Why would I even want to do this to myself?

I love this game! Tomb Raider 2013 is easily one of my top five games of all time.

It would be a shame not to 100%, even if I had to grind a dead multiplayer mode for dozens of hours to achieve my goal.

I wanted to share this guide with anyone who feels the same way about TR '13 but got frustrated with mp issues.

The following is the distilled know-how to solo grind, tried and tested by myself, then further improved to shave off more minutes per run. The grind itself, however, is on you.

The idea is to move from this


to this!

• Time limit: 20 minutes
  
• Medkits to retrieve: 20
  
• [The other two options don't matter. You may leave them untouched.]

• In the Lobby menu, choose Character Selection.
  
• Make sure that you see Survivors on the top-left of the screen.
  
• If not, click Switch Faction to choose them.
  
• Any character you choose from the Survivors is fine.

• In the Lobby menu, choose Loadouts.
  
  
• In the Survivors section, click on the first small icon - marked with blue.
  
  
  
• Now in the Offensive Skill window, choose Second Wind.
  
  
  
• Next, we click on Survival Skill on the upper-right. In this new window, choose Advanced Looting.
  
  
  
• Your loadout is now optimized.
  
  
• Picking primary, secondary and explosive weapons makes no difference in this method.
  No need to worry about them.
  
  
• If you haven't unlocked these two skills yet, that's okay.
  Keep playing multiplayer using this method to quickly unlock them as you level up.

Now that we set up the session, chose the correct faction (Survivors), and optimized the Loadout, we're ready to start.

Choose Start game.

The idea is:

1. Run to the Medkit, grab it and start walking back to the drop point.
   
   
2. Drop the Medkit when you're roughly 15 steps away from any direction before you reach the drop point.
   You can do this by aiming your weapon (RMB).
   
   
3. Pick up the Medkit again and walk till you reach the drop point where it automatically is taken off your hands and vanishes.
   
   
4. Rinse and repeat for the remaining 19 Medkits.
   
   
5. When you deliver Medkit #20, the Round finishes and you're loaded into the results screen.
   In the next round, the roles switch, you become the Solarii and you're supposed to kill the survivors, but you're playing solo and there's no one to kill, so...
   Exit to the Multiplayer menu to set up a new match. Repeat the grind as needed.

• You get
  200 XP for Medium Carry
  500 XP for Long Carry
  750 XP for delivering the Medkit to the drop zone
  
  
  
  
  
• Step 2 = 200 XP if you were close before dropping (Medium Carry ) or 500 XP if you were far (Long Carry).
  Step 3 = the same as above, though you cannot get two Long Carry / 500 XP in a row
  
  
• You can get two and even three Medium Carry / 200 XP in a row
  but that's still only 600 XP,
  less than a single 500 XP + a single 200 XP, 700 XP.
  
  So for each Medkit, drop it strategically to get a single Medium Carry & a single Long Carry every time.

• It will take some time and practice until you get used to the map, recognize the ideal spots before the drop point to get your Long Carry and Medium Carry XP, and get familiar with the controls.
  
  
• Once you do, and once you get into a nice rhythm, it will take as little as 30 seconds to deliver each Medkit, gaining 1,450 XP / Medkit.
  
  
• Proof: You can see that all 20 Medkits have been delivered and there's still 10:09 minutes remaining out of 20:00.
  

1,450 XP per Medkit * 20 Medkits = 29,000 XP

You also get 1,650 XP once per round as follows:
350 for Gopher
1,000 for Delivery Boy
300 for Completed Round

29,000 + 1,650 = 30,650 XP per round

Each round = 10 minutes if you're fast and learned the map
OR
15 to 20 minutes if you're just starting and still not used to it.

Setting up a new match and loading in and out all in all take 2-3 minutes,
Picking up the crates for loot takes as much time as you let it,
so ideally you should be able to get 30,650 XP / 13 minutes
Let's say 30,650 XP / 15 minutes


so every hour grinding solo, you can get 122,600 XP.

The grand total XP is 1,771,100
Being that you make 122,600 XP per hour on average

1,771,100 ÷ 122,600 = 14.45 hours

So you'll need 15 hours.



Important note:

• The multiplayer will detect if you're AFK and show a warning message, then within very few minutes kick you.
  
• The point being, if you need to be AFK, do so before or after your match, not during it.
  
• Losing 10-15 minutes of grind might sound like nothing but it can still be a little bit annoying!

Disclaimer:
There's a faster way of doing this but it isn't solo.
I tried the duo-player, grenade-launcher method but it just didn't work out and here's why:

• While there are two semi-active chat groups for multiplayer which you can find in the discussion forums, these work for quick achievements only. It's not exactly easy finding a committed partner for the two achievements we focused on, because both players need to
  (a) be there at the same time of day for several sessions / days
  (b) do the same boring thing for hours and hours
  and that's just very rare to come by.
  
  
• The game's multiplayer mode is wonky: lags, bugs, disconnections, crashes, and worse, loss of progress. When you play solo, most of these issues are non-existent.

You'll need other players for the group and match achievements, not for these two though.

I hope you get there whichever way you're more comfortable with. Remember these words:

• When you reach level 60, the True Commitment achievement will pop up.
  
• Purchase all the characters as you're progressing or now, and, of course, purchase the last character, Lara Croft.
  
• No need to buy any gear nor get the Solarii General by prestiging twice.
  
• Quit Tomb Raider, wait for a few seconds till the cloud is synced, then launch the game again.
  
• The Shopaholic achievement should pop up now as well.

• You can see that the match itself took exactly 8 minutes and 15 seconds!
  
• That's a new record and opens up a whole new range of faster XP grinding.
  
• Do note though that it was extremely lucky to have almost half the 20 Medkits in the nearest spot and none of them appeared in the farthest spawn spot of the map.