Dr. Mrs. The Nerd: Leveling your new Skylanders - Fast!

If you're like Chan & I, you saw Skylanders in a store for the first time and immediately became addicted. We've been collecting the tiny, adorable characters ever since, and have amassed about ten or twelve of them at this point. If you're less spastic/neurotic/easily swayed by cute figurines than us, you might have the game and a few figures.

Sadly, our collection has never looked this shiny or epic.

Either way, if you're "done" with the main story arc of the game and you've bought new Skylanders since, you might want to level them up and get all of their super cool abilities without having to replay through all of those levels again. If you want to fudge your way to fully-leveled Skylanders with all of their powers, we've learned a few tricks in the past week or so and we thought it would be nice to compile them here, possibly to aide other gamers hoping to similarly outsmart the system. Yes, we are kind of cheaters. So what.

Usually when I get a brand-spanking-new figure, the first place I take them is for a run through (or two) of Perilous Pastures. It's Level 2 of the game (wiki here), and it's totally easy for a level 1 Skylander to get through. Plus, if you have a tech Skylander to open the gate in the first part of the level, you can easily finish the level with around 700 coins or so.

Once you feel comfortable with your new friend, your best leveling-up move is to head to the Crawling Catacombs (wiki). Though it may seem odd to take a level two or three Skylander to the 15th level in the game and expect them to survive, it really isn't, mostly because of your new best friend, the Spider Swarmers, and their mamas, the Spider Spitters. Similar to the Chompy Pods in early levels of the games, the Spider Spitters will continue to spit out Spider Swarmers as long as you don't destroy the "pod." The great thing about these tiny spiders is that they actually explode themselves after a few seconds, showering your Skylander with EXP and food. As long as you leave the pods alone and run around trying to avoid most of the damage the spiders inflict, you can level your Skylander up to a four or five pretty quickly. Once you've got the figure to that point, you should be able to beat the rest of the level without too much of a struggle, still gaining a lot of EXP and money as you go. This youtube video shows you what I mean to some extent:

After I've gotten a new Skylander through the Catacombs and leveled up to lvl 7 or so, it's time to head to the Lair of Kaos, aka the last level in the game before the final boss fight (wiki).

Cutest. Bad guy. Ever.

Despite Kaos being totally adorable, the last boss fight isn't exactly easy. Still, we're not gonna even get close to the end fight - we're staying at the beginning of the level for this trick - the Path of Fangs. All you do at this point, really, is get your Skylander through the first section of the level, beating the various minions and raking in the money - about 1000 coins per go - and then when you get to the first conveniently placed spinning blade, let it kill you.

Yes, that's right - let the spinny blade of doom kill your tiny unsuspecting Skylander. Then, when the game tells you to replace the figure you're trying to level with a different one, ignore it and retry the level (on Xbox, you press Y to do this). Now, you can continue through this part of the level and let the blade kill you as many times as it takes to get the money you need to buy your Skylander's power upgrades. When you think you've got enough money, or your're bored of schooling the minions over and over, make sure you finish by letting the spinny blade kill you one last time, restarting the level again, and THEN use the main menu to exit back to the ruins. Your newly minted piles of money will stay with you and you can get all of the super sweet powers you could possibly want. All it costs is the bits of your soul you lose each time you kill your adorable Skylanders on purpose!

I hope you enjoyed this look into the life of a cheating, Skylander-killing monster, and that these tips may have helped you. If you have any tips, tricks, ideas, or questions, let us know! If you want to contact me, comment here, or tweet at me - @ShortFusePinups.