WT21

Not sure if anyone else has mentioned this, but in the new zwift climb portal, you can climb the Cote de Pike pretty quickly, gaining 225m in climb and passing through 10 portals. Then you can ride back down to the France map, turn around, and re-enter. Today I did the pike 3 times gaining 725m towards my Tron bike and also racking up experience points with the 30 gates I went through.

I didn't see this mentioned any other place, so dropping the tip here. (I did all the hard rides first, only to realize later what a better return on effort multiple pike trips give you over a single longer climb, because all climbs have 10 gates, to the 2.2KM Pike has the most gates per KM)

oldukbkr 

There’s a piece on this on Zwift Insider

himespau 

I prefer one of the other 2 short ones (Dormancy?) because the steep bits on Pike are just too darn steep and there is a climbing bit on the descent that totally kills your momentum when you're trying to rest.

unterhausen

Speaking of farming xp, does using powerups end up giving you more xp? I tend not to ever use them, so I don't get more.

himespau 

Sometimes, you can get a +10 (10-25% chance) or +250 XP (2-3% chance) powerup. IF you don't use the old ones, you don't get a new one and don't get a chance at the XP.

oldukbkr 

If you ride a TT bike then you always get extra XP instead of a power up. That’s another way to farm XP - get on a TT bike and ride a short course to pick up XP at the power up banners

unterhausen

I wonder if I can afford a TT bike

WT21

Thanks. I didn't see that, but in my defense, I started farming pike on 12 July, and this article is 18 July so I'm still going to say I discovered it lol. (jk. I'm sure the smarter minds at Zwift Insider knew about it before me).

The one thing I did wrong the first time is I rode to the top on each one and then exited and started a new one. I now find you can just ride up, ride down, turn around and do it again. Some people in that article, though, talk about getting power ups "on the way down" and that's not been my experience. Some are turning around after each arch to go back up and then turn around again to go down but it seems easier to me to just ride the whole thing up and then down, and also log climbing meters for your Tron bike (if you need one).

himespau 

Yeah, definitely turning around at the bottom so you don't need to repeat the lead in is good. I didn't get any power ups on my descents. I suppose you could just turn around and repeat the flattest segment over and over again, but that sounds like too much monotony for me.