I'm getting to that point where I need to start releasing wolves *sadness* and I know the rewards for releasing wolves just went up... Anyway, I'm debating if I need to start leveling them before sending them to the great unknown or not. My regular wolves I have, seem to take forever to level up, but I may not being doing it in the most effecient way. So, I decided to come here and ask those that are more versed in it, what is the easiest quickest way to level these guys up?

Thanks for all your help!

Campaigning is the best way. Ideally you want lots of combat encounters as they give the most experience. You can fully level a wolf in a few hours if you campaign continuously, although that is a little unpleasant IMO.

If you have lots of food and a team of 2 wolves + 2 companions that can take out bosses, add the wolf that you want to level and grind the boss levels. You'll level up fast and get lots of money. This is very, very food-intensive though.

Personally I prefer to just run one wolf and one companion in campaign at a time. I usually start a low-level wolf in DS2 (the first "sword" area). It's nicer than the other Level 2 areas because it doesn't have the raspberry encounter and does have an extra combat encounter. Once they're strong enough, I graduate them to IR3 since the lapistrixes have nicer drops than in other Level 3 areas.

The new profession encounter might switch this up though. I think of all of them, the cooking encounter in GS1 is probably the most important, but it's a little early to say for sure.

You can also get a lot of experience from hunting, especially if you can slot a low level wolf into a high level hunt without messing up your synergies. But low levels can still run the simple hunts and get quite a bit of experience that way as well. When I have multiple wolves to level, I usually have one campaigning and try to have the others hit hunting hard.

You can also level them by giving them an exp companion and just playing. A little bit time intensive, but a lot less grinding, which leaves you open to cook, or mine, farm.

Has anyone done the math re: rough food cost per level per zone yet? That's a sneaky way to lose the potency of any potential benefits of leveling; it may shake out to be so minimal as to be immaterial, but I would be surprised by that given 1) the time it takes and 2) the size of the payout buff.