What is the easiest way to level up my profile?
While there's tons of badges out there, collecting cards and cards takes a lot of time, and only results in a 100 xp badge, is there anything other than just crafting badges that would help increase more exp?
Are there games that have extremely few cards to collect? Or is there an easier way to level up my profile?
If you're looking for games with as little cards as possible, the following incomplete list shows games which only have five cards each:
- Don't Starve
- Super Meat Boy
- The Swapper
- DLC Quest
- Trine 2
- Bastion
- The Walking Dead
- Bleed
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
- Defy Gravity
for a probably complete list of games with trading cards, have a look at this one
Costs: With a current card price of ~.2$ per card, that's about 1$/badge, so 100XP for 1$. Due to the level limit you cannot do this forever with the same game though
Other ways to obtain XP are:
- "Years of service" I got 250 XP for five years, so I guess it's 50 XP per year. Costs: time
- "Community leader" (Max: Lvl 3) Just do 28/29 of the stuff mentioned there (post a screenshot, trade, link to facebooke etc). Costs: Data
- "Director of Acquisitions" some XP per game you own (1-5 XP/game, see here as per Nolonar's answer). I don't know how DLCs count here, and the scaling is probably non-linear. Costs: a lot - even with an optimistic 10$/game you have to spend about 1000$ for another 100XP once you have many games
- "Steam Summer/Holiday Sale 201X; Potato Sack; Trading Card Beta Tester": XP based on the achievements/participation. Costs: A time machine...
So in summary, apart from the up to 200 XP from the "Pillar of community" badges the most promising source of XP are indeed gamecard badges. The badges with fewer gamecards are probably easier to obtain, but then again they may also be more expensive on the market.
By far the easiest way, is to do nothing.
You get 50 XP per year since your registration.
By far the fastest way, is to buy games with trading cards as well as their cards.
For every game owned, you get a few extra XP; For more information on how many games award how much XP, read here.
Trading card badges awards 100 XP each. You can only gather half of the cards available per game, unless you receive a booster pack. For the rest, you have to trade.