work.
(there are some turrets who you can't use tech skill, but on any turrets, you can use body skill even after use tech skill on them).