If you’re a user of the Steam platform, you’re probably aware of the existence of such a thing as your profile level. However, do you know about the benefits that can come from increasing its value and how to do it effectively?
Such knowledge may come in handy, especially for streamers, players, and people who use the Steam platform features to gain material benefits (e.g., through trading). It may happen that due to lack of proper level of your profile will prevent you from performing a specific operation. How to protect yourself against this? In this article, we’ll discuss the benefits of having a higher level of your Steam profile and its effective ways to increase the value.
Without further ado, let’s get right into it!
How to level up on Steam
What exactly are Steam profile levels?
We can say that the Steam profile level is a value that determines the state of engagement with the life of this platform. Each user starts from level 0.
Users with higher levels can be distinguished by, for instance, a higher place on a friends list. Here’s the example:
The account with the highest level currently belongs to a user with the nickname St4ck; he’s at the level 5000. The total value of his account rates around $25,000.
What are the benefits of boosting your Steam level?
For each level you achieve, rewards will be provided. Besides the mentioned priority on the friend list, the benefits of leveling up a Steam account include:
- Increased number of slots in your friends list (The cap at level 0 is 250. You increase the cap by 5 each time you level up)
- Higher drop-rate for Booster Packs with Steam Trading Cards (20% higher chance for every 10 levels)
- Cosmetics such as emoticons or profile backgrounds
- Increased number of possible showcases (1 showcase per 10 levels)
Besides, a higher level on Steam boosts your profile’s credibility, making life easier for you in the Steam community, for example, when making a trade.
You level up your Steam profile just like you do in the majority of video games — by earning experience points (XP).
How to earn XP?
The source of XP on Steam is badges. There are three types of badges:
- Common Badges
Common Badges are badges that every Steam user has
For now, we can list three types of it:
- Community Badge
This is a type of badge that can be upgraded by doing specific tasks. Here’s a list of them:
You can collect up to 500 XP for this badge. The way of progression looks like this:
(image source: steamcommunity.com)
- Game Collector
This badge upgrades for the number of games you have. Here’s how its progression looks like:
(image source: steamtradingcards.fandom.com)
- Years of Service Badge
This badge on your Steam account anniversaries. Each year, the value of the XP you receive increases. Here’s how it looks like:
(image source: steamtradingcards.com)
- Event Badges
You can upgrade your profile a few levels higher for activities such as launching a game or gifting something to your friend during specific events such as the Steam Summer Sale or Halloween Sale. There are 4 to 6 such events every year.
Besides easy XP scoring, you can also benefit from the discounts that flash up during that period. You are able to get the most popular game titles from recent years for literally a few bucks!
- Badges created with Steam Trading Cards
Most games on Steam have a collectible set of cards that can be used to create badges. These types of badges have 5 tiers; for a single one, you’ll earn 100XP.
- How to create such badge?
For example, let’s use the game “Cyberpunk 2077”:
- Step 1:
Open the Steam app, click your nickname and select “Badges”.
- Step 2:
Find the game you want to make a badge for.
- Step 3:
Make sure you have all the cards from this game’s collection and click “Craft Badge”.
- Step 4:
Done!
You have successfully upgraded your Game Badge by 1 tier and gained 100XP. You may repeat this process 4 more times for the same game.
The cost of upgrading this badge type can range from a few cents to even several thousand dollars. It all depends on the prices of the cards you need on the Steam Market. For most popular games, one tier will cost you about a dollar.
It’s also worth mentioning that when you collect all foil cards from the collection of a particular game, you will have the opportunity to create a foil badge, which will boost your Steam level by 100XP.
Foil badges only have 1 tier, so you can only perform this process once for each game. Creating this type of badge usually costs much more than making five tiers of a regular one, as foil version cards are much more expensive.
- Several ways to collect Steam Trading Cards!
- Just play the games you already have on your Steam Account. You can drop from 3 to 5 Trading Cards per game, and then you have the chance to get a booster pack with three random cards. The possibility of getting a Booster Pack increases as the level gets higher.
- You can find pretty much all possible cards on the Steam Market. Prices vary, with some costing a cent, others a few hundred dollars, and the rarest ones even a few thousand dollars.
- The Steam Community has many groups where people exchange items, including Trading Cards. The most popular one is the STCards, with almost 2 million users.
- Your friends can also help. If your Steam friend has any cards you need — offer them an exchange for some items that you have which might be useful for them.
Summary
We hope this article will help you successfully boost your Steam profile to a higher level.