How do you level up fast in Overwatch 2? Blizzard’s hero shooter has gone free to play with the release of Overwatch 2, and part of the brand new free-to-play model is that many cosmetics (and even heroes) are locked behind a new Battle Pass. Instead of player or account levels, there is now simply the Battle Pass level, and players will no doubt be racing through the Battle Pass to unlock everything as quickly as possible.
You can earn XP simply by completing matches, but there’s a far, far better method if you want to really level up fast in Overwatch 2. We’ll go over everything you need to know in order to quickly earn Battle Pass XP below.
How to level up fast in Overwatch 2
There are two main ways to get XP and level up in Overwatch 2:
- Complete Daily, Weekly, and Seasonal Challenges
- Complete matches
Completing matches is the most straightforward way of earning XP, but each match only earns you a small amount of XP for your Battle Pass level. It’s far, far better to focus on completing Challenges instead, as these will net you thousands of XP per day if you complete them regularly.
As you’ll see, many of these Challenges are specific to certain heroes. So to level up fast you should play lots of different heroes, not just your mains. Other than that, it really is just as simple as checking out your Challenges from the main menu in-game, and working towards completing them.
Challenges in Overwatch 2 are broken into four categories: Daily, Weekly, Seasonal, and Lifetime. Here’s a closer look at how they work.
Completing Daily Challenges in Overwatch 2
Daily Challenges are the most immediately lucrative of all the Challenges in Overwatch 2, and the easiest to complete. There are 6 Daily Challenges to choose from, but only the first 3 you complete will give you any XP. This means you can pick and choose which Daily Challenges to focus on each day. It also means once you’ve completed your first 3, you should forget about completing the rest if you want to level up fast. Focus instead on completing your Weekly and Seasonal Challenges instead.
You’ll earn 3,000 XP per completed Daily Challenge, up to a maximum of 9,000 XP per day. This means that completing 3 Daily Challenges each day of the week will earn you 63,000 XP in total. Each Tier of the Battle Pass takes 10,000 XP to reach, so that’s an easy 6 levels of the Battle Pass completed simply through completing your Daily Challenges each day.
Here are some examples of Daily Challenges you might encounter in Overwatch 2:
- First Win Of The Day – Win a game.
- Open Season – Complete 3 games in Open Queue.
- What Doesn’t Kill Me – Mitigate 2,000 damage without dying.
- Better With Friends – Complete 3 games in a group.
Completing Weekly Challenges in Overwatch 2
Weekly Challenges take longer to complete than Daily Challenges, but each one is worth more, and you can earn rewards from all of them, unlike Daily Challenges where you’re limited to earning rewards for just your first 3 per day.
Each Weekly Challenge gives you 5,000 XP upon completion, and with 11 of these challenges available every week, you can earn up to 55,000 XP – enough for 5 Battle Pass tiers. What’s even better is a lot of these Weekly Challenges overlap with Daily Challenges. For example, you might have a Daily Challenge to win a match, and a Weekly Challenge to win 10 matches. In which case you can work on completing both challenges at the same time.
Here are a few examples of Weekly Challenges in Overwatch 2:
- Playing To Win – Win 10 games.
- The Best Defense – Deal/Boost a total of 125,000 damage. (Total Mayhem doesn’t count).
- Hero Mastery – Complete 7 games as heroes NOT in your top 3 most played (All Modes).
- Cleaning House – Earn 20 Team Kills.
Completing Seasonal Challenges in Overwatch 2
Seasonal Challenges are a good secondary source of XP to supplement your Daily and Weekly Challenges. There are many more Seasonal Challenges to get through (41 in total for Season 1), and each one earns you either 500 or 1,000 XP – with the exception of the Experienced Competitor and Veteran Competitor challenges, which reward you with 3,000 and 5,000 XP respectively.
Seasonal Challenges often are hero-specific, meaning in order to be as efficient as possible when levelling through the Battle Pass, you’ll need to play as lots of different heroes rather than just maining one or two heroes all the time.
Here are some examples of Seasonal Challenges in Overwatch 2:
- Veni, Vidi, Vici – Win 3 games in Colosseo. (1,000 XP)
- Ancestral Empowerment – Earn 5 Eliminations while buffed by Kiriko’s Ultimate. (500 XP)
- I Make My Own Fate – Escape Orisa’s Ultimate. (500 XP)
- In For A Shock – Deal 1,000 damage with your secondary fire as Winston. (500 XP)
- Season 1: Open Queue Competitor – Win 7 games in Competitive Play’s Open Queue. (1,000 XP)
Completing Lifetime Challenges in Overwatch 2
Finally there are Lifetime Challenges, which can only ever be earned once. Most Lifetime Challenges reward you with titles and cosmetics, but the first 9 challenges earn you Battle Pass XP. Each one is designed to reward your first win of a certain type – for example, your first win with a Support Hero, or your first Team Deathmatch win.
Each of these starting Lifetime Challenges will earn you 500 XP, so completing all 9 will earn you a total of 4,500 XP. It’s not much – in fact it’s half what you’d normally get per day just from completing your 3 Daily Challenges – but every little helps, particularly for new players.
Here are all the Lifetime Challenges which reward Battle Pass XP:
- First Tank Win – Win a game as a Tank hero. Practice vs AI counts.
- First Damage Win – Win a game as a Damage hero. Practice vs AI counts.
- First Support Win – Win a game as a Support hero. Practice vs AI counts.
- First All Roles Win – Win a game as All Roles in Role Queue.
- First FFA Deathmatch Win – Win a Free-For-All Deathmatch game.
- First Team Deathmatch Win – Win a Team Deathmatch game.
- First CTF Win – Win a CTF game.
- First Elimination Win – Win an Elimination game.
- First Duel Win – Win a Duel game.
How quickly can I complete the Battle Pass in Overwatch 2?
Each tier of the Battle Pass in Overwatch 2 takes 10,000 XP to complete, and with a total of 80 tiers, that means you’ll need to earn 800,000 XP over the course of a season in order to earn everything in the Battle Pass without spending any real money.
Assuming you complete every Daily and Weekly challenge on offer as they come up, you’ll be earning 63,000 + 55,000 = 118,000 XP per week. That’s just under 15% of the total Battle Pass in a week.
Add to this the extra XP you’ll be earning simply by completing matches and by earning the odd Seasonal Challeng reward along the way, and it’ll likely take a dedicated player 6-7 weeks to complete the Battle Pass without spending any money.
Of course, if that sounds like too much work and you don’t mind spending money, you can purchase each tier of the Battle Pass for 200 Apex Coins.
That’s everything you need to know in order to start racing through those Battle Pass levels. If you want to know exactly how much you need to level up to unlock a specific character, check out our guide on how to unlock heroes in Overwatch 2. If you’re just returning to Overwatch with the release of the sequel and this all feels very new and overwhelming, don’t fear. We’ve compiled a list of the biggest Overwatch 2 changes since the original to bring you up to speed.
