Steam is a famous video game platform, which offers a multitude of different features for its users. These features include its own game launcher, purchasable video games, a chat function, and account features.

Steam accounts each possess a level, and begin at level 0 by default. These accounts can be levelled up through various methods, some of which we’ll go through in this article. Levelling up a Steam account comes with different benefits, so it can be advantageous to do so.

What do I get for levelling up my Steam account?

Levelling up your Steam account comes with several benefits, which consist of granting you extra friend slots, extra showcase slots, and increased drop rates for booster packs.

Steam accounts begin with 250 friend slots, and each level up grants you 5 extra slots until you reach the maximum of 2000 friend slots.

At every 10-level benchmark, you gain 1 showcase slot until you reach the 20 slots limit. You also gain a 20% increase in booster pack drop rates.

Why is my Steam account still level 0?

Steam accounts can only be levelled up if you are not a limited user. A limited user is a user who has not spent at least $5.00 (or equivalent) in Steam.

Limited users cannot gain XP for their account, meaning that their accounts will remain at level 0 regardless of what they do. Therefore, before you start trying to level up your account, make sure that you have spent at least $5.00 in Steam.

Alternatively, you can also add $5.00 to your Steam wallet to reach the requirements needed in order to gain XP. You can do so by clicking your profile name in the top right, and going to Account Details > Add Funds to Your Steam Wallet.

It’s also worth noting that you won’t earn Steam trading cards and badges if you’re downloading non-Steam or pirated games to your account.

How to level up on Steam – Increase

There are a few methods you can utilise in order to increase your Steam account level. This largely revolves around buying and playing games from the Steam marketplace.

Other methods include obtaining badges, making badges, and levelling up badges. All these activities give you XP for your Steam account, which help you level up.

Method 1: Buying Games

The first method you can utilise to level up your account is buying video games from Steam.

Navigate to the ‘Store’ tab in Steam to find their video games. The store homepage usually showcases any big sales or discounts they currently have.

You can also filter games by their genre (and other tags), or search for games using the search bar. You can narrow down your search further by choosing a price limit. This will filter out any games that are priced above the limit.

Each time you purchase a video game, you gain XP. Purchasing new games is the easiest way to level up on Steam quickly, but obviously this can cost a lot.

For this reason, it’s usually a good idea to wait for Steam sales and buy your games in bulk if you want to earn the maximum XP.

Earn Badges

Another way of gaining XP for your Steam account is by earning badges. Each badge earned gives you XP. You can earn badges by completing certain tasks in Steam.

You can view your badge inventory to see the different badges you have. You can also view what badges you have yet to earn. There are different sections for the various badges you can earn.

Steam main badge section is called the ‘Pillar of Community’. Each badge slot contains a short description describing what you must do to earn said badge.

Such tasks include many simple activities, like playing a game, adding a game to your wishlist, reviewing a game, adding a friend, and so on.

Additionally, there’s a Select Collector badge that grants you XP whenever you collect a specific amount of video games in your Steam library. There are several benchmarks for Game Collector badges, and supposedly no limit.

There’s also a Years of Service badge that grants you XP for having a Steam account for a certain amount of time. For each year that passed since you got your account, you gain 50 XP.

If you want to play games to earn XP, checking which badges you need is a good idea, as well as considering which games you’re playing too.

Craft Badges

Other than earning Steam badges through certain tasks or card drops, you can also get badges by crafting them. Crafting a badge earns you XP.

One method of crafting badges is by playing video games on Steam. Ensure that the games you’re playing support badges, and have cards you can earn.

As you play these games, cards can drop. Card drops can be quite slow, which can make increasing Steam levels quite a long process.

See Also: Why is my Steam download so slow?

Purchasing a video game can also earn you a card drop for the respective game. Each game has a certain amount of cards you can get.

A video game usually only drops a certain amount of cards, which means you’ll have to get the rest of the cards through other means. You can get cards by either trading for it, or buying it from the marketplace on Steam.

You can trade for the cards if someone in your friends list has the cards you want. You can check whether this is the case by clicking on a game’s badge section, and scrolling down. It will tell you how many of your friends have each badge.

You can also click ‘Visit Trade Forum’ to find users wanting card trades. Click on a message, and click ‘Offer a Trade’ to start trading cards.

Alternatively, you can click ‘Buy Remaining Cards on the Market’ to visit the marketplace. You will be taken to a page where you can purchase all the missing cards for the respective video game.

Fill in your details, and click ‘add funds’ to purchase the cards. Each card usually only costs a few pence so don’t worry about spending too much money.

You can also sell cards you don’t want on the marketplace. To do so, hover over your username, and click ‘inventory’.

Then, select the badge you wish to sell. Scroll down to view how much it would sell for. Click ‘sell’ to put it on the market.

Alternatively, you can convert it into gems. Gems are used to buy booster packs. Click ‘turn into gems’ to convert it.

Once you get all the cards available for a game, you can use them to craft a badge. This badge will a specific one for the video game. Each game has one badge you can get, which will give you 100 XP when first crafted.

You can level up these badges by crafting them again. The badges can be levelled up a maximum of four times, and each level up grants you 100XP.

When you craft a badge, you can get a booster pack. A booster pack consists of three random cards from the respective video game.

You can only start getting booster pack drops for a game if you’ve already gotten all the available card drops through playing the game. You must also be considered eligible for receiving booster packs.

To be eligible, you must log into Steam every week. You can check whether you’re eligible by clicking ‘how do I earn card drops?’ on the badge homepage.

In short, you can gain XP when you collecting trading cards from playing more Steam games – you can get these from some free games too, so it’s worth checking out which games are free.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there are several ways to level up your account on Steam. Such ways include buying games, getting badges, levelling up badges, and crafting badges – you don’t need to be connected to the Steam network to do this.

All these activities grant you different amounts of XP, which is required to level up your Steam account. Just make sure that you’re able to level up your account by spending at least $5.00 in Steam, or adding $5.00 to your Steam Wallet.