XDefiant’s weapon progression issue is getting a double XP bandaid

Get your weapons leveled up now.

Phantom faction in XDefiant.
Tech warriors. Screenshot by Dot Esports

Since XDefiant launched on May 21, players have been complaining about various problems with the game. Among them, one of the main issues is that leveling up weapons is tediously slow. Fortunately, Ubisoft is releasing an update this weekend that should (temporarily) alleviate the problem.

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But before you get excited, it’s nothing more than a double XP weekend. It begins today at noon CT time and lasts until the same time on Tuesday. With that in mind, if you were planning to grind XDefiant this weekend, you’ll be able to level up your weapons in a blink of an eye.

Or at least we hope it’ll be quick. An Ubisoft developer explained on May 22 that increasing a level’s weapon by one requires 3,500 XP. One kill, on the other hand, only awards 100 experience.

XDefiant character aiming down the sights of their weapon while running.
Finally, the leveling won’t take so long. Screenshot by Dot Esports

So, prior to the XP boost, you needed to take down 35 enemies with one gun to level it up. During the weekend, it’ll be 17-and-a-half kills. This isn’t a whole lot—you can easily reach this number in one game. We do wish it was a permanent change, though, not only a weekend boost.

If you’ve tried Ubisoft’s latest FPS, you’ll know this a much-needed response to a burning issue. Leveling up weapons has felt tiresome so far, with players often pointing out how much XDefiant encourages grinding. And we can’t disagree. So far, I’ve enjoyed XDefiant for a few hours, but I was only able to play with two guns, since I needed to focus on leveling them up.

We do need to give credit where it’s due—a double XP weekend is better than nothing. XDefiant is reportedly being enjoyed by a massive number of players; within hours of launch, it hit 1 million players, according to esports.gg.

Author
Image of Mateusz Miter
Mateusz Miter
Freelance Writer at Dot Esports. Mateusz previously worked for numerous outlets and gaming-adjacent companies, including ESL. League of Legends or CS:GO? He loves them both. In fact, he wonders which game he loves more every day. He wanted to go pro years ago, but somewhere along the way decided journalism was the more sensible option—and he was right.