In the Tribble/F2P discussions there was often the extremely fast leveling claimed to occur currently - the mythical folks who reportedly level to VA in a day, or a weekend.

So my question is - especially on Fed side - how is it done? If my experience from Klingon side leveling / grinding is any indication, the fastest way would be grinding exploration missions with a few selcted sequences of FE (like skirmish + turn the wheel) thrown in every now and then.

But doing that you can achieve a rank per weekend, if you are somehwat fast. I assume 10 exploration missions per level, so per rank you need at 100 mission with ~10 minutes, ending up with about 18 hours play time per rank - which to press into a weekend is already a steep effort.

Now to get from start to VA you would probably need 5 times that much, plus some time to start the character.
makes 5 weeks from where I stand. faster with q, but he rarely appears for more than 2 days.

So my question to the power levelers - how do you do it?

fastest i have been able to do it was when game released. I went from start to then level cap in 3 and a half days. was no trick to it i just stayed online and cranked content out as fast as i could. only thing i lacked during that time period was sleep lol.

I suspect it might be possible to level in a weekend just playing the game by yourself and grinding through the content, although it might mean staying up all or most of the weekend.

As for leveling even more quickly, the methods that I have heard are:

1) Using foundry missions that are either designed or incidentally able to give you large amounts of XP, some giving you as many as a half a level in about ten minutes without any boosts.

2) Playing certain content on elite with a full team, which allows you to combine everyone's xp.

3) Combining the two methods with various forms of XP boosts, such as Q weekends and c-store items.

On holodeck you can level up in less than 24 hours /played, but that is 24 hours straight. I once was a power gamer and I couldn't do this.

Ok. Care to put in some substance?
How?

I always try to take heavy advantage of Q weekends. Q weekends are not for fun, they're for levelling.

Leveling with:

-Exploration Missions. For Lieutenant the XP output is a bit low, so there you probably go faster with normal story content
- Patrols. Patrols will give you XP for every single patrol and for completing the whole mission. They are mostly space combat or scan 5 missions, so fast and easy XP. Go get a VA friend, invite him, let him match your level and go with elite mode, this will give you a lot more XP. For KDF this can be done with the Pi Canis sorties and Empire Defense. Empire Defense will give good XP the first time you do them, after that you'll need more rounds to finish the mission, which takes time.
- Q double XP weekend
- 1 and 8 hour Skill boost: buy them cheap from the exchange and use once you hit Commander. Before that the skill points you get are quite low, so would be a waste. If there's a Q weekend you can start using them from the beginning though.
- Red Alerts: That's the best of all. Once you hit Lt. 6 go fight Borg, but make sure to be always on a team. If nobody invites you, start 1 yourself. Some people claim that lowbies should stay away, but the RAs are made for leveling. The team thing is important here, or you won't get any skill points for kills due to your low firepower. Do NOT go probe farming, try to help win the mission please
- Featured Episodes. The first time you do them is ok, most of them are longer than exploration missions, but if you hurry it's ok. After that, Cold Comfort and Spin the Wheel are good for quick XPs.

Normal storyline missions are usually not that good for fast leveling. They tend to be longer (which on its own is a good thing, contentwise) but some give decent XP, so it depends on the mission.
Just remember, don't go solely for Red Alerts, you'll only get a small amount of Merits to train your officers out of them.

Edit: Forgot 1. Once you unlocked them, do your dailies. They are fast and easy.

I expect my leveling from Tutorial to VA took no more than 48 hours.

How? Easy: If we ignore the chatting, fleet establishing, and all the other stuffs i ran around doing, and focus only on missions and DSE/Explores, and the time it takes to travel between systems, it is actually quite easy.

KDF side it is a little harder, since there are just enough Story missions nessacary to level, while FED has enough for several missions beyond maxing level.

only way i see you leveling in a day or weekend is a lot of XP booster and stay up as one said most of the wekend i know for a fact you can do it in a week playing 16/7 same for geting the best stuff that is another week

and this was be for xp booster and FE and foundary misson

so ya i can see this

You dont need XP Boosters....

A well equipped team, yank up the diff to elite, and then go...