Shadow of War: The Best (& Fastest) Way To Farm XP in Act 4

After the big conclusion to Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, the game continues into a fourth post-game act, with plenty of new battles to complete before Talion can earn the “true” ending of the game. This is a long, slow act — but, if you’re low level and want to grind fast XP almost effortlessly, some exhausted fans managed to come up with a great way to earn tons of XP the quickest way possible. It’s all about losing instead of winning.

In Shadow of War, you reprise your role as Talion the Ranger, with the ghostly Celebrimbor occupying space in your brain. As a duo, you set out to retake Mordor from Lord Sauron, mind-controlling Orcs and assassinating Generals as you work your way up to the top of the evil army’s ladder. Along the way, you’ll need to gain levels — don’t worry, it doesn’t get really tough until the post-game.

More Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor guides on Gameranx:

• Middle-Earth: Shadow of War – All Ithildin Poem Puzzles | Solutions Guide
• Middle-Earth: Shadow of War – Sign-Up To WBPlay For +3% XP Boost 
• Middle-Earth: Shadow of War – Unlock These Early Skills For A Better In-Game Experience
• Middle-Earth: Shadow of War – How To Get The True Ending | Act 4 Guide
• Middle-Earth: Shadow of War – DirectX Errors, Blurriness & Low FPS | PC Fixes Guide

Act 4 XP Farming Guide

The trick to gaining lots of levels in Act 4 is this — losing instead of winning. Instead of successful defending your keeps, you’ll earn far more experience retaking a fort than you will successfully defending it.

• How To Earn Fast XP In Act 4:
  • For successfully defending a fort, you’ll earn about 50k~ XP.
  • For failing to defend a fort and then retaking it, you’ll earn 160k~ XP.
    • That’s in the ball park of two levels.
  • For more XP, add White Gems to your armor for a small XP buff.
    • Upgrade those for even more XP.

For losing a fort, you do not lose Warchiefs or Overlords. Overlords are captured, so if you want to keep them, you’ll have to complete a rescue mission later. You can send out Orcs to save him.

• To make things easier, replace your good Overlords with useless ones before losing. There is (currently) a bug that makes the rescue mission sometimes never appear. You don’t want to lose your best Uruks, so leave some spaces open and swap terrible Overlords into your fort.

And that’s literally all it takes. For every fort defense quest, simply lose the fort and retake it for x3 the regular amount of XP you would earn. That’s tons of levels you wouldn’t earn otherwise. No loot crates required.