This is one of the “bad” parts about getting a new mount in ArcheAge. Except for those rare promotional ones that start off at level 50, you need to level a new one up from level 5. Part of that is by design since there is a cash shop item (Companion Crusts) that can be purchased for 15 Loyalty Tokens (which is acquired at 5 per day as a Patron subscriber) or also for gold (which varies) from the auction house. It provides 50K experience for your pet (mount or pet).
Killing mobs will also earn experience (mount needs to be activated and kept preferably in standby mode far enough until it is high enough level to take some damage). The alternative is to travel a lot by mount; the hitch is that it needs to be actively running (and not against a wall since it is based on distance traveled) and earns around 300XP every minute (56 seconds to be exact) at a movement speed of 9m/s (faster mounts like this one earn that 300XP a little bit quicker). Approximately 40 Companion Crusts are needed to level it up to 50.
So this auto run in circle is an alternative that many have used and is considered ok by Trion so long as you aren’t getting in the way of any other player and/or if the server load is high enough where AFK players will be kicked by a GM if discovered. Since this is a legacy server that is no longer heavily populated, I just do this in out of the way places (up to level 30 as of this video).
Besides the initial market place credits that I’ve been slowly spending down, I have no intention of spending any more money on this game/Trion (given their completely flippant attitude towards paying players across most of their games). So I have zero intention of becoming a ArcheAge Patron to earn some Loyalty nor spend gold on those crusts.
UPDATE: as if they read my mind, they ran a double everything event for 7 days starting from April 28 where I was able to get my mount to 50 in two days from around level 35.
