I did it. I made my second character. He’s going to be a fighter so I can sort of have the best of both worlds, and he’ll have some of the crafting skills I didn’t give to my first dude.
I’m curious - after the original crazy experience gains from crafting were removed, has anyone recently calculated the most efficient ways to level? Does mining still give more experience overall than combat? How’s the balance currently?
I find hunting the most efficient as you have a chance to join someone higher level and go fight higher level creatures. And that will give you crazy amount of xp - its leveling a few times for an hour of hunt when you are kinda 10-20 lvl. Even with lvl 5-10 if you lay your hands on silver sling (doesnt matter you dont have mastery or rapid fire), your xp from killing wildstock on home planet is really big for the early leveling requirements.
Mining is good if you hit the high tier resources of course. Although being low on power and swing speed might considerably slow your block breaking.
Great advice! And that sounds good, since this character will be a hunter. 
Much appreciated. Anyone else have any thoughts?
Edit: Is it considered poor form to drop a couple items to my alt from my main? 
I don’t have a detailed data for you but speaking from my experiece (I made a pure hunter and pure miner with the game’s current exp system).
Mining grants okay pace of experience. It’s quite linear and steady as you usually never stops mining.
Hunting grants a better overall amount of experience overtime. I say overall since it can be quite slow in the beginning but once you are hunting on Tier 3 worlds, it’s really very fast. You’ll probably level up faster than when you were on your lower levels (Still true so far in level 30+ (my hunter’s current level)). My advice is to get to higher tiered creatures as soon as you can.
Edit: More advice. While quite boring, you can safely farm wildstocks easily on ice biomes as they move really slow. I do this from time to time
Thank you! I appreciate the advice.
Dropping items to your alt is similar to your alt buying from shops which I did on my runs and personally think it’s fine since that’s how the game is designed. The coins from objectives alone is enough to sustain my alt’s needs to perform efficiently.
Yeah, I already played through the game once. I don’t feel too bad about helping my second dude get started a bit quicker, hah.
I am a bit confused, though… If I wanted to add him as a friend / add him to my beacon, how do I do that? I have to meet him in person to add him as a friend, no? Which I can’t do because they’re the same account.
He will automatically show up on your beacons permissons list.
No need to friend him.
Ah, yes! Very useful. Thank you.
Using and making bricks
Explain? :o
oh placing bricks gives good xp and i think making them to plus a prestige bonus to your build
Oh, good to know for future reference. :o
Crafting higher tier materials gives good xp. The problem for low level character is the need to invest in expensive crafting skills. It is a good levelling way for later and for a crafter or generalist to a degree. But your fighter build won’t use crafting for xp at all as you won’t have skills to play with machines.