History Main / LevelGrinding

* ''LightNovel/AkuyakuReijouLevel99WatashiWaUraBossDesuGaMaouDeWaArimasen'' is about a GamerChick who [[NextLifeAsAFictionalCharacter reincarnates]] into Yumiela, the {{Superboss}} of a combo otome game/RPG. She applies her gaming attitude to her new life, fighting monsters every day for years, to the point where she starts the game story proper at level 99. She tries to get the army and her fellow classmates to adopt these strategies, but they're terrified at the idea of deliberately risking their lives.

* This was necessary in the MostDangerousVideoGame that was ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline''. The minimum safety margin is to be at least ten levels higher than the floor you're on; so if you're on Floor 40, you need to be at least Level 50. By the time the Clearers hit the Level 75 Boss, most of them are around level 90. Due to diminishing returns, basic grinding was inevitable.

** ''Ninja Gaiden 2'' also has an easy way to grind as much essence as you need to max out every weapon and buy as many healing items as you can hold: in one part of the AirborneAircraftCarrier level, you come across a long hallway that's blocked from one end by laser beams: if you try to pass them, you naturally take damage and an alarm is triggered, which summons some TAC Ninjas to take care of you. However, the alarm trigger is actually separate from getting hit by lasers, meaning that if you inch your way right next to the lasers, you can summon as many of them as you want without running out of health in the progress. Not only that, but the ninjas enter the room via a long hallway and take their sweet time getting to you, which easily allows you to kill them in a single [[ChargeAttack Ultimate Technique]] from the [[SinisterScythe Eclipse Scythe]].

The term "grinding" refers to having to repeat the same action or group of actions over and over in order to gain money or the equivalent, power-ups or extra health. One can take that "up to eleven" by grinding for the purpose in order to raise one's experience points or one's character level.

* ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex''

* In ''LightNovel/TheRisingOfTheShieldHero'' the awakening of Cal Mira Island spawns a large number of monsters with increased XP rewards. As such the Heroes and other adventurers flock to it and grind their levels to the point of diminishing return.

* ''LightNovel/AkuyakuReijouLevel99WatashiWaUraBossDesuGaMaouDeWaArimasen'' is about a GamerChick who reincarnates into Yumiela, the {{Superboss}} of a combo otome game/RPG. She applies her gaming attitude to her new life, fighting monsters every day for years, to the point where she starts the game story proper at level 99. She tries to get the army and her fellow classmates to adopt these strategies, but they're terrified at the idea of deliberately risking their lives.

* The basic premise of the descriptively-titled ''LightNovel/IveBeenKillingSlimesForThreeHundredYearsAndMaxedOutMyLevel'': the protagonist reincarnates as an [[CompleteImmortality Completely Immortal]] witch in an RPGMechanicsVerse who kills a few slimes every time she goes down to the village, with her killing around 25 per day as exercise and to earn money. When she finally thinks to check her stats 3 centuries later, it turns out she's level 99, has a dozen apocalyptic spells she never knew she'd learned (she'd only used the ability she started with, [[KnowYourVines identifying plants to make medicine]]), an additional ability that doubles the amount of exp she gets from killing slimes[[note]]It simply adds 2 EXP points to whatever EXP she gets from killing a monster, but since slimes are only worth 2 EXP to begin with, that means it doubles how much she gets from them[[/note]], and her numbers are so high that she curbstomps a dragon while trying out one of those spells for the first time. To give an idea of just how long she grinded for, the guild receptionist she talks to calculates that an adventurer would have to kill ''4380 large dragons'' to reach max level.

* ''LightNovel/IveBeenKillingSlimesForThreeHundredYearsAndMaxedOutMyLevel'': As the title implies, level grinding is the source of protagonist Azusa Aizawa's absurdly high power, which is such that despite supposedly being a SquishyWizard she can defeat dragons bare-handed with ease. However, Azusa did this entirely by accident, as she only killed Slimes every day for exercise and because the magic stones they drop were a source of income. It's just that doing it for 300 years plus possessing a passive ability that increases her experience gains totaled out to over 10 million experience points.

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* In ''VideoGame/ZeldaIITheAdventureOfLink'', the only side-scrolling installment, Link has 3 skills (Magic, Life and Attack) which can each reach level 8. Doing this in the first playthrough requires a bit of grinding.
** This game was also one of the first action games to introduce leveling and XP, and the developers' inexperience with leveling as a mechanic shows a bit in the game. You lose all experience towards your next level when you run out of lives, which means that grinding low-level creatures becomes the default method for leveling due to its safety. Completing a dungeon means an automatic level-up regardless of the XP needed, which means that with the expanding amounts of XP needed for later level-ups, it's better to level-up naturally up to at least six-levels from the maximum, and then just go back and finally beat the bosses of each dungeon to get the remaining six or fewer level-ups. This adds a bit of uneven pacing to the game as you've gone through over 2/3 of your level-ups before you beat each boss. Most enemies give only trivial amounts of xp (such as 2 pts when you need 9,000), and some give ''no'' XP except for when they hurt you, and then they'll ''drain'' xp from you.
** A convenient, if risky, method of early leveling up is killing Bubbles, even in the first Palace. They respawn infinitely, they hold still when you hit them, and they give you a whopping 50 Experience Points each. All they ask in return is sore fingers and whatever magic they eat off you if you screw up. Having the downward thrust makes this substantially easier if you time your jump right.
** You can also skip returning the crystals to the palaces until the last minute, making getting those 5000, 6000, 7000 and 8000 experience levels a lot easier.

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* ''VideoGame/XMenLegends'' has the Danger Room accessible from any safe point wherein a player can spend a lot of time grinding by purposefully losing teamwork missions. The mission simply restarts with all of your newly acquired goodies and XP intact with none of the damage. In relatively little time, you can use it to level up enough to beat whatever boss that gives you trouble.
* ''VideoGame/{{The 7th Saga}}'' for the SNES is known for the insane amount of time it takes to level up -- the monsters are difficult and the experience is low. Plus if you level up too much, the game is {{Unwinnable}} due to an oversight: the other potential [=PCs=] level up as you do. At level 42, the cleric learns a spell that restores all his HP -- and for no good reason, also all his MP. He's essentially immortal at that point. The other potential [=PCs=] also sometimes steal your {{Plot Coupon}}s, requiring you to duel to take them. If the cleric ganks one late in the game, he's literally impossible to beat, since the AI isn't dumb enough to forget it has healing spells.
* You won't come out of ''VideoGame/{{Albion}}'''s first big dungeon alive, unless you spend a few days on the previous island, doing nothing but slaughtering the local wildlife, and visiting the local healer for occasional free potions you can sell later.
* ''[[VideoGame/BaldursGate Baldur's Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal]]'' has one of the easiest level grinds in RPG history. It doesn't even need the player be there to kill the monsters. Once you reach the city surrounded by attacking giants, go to the ramparts near the gates. Equip all the infinite ammunition items you have available and have those characters set to attack automatically with ranged weapons on aggressive creatures using the game's script feature. Other characters in your group should be set not to attack (no sense in wasting ammunition). Once they start attacking the offscreen (and defenseless) giants and killing them unopposed, go watch a movie. Return later to see all of your characters now at the level {{cap}}.
* The first game in the ''[[VideoGame/TheBardsTaleTrilogy Bard's Tale]]'' series features an JustForFun/{{egregious}} midgame level-grind. A repeatable encounter with 396 midlevel fighters -- certain death for a low-level party, but no particular threat to a party with good armor and group-effect spells -- nets the party 65535 experience points for a victory; as that suggestive number implies, XP per battle are capped and no other battle even comes near the cap. It thus becomes an obvious strategy for players to repeat this one encounter over and over instead of seeking out more dangerous and less rewarding fights.
* As the battle system of ''VideoGame/BatenKaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean'' is card-based, it's not nearly as important to have a high level or great stats as it is to have a well-rounded, efficient deck. However, since most of the best cards are only randomly dropped by enemies, the net effect is the same: a lot of time spent wandering around in the wilderness killing random monsters until your deck is up to par.
** You can also explicitly grind 'recipes' in order to cause specific cards to appear. This is the only reliable method to acquire good revival items (such as the absolutely vital Sacred Wine: 100% Revive + 500 HP).
* ''VideoGame/CapellasPromise'' doesn't require too much grinding to beat the main story, but the postgame will require the party to use Recursion stones, which lowers their level by three if the main character is at a high enough level. The party essentially has to use these stones to level up far more than the cap would normally allow, all to beat the insanely powerful bonus bosses.
* ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' allows the party to access 65,000,000 BC as soon as it reaches the End of Time. Once there, the party can go to the Dacytl's Nest, an area that the party won't visit on the OneTrueSequence until several dungeons later, and fight enemy parties that give out twice the experience the enemies in the dungeon the party is ''supposed'' to visit next. The combination of tricks like these and non-random enemy encounters make ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' a ''very'' easy game to level grind on.
** ''VideoGame/ChronoCross'', the sequel manages to avert LevelGrinding hard, you gain stats and bonus's whenever you defeat a boss, ensuring that you are always at the level you need to be to take on the appropriate boss ([[NewGamePlus on the first play through anyway]]).
* ''VideoGame/{{Contact}}'' has this out the wazoo. Potentially, anyway. If you want OneHundredPercentCompletion, you'll have to raise every single stat to level 100, get every item, and for good measure fill up the treasure and food screens. Oh, and equip the most powerful decals you can find, if you feel like it.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Crystalis}}'', you will find yourself unable to advance to certain parts of the game or damage certain enemies unless you have achieved a certain level.
* All the Digimon World games sans the first one fall into this. The DS games, however, take this to never seen extents. The random encounter rate in these games is fixed, but very high, and no way to repel enemies. The areas you explore are very large, with no map whatsoever. Plus, the enemies give very low experience, while the experience needed in order to level up grows exponentially (ironically, beating the weakest enemy in the game is enough to level anything from 1 to 3). The later bosses have much higher stats and skills than you'd have without Korean MMORPG-levels of grinding. A simple test of beating the game with no random battles and following the right paths in the maze-like dungeons shows that the main story can be beaten in two hours or so, and the post-story mandatory missions in another hour or so. In a game that a proper raised [=PvP=] team may require over 100 hours of gameplay, just by playing random battles and Farmville-like training.
** It shows something when, even if you use the code to start the battle with only 1 EXP point remaining to the next level, it still can take more than one hour to have a digimon reach Lv. 99 ONCE. Because if you want to max you stats, you'll be leveling from 1 to at least 70 several times, to say nothing of using the cross DNA evolution to learn skills you normally wouldn't be able to.
* The ''Franchise/{{Disgaea}}'' series keep grinding entertaining by use of the Item Worlder, which provides unlimited randomly generated dungeons while also boosting your character's equipment. You also have some choice in the level of the enemies you fight since they are relative to the power of the item.
* ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'' included a pretty boring grind: if you don't slaughter the entire Dalish settlement, the Elven emissary will appear in your party camp and accept "crafting materials" to upgrade Elven troops' equipment for the FinalBattle. Now, "crafting materials" include Elfroots, which are available for 60 copper pieces in ''unlimited quantity'' at the Elven camp, and each batch of 89 pieces (called "Give all Elfroots") nets you ''880 XP'' (meaning it costs only 112 gold to grind from level 0 to the level {{cap}} -- roughly an eighth of the transaction volume you can potentially have in single playthrough). So, just go to the Dalish camp, buy an inventory full of Elfroots, return to the party camp and grind. Not that there's much reason to do so, as you'll probably be about level 20 by the time you unlock this option and the cap is only level 25. The Grey Warden, in fact, is probably better served by not leveling (or at least not spending the skill and ability points gained by leveling up) until you progress on to the expansion so you can buy more of the powerful new abilities that get unlocked.
* ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'':
** In ''VideoGame/DragonQuestI'', wandering too far from the first castle before gaining a level or two from Slimes will result in a quick, depressing death at the hands of... a Spooky.
** The grinding is most apparent in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIV''. Due to the unique chapter set-up, you'll have to do the pre-journey grind five separate times.
** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIII'' for the GBC has 150+ medals to collect. If you want to obtain all gold medals, prepare to not just fight lots of monsters, but to make ''sure'' you keep the ''right kind'' alive to the end of the fight so the right medal drops. And if you do get them all, the game's most powerful dragon gives you the "ultimate reward": He says he's bored and goes to sleep.
** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVI'''s JobSystem uses the number of battles won rather than experience to increase a job's rank, but the catch is that these battles have to be against a challenging enemy (no going back to the very first area to beat on slimes, unless you somehow recruited a level 1 character). This is done by giving every region a hidden LevelCap where battles no longer count for characters of that level or higher. The earliest location where the cap is 99 is the Spiegelspire, itself reached late-game.
** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIX'' takes this UpToEleven. Each character can reach Level 99 in each job. There are 16 jobs. For comparison, beating the final boss is feasible at Level 50. After completing the main game, Level 99 characters can restart at Level 1, but keep all of their skills. This is the only way to maximize all of the many in-game skills.
* ''VideoGame/EarthBoundBeginnings'' is hit pretty badly with this; because the game was never tested for balancing purposes, it suffers from an annoyingly steep difficulty curve that forces the player to grind experience each time the plot advances to a new area. This is particularly necessary when Lloyd and Ana join the party at level 1: those characters will need to gain some levels just to have a chance of surviving areas that are unlocked at about the same time.
* While it's for the most part unnecessary in ''VideoGame/EarthBound'', the game gives several good opportunities:
** After defeating a sanctuary guardian, ''all'' the enemies in the area flee from you regardless of your level compared to theirs. Engaging an enemy from behind (practically a given since they're running away) either guarantees an extra attack or an outright free kill, and since the enemies are still giving decent amounts of experience it's a golden opportunity to gain a couple levels.
** Foppys and Fobbys, which attack in large groups, are weak, respawn readily, and give sizeable experience and money rewards and often a rather useful Psy Caramel upon defeat, were put into the game ''intentionally'' for this purpose to bolster your level before facing [[GoddamnedBoss Master Belch]] and [[ThatOneBoss Electro Spectre]], respectively.
* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls''
** In general, with a few quirks varying by game, the series' leveling system follows the logic of having successful uses of a skill go toward increasing that skill's level. (Sneaking around will increase your Sneak skill, casting Destruction spells will increase your Destruction skill, etc.) Then, every ten increases of a skill level goes toward increasing the character's overall level. However, some skills (mostly those outside of standard combat-related skills) require intentional grinding, such as Enchanting and Alchemy. If you want to grind them, you'll need to acquire/purchase all of the necessary components and then use those skills over and over.
** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'''s horrifically broken LevelScaling system adds a major complication. Unless you go the full blown {{Munchkin}} route to [[MinMaxing Min Max]] your skills and keep careful track to avoid deadly EmptyLevels (which severely ''weaken'' the PlayerCharacter in comparison to the world's enemies that scale only to your level), it's recommended that you follow the strange practice of deliberate ''under''-leving. IE, increase your skills up to and beyond the point where you ''could'' level up, but don't. Enemies will remain scaled to your level, but your ''skills'' will be far beyond what you should have at that level. As sleeping is the means of leveling up, this leads to the world being saved from a horde of feeble LegionsOfHell by a strangely competent insomniac. Additionally, a first-level character in ''Oblivion'' can become the Archmage of the Mage Guild, Master of the Fighters Guild, leader of the Thieves Guild, Listener of the Dark Brotherhood, and Grand Champion of the Arena. At the same time. The disadvantage to this is that the equipment and rewards available will always be of the lowest quality, but it sure beats leveling up only to find yourself getting demolished by suddenly-even-stronger enemies.
** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'' overhauls the series' standard system to focus on skill grinding AND ONLY skill grinding. There are 18 skill trees; 6 for each of the FighterMageThief classes, one of each for crafting, and two of each for defense. To level up a skill, players simply have to perform a successful application of a skill (hit the target, deal or deflect damage, buy, sell, and craft items, etc.). Each time a skill is leveled up, the player character gains an experience point; get ten of these and the player character levels up, getting the option to increase 10 points of Health, Magic, or Stamina, and earning a skill perk. Once again, leveling up non-combat skills alone can lead to EmptyLevels, but it is much harder to accidentally do than in ''Oblivion''. In the 1.9 patch, players are given the option to "Legendary" any of their maxed skills, resetting it back to 15/100 but retaining the experience points and perks earned from the skill.
* In ''VideoGame/EtrianOdyssey'', trying to 'skip' to the labyrinth's next floor without having explored a substantial amount of the one you're on will ensure swift death. Oh, and the only way to earn money in the game is to sell off items dropped by monsters. A game where sidequests are arguably a time-consuming practical necessity for the rewards, loot, and exp potentially gained by completing them. You'll [[NintendoHard need]] the lot.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyI'' and its remake had a mapping bug that allowed the player to fight high-level monster groups very early in the game by visiting a two-square peninsula northeast of Pravoka, the second town visited. Once the Mages learned group-effect spells like [=FIR2=] and [=HRM2=], many of the encounters provided quick experience boosts. Later on, the best LevelGrinding was available in the Ice Cave, where a fixed battle with the EYE boss could be repeated for thousands of easy experience points. Another location is the "Giant's arm" in the Earth Cave, a certain bend in the cave where every single step you take results in an encounter with giants or green ogres.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyII'': The game's [[NintendoHard difficulty]] meant grinding was the only way to survive the first real mission. This is partially because the [=PCs=] start out as weaklings who get offed in the first battle, and partially because ''FFII'' has a unusual leveling up system: The team only gets HP bonuses if they take damage in battle, so grinding usually revolves around party members beating ''each other'' up in order to grow stronger.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'':
** Players can force a loop of fighting an unbounded number of low-level monsters, with a party member who can heal the entire group for free as much as he wants. As a result, simply putting a book on top of the 'A' button and going away for a few days will leave the player with four maximally-leveled characters quite early in the game. However, this will leave the party with awful base stats, since the absence of Summons means no good stat bonuses and spells. Doing this can actually make the game harder [[note]]although even without the stat boosts, level 99 is strong enough to defeat Kefka[[/note]] by the very end and make the bonus dungeons very difficult.
** A desert patch next to Doma Castle in the World of Ruin (SNES version) has an endgame grinding area where a bug boosts experience points to extraordinary amounts when you fight with a lower number of members, with a solo fighter gaining maximum EXP and leveling up like mad from a single fight. As the result, a player may have a character/a duo taking turns grinding to level 99.
** In the World of Balance, once you have your (nearly) complete party and GlobalAirship, returning to the Haunted Forest from Sabin's Scenario grants a high chance of encountering a single, low level monster... which gives 3 AP quite reliably upon defeat, but is worth little to no EXP, meaning you can have a party who have learnt all of the available spells from Espers within a relatively short time, without becoming extremely over-levelled.
** The Intangir on Triangle Island. Thanks to the Vanish bug, he can easily be defeated with X-Zone. You get no experience, but he gives a whopping 10 AP per battle!
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'':
** Because there is absolutely no LeakedExperience, you will find at least one point in the game that requires some serious grinding (looking at you, Disc 3 Steiner and Freya). Luckily, the Level-Up passive ability makes it a little less painful.
** The way the game's ability-system works (passive abilities like Auto-Haste and Auto-Regen are learnt from armor and accessories and AP earned in battle) actually provides some ''incentive'' for doing this, as you will want the most beneficial abilities (again, Auto-Haste and Auto-Regen) for your characters before entering a dungeon, and will generally only have one of the item teaching the relevant ability at a time.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'': This game uses StatGrinding via the Sphere grid, but level grinding for your blitzball team.
* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'', with a lot of phoenix downs and a little patience and dexterity, one can advance 30+ levels and rake in a small fortune before even completing the first mission. What's more, once you finally decide to advance in the plot, all these levels [[LeakedExperience carry over to the new members of your party]]. If you do all this with just Vaan, it's like leveling up six characters for the price of one.
** Later in the game, you can find Negalmuur, a monster that summons other, weaker monsters. You can set Gambits on your characters to attack the summoned monsters and defend yourself from Negalmuur's attacks, go to bed, and wake up to three level 99 characters and a shitload of dropped loot.
** There's also a place in the Henne Mines with a set of four jellies that, as long as you set your gambits up correctly, will spawn forever.
* Unlike the ''Literature/FightingFantasy'' gamebooks, Fighting Fantasy Legends and Legends Portal has your characters gain experience. LevelGrinding becomes a huge part of the game as the first few points of improvement will be neglible, while useful equipment might take a while to find. Grind enough and you'll even be able to smack down the bosses with brute force alone.
* ''VideoGame/GinormoSword''. You spend more time level grinding than you do fighting bosses, upgrading equipment, and moving around the map combined.
* ''VideoGame/GoldenSun'':
** It can become this at times. At least as an inexperienced player who may not collect all the djinn, you will require LevelGrinding in ''VideoGame/GoldenSun1''. In ''VideoGame/GoldenSunTheLostAge'', you can grind until level 99 in the turtle cave, which isn't really hard considering the insane amount of EXP Wonderbirds give, if you want to. It isn't required.
** If you're a veteran dungeon crawler and just kill everything that comes your way without ever running from a fight (not hard since you recharge PP to heal between combat), you may find yourself ''overleveled'' for some parts without ''ever'' going out of your way to grind. In ''TLA'' you may be so lost during the whole [[GuideDangIt trident sequence]] that by the time you meet Isaac's team you're ten levels past him.
** VideoGame/GoldenSunDarkDawn one-upped The Lost Age, with [[spoiler:Tua Warriors, relatively weak monsters, that are the only randomly encountered monsters in the final area of the final dungeon]], by taking advantage of the extra experience from unleash-killing monsters, it is possible to go from the mid-40s (the level you're supposed to be near the end), to the max level in two hours.
* In ''VideoGame/GranblueFantasy'', it is fairly easy to level-up characters who are at their early levels by placing them at the back-row and having your higher-level front-line party members do the killing, all of them get the same amount of EXP otherwise. Combine this tactic with repeating the quests mentioned in the PeninsulaOfPowerLeveling entry, and you'll be able to easily grind out the levels of your newly-acquired characters at the same time.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Gyromancer}}'', you're going to have to do considerably more than just chase the objectives if you want to get to the end. Stages refresh themselves when you leave, so you can fight the same monsters repeatedly. Somewhat unusually, the grinding actually occurs -- and is used -- in the PuzzleGame component, not any of the [=RPG=] mechanics.
* In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsChainOfMemories'', both Sora and Riku max at Level 99. Thing is, both the main story and ''Reverse/Rebirth'' are beatable at about half there for anyone reasonably skilled with the card system. So if you're someone that likes to max out levels, get ready for lots of level grinding, pointless for anything other than just getting the levels, since there are no [[BonusBoss bonus bosses]] to fight. Not only that, but there are no really quick leveling strategies such as the tech points that the original game has, and eventually the bonuses you get for leveling up stuck having any practical effect in speeding up battle completion. (Riku's attack points max at 30 and Sora doesn't even get attack points.) HD 1.5 [=ReMIX=] ups the pain by linking Trophies to max levels for both Sora and Riku.
* To keep up its parody status ''VideoGame/LinearRPG'' does make you grind. Going straight will cause you to die. Best to end the game at level 40 which means there's a bit of running back and forwards. No really.
* ''VideoGame/MonsterHunter'', while not having explicit character levels, forces you to kill the same monsters over and over to get the weapons or armor made from their parts. Also, one gains experience in the form of real-life experience in killing the monsters, such that extremely good players often take on a high-level monster with no armor at all, just to show off.
** ''Monster Hunter Tri'''s online multiplayer required you to grind "Guild Points" to unlock the more next "level" of quests and monsters. Since you used the same character for both single and multiplayer, a maxed out singleplayer character would find the early game multiplayer trivial since you had already grinded the same monsters in the singleplayer. But it also made the singleplayer trivial since a maxed out multiplayer character fought advanced forms of the same monsters as well as multiplayer exclusive monsters and unlocked equipment far better than anything in the singleplayer. Lesson to be learned? Jump straight into multiplayer, come back later and curb stomp your way through the singleplayer.
* ''VideoGame/ParasiteEve'' has a pretty average leveling curve as you progress in the story, but the amount of EXP required to level up gets insanely high by the late 20s to early 30s. However, due to either a quirk in the programming or intentionally made this way, the amount of EXP needed to level up is ''much'' lower once you are past level 38. This makes reaching the cap far easier.
* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarNova'': For the most part you don't need to grind to complete the story. However, there are two exceptions: With four classes and the ability to switch at will, any class you want to level beyond the first (for cross class skills) is basically a grind. Additionally, patches have added new content to the game -- new content that starts at level 110. You will have to grind to level 110.
* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'':
** The series accentuates this trope by letting you start a battle with a weak Pokémon, knock out a high-level enemy with a strong one, and [[LeakedExperience have both Pokémon earn experience points]]. At least one "Trainer Tips" sign ''encourages'' this. On the downside, you need to have battled your way to the higher-level locations first.
** The UsefulNotes/NintendoGameCube side-games, ''VideoGame/PokemonColosseum'' and ''XD'', actually ''avert'' this trope for the most part -- while you can have level grinding, the Pokémon you can catch are as high a level as the area opponents, meaning you can go through the game with just using Pokémon as you catch them rather than training them. The only real point where it does require leveling is against the penultimate and ultimate bosses, which take a leap of levels over the next best opponents.
** The rom hack ''VideoGame/PokemonCrystalEnhanced'' has the level curve set so high that you must grind for a large amount of time wherever you go. This is made easier in the post-game, where you can find a cave that contains only the exp-rich Chansey and Blissey for easy grinding to level 100.
* ''VideoGame/ReturnToKrondor'' will have you doing this a lot, especially in the first four chapters. You can easily spend hours going through doors and getting into random fights, in the hopes of getting to the next level. At least by going up a number of levels, you will have a higher number of weapons strikes, and more effectiveness with weapons and magic. There are less and less opportunities to level grind as you progress through the game, which may or may not be a good thing.
* ''VideoGame/RivieraThePromisedLand'' has a grinding ''hell''. Your characters' stats increase via "Skill Up" from using certain weapons or items for certain amount of time. Your items are breakable, so you have no choice but to spend countless time grinding in a training room to preserve them for real fights. Worse off, your inventory is very limited and you quickly have to discard some of your items away. This means that you want to frequently grind everyone as soon as you have grindable items in order to open up the room for newer ones
** Your full party has 6 members, two that don't join until the end of Chapter 2 and the beginning of 3. Because you never know what item teach which skill to them before they join, Serene and Cierra may end up losing some grindable stats forever [[GuideDangIt if you've discarded wrong items.]]
* The ''VideoGame/RuneFactory'' series of games require LevelGrinding and StatGrinding, because your HP and stats go up, and in ''VideoGame/RuneFactory3'', your RP (basically "do anything" points) go up by level. And, the higher a skill is, the less RP it takes to use the skill.
* This can be abused in ''VideoGame/SecretOfEvermore'' as soon as you defeat Aegis in Nobilia and gain access to the Oglin Hideout (the cave that was submerged). You can't fully explore it yet since it's actually a dungeon for much later in the game, but the few areas of it you can explore are ''crawling'' with Oglins who are {{Fragile Speedster}}s and Sons of Anhur who are {{Degraded Boss}}es. Both have comparably low HP yet give tons of experience and money, in fact the Son of Anhur gives more money than any other enemy, making this the single most economic place to level and {{Money Grind|ing}} in the entire game. Since you're making so much money you can brutally ''spam'' formulas like Crush, Drain, Heal, and Flash, leveling up your fomulas like mad and raising your character's levels well beyond even where they need to comfortably fight the final boss, then go back and stock up on ingredients and still walk away with a profit.
* ''VideoGame/SepterraCore'' has a wonderful level grinding spot -- the Smelting Complex. It's accessible as soon as you get the airship, but you aren't intended to go there until much later. Since all the enemies are mechanical, Led and Grubb can tear them apart with Repair, earning you large amounts of gold and EXP in the process.
* ''VideoGame/ShiningInTheDarkness'' A First person view game where you and your 2 partners Milo and Pyra spend most of the time in the 3D dungeons fighting random battles and Level Grinding. The monsters get progressively harder as you enter floor areas. You get item rewards at the Item Store on Special Deals if all 3 characters are over level 60 for The Earth Hammer, at level 70 they get The Shock Box, level 80 gets them Ogre Flute, and finally level 90 gets them The Black Box. Good luck spending hours to getting those items. Especially when you fight Crystal Ooze monsters on floor 5.
* ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'':
** The games tend to discourage this, except when it comes to facing [[BonusBoss bonus bosses]]. Taking the appropriate skill set and immunities into a fight is generally vastly more important than having a high level. Obviously, this can lead to '''skill''' grinding instead.
** The Answer in [[UpdatedRerelease Persona 3:FES]] is pretty much a forced level grinding session to get yourself back into the 70s, due to bosses that have high chances of evading their weaknesses and very hard hitting attacks, and the [[FakeDifficulty lack of a persona compendium]] that makes covering and exploiting weaknesses much harder.
** Can be played to trope in the offshoot, ''VideoGame/DigitalDevilSaga''. The skills you need to survive the combination kill of the random encounters in the Karma Temple are near the end of one of the branches of the skill tree. Lack the skills, and you're forced to grind your way to them.
** ''[[{{VideoGame/Persona2}} Persona 2]]: Innocent Sin'' doesn't really ''require'' much level grinding, and you can finish the game with your characters in the mid-60s of levels (out of a possible 99), but if you want to see the high-level content like the [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill Armageddon fusion spell]], be prepared to ''grind''. By the end you will need hundreds of thousands of XP per character per level, and the highest-level area (which is optional) provides enemies who offer maybe 3,000 XP to each character per encounter. One encounter, [[AliceAllusion Alice]], offers a lot more XP... but she is painfully rare even when you do everything to manipulate encounter rates. The "easiest" trick to grinding is to let all but your leader die so the XP doesn't get divided up, and then he can gather all the high-level stuff for everyone else.
** ''VideoGame/{{Persona 3}}'' is fond of throwing The Reaper at you if the AI suspects you're level grinding. Unfortunately, some amount of grinding is required if you want to access higher-level personae -- the first Star persona is level 39, and you'll need the persona to max the Social Link (the game's other major challenge).
* ''VideoGame/{{SoulBlazer}}'' allowed level-grinding. While monsters that spawned from lairs would stay dead once killed, some monsters did not spawn from lairs, and these would respawn every time your character left and re-entered the dungeon. Because the requirements for each successive level increased roughly exponentially through the game, however, spending several hours of grinding in one area would be completely negated by a few minutes of grinding at the start of the next area (where the monsters would generally suddenly offer 5-10x more XP).
** Its SpiritualSuccessor, ''VideoGame/IllusionOfGaia'', did not allow level grinding at all. Each permanent stat increase was gained after clearing an area of a dungeon, and there were a finite number throughout the game (any missed stat increases were granted anyway on arrival at the dungeon boss, so underlevelling was avoided too).
** ''VideoGame/{{Terranigma}}'' allowed level-grinding even more freely than Soulblazer did. ALL the monsters would respawn when Ark left the current area of a dungeon, and the XP requirements were nowhere near as exponential as before; less than an hour of grinding in Tower 5 would mean that Ark was capable of CherryTapping the first boss, Shadowkeeper.
*** On the other hand, since your current level is a major part of the damage formula, it's extremely easy to end up doing ScratchDamage to every enemy in a new location if you're not sufficiently leveled up.
* In ''VideoGame/StarOceanTillTheEndOfTime'', the highest level your characters can reach is 255, so it goes without saying that much LevelGrinding is needed to achieve this level without the aid of a cheat disk. Luckily, for normal gaming purposes, there is no need to reach such a high level unless you plan on taking on [[BonusBoss Freya]].
* In ''VideoGame/SuperMarioRPG'', you might have to level grind at the most rewarding easy spot available, which, by the time you reach the Factory, happens to be Star Hill.
* One of the easier (if patience-wearing) methods to employ in ''VideoGame/WizardryLabyrinthOfLostSouls'' if you don't want to die as one hit kills (for the [[DemonicSpiders Hayate]] and harder enemies in the above floors) by the fourth floor of Shin's Dungeon, considering the NintendoHard nature of the game. Doesn't hurt to have a Bishop either, as they gain a very useful ability in later levels.
* In ''VideoGame/TalesOfPhantasia'', the best place for grinding would be [[BonusDungeon Moria Gallery]], were the toughest and roughest monsters dwell (and also the ones who give more experience/money). You enter as a little more than a [[KidHero boy of 50 or 60 in level]], and come out as a full grown man of level 90-ish with enough money to ignore all the trading sidequests and minigames. Besides, the InfinityPlusOneSword is on the Gallery's last floor, plus [[BonusBoss a couple of powerful summons]]. If you are up to the challenge, no matter how many Cruxis spells [[BigBad Daos]] uses against you, you will be able to kill him with a butter knife.
* ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' encourages you to do a PacifistRun (which is necessarily also a LowLevelRun) by having the tagline "The friendly RPG where nobody has to die" and a few characters in the first area explaining how to placate the RandomEncounters peacefully. If you instead decide to do exactly the opposite of that, and level grind in every area until [[AntiGrinding there just aren't any monsters left]], you get an entire alternate story as a VillainProtagonist.
* Level Grinding appears to have found its audience: a Gamespot review for ''VideoGame/ValkyrieProfile 2'' points out that the game seems designed for fans of the process.
** It's not really necessary though, as clever usage of skills and accessories will work '''far''' better in combat than level grinding. The bonus dungeon, [[spoiler:Seraphic Gate]], is a very good example of this.
** Even so, there comes a moment in the game where four of your main characters (two in one chapter, two in the next) leave your party. Depending on how high their level is, you can get some pretty powerful equipment. The problem? You can get game-breaking equipment this way... but you need to level the characters to levels 40 (for the first set) and 45 (for the second set).
* ''VideoGame/{{Willow}}'' for the NES requires you to be at least level 13 to uncurse Fin Raziel so she can upgrade your wand into the [[SwordOfPlotAdvancement Wand of Plot Advancement]].
* ''VideoGame/{{Wizardry}}'' 1 to 7 and Gold are just jam-packed with grinding. In fact, if you don't want to get pounded just by going through doors, you'll spend hours just 'hanging' on the first floor, killing rats, bats, rogues and plants until you CAN go through doors.
** The exception is ''Wizardry 4'', where there's no real reason to go back and level some more because the monsters you summon increase in power with each Level of the dungeon you go up.
** ''Wizardry 8'' allows it, but discourages level-grinding by throwing geometrically difficult opponents at the party the longer they hang out in a particular area; in particular, the {{noob cave}} monastery and the roads between settlements.
* Every ''VideoGame/{{Xenosaga}}'' game has noteworthy grinding spots. ''Xenosaga II'' in particular has the Dammerung, an area in which only Shion is usable the first time you go through. Because of how the EXP is normally divided, in this particular dungeon Shion effectively gains 300% EXP -- and everyone else gains 225%! Naturally an excellent place to gain some extra levels. It's a nice option to have.
** It is also worth noting that everything in the Dammerung is weak against Shion's attacks; it doesn't take very long until she one-shots everything with her basic attacks. And don't worry if you passed that area up before you discovered it -- you can go back to it using the Encephelon. One might wonder if the devs did this ''on purpose''.
[[/folder]]

* ''LightNovel/AkuyakuReijouLevel99WatashiWaUraBossDesuGaMaouDeWaArimasen'' is about a GamerChick who reincarnates into Yumiela, the SuperBoss of a combo otome game/RPG. She applies her gaming attitude to her new life, fighting monsters every day for years, to the point where she starts the game story proper at level 99. She tries to get the army and her fellow classmates to adopt these strategies, but they're terrified at the idea of deliberately risking their lives.

* ''VideoGame/XMenLegends'' has the Danger Room accessible from any safe point wherein a player can spend a lot of time grinding by purposefully losing teamwork missions. The mission simply restarts with all of your newly acquired goodies and XP intact with none of the damage. In relatively little time, you can use it to level up enough to beat whatever boss that gives you trouble.

The traditional way of level grinding is to kill lots of a very low level enemy, for example, rats. However, MetalSlime-type enemies that give out large amounts of [[ExperiencePoints experience]] can shorten the process considerably. Given that the second group are always much more likely to be able to actually kill your character at lower levels, a ladder system is usually employed. Modern {{MMORPG}}s have turned to 'Quest Grinding' instead, offering both one-time and {{Repeatable Quest}}s with massive ExperiencePoint rewards compared to simply killing hordes of monsters - but this has simply changed the type of activity players use to grind instead of eliminating the grind altogether.

* In ''VideoGame/DissidiaFinalFantasy'', there are twenty-two separate characters all of whom can reach level 100. This is in fact not the true grind - through proper setup a level one character can beat a level one hundred Exdeath and jump to level 100 in a single battle. The true grind is the equipped abilities - some of the late ones require 500 points to master, and under normal circumstances you get one point a battle. Even on a day when the game gives 4x the reward per battle, it would still require 125 battles to master.

* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' generally averts grinding for the regular process: you never need to stop and kill mobs with nothing but killing going on. You always get a batch of quests, do them, then move on to a different area with a new batch. However, it packs several other kinds of grind:
** [=PvP=] functions as an alternate levelling process, but you only have a scant handful of battlegrounds to do repeatedly in order to level up. Once at level cap, you do endless repeat of same old battlegrounds to farm your [=PvP=] gear.
** Dungeons: during levelling you can do with doing each of them once or twice at most, but once you are at level cap, here comes the grind - although the amount of dungeons is higher than at any lower level range, you do them repeatedly for gear. And then upgrade to doing the raids repeatedly for gear.
** Reputations: they are obtained by settling down and killing a ton of specific kind of mobs in the specific location, the epitome of grinding. You get gear and collectibles.
** Alternate gear tokens: the assortment changes with expansions, but they often have both something that drops from nearly every mob in the expansion pack as well as more zone-specific. You can trade in hundreds or thousands of them for more gear.
** Resource gathering: mostly serves to be sold for cash, however occasionally also yields rare resource to get crafted into high tier gear. It also gives small amount of XP, but using that for levelling is a SelfImposedChallenge rather than a main method.
** If you ''really'' want, you can still level up with regular old mob grinding, although you need to change location once you outlevel the mobs. You can ''almost'' do it by moving from one kind of boar to another, but there are a few boar-less gaps in the chain.
* In ''VideoGame/EveOnline'', while your skills train passively at a rate determined by your attributes, there is significant grinding to be able to obtain enough cash, faction reputation, raw materials, and other such things to be able to purchase or build any items.
** Players have discovered a way to basically "farm" the best subjects for grinding. In 0.0 security space (Free-for-all [=PvP=] and player owned) NPC pirate ships can pay anywhere from a few hundred thousand ISK to over a million. By wiping out spawns until one with multiple high-bounty battleships appear, and then only killing the battleships, corporations with 0.0 space can basically create a perpetual money factory. This is due to the fact that there a few set spawn compositions the game loads whenever a spawn has been completely cleared. But when a spawn is only partially destroyed, instead of changing the makeup of the spawn the game just "refills" it, ensuring that high profit spawns stay high profit.
* The ''VideoGame/NexusWar'' series averts the obvious expressions of this trope only to use a whole bunch of less obvious ones. There's a clearly defined level cap that most characters reach fairly quickly, after which additional experience becomes useless except for bragging rights. However, the reward for leveling consists of Character Points (which can be traded for skills, spells, etc.), and players can also get Character Points by doing ''nearly anything'' often enough. Characters gain bonuses equivalent to levels for doing enough killing, vandalism, door repair, lockpicking, etc., etc. There are even bonuses for dying enough times, and so there are groups devoted to ''dying as much as possible'' that make up the bulk of the people visible outside in some cities.
* ''VideoGame/RuneScape''. You'll regularly see things like people setting line after line of fires just to get their firemaking skill up, or spending hours mining ores, smelting them, crafting them and selling them just to get those three skills going... It could be nearly king of this trope -- according to one of the top players (who has maxed out every single skill), it takes at least 3000 hours to max out every skill (level 99) in the game, and that is if you only grind out the most efficient way possible for every single level.[[note]]It takes about ''6.5 million'' experience to level up to 92, and level 99 requires ''13 million'' experience. So if you are at level 92, you are still ''halfway'' to the max level. Cue many memes of "In RS, 92 is half of 99".[[/note]]
* As a MMORPG, ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarOnline'' had a lot of grinders trying to catch up to the sharkers/Action Replayers when it was first released. The usual method of doing this was to equip the low-leveled character with a handgun or a rifle, go into multiplayer mode with a character who had beaten Normal mode, and employ hit-and-run tactics on the enemies in the second or third levels while the higher-leveled character stayed back and picked off the faster enemies. Since exiting the room caused the enemies to turn around and slowly march back to their starting positions while retaining all damage done to them, it was easy to exploit. There was a catch--you couldn't enter multiplayer on Hard Mode, where enemies gave eight times the experience, until both characters were level 20 regardless of that difficulty being unlocked in single mode. The game's Normal mode was so easy that grinding did you little good until Hard Mode was available.
** The game also had a rather ridiculous alternative to level-grinding: Simply handing a new character a maxed-out Mag (a piece of equipment that, by feeding it various items, could be customized both in looks and stat boosts) and a piece of armor with some high-end Slots (which provide even ''further'' stat boosts, including to HP and TP) could turn them into something comparable to an unequipped character 20-30 levels above them.
* The MMORPG ''VideoGame/JadeDynasty'' (which is adapted from the Chinese ''Zhu Xian'' and its English equivalent ''Celestial Destroyer'') actually subverts this somewhat by giving the player a ''built-in bot'' at level 3, which is useable until level 90, at which point it starts using energy that has to be replenished. The bot even uses health and spirit recovery potions for the player, enabling someone to go to sleep with the bot running and wake up a few levels higher and much richer. However, since mobs give less experience and items as you level (up to no experience or items at all since your level is much higher than theirs), the bot cannot be used to avoid grinding completely.

* At first, ''VideoGame/ChampionsOnline'' seemed to avert this trope - you got FAR more XP for actually accomplishing missions, many of which involved activities besides just killing mooks (such as disabling bombs, sabotaging alien ships, etcetera), than you did for wandering around killing everything you saw. That is, until the Crafted Travel Powers cropped up. In order to actually make the darn things, you have to kill tens of thousands of the right type of baddies to get the drops to make the components to make the components to make the Crafted Travel Powers.

* ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'' initially had a problem where you could get the next set of contacts only after you reached a certain level but it was possible to complete all the missions from your present contacts long before you had enough XP to level (especially if you were a solo player), so the only option, if you didn't team up with someone on their missions, was to randomly go around picking fights with mooks on the streets until you levelled up which could get real boring real fast. Subsequent updates of the game have drastically changed this: there are now more contacts, Newspaper/Radio missions are always available once you've reached a given (low) level, and you can always play in player-made Architect scenarios. As a result of this, pretty much the only time you actually see heroes/villains fighting mobs on the streets is if they're trying to get the last few XP points needed to level, they're on a Kill X Number of Y mission, or they're badge-hunting.
* Zynga games like ''VideoGame/MafiaWars'' get to be this after a while, especially if you're unwilling to spend real money on what are essentially casual games.
* The [[MultiUserDungeon MUD]] ''VideoGame/{{Lusternia}}'' takes this to an extreme. Level grinding becomes progressively easier as you go on: while you technically gain much less experience per kill, the chance of performing critical hits ramps up ''massively'', increasing the speed of said kills (the most powerful crit you can get does a whopping 32x damage). However, once you reach level 100, you become a Demigod, and experience is replaced with "essence". A lot of the unique Demigod abilities require essence to buy, meaning you have to hunt an awful lot just to unlock them: more insidious is the fact you ''lose essence when you die'', and if you lose enough you'll be kicked back down to level 99 and lose all your neat abilities. Most level 100 players refuse to go outside their organizations unless they have a huge buffer of essence, and there are [[{{Griefer}} gank-squads]] organized specifically to target new Demigods. Needless to say, LevelGrinding is a necessity.
* ''[[VideoGame/AceOnline Air Rivals]]'', and how! The level grinding there is so intense after level 75 and specially at 8x levels that even the own developers of the game decided to add new [[PeninsulaOfPowerLeveling maps of power leveling]] for players to get to the so-desired level cap of 110. Even with that, the American server (''Ace Online'') has a PERMANENT 200% EXP BONUS for everyone below level 75 and it gets reduced to 50% on weekends after that point. Geez.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' is no exception to the trope; not only do you have to level grind just to get access to higher level quests, but if you plan to take on side jobs like cooking or weaving, you have to level up your skills in those jobs as well just to be able to make better items. However, the ways to effectively grind are not "kill many enemies" nor "make many items" so much as, for combat classes, "Seek out FATE events obsessively" and for crafting classes, "Burn all your daily leve allowances on good crafting levequests."
** With A Realm Reborn, there are enough quests and rewards that you can get your first combat job to the level cap with minimal (if any) grinding. Every ''other'' combat job after the first one? Grind away!
* ''VideoGame/{{Wakfu}}'' plays with this. Enemies, especially single or double enemy groups, give incredibly low amount of experience, and by the time the player reaches around level 30, which is possible even in the early game, they'll be needing several thousand experience, if not several hundred thousand experience points. This is especially irritating for the more defensive classes ([[BarrierWarrior Feca]], [[HollywoodVoodoo Sadida]], [[DrunkenMaster Pandwa]], ect) as killing large groups of enemies quickly becomes a chore. This means that Holiday events will result in surges of high amounts of experience, and the rest of the time, you'll be scrounging for a single level. Then again, the game justifies this: most of your stats - including HP, chances of critical hits, and even evading attacks - depend on your equipment, so the player is encouraged to find equipment that suits their character build rather than constantly putting focus on leveling up.

* ''VideoGame/NetHack'' tries to avert this with a combination of LevelScaling and a level cap of 30 - however, potions and scrolls and such can boost individual stats without changing levels, which means that [[RandomlyDrops Random Drops]] are the way forward. This generally means grinding by [[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/rec.games.roguelike.nethack/OCzz8LD-n4I/xWFpI6QG9ygJ pudding farming]]: black puddings will happily duplicate themselves if hit with an iron object, provide worthy XP, they very occasionally drop items (of more or less any form) when they die, and also leave corpses. Kill, sacrifice the corpses or eat them when you grow hungry, repeat until the level is full of puddings and your max HP is wherever you want it (usually in the six-figure region); the repeated sacrificing of corpses can also be used to gain spellbooks and artifact weapons, and to increase your intrinsic amour class. Several bots have been written to automate the process.

* ''VideoGame/InsideAStarFilledSky'' is nothing ''but'' grinding. Because the game has no end that anyone could possible achieve in this millennium (or the next one, for that matter), all you're doing is moving back through entering items and getting better powerups. And if you're bad off, you make have to grind so that the first grind actually shows any effect.

* ''VideoGame/TheAwakenedFateUltimatum'' basically warns you from go that you're going to be in trouble if you don't replay dungeons to grind levels, collect useful items and upgrade your equipment. Indeed, each dungeon has progressively stronger enemies and especially earlier in the game, more and more twists are added, including opponents that inflict various status ailments, ones that can attack from a distance and ones that can [[TakingYouWithMe self-destruct for massage damage.]]

* As the battle system of ''VideoGame/BatenKaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean'' is card-based, it's not nearly as important to have a high level or great stats as it is to have a well-rounded, efficient deck. However, since most of the best cards are only randomly dropped by enemies, the net effect is the same: a lot of time spent wandering around in the wilderness killing random monsters until your deck is up to par.
** You can also explicitly grind 'recipes' in order to cause specific cards to appear. This is the only reliable method to acquire good revival items (such as the absolutely vital Sacred Wine: 100% Revive + 500 HP).
* Level Grinding appears to have found its audience: a Gamespot review for ''VideoGame/ValkyrieProfile 2'' points out that the game seems designed for fans of the process.
** It's not really necessary though, as clever usage of skills and accessories will work '''far''' better in combat than level grinding. The bonus dungeon, [[spoiler:Seraphic Gate]], is a very good example of this.
** Even so, there comes a moment in the game where four of your main characters (two in one chapter, two in the next) leave your party. Depending on how high their level is, you can get some pretty powerful equipment. The problem? You can get game-breaking equipment this way...but you need to level the characters to levels 40 (for the first set) and 45 (for the second set).

* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls''
** In general, with a few quirks varying by game, the series' leveling system follows the logic of having successful uses of a skill go toward increasing that skill's level. (Sneaking around will increase your Sneak skill, casting Destruction spells will increase your Destruction skill, etc.) Then, every ten increases of a skill level goes toward increasing the character's overall level. However, some skills (mostly those outside of standard combat-related skills) require intentional grinding, such as Enchanting and Alchemy. If you want to grind them, you'll need to acquire/purchase all of the necessary components and then use those skills over and over.
** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'''s horrifically broken LevelScaling system adds a major complication. Unless you go the full blown {{Munchkin}} route to [[MinMaxing Min Max]] your skills and keep careful track to avoid deadly EmptyLevels (which severely ''weaken'' the PlayerCharacter in comparison to the world's enemies that scale only to your level), it's recommended that you follow the strange practice of deliberate ''under''-leving. IE, increase your skills up to and beyond the point where you ''could'' level up, but don't. Enemies will remain scaled to your level, but your ''skills'' will be far beyond what you should have at that level. As sleeping is the means of leveling up, this leads to the world being saved from a horde of feeble LegionsOfHell by a strangely competent insomniac. Additionally, a first-level character in ''Oblivion'' can become the Archmage of the Mage Guild, Master of the Fighters Guild, leader of the Thieves Guild, Listener of the Dark Brotherhood, and Grand Champion of the Arena. At the same time. The disadvantage to this is that the equipment and rewards available will always be of the lowest quality, but it sure beats leveling up only to find yourself getting demolished by suddenly-even-stronger enemies.
** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'' overhauls the series' standard system to focus on skill grinding AND ONLY skill grinding. There are 18 skill trees; 6 for each of the FighterMageThief classes, one of each for crafting, and two of each for defense. To level up a skill, players simply have to perform a successful application of a skill (hit the target, deal or deflect damage, buy, sell, and craft items, etc.). Each time a skill is leveled up, the player character gains an experience point; get ten of these and the player character levels up, getting the option to increase 10 points of Health, Magic, or Stamina, and earning a skill perk. Once again, leveling up non-combat skills alone can lead to EmptyLevels, but it is much harder to accidentally do than in ''Oblivion''. In the 1.9 patch, players are given the option to "Legendary" any of their maxed skills, resetting it back to 15/100 but retaining the experience points and perks earned from the skill.
* The first game in the ''[[VideoGame/TheBardsTaleTrilogy Bard's Tale]]'' series features an JustForFun/{{egregious}} midgame level-grind. A repeatable encounter with 396 midlevel fighters -- certain death for a low-level party, but no particular threat to a party with good armor and group-effect spells -- nets the party 65535 experience points for a victory; as that suggestive number implies, XP per battle are capped and no other battle even comes near the cap. It thus becomes an obvious strategy for players to repeat this one encounter over and over instead of seeking out more dangerous and less rewarding fights.

* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'':
** The series accentuates this trope by letting you start a battle with a weak Pokémon, knock out a high-level enemy with a strong one, and [[LeakedExperience have both Pokémon earn experience points]]. At least one "Trainer Tips" sign ''encourages'' this. On the downside, you need to have battled your way to the higher-level locations first.
** The UsefulNotes/NintendoGameCube side-games, ''VideoGame/PokemonColosseum'' and ''XD'', actually ''avert'' this trope for the most part - while you can have level grinding, the Pokémon you can catch are as high a level as the area opponents, meaning you can go through the game with just using Pokémon as you catch them rather than training them. The only real point where it does require leveling is against the penultimate and ultimate bosses, which take a leap of levels over the next best opponents.
** The rom hack ''VideoGame/PokemonCrystalEnhanced'' has the level curve set so high that you must grind for a large amount of time wherever you go. This is made easier in the post-game, where you can find a cave that contains only the exp-rich Chansey and Blissey for easy grinding to level 100.
* All the Digimon World games sans the first one fall into this. The DS games, however, take this to never seen extents. The random encounter rate in these games is fixed, but very high, and no way to repel enemies. The areas you explore are very large, with no map whatsoever. Plus, the enemies give very low experience, while the experience needed in order to level up grows exponentially (ironically, beating the weakest enemy in the game is enough to level anything from 1 to 3). The later bosses have much higher stats and skills than you'd have without Korean MMORPG-levels of grinding. A simple test of beating the game with no random battles and following the right paths in the maze-like dungeons shows that the main story can be beaten in two hours or so, and the post-story mandatory missions in another hour or so. In a game that a proper raised [=PvP=] team may require over 100 hours of gameplay, just by playing random battles and Farmville-like training.
** It shows something when, even if you use the code to start the battle with only 1 EXP point remaining to the next level, it still can take more than one hour to have a digimon reach Lv. 99 ONCE. Because if you want to max you stats, you'll be leveling from 1 to at least 70 several times, to say nothing of using the cross DNA evolution to learn skills you normally wouldn't be able to.
* To keep up its parody status ''VideoGame/LinearRPG'' does make you grind. Going straight will cause you to die. Best to end the game at level 40 which means there's a bit of running back and forwards. No really.

* ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' allows the party to access 65,000,000 BC as soon as it reaches the End of Time. Once there, the party can go to the Dacytl's Nest, an area that the party won't visit on the OneTrueSequence until several dungeons later, and fight enemy parties that give out twice the experience the enemies in the dungeon the party is ''supposed'' to visit next. The combination of tricks like these and non-random enemy encounters make ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' a ''very'' easy game to level grind on.
** ''VideoGame/ChronoCross'', the sequel manages to avert LevelGrinding hard, you gain stats and bonus's whenever you defeat a boss, ensuring that you are always at the level you need to be to take on the appropriate boss ([[NewGamePlus on the first play through anyway]]).
* ''VideoGame/{{Contact}}'' has this out the wazoo. Potentially, anyway. If you want OneHundredPercentCompletion, you'll have to raise every single stat to level 100, get every item, and for good measure fill up the treasure and food screens. Oh, and equip the most powerful decals you can find, if you feel like it.
* ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'':
** In ''VideoGame/DragonQuestI'', wandering too far from the first castle before gaining a level or two from Slimes will result in a quick, depressing death at the hands of... a Spooky.
** The grinding is most apparent in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIV''. Due to the unique chapter set-up, you'll have to do the pre-journey grind five separate times.
** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIII'' for the GBC has 150+ medals to collect. If you want to obtain all gold medals, prepare to not just fight lots of monsters, but to make ''sure'' you keep the ''right kind'' alive to the end of the fight so the right medal drops. And if you do get them all, the game's most powerful dragon gives you the "ultimate reward": He says he's bored and goes to sleep.
** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVI'''s JobSystem uses the number of battles won rather than experience to increase a job's rank, but the catch is that these battles have to be against a challenging enemy (no going back to the very first area to beat on slimes, unless you somehow recruited a level 1 character). This is done by giving every region a hidden LevelCap where battles no longer count for characters of that level or higher. The earliest location where the cap is 99 is the Spiegelspire, itself reached late-game.
** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIX'' takes this UpToEleven. Each character can reach Level 99 in each job. There are 16 jobs. For comparison, beating the final boss is feasible at Level 50. After completing the main game, Level 99 characters can restart at Level 1, but keep all of their skills. This is the only way to maximize all of the many in-game skills.
* ''VideoGame/GoldenSun'':
** It can become this at times. At least as an inexperienced player who may not collect all the djinn, you will require LevelGrinding in ''VideoGame/GoldenSun1''. In ''VideoGame/GoldenSunTheLostAge'', you can grind until level 99 in the turtle cave, which isn't really hard considering the insane amount of EXP Wonderbirds give, if you want to. It isn't required.
** If you're a veteran dungeon crawler and just kill everything that comes your way without ever running from a fight (not hard since you recharge PP to heal between combat), you may find yourself ''overleveled'' for some parts without ''ever'' going out of your way to grind. In ''TLA'' you may be so lost during the whole [[GuideDangIt trident sequence]] that by the time you meet Isaac's team you're ten levels past him.
** VideoGame/GoldenSunDarkDawn one-upped The Lost Age, with [[spoiler:Tua Warriors, relatively weak monsters, that are the only randomly encountered monsters in the final area of the final dungeon]], by taking advantage of the extra experience from unleash-killing monsters, it is possible to go from the mid-40s (the level you're supposed to be near the end), to the max level in two hours.
* ''VideoGame/{{SoulBlazer}}'' allowed level-grinding. While monsters that spawned from lairs would stay dead once killed, some monsters did not spawn from lairs, and these would respawn every time your character left and re-entered the dungeon. Because the requirements for each successive level increased roughly exponentially through the game, however, spending several hours of grinding in one area would be completely negated by a few minutes of grinding at the start of the next area (where the monsters would generally suddenly offer 5-10x more XP).
** Its SpiritualSuccessor, ''VideoGame/IllusionOfGaia'', did not allow level grinding at all. Each permanent stat increase was gained after clearing an area of a dungeon, and there were a finite number throughout the game (any missed stat increases were granted anyway on arrival at the dungeon boss, so underlevelling was avoided too).
** ''VideoGame/{{Terranigma}}'' allowed level-grinding even more freely than Soulblazer did. ALL the monsters would respawn when Ark left the current area of a dungeon, and the XP requirements were nowhere near as exponential as before; less than an hour of grinding in Tower 5 would mean that Ark was capable of CherryTapping the first boss, Shadowkeeper.
*** On the other hand, since your current level is a major part of the damage formula, it's extremely easy to end up doing ScratchDamage to every enemy in a new location if you're not sufficiently leveled up.
* ''VideoGame/ShiningInTheDarkness'' A First person view game where you and your 2 partners Milo and Pyra spend most of the time in the 3D dungeons fighting random battles and Level Grinding. The monsters get progressively harder as you enter floor areas. You get item rewards at the Item Store on Special Deals if all 3 characters are over level 60 for The Earth Hammer, at level 70 they get The Shock Box, level 80 gets them Ogre Flute, and finally level 90 gets them The Black Box. Good luck spending hours to getting those items. Especially when you fight Crystal Ooze monsters on floor 5.
* ''[[VideoGame/BaldursGate Baldur's Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal]]'' has one of the easiest level grinds in RPG history. It doesn't even need the player be there to kill the monsters. Once you reach the city surrounded by attacking giants, go to the ramparts near the gates. Equip all the infinite ammunition items you have available and have those characters set to attack automatically with ranged weapons on aggressive creatures using the game's script feature. Other characters in your group should be set not to attack (no sense in wasting ammunition). Once they start attacking the offscreen (and defenseless) giants and killing them unopposed, go watch a movie. Return later to see all of your characters now at the level {{cap}}.
* You won't come out of ''VideoGame/{{Albion}}'''s first big dungeon alive, unless you spend a few days on the previous island, doing nothing but slaughtering the local wildlife, and visiting the local healer for occasional free potions you can sell later.
* ''VideoGame/SepterraCore'' has a wonderful level grinding spot - the Smelting Complex. It's accessible as soon as you get the airship, but you aren't intended to go there until much later. Since all the enemies are mechanical, Led and Grubb can tear them apart with Repair, earning you large amounts of gold and EXP in the process.
* Every ''VideoGame/{{Xenosaga}}'' game has noteworthy grinding spots. ''Xenosaga II'' in particular has the Dammerung, an area in which only Shion is usable the first time you go through. Because of how the EXP is normally divided, in this particular dungeon Shion effectively gains 300% EXP - and everyone else gains 225%! Naturally an excellent place to gain some extra levels. It's a nice option to have.

* ''VideoGame/{{Willow}}'' for the NES requires you to be at least level 13 to uncurse Fin Raziel so she can upgrade your wand into the [[SwordOfPlotAdvancement Wand of Plot Advancement]].
* ''VideoGame/{{The 7th Saga}}'' for the SNES is known for the insane amount of time it takes to level up -- the monsters are difficult and the experience is low. Plus if you level up too much, the game is {{Unwinnable}} due to an oversight: the other potential [=PCs=] level up as you do. At level 42, the cleric learns a spell that restores all his HP -- and for no good reason, also all his MP. He's essentially immortal at that point. The other potential [=PCs=] also sometimes steal your {{Plot Coupon}}s, requiring you to duel to take them. If the cleric ganks one late in the game, he's literally impossible to beat, since the AI isn't dumb enough to forget it has healing spells.
* ''VideoGame/GinormoSword''. You spend more time level grinding than you do fighting bosses, upgrading equipment, and moving around the map combined.
* In ''VideoGame/StarOceanTillTheEndOfTime'', the highest level your characters can reach is 255, so it goes without saying that much LevelGrinding is needed to achieve this level without the aid of a cheat disk. Luckily, for normal gaming purposes, there is no need to reach such a high level unless you plan on taking on [[BonusBoss Freya]].
* ''VideoGame/MonsterHunter'', while not having explicit character levels, forces you to kill the same monsters over and over to get the weapons or armor made from their parts. Also, one gains experience in the form of real-life experience in killing the monsters, such that extremely good players often take on a high-level monster with no armor at all, just to show off.
** ''Monster Hunter Tri'''s online multiplayer required you to grind "Guild Points" to unlock the more next "level" of quests and monsters. Since you used the same character for both single and multiplayer, a maxed out singleplayer character would find the early game multiplayer trivial since you had already grinded the same monsters in the singleplayer. But it also made the singleplayer trivial since a maxed out multiplayer character fought advanced forms of the same monsters as well as multiplayer exclusive monsters and unlocked equipment far better than anything in the singleplayer. Lesson to be learned? Jump straight into multiplayer, come back later and curb stomp your way through the singleplayer.
* In ''VideoGame/TalesOfPhantasia'', the best place for grinding would be [[BonusDungeon Moria Gallery]], were the toughest and roughest monsters dwell (and also the ones who give more experience/money). You enter as a little more than a [[KidHero boy of 50 or 60 in level]], and come out as a full grown man of level 90-ish with enough money to ignore all the trading sidequests and minigames. Besides, the InfinityPlusOneSword is on the Gallery's last floor, plus [[BonusBoss a couple of powerful summons]]. If you are up to the challenge, no matter how many Cruxis spells [[BigBad Daos]] uses against you, you will be able to kill him with a butter knife.
* ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'' included a pretty boring grind: if you don't slaughter the entire Dalish settlement, the Elven emissary will appear in your party camp and accept "crafting materials" to upgrade Elven troops' equipment for the FinalBattle. Now, "crafting materials" include Elfroots, which are available for 60 copper pieces in ''unlimited quantity'' at the Elven camp, and each batch of 89 pieces (called "Give all Elfroots") nets you ''880 XP'' (meaning it costs only 112 gold to grind from level 0 to the level {{cap}}--roughly an eighth of the transaction volume you can potentially have in single playthrough). So, just go to the Dalish camp, buy an inventory full of Elfroots, return to the party camp and grind. Not that there's much reason to do so, as you'll probably be about level 20 by the time you unlock this option and the cap is only level 25. The Grey Warden, in fact, is probably better served by not leveling (or at least not spending the skill and ability points gained by leveling up) until you progress on to the expansion so you can buy more of the powerful new abilities that get unlocked.
* In ''VideoGame/EtrianOdyssey'', trying to 'skip' to the labyrinth's next floor without having explored a substantial amount of the one you're on will ensure swift death. Oh, and the only way to earn money in the game is to sell off items dropped by monsters. A game where sidequests are arguably a time-consuming practical necessity for the rewards, loot, and exp potentially gained by completing them. You'll [[NintendoHard need]] the lot.
* In ''VideoGame/SuperMarioRPG'', you might have to level grind at the most rewarding easy spot available, which, by the time you reach the Factory, happens to be Star Hill.
* ''VideoGame/ReturnToKrondor'' will have you doing this a lot, especially in the first four chapters. You can easily spend hours going through doors and getting into random fights, in the hopes of getting to the next level. At least by going up a number of levels, you will have a higher number of weapons strikes, and more effectiveness with weapons and magic. There are less and less opportunities to level grind as you progress through the game, which may or may not be a good thing.
* One of the easier (if patience-wearing) methods to employ in ''VideoGame/WizardryLabyrinthOfLostSouls'' if you don't want to die as one hit kills (for the [[DemonicSpiders Hayate]] and harder enemies in the above floors) by the fourth floor of Shin's Dungeon, considering the NintendoHard nature of the game. Doesn't hurt to have a Bishop either, as they gain a very useful ability in later levels.
* ''VideoGame/RivieraThePromisedLand'' has a grinding ''hell''. Your characters' stats increase via "Skill Up" from using certain weapons or items for certain amount of time. Your items are breakable, so you have no choice but to spend countless time grinding in a training room to preserve them for real fights. Worse off, your inventory is very limited and you quickly have to discard some of your items away. This means that you want to frequently grind everyone as soon as you have grindable items in order to open up the room for newer ones
** Your full party has 6 members, two that don't join until the end of chapter 2 and the beginning of 3. Because you never know what item teach which skill to them before they join, Serene and Cierra may end up losing some grindable stats forever [[GuideDangIt if you've discarded wrong items.]]
* In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsChainOfMemories'', both Sora and Riku max at Level 99. Thing is, both the main story and ''Reverse/Rebirth'' are beatable at about half there for anyone reasonably skilled with the card system. So if you're someone that likes to max out levels, get ready for lots of level grinding, pointless for anything other than just getting the levels, since there are no [[BonusBoss bonus bosses]] to fight. Not only that, but there are no really quick leveling strategies such as the tech points that the original game has, and eventually the bonuses you get for leveling up stuck having any practical effect in speeding up battle completion. (Riku's attack points max at 30 and Sora doesn't even get attack points.) HD 1.5 [=ReMIX=] ups the pain by linking Trophies to max levels for both Sora and Riku.
* The ''Franchise/{{Disgaea}}'' series keep grinding entertaining by use of the Item Worlder, which provides unlimited randomly generated dungeons while also boosting your character's equipment. You also have some choice in the level of the enemies you fight since they are relative to the power of the item.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Gyromancer}}'', you're going to have to do considerably more than just chase the objectives if you want to get to the end. Stages refresh themselves when you leave, so you can fight the same monsters repeatedly. Somewhat unusually, the grinding actually occurs - and is used - in the PuzzleGame component, not any of the [=RPG=] mechanics.
* ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' encourages you to do a PacifistRun (which is necessarily also a LowLevelRun) by having the tagline "The friendly RPG where nobody has to die" and a few characters in the first area explaining how to placate the RandomEncounters peacefully. If you instead decide to do exactly the opposite of that, and level grind in every area until [[AntiGrinding there just aren't any monsters left]], you get an entire alternate story as a VillainProtagonist.
* ''VideoGame/EarthBoundBeginnings'' is hit pretty badly with this; because the game was never tested for balancing purposes, it suffers from an annoyingly steep difficulty curve that forces the player to grind experience each time the plot advances to a new area. This is particularly necessary when Lloyd and Ana join the party at level 1: those characters will need to gain some levels just to have a chance of surviving areas that are unlocked at about the same time.
* While it's for the most part unnecessary in ''VideoGame/EarthBound'', the game gives several good opportunities:
** After defeating a sanctuary guardian, ''all'' the enemies in the area flee from you regardless of your level compared to theirs. Engaging an enemy from behind (practically a given since they're running away) either guarantees an extra attack or an outright free kill, and since the enemies are still giving decent amounts of experience it's a golden opportunity to gain a couple levels.
** Foppys and Fobbys, which attack in large groups, are weak, respawn readily, and give sizeable experience and money rewards and often a rather useful Psy Caramel upon defeat, were put into the game ''intentionally'' for this purpose to bolster your level before facing [[GoddamnedBoss Master Belch]] and [[ThatOneBoss Electro Spectre]], respectively.
* ''VideoGame/ParasiteEve'' has a pretty average leveling curve as you progress in the story, but the amount of EXP required to level up gets insanely high by the late 20s to early 30s. However, due to either a quirk in the programming or intentionally made this way, the amount of EXP needed to level up is ''much'' lower once you are past level 38. This makes reaching the cap far easier.
* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarNova'': For the most part you don't need to grind to complete the story. However, there are two exceptions: With four classes and the ability to switch at will, any class you want to level beyond the first (for cross class skills) is basically a grind. Additionally, patches have added new content to the game - new content that starts at level 110. You will have to grind to level 110.
* Unlike the ''Literature/FightingFantasy'' gamebooks, Fighting Fantasy Legends and Legends Portal has your characters gain experience. LevelGrinding becomes a huge part of the game as the first few points of improvement will be neglible, while useful equipment might take a while to find. Grind enough and you'll even be able to smack down the bosses with brute force alone.
* This can be abused in ''VideoGame/SecretOfEvermore'' as soon as you defeat Aegis in Nobilia and gain access to the Oglin Hideout (the cave that was submerged). You can't fully explore it yet since it's actually a dungeon for much later in the game, but the few areas of it you can explore are ''crawling'' with Oglins who are {{Fragile Speedster}}s and Sons of Anhur who are {{Degraded Boss}}es. Both have comparably low HP yet give tons of experience and money, in fact the Son of Anhur gives more money than any other enemy, making this the single most economic place to level and {{Money Grind|ing}} in the entire game. Since you're making so much money you can brutally ''spam'' formulas like Crush, Drain, Heal, and Flash, leveling up your fomulas like mad and raising your character's levels well beyond even where they need to comfortably fight the final boss, then go back and stock up on ingredients and still walk away with a profit.

** ''VideoGame/PhantomBrave'' has what may be the easiest level grind in existence. Goes like this: There's an easy way to get a character that can easily "steal" objects that are much higher level early in the game. Use it to get high-level items and fuse them together. Use that item to power level the character, then have it get even higher-level items. Before long, all you have to do to level any character up is to hand it your hand-made InfinityPlusOneSword and watch the levels add up. (However, every new character starts with a [[{{Cap}} level cap]] of 100...but this can be easily raised to the 9,999 maximum with a few fusions.)
* Made ridiculously easy in ''VideoGame/LuminousArc'', where healing or buffing any ally earns the character casting the spell 30 experience, and it takes 100 EXP to level. This doesn't sound so special until you realize that upon gaining a level, your [[=HP=]] and [[=MP=]] are reset to full, allowing you to simply go to a low-level map with all your healers and buffers and boost them up by massive amounts.
* The Tower of Valni in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheSacredStones'' is, in-story, the place where [[spoiler:the Sacred Stone of Frelia was kept, until the Grado Empire raided the tower and broke it.]] In game, as it's full of low-level monsters, it can be used as this. There are also random monster skirmishes which can easily be used for grinding, particularly ones that spawn on earlier-game maps.
** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening'' also included skirmishes on the overworld that are meant for level grinding. Additionally, while it didn't include a specific area like the Tower of Valni, it ''did'' have an entire DLC map dedicated to [=EXP=] farming.
** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemFates'' continued the trend of including means to level grind, though with a slight twist. The overworld skirmishes can only be done on ''Birthright'' and ''Revelation'', but not ''Conquest''; additionally, in ''Conquest'', all DLC levels except the one specifically meant for level grinding do not provide [=EXP=] to the characters.

* ''[[VideoGame/AdvanceWars Advance Wars: Dual Strike]]'' introduced the skills mechanic where, for every 1000 points earned by a [=CO=], they "ranked up" and unlocked an empty skill slot and their choice of skill to put there. The early skills are near worthless, such as getting a miniscule 5% raise to attack power, but the later skills you earn are devastating, such as the ability to deploy units from ''any allied city''[[note]](although some, such as this one, can only be gained by beating the campaign mode, making it a [[DownplayedTrope not entirely straight]] case of promoting grinding)[[/note]]. Since points won in the non-canon War Room counted, a patient-enough player could farm Jake to Rank 10 before even starting the campaign and blast through story mode effortlessly. It was such a GameBreaker the mechanic was removed entirely from ''Days of Ruin''.

* ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas'' lets you level up several skills, such as sprinting, biking, and individual weapons, by repeatedly using them. Maxing them out offers various benefits, such as [[GunsAkimbo dual-wielding pistols and SMGs]].

* The necessity of this trope is somewhat addressed in ''Manga/SoulHunter''--the BrilliantButLazy protagonist Taikoubou, when tasked to seal ''365'' souls (a good number of whom belong to the local EvilEmpire), tries to [[SequenceBreak short-cut]] the process by taking on the [[spoiler:apparent]] BigBad first. He gets his ass handed to him, and he spends the rest of the plot working his way up the SortingAlgorithmOfEvil and taking levels in badass.

* ''Anime/DogDays'' takes this to its logical conclusion, with [[FriendlyWar entire wars]] being fought for the purpose of army-wide grinding sessions to prepare for the occasional demon attack ([[WarForFunAndProfit with the bonus of them being an excellent source of revenue and entertainment for the countries involved]]).

* ''LightNovel/IveBeenKillingSlimesForThreeHundredYearsAndMaxedOutMyLevel'': As the title implies, level grinding is the source of protagonist Azusa Aizawa's absurdly high power, which is such that despite supposedly being a SquishyWizard she can defeat dragons bare-handed with ease. However, Azusa did this entirely by accident, as she only killed Slimes every day for exercise and because the magic stones they drop were a source of income. It's just that doing it for 300 years plus possessing a passive ability that increases her experience gains totaled out to over 10 million experience points.

* In ''Film/GroundhogDay'', Creator/BillMurray's character Phil relives the same day over and over. To fill the time, he learns how to sculpt ice, throw playing cards into a hat, perform CPR, perform the Heimlich maneuver, play the piano, get the girl, be a decent human being, etc. He has none of these skills at the beginning of the story. The implication is that Phil spent the equivalent of decades reliving the same day, giving him the time to perfect these abilities.
* The Mimics in ''Film/EdgeOfTomorrow'' conquer worlds by resetting time itself to a specific moment whenever an Alpha, one of a special caste of warriors, is killed. This mechanism allows the mimics to win by SaveScumming and adapting to the tactics of their enemies. When Bill Cage, a morale officer with zero combat experience, gains the Mimics' power after killing an Alpha, he uses this ability to learn how to become a better soldier, by dying over and over again. He not only fights the Mimics over and over again, but also learns more about the people around him bit-by-bit. By the time [[spoiler:he loses his power to reset]], he's a OneManArmy.

* ''Literature/TheGam3'': A large part of Alan's time is spent doing repetitive or unusual activities with the explicit purpose of gaining experience or abilities. He isn't treated as unusual in this regard, as nearly every player shown is desperately trying to become as powerful as they can.

* ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex''
** This is basically what Accelerator was trying to do with the [[CloningBlues Sisters]]: Killing 20 thousand level 2 espers to advance to level 6. Sure is a loooong grind. Though the thing that actually got him within a hair's breadth of the Level 6 Shift was [[spoiler:[[NiceJobBreakingItHero getting punched in the face by Touma a few times]]]].
--->'''Accelerator:''' Guess the secret to leveling up is to face a strong opponent, huh?
** Thor says he gets stronger and more skilled with each fight. By the time Touma meets him, Thor says he's become so powerful that Touma is pretty much the only opponent who could give him any significant boost.
* This was necessary in the MostDangerousVideoGame that was ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline''. The minimum safety margin is to be at least ten levels higher than the floor you're on; so if you're on Floor 40, you need to be at least Level 50. By the time the Clearers hit the Level 75 Boss, most of them are around level 90. Due to diminishing returns, basic grinding was inevitable.

* The basic premise of the descriptively-titled ''LightNovel/IveBeenKillingSlimesForThreeHundredYearsAndMaxedOutMyLevel'': the protagonist reincarnates as an [[CompleteImmortality Completely Immortal]] witch in an RPGMechanicsVerse who kills a few slimes every time she goes down to the village, with her killing around 25 per day as exercise and to earn money. When she finally thinks to check her stats 3 centuries later, it turns out she's level 99, has a dozen apocalyptic spells she never knew she'd learned (she'd only used the ability she started with, [[KnowYourVines identifying plants to make medicine]]), an additional ability that doubles the amount of exp she gets from killing slimes[[note]]It simply adds 2 EXP points to whatever EXP she gets from killing a monster, but since slimes are only worth 2 EXP to begin with, that means it doubles how much she gets from them[[/note]], and her numbers are so high that she curbstomps a dragon while trying out one of those spells for the first time. To give an idea of just how long she grinded for, the guild receptionist she talks to calculates that an adventurer would have to kill ''4380 large dragons'' to reach max level.

* ''Webcomic/TropeOverdosedTheWebcomic'' [[http://tropeoverdosed.pcriot.com/?p=32 has the party grinding for a good many panels, but only making it to level 2]] [[RuleOfFunny because if they had leveled up any more, it wouldn't have been as funny.]]

** “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced ''one'' kick 10,000 times.” - Creator/BruceLee

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'': Not only do you have mundane level grinding (mixed with the complicated and often annoying sphere grid system), you also have level grinding for your blitzball team! And if you want to beat Nemesis (or, even worse, Penance), prepare to rip out the entire sphere grid and grind to replace all those piddling +1 & +2 stat bonuses with +4's won from arena bosses.

* ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' allows the party to access 65,000,000 BC as soon as it reaches the End of Time. Once there, the party can go to the Dacytl's Nest, an area that the party won't visit on TheOneTrueSequence until several dungeons later, and fight enemy parties that give out twice the experience the enemies in the dungeon the party is ''supposed'' to visit next. The combination of tricks like these and non-random enemy encounters make ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' a ''very'' easy game to level grind on.

* ''[[VideoGame/AceOnline Air Rivals]]'', and how! The level grinding there is so intense after level 75 and specially at 8x levels that even the own developers of the game (which are, as you might guess, ''Korean''), decided to add new [[PeninsulaOfPowerLeveling maps of power leveling]] for players to get to the so-desired level cap of 110. Even with that, the American server (''Ace Online'') has a PERMANENT 200% EXP BONUS for everyone below level 75 and it gets reduced to 50% on weekends after that point. Geez.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'': Not only do you have mundane level grinding (mixed with the complicated and often annoying sphere grid system), you also have level grinding for your blitzball team! And if you want to beat Nemesis, prepare to rip out the entire sphere grid and grind to replace all those piddling +1 & +2 stat bonuses with +4's won from arena bosses.

** ''Helbreath''. Player servers have leveling sped up 10 to 20 times to gain levels at least in somewhat average pace.

** ''Ninja Gaiden 2'' also has an easy way to grind as much essence as you need to max out every weapon and buy as many healing items as you can hold: in one part of the AirborneAircraftCarrier level, you come across a long hallway that's blocked from one end by laser beams: if you try to pass them, you naturally take damage and an alarm is triggered, which summons some TAC Ninjas to take care of you. However, the alarm trigger is actually seperate from getting hit by lasers, meaning that if you inch your way right next to the lasers, you can summon as many of them as you want without running out of health in the progress. Not only that, but the ninjas enter the room via a long hallway and take their sweet time getting to you, which easily allows you to kill them in a single [[ChargeAttack Ultimate Technique]] from the [[SinisterScythe Eclipse Scythe]].

** This game was also one of the first action games to introduce leveling and XP, and the developers' inexperience with leveling as a mechanic shows a bit in the game. You lose all experience towards your next level when you run out of lives, which means that grinding low-level creatures becomes the default method for leveling due to its safety. Completing a dungeon means an automatic level-up regardless of the XP needed, which means that with the expanding amounts of XP needed for later level-ups, it's better to level-up naturally up to at least six-levels from the maximum, and then just go back and finally beat the bosses of each dungeon to get the remaining six or fewer level-ups. This adds a bit of uneven pacing to the game as you've gone through over 2/3 of your level-ups before you beat each boss. Most enemies give only trivial amounts of xp (such as 2 pts when you need 9,000), and some give ''no'' xp except for when they hurt you, and then they'll ''drain'' xp from you.

* Best example of this come from {{MMORPG}}s originating from Korea, notorious for having an atrocious leveling pace. Prime examples are ''VideoGame/MapleStory'' and ''VideoGame/{{Lineage 2}}'', which has a leveling pace so bad and arduous that there are many private servers that give players ''thirty-two times'' as much experience, money, and loot as the official game yet still contain playtimes roughly equivalent to ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''. Add the fact that dying will result in XP loss that can de-level you quickly, even when another player kills you. Such games give rise to the euphemism ''Korean flavour'' MMORPG, even when the game isn't from Korea. Examples include :

** VideoGame/RFOnline. Given that earlier versions of the game had no side quests and most of the quest requires you to kill a Pitboss (which is only doable with at least a party of 8, if not multiple parties and hope you got the last shot) there is really nothing else to do. On top of that, even on servers with the exp turned up to ''300 times the normal amount'' you still need to grind if you ever want to hit that oh-so-coveted level 65, because even at 300X, mobs still only hand out a sliver of exp per kill (and they can one-shot you).

* ''VideoGame/NetHack'' tries to avert this with a combination of LevelScaling and a level cap of 30 - however, potions and scrolls and such can boost individual stats without changing levels, which means that [[RandomlyDrops Random Drops]] are the way forward. This generally means grinding by [[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/rec.games.roguelike.nethack/OCzz8LD-n4I/xWFpI6QG9ygJ pudding farming]]: black puddings will happily duplicate themselves if hit with an iron object, provide worthy XP, they very occasionally drop items (of more or less any form) when they die, and also leave corpses. Kill, sacrifice the corpses or eat them when you grow hungry, repeat until the level is full of puddings and your max HP is wherever you want it (usually in the six-figure region); the repeated sacrificing of corpses can also be used to gain spellbooks and artifact weapons, and to increase your intrinsic armour class. Several bots have been written to automate the process.

* ''VideoGame/InsideAStarFilledSky'' is nothing ''but'' grinding. Because the game has no end that anyone could possible achieve in this millenium (or the next one, for that matter), all you're doing is moving back through entering items and getting better powerups. And if you're bad off, you make have to grind so that the first grind actually shows any effect.

** A desert patch next to Doma Castle in the World of Ruin (SNES version) has an endgame grinding area where a bug boosts experience points to extraordinary amounts when you fight with a lower number of members, with a solo fighter gaining maximum exp and leveling up like mad from a single fight. As the result, a player may have a character/a duo taking turns grinding to level 99.

** The way the game's ability-system works (passive abilities like Auto-Haste and Auto-Regen are learnt from armour and accessories and AP earned in battle) actually provides some ''incentive'' for doing this, as you will want the most beneficial abilities (again, Auto-Haste and Auto-Regen) for your characters before entering a dungeon, and will generally only have one of the item teaching the relevant ability at a time.

** The series accentuates this trope by letting you start a battle with a weak Pokemon, knock out a high-level enemy with a strong one, and [[LeakedExperience have both Pokemon earn experience points]]. At least one "Trainer Tips" sign ''encourages'' this. On the downside, you need to have battled your way to the higher-level locations first.
** The UsefulNotes/NintendoGameCube side-games, ''VideoGame/PokemonColosseum'' and ''XD'', actually ''avert'' this trope for the most part - while you can have level grinding, the Pokemon you can catch are as high a level as the area opponents, meaning you can go through the game with just using Pokemon as you catch them rather than training them. The only real point where it does require leveling is against the penultimate and ultimate bosses, which take a leap of levels over the next best opponents.

** It shows something when, even if you use the code to start the battle with only 1 exp point remaining to the next level, it still can take more than one hour to have a digimon reach Lv. 99 ONCE. Because if you want to max you stats, you'll be leveling from 1 to at least 70 several times, to say nothing of using the cross DNA evolution to learn skills you normally wouldn't be able to.

** It can become this at times. At least as an inexperienced player who may not collect all the djinn, you will require LevelGrinding in ''VideoGame/GoldenSun1''. In ''VideoGame/GoldenSunTheLostAge'', you can grind until level 99 in the turtle cave, which isn't really hard considering the insane amount of exp Wonderbirds give, if you want to. It isn't required.

* Unlike the ''Literature/FightingFantasy'' gamebooks, Fightingl Fantasy Legends and Legends Portal has your characters gain experience. LevelGrinding becomes a huge part of the game as the first few points of improvement will be neglible, while useful equipment might take a while to find. Grind enough and you'll even be able to smack down the bosses with brute force alone.

* ''VideoGame/AceCombat5TheUnsungWar'''s method of unlocking new planes within a "family" involved you farming kills on one model so as to unlock the next, then use the next to farm up to the third etc. ''VideoGame/AceCombatXSkiesOfDeception'' also has you unlock a set of colour schemes by grinding enough kills on the relevant planes. Well, all of them to be honest.

* Made ridiculously easy in ''VideoGame/LuminousArc'', where healing or buffing any ally earns the character casting the spell 30 experience, and it takes 100 exp to level. This doesn't sound so special until you realise that upon gaining a level, your [[=HP=]] and [[=MP=]] are reset to full, allowing you to simply go to a low-level map with all your healers and buffers and boost them up by massive amounts.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'', experience gained by killing mobs gives experience levels. Although these are pointless for the first part of the game, once the player obtains diamonds they can make Enchantment Tables. These allow weapons, armor, and tools to be enchanted with special abilities, such as reduced damage from use, extra damage when attacking monsters, protection from certain types of damage (explosions, fire, water, fall, etc.), and increased item drops. The problem is that experience gained from monsters is worth much less at higher levels, and dying makes the player lose almost all their experience. As a result, even with structures built specifically to spawn and damage mobs automatically, it can take days to get enough experience for the best enchantments. Made worse by the [[RandomNumberGod Random Number God]] deciding what enchantments are received, which can absorb large amounts of exp only to give a common, less useful enchantment or even ''ignore up to one quarter of the experience'' (but still take it) when calculating which enchantment will be given.

* ''Anime/DogDays'' takes this to its logical conclusion, with [[FriendlyWar entire wars]] being fought for the purpose of army-wide grinding sessions to prepare for the occaisonal demon attack ([[WarForFunAndProfit with the bonus of them being an excellent source of revenue and entertainment for the countries involved]]).

* in ''Manga/LevelE'', a group of five elementary-school kids end up stuck [[RPGEpisode RPG world]] because of [[{{Troll}} the Prince]]. When they catch a glimpse of the vilain they are suposed to fight, they immediately decide to gain severals levels before trying anything.

* The basic premise of the descriptively-titled ''LightNovel/IveBeenKillingSlimesForThreeHundredYearsAndMaxedOutMyLevel'': the protagonist reincarnates as an [[CompleteImmortality Completely Immortal]] witch in an RPGMechanicsVerse who kills a few slimes every time she goes down to the village, with her killing around 25 per day as exercise and to earn money. When she finally thinks to check her stats 3 centuries later, it turns out she's level 99, has a dozen apocalyptic spells she never knew she'd learned (she'd only used the ability she started with, [[KnowYourVines identifying plants to make medicine]]), an additional ability that doubles the amount of exp she gets from killing slimes[[note]]It simply adds 2 exp points to whatever exp she gets from killing a monster, but since slimes are only worth 2 exp to begin with, that means it doubles how much she gets from them[[/note]], and her numbers are so high that she curbstomps a dragon while trying out one of those spells for the first time. To give an idea of just how long she grinded for, the guild receptionist she talks to calculates that an adventurer would have to kill ''4380 large dragons'' to reach max level.

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