Azur Lane stands to be one of the oldest side-scrolling naval battler titles on mobile devices. In fact, many would say it to be the original one that brought many innovations to the genre. It features many RPG (Role-Playing Game) elements such as recruiting new ships, training them, and levelling up your account. This guide will expand on the latter a bit to help you unlock more game modes and events. The game itself encourages you to level up faster in order to catch up with the progress made by veterans. 

Focusing on the Main Story Missions

If you’re unaware, Azur Lane has a ton of innovative features. But the main one remains to be the main story mission that provides you with tons of resources, including EXP. A total of 48 missions are available, each taking approximately 10-15 minutes to complete. All your fleets that participate in mission battles will receive generous amounts of experience. You can easily complete these missions in a day if you are serious about competing in the game. Yes, it will take you roughly 10-12 hours, depending on how active you are in-game, but the rewards are well worth the effort.

Not only do your ships gain XP points, but you as the player do as well. These boost your “commander” status. To enable some game features, you must first advance to a higher level. For example, joining a guild requires you to be at least level 10. So, the first thing you should do is finish the main plot missions without stopping.

Your XP points will remain constant, but the scores of your ships may vary. At the end of each mission, one of your ships is chosen as “MVP” and receives twice as many XP points as the other ships. You cannot choose which ship will be the MVP; it is decided automatically by the game based on the damage rate.

One dilemma you might face on your conquests in the main story mode is that the pace of difficulty of the missions far exceeds your ship development. This is designed thoughtfully by the developers as they want you to repeat missions multiple times instead of finishing them in 1 go. Doing so will fetch you with powerful equipment and tons of EXP points. Keep in mind, the amount of XP gotten by repeating missions isn’t less but equal to the first time you completed them. This allows players to fetch multiple items at once by simply engaging in auto repeat battles on the same stage. 

Commissions

When you achieve account level 12, commissions are unlocked. You may find them on the “Attack” screen. They are not standard missions, and you will not need to control your ships to complete them. Once you send them on a commission mission, you just wait for the results. If your ships match the conditions, they can engage in commission missions lasting 1 to 8 hours. In exchange, you will receive gold, oil, wisdom boxes, loot boxes, and, most importantly, XP points.

To be more specific, the duration of the commission decided the overall output in terms of EXP. Try to focus on completing any 8-hour commission that you are assigned, and ideally start them when you’re about to exit from the game. You can also take up small missions such as 1-hour as the reward to ratio is pretty good in them. Commissions give tons of EXP. One 8-hour mission can give you 8000 EXP, a significant bump for your level count. 

Daily Ops

Daily Operations tasks are another XP resource. These are comparable to commission assignments, but more complex and, most importantly, time-limited. Each operation task is active for an average of 20 minutes. So, if you can’t start the work within that time frame, it will be removed from your list. These operational tasks can usually take 5-8 hours but they do provide a ton of experience points. We would recommend creating 3 distinct fleets: one for commission, one for story missions, and one for daily ops. 

Playing Azur Lane on a bigger screen of your PC or Laptop with BlueStacks without worrying about battery drainage and smooth gameplay, is highly recommended.