New Player Trying to Figure out Pooled Adventurer Experience

Maybe post your levels, skill levels, etc so someone can point out where it might be best to level at your level, etc? Or check out the guide by Themo in the player resource section.

 

I started right at the beginning of R26, so not too long ago. I have to say that there is quite a steep learning curve due the fact that information about the game can be hard to find. As someone else was right to point out to me, this game is still in testing. That said, it was some time before I actually paid attention to the fact that there is a ~ Player Guide ~ sitting right there in my inventory. It doesn't cover everything that I feel we should be informed about, but it does cover quite a few things including player advancement. It talks about trying to raise too many skills at once. Best way that I can convey the concept is to think of Pooled Adventure XP as your bank account. The amount of XP that you can generate is your income. Now the wonderful thing about this game is that you can train your character in any skill that you want. That freedom is exactly where I went wrong. I didn't stay within my XP budget and drained my PAE to nothing. Like your real life budget, you need to decide what's most important, focus on that, and put the rest on hold until your budget will allow. I've read in a few threads now, and it is great advice, that the best practice is to adjust the amount of skills that you are raising so that you are always gaining in your PAE pool. Once I figured that out I turned off all of the frivolous skills and set to grinding the single skull areas. I was able to work my character much closer in power to my adventure level and rebuilt some PAE. Once you get the hang of it things will go much smoother.

 

It's definitely far from an easy system to understand from a new players perspective.

 

Apart from not being new player friendly, i lately asked myself the question if it was fun. And the answer is no, to me it isnt fun.

Yes, i learned, sort of, to use it to gain xp, but it does severely limit me in my preferred playstyle. I like to actually use these skills given to me, but the game punishes me for it. Instead i am being forced to level up 1 skill, then the next, then the next, etc. Using many skills, also those that are set to decay, makes me use so much xp that mobs hardly give any net gain, even yellow or red mobs. Even if i put everything on decay !
People have pointed me towards wiki and Termo's thread, and it gave me the basic understanding of how the system works. But right now, after i understood how things work, as a newer player without the 4x bonus, it is very very hard to kill mobs without losing xp, let alone gain xp. The only reason i sometimes still gain xp, is because i use a pet bought from a tamer, that i will not have after the full wipe.

It could be a gear thing, as i am still running around in stuff i found on NPC's. Maybe....
But if it is already hard at level 40, with hardly any skill besides those that were given to me being a "fighter", i am not eager to find out what it will be above level 80.

 

I agree. I dislike feeling penalized for just adventuring and using the skills I've learned. It doesn't feel intuitive or natural to have to lock skills just so I can progress them one at a time.

 

Welcome andrewdorre!

 

You just friend ol Insinious FizzleThorpe in game.. I'll get you on the right track.. be on around 3 pm NBT

 

For the same amount of XP you can have several skills at level 80 or one skill at level 100.
I can't see a compelling reason to level up beyond 80.

 

As frustrating as it has been early on I'm really enjoying the leveling process. I love the game within the game of working out how to best level for my build. Two and half weeks in I'm currently able to operate in a 4 skull zone. I don't think that's necessarily phenomenal, but I feel pretty good about it. I could have been further along but I spent a good chunk of time checking out mechanics and gear issues. My main gripe at this point is those skills that I've wasted XP on only to discover that they don't work for what I want to do. When the ability to refund skills go in I'll be a happy camper. There is so much to experiment with and that will make it 'risk' free to try out something new.

You have a really good point there. I don't think it's good idea to level one particular skill that far to the exclusion of everything else. If you consider the cost & effort of getting one level at that point you could get so much more bang for your buck from other skills and passives. Granted I've got Blades locked at 75 and healing is growing slowly at 63 but now that I've identified the rest of the skills that are really important to me I'm working them 5 lvls at a time, 2 or 3 skills at a time. It's a silly thought, but I think of my skills as my 'troops' that move up in small groups, take up position and then allow the other 'troops' to advance. 75 is the magic number for me, purely arbitrary as a nice, neet number, and we'll see what happens when the rest get there.

Craft yourself some gear. The crafting system is rather complex, but I feel that adds to the enjoyment of creating your end product. It also gave me some goals to go after while adventuring. I couldn't have done with out www.sotacraft.com/home.html. It's the most accurate data I found online. I found that crafted gear felt like the difference between night & day.

 

I don't know what to say about the XP pool thing because my pool has never really dropped below the 200k range since I got it up that high, but I'm pretty sure undead creatures do not resurrect on their own anymore. For instance, when a skeleton dies, in order for it to come back to life, a skeleton mage would have to cast a spell for that to happen.

Just pay attention to the spikes at the scene entrances, they have skulls on them to let you know how difficult the creatures are in that scene. If you find your PAE bar depleting, you need to go to a place with more skulls.

 

I'm sorry that the experience has been so negative for you, but once you understand the system you will realise that it is absolutely brilliant. Kill mobs for experience, use skills to spend it. Control how you spend it by toggling the skills in your skill tree menu. it means that I can train some skills as my primary skills, levelling them very high (at a large expense!) and also train some skills as secondary skills, training them only to a low level and turning skill gains off (a snare for example).

At the end of the day, if you keep killing stuff appropriate to your actual avatars ability, you will still grow your character (even if the bar shows zero XP). It just means that you are spending it as fast as you earn it.

 

Yeah, the pool is confusing. I think showing it at all creates problems, just hide it if you're going to make it act weird and confuse players. We probably wouldn't notice it, or would adapt more "naturally" to changes we see in character/skill development.

I would stress though that it is important to try to fight creatures a step or two above you. Do what you have to; grind for good equipment, or choose skills that give you the ability to survive long fights with higher level mobs than you are. Take them one at a time, run if you have to. That's where the steady, fast levelling comes from, that's where a fuller XP bar comes from. (For 4 releases I thought I was fighting appropriate mobs, but I wasn't. I should have been in higher level areas.)

 

As a total noob, I would like to get answer to few questions:
1. Do you gain same exp from mobs, regardless of your level?
2. Do skills take same amount of exp to level to certain skill level, regardless of your level?

Or to sum it up...
3. Does your adventurer level have any effect on the play?

 

Yes. Level 1 wolf gives same exp as long as it's the same Level 1 wolf.

No. Some have different exp needed to level to the next level. Someone posted a rundown on the archer exp pt needed and it wasn't the same from lvl to lvl.

??? Coffee's not working good enough for me to get this one.

Yes. Some. Not totally. Adv going up give you more stuff like health and stuff so yes, it does. The adv level doesn't seem to decrease the exp the level 1 wolf gives you though? But your skill level going up will need more exp to eat so skill upping would. Adv going up you'd get more health to last longer, so would be easier to go into higher exp areas, etc.

 

Thanks for replies. That helps a bit to understand the mechanics.

About 2. I mean, if you got Flame Fist at 50 and it takes, lets say, 10k exp to level to 51.
Is it the same for all other skills later when you level them?
Or does the exp required to raise a skill increase if your adventurer level rises? This is what you said would be the case, but I want to be sure...

In example:
If I raise Flame Fist to 50, it takes (lets say) 100k exp.

Now, I don't want to go straight to 50, I want some healing while leveling:
I raise Flame Fist first to 40, then Healing Touch to 40, and then Flame Fist to 50.
Does Flame Fist still take the same amount of exp (100k) as if I had straight leveled it up to 50?

 

This. There is really only one good reason to go beyond 80, and that is the prestige of having it on you grandmaster list. That goes double for skills that are used from glyphs in your hotbar, because you don't get any more glyphs for your deck after 80.

Seriously, by the time you hit 95, they really drain your pool. Right now I'm at 97.5 on bladed combat, and in order to get anywhere on it, I have set every other adventurer skill to maintained. Yesterday I was fighting sand elementals that were (apparently) giving me 1500 per kill, but I was losing more than that per kill to the skill. I'm only pushing forward on it so I can turn it off at 100.

If there's a good side to this, by the time you get to the point where it becomes important, you've probably gotten enough raw adventurer level to fight stuff that gives you more XP. It does not affect the XP you gain, it just gives you an edge in PvE combat, though it takes more XP for each adventurer level. So you will be able to get faster pool XP to spend on stuff.

 

@Whalefish
Well, no one so far has mentioned that leveling one skill up will make the other skill need more points Heal vs Flame wise, so maybe, no? Either that or they're hiding it real good. But if you do level up another skill that one eats up stuff too (the bigger they get the hungrier they get) so might be a balancing act thing. Would still be the 100K but now the wolf you're eating needs to feed two mouths equally hungry, where as before you'd have little piggy and dad hog before?

Assuming that little piggies eat less that dad hogs would, of course

 

Hi!
Another new player trying to figure out the pooled experience, so I thought I'd hijack this thread... ;-)

I have leveled the skill "Light" to level 20, and have now set it to "No Training" (icon: grey bar).
According to the documentation: "Not Training: The skill will never consume EXP and will decay on death. (Above level 20)"
However, each time I cast the spell "Light", I am losing 4 EXP from the adventuring pool. What is going on?

I am definitely not understanding this system yet... :-(

 

There are other innates that gain when you cast - focus skills, int, dex . . . . Innate skills also use exp

 

Thanks! That makes complete sense!