I am slowly closing in on Zwift level 50 which was (until recently) the highest level attainable. Alas, I suppose enough people had hit level 50 that Zwift HQ decided it needed to raise the roof to level 60, but I suppose it’s just as well. After all, my zeal for Peloton started to wane after ride #1000, and for Hydrow once I got my t-shirt for rowing a million meters, well, it was just hard to get psyched to do another million meters to get the hat. So if past is any indication, if they hadn’t raised the maximum level I probably would have started looking around for another platform.

Not that there’s a whole lot to be gained by maxing out Zwift. All you really get is some kit you’re probably not going to wear. There was sort of a cool Mondrian kit that I got a little while ago (level 40?) and wore for a while but mostly it’s not stuff you really want anyway. There are also some frames and wheels that are unlocked at later levels but once you have the Tron bike, the marginal gain from some of these super-high-end upgrades is pretty marginal. I guess you still need a time trial bike and a mountain bike, but there’s not a ton to differentiate any of them, really. 

(NB: And that’s a good thing. Zwift and similar platforms should really be about the rider and the effort and not things that you can buy. So if anyone is actually reading this, please don’t take anything I’m saying as an argument to have more differentiation between frames and wheels. Let the rider make the difference, I’m good with that.)

Still, there are levels, and where there a levels there are people like me who have an irrational need to get to the top. So I’d like to talk about how that’s done, and talk about a couple of very big flaws in Zwift’s system of awarding points.

Fundamentally, you get points for riding. The farther you ride, the more points you get. Zwift Insider has a good guide to the basics of the Zwift points system, so instead of rehashing those basics here, I’ll just point you to their site.

Did you actually go and read that page? The part about how riders using the metric system get points faster? I quote:

Sorry, Imperials: you will accumulate XP 7.3% faster if you ride in metric units. (100km=2,000 XP, while the equivalent mileage, 62.13=1864 XP.)

So, that by itself is a pretty big inequity right there. Why not give riders using the imperial system 32 xp instead? That’s still a fraction less than the metric system users get, but it’s a lot smaller difference than what they have today. That 7% or so difference between metric and imperial is absolutely huge when you start to think about the distances that you’ll be riding to level up.

The other big flaw in the awarding of Zwift points has to do with the fact that, outside of workout mode, Zwift points are awarded based on distance and not on effort. This means that to level up, one is behooved to do a lot of riding on flat roads in large groups where you can get the maximum speed for your effort. So, we’re talking a lot of Fuego Flats with the robot-pacers, which is about as boring as this game can get.

As I write this, the Tour of Watopia ’23 is drawing to a close. For the past month, I’ve been doing ToW rides because those rides give double points. So, for a month now, I’ve been seeking out the longest, flattest routes that are offered, because that is how I can gain the most points. Stages 3 and 4 (mountains and dirt, respectively) are the least valuable. Now that we’re into the “makeup week” it’s all Stage 1 (the flats) for me. Yawn.

As the saying goes, “What gets rewarded gets repeated.” So that’s why you’ll find me on the flats.

PS: Interested in “XP Farming”? There’s a good Reddit post here that uses the Crit City route and a time trial bike (capitalizing on the short length of the route and the fact that on the time trial bike you always get the XP bonus rather than another “power-up”). A much more elaborate (but more rewarding) strategy is offered by Shane Miller, involving interval workouts on the Alpe d’Zwift. You do need to complete the climb for it to work, and the big payout happens if you both own the lightweight wheels and then are awarded them at the top (so you are instead awarded 1000xp bonus). Shane says this happens often but frankly it has never happened to me. I’m always getting the helmet or some other prize that really should be accompanied by the “sad trombone” sound effect.