The difference between 2NL and 5NL is the biggest you will ever find between 2 lvls. While 5NL it is still verry easy to beat it is not the absolutely nut legion of players that do not even know the rules of the game. At 2 NL 80% of the players out there are absolute fish. At 5NL you need to start table selection because you can find yourself playing with a bunch of absolute nits. I use to color code with blue the fish. At 2 NL there were mostly blue tables. I mean absolute blue. No decent player. At 5 NL I have to jump like 100 tables a session to find sweet seats. They are still bad players but not as profitable BB/100. From 5 to 10NL the difference is a lot smaller. A bigger percent of regullars of course that fight over the same fish.
So this is how I dit it from 5NL up. Ignore the nits, ignore the regullars. It is not yet worth it bothering how to squeeze money from them unless it is an obvious spot like 3-betting premium
hands or setmining IP.Nothing fancy because it is not worth it.. There are still plenty of fish at this lvl. Table select until you get fish on your right so you can have position on them. The play against them is the same. The basics you learn from 2NL and 5 NL will help you improve for the lvls above.