Your first hero choice is very important on how you level up all four heroes to level 50. Some heroes provide the easiest path forward, while others make a bit of a challenge. Keep in mind that this guide is made thinking that you, the reader, will be soloing the game.

Squire is probably the optimal hero to start with. He brings with him the best walls in the game, a decent damage tower, okay air defense, and many helpful abilities that keep his towers alive.


Towers

Cannonball Tower - This is an average tower. It will suffice for leveling purposes, as it will work for every map through hard mode very efficiently. Place these behind your walls and watch as all of the enemies die. It can also attack air enemies, but not as well as the Ballista. This along with your Spike Blockades will get you to 50 no problem.

Spike Blockade - This is the best wall in the game. This is the main reason why Squire is the optimal choice over Apprentice for your first hero to level to 50. With the Hearty Blockade stat on your gear, your walls will carry you to victory, as no ground enemies can break it.

Ballista - This tower is a good tower for air defense if you do not already have a Skyguard Tower from the Monk. However, since this is your first hero, the Ballista is fantastic for those pesky wyverns that you cannot seem to get down with your melee ranged sword. Place these in places where wyverns will fly into, and do not use too many, as they take up 50 DU each.

Target Dummy - Useless, do not use this tower, it only takes up space that could be used for other towers, this is not useful for leveling at all.

Important Ability

Provoke - This ability can save your towers if they happen to get low. It draws every enemy near you to you, forcing them to turn around, follow, and attack you.

Apprentice is the next best hero to start with, behind Squire. His towers cannot take many hits, including his walls, but they do do more damage than the Squire's. This is an even tradeoff, but Squire is still easier to get to 50 and support your other characters with his very high health towers.


Towers

Fireball Tower - The fireball tower is incredibly useful for leveling. It does high damage, it attacks often, it does what you want it to. However, it has little health, so be wary on where you place them, as it can get destroyed fairly easily. It can also attack airborne enemies.

Arcane Barrier - The Arcane Barrier is a wall, much like that of Spike Blockade. It has much less health, however. This the the main reason why Apprentice is the second best first 50, as he has a wall. Walls are incredible in every situation, and will carry you.

Frostbite Tower - Frostbite towers are an essential part of any Apprentice build. With the Frosty Power stat, these boost the DPS of any towers that hit the area that is chilled. They also slow and eventually freeze all enemies that they lock on to, includung wyverns, which can slow them down enough for you to auto attack them down.

Earth Tower - This tower has a very long lange, and a very slow attack speed. It is too slow and expensive to use over fireball and frostbite towers, so avoid this unless you find it abosultely necessary to have that extra range.

I am a believer that this is the third best hero to level to 50 first. She has high damaging towers, as well as some crowd control built into her towers. She does not have a wall, though, making her a very poor choice to level to 50 first.


Towers

Explosive Trap - Explosive trap does a lot of damage very quickly. Place many of these to have them trigger multiple times on the enemies. They do not slow down enemies, so you will have to rely on their damage as well as your own DPS.

Geyser Trap - Geyser traps provide CC to the enemies temporarily, but it is mainly only good as a combo piece with Monk's Skyguard Tower and Lightning Aura.

Poison Dart Tower - Poison Dart Towers cost too much, have too little range, and barely attack airborne enemies. Do not use this, especially with the lack of walls.

Balloon Trap - This trap in my opinion costs too much for its effect, but it could possibly be useful for leveling to 50 first solo. It covers a decent sized area in lava and enemies that walk through take fire damage. Once again, it does nothing to stop the enemies from marching to your crystal.

Monk is the worst choice to level to 50 first in my opinion. All of Monk's towers are useless alone, and need other heroes to make them useful, atleast until you get very high level gear. Do not level Monk to 50 first if you plan on soloing. The problem with Monk is that he is only good if you have all four heroes already level 50.


Towers

Lightning Aura - Lightning aura alone is not good at all, as enemies walk right through it. You will need a lot of these right next to each other to ever think of killing things, and you might run out of DU to do so. These generally only work well if comboed with walls, which Monk does not have.

Boost Aura - Boost Aura is a waste of DU, which could be used effectively by any other tower in the game. It buffs towers around it minorly, not enough to be noticed. Do not place these.

Serenity Aura - Serenity Aura is near useless until you hit level 50, but even then, you will need very high level gear to make it useful, as well as a special stat that makes it so enemies explode inside of it for a lot of damage.

Skyguard Tower - This is the tower that will not necessarily help you while leveling this hero, but will greatly help your other heroes in their leveling journeys. It covers all airborne enemies is a very large circle, so place these near objectives and don't worry about airborne enemies for the game.

Pick Squire or Apprentice first, preferably Squire.

Using the hero suggested up there, complete the campaign! This will get you to level 25, and you will get a legendary weapon for your class after conquering the game's boss, Betsy. This will open up free play, where you will make your way from 25-50.

Free Play is where you will be making your way from 25-50. Assuming you are soloing, you will want to play at the appropriate iPWR maps, or 20 iPWR higher maps. These will yield the best and easiest experience for you.

There are various ways to get more experience in Dungeon Defenders II. They will be explained in this section of the guide.

From Gran Masta, you can buy two 20% Experience Bonus medium spheres, equippable at level 25 and 30. These add a total of 40% bonus experience, which is essential for leveling quickly. They are relatively cheap, as well.

Every day, you can complete five different maps on Free Play mode for bonus experience. The first four wins yield 50% extra experience, while the fifth yields an extra 100% experience. Utilize these to the fullest for the most efficient leveling.

For every hero in your deck that is level 50, you get a 35% experience bonus that stacks. This means you can get 115% bonus experience if you have three level 50 heroes in your hero deck. This is only useful for leveling your second, third, and so on heroes to 50.

If you press "i" And then click collections, and then click challenges, you will see a list of the various challenges you can complete. They are very simple, and generally just require you to play the game. They give quite a lot of experience and gold upon completion, so consider doing these to level efficiently.

Most challenges require you to hit enemies with your abilities, or do damage with your towers, so you will eventually get them, and when you do, you will be rolling in with the experience, and bonus gold.

Quests are only available until you hit 50 for the first time. Quests have you on a mission to level up to a certain level, and then talking to an NPC to see what you have unlocked. These give experience, and well as teach you the more advanced parts of the game. You cannot avoid doing these, so they are just free experience.

Daily Missions can be a daunting task if you are not yet level 50, but they are still doable. They give hefty gold, and a lot of experience. Do these whenever you can, and if you can't, reroll the mission. It is definitely worth it.

Since you get five daily experiene bonuses, a top 5 maps for experience is necessary. These should be done for the most experience every day. A quick note: Littleroot Forest is a very high yielding experience map, but it is currently bugged to where you cannot get the daily bonus experience from it.

Throne Room

Gates of Dragonfall

Dragonfall Bazaar

Little-Horn Valley

Greystone Plaza

All of these maps are easy to do, finish quickly, and give the most experience out of all of the maps. They are all also very soloable, which makes other options not as good for this list. Do these maps every day for the most efficient leveling possible.

Once you get your first level 50, the rest become much easier. From this point on, you can run your other heroes through hard maps no problem. At this point, doing medium and easy maps is pointless, and only serves to boon you, as they do not give nearly as much experience.

END GAME MAPS GIVE FAR LESS EXPERIENCE THAN ANY FREE PLAY MODE. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO LEVEL YOUR CHARACTERS IN END GAME MODES.