Low XP

In my last adventuring run, I found that doing nothing but fighting, my adventure XP was actually going down in each encounter rather than up. Basically I was skilling up faster than I was gaining XP.

I don't see how this could even be possible, and I'm puzzled what to do. Do I need to clamp some of my skills so they don't gain?

 

Yes either stop skilling skills that are too high or fight mobs that give more xp.

Each skill level requires 10% more xp than previous one, so the needed xp goes up quickly. Another thing is the more xp you have in pool, the more xp is allocated to skills.

 

anseered your own question - you have to many skill set to gain, it is that simple manage your skills.

 

Aye, you have to push yourself to find ways to kill harder spawn. or use less skills, keep your skill tree open so you can see the use of the xp as you use them. This is why I rather just have a counter on screen, than a icon. but likes the icon for now while I am still in the training mode.

 

sometimes I just swing and heal only use buffs when I need to. when I get a full load of xp that will last a while, I indulge.

 

what will really get your goat, is when you notice the game is calculating against you.

 

I had the same problem as the OP today. I only had 1 skill turned on (leveling up Dexterity to 40). I was running through my 2 skull level and my XP pool went up from 3700 to 4300. Then, it started going down/up/down/up/down. By the time I finished my run, my XP pool was at 4000. On the plus side, I managed to hit level 40 on Dex, but seeing my pool drop with each kill was depressing and took away a lot of my motivation, to be honest.

 

I don't like this system, I'm making iron ingots and it's costing me experience, not only that every now and then I fail, so I'm obviously not that proficient at it. How is that right?

This pool system is probably going to be the thing that stops me from playing. I am not doing everything twice.

 

Actually you simply don't seem to understand the system (which doesn't mean you are dump or anything). You don't loose xp from crafting, you actually use them. XP in your pool are unspent xp you've earned. Once you use a skill, those xp are used to train that skill as long as you you have set it on "train" and not on "maintain". When your pooled xp go down it means you are using more xp in your skills than you generate by using those skills. So crafting iron ingots simply doesn't generates enough xp to train those skills related to it at your current skill-levels.
So you might want to set some of your crafting-related skills to maintain to focus on those skills you want to train/raise... or go out, get some xp by grouing with some players and kill some stuff to pool up some xp you can later use up on crafting.
The system is actually quite good, but needs some more tweaking of course. Just give it a try (and some thought)

 

Thanks for the reply, I understand how the system works, I just don't like it. It's forcing me to do things I don't want to do at that particular time. I can do them but won't earn any experiencing for doing them once my pool is empty. I could want to make 200 ingots from all the ore I collected, and I can, but once my XP runs out I'm no longer gaining smelting skills from making them and have to go do something else, or work unrewarded. Not only that I can also still fail at making them occasionally. It feels really restrictive and I don't like it.

Even killing mobs I'm looking at my xp trying to figure out if I'm working at a loss for killing them. I suppose I'll have to restrict what skills I use next...

 

I agree. I get what the system is trying to avoid - everyone skilling up to be a tank mage master of all crafts. And I agree it's important to avoid that. But the unintended consequences of this system require a rethink.

 

Then give everyone the same amount of skill points to spend, surely? so they won't ever have enough to do everything on one char.

 

The innate stat skills (dexterity, strength, intelligence) all cost a lot of XP to level once you get to the higher levels. A two skull area will not provide enough XP per kill to make up for it very much if at all. You either need to shut the skill off from training or go to a higher difficulty area if you want to build your pool up at all.


For my method of leveling skills, I just shut almost everything off except for maybe one active and one innate skill, and then I go farm the enemies in the Crag Foothills (5 skull area). After about an hour or so, I'll have around 100k-150k XP built up in my pool depending on if I'm worrying about harvesting nodes or not. I'll usually do that for two hours. Afterwards I'll turn on a few skills that I want to level and either level them on a gustball (if it's a skill I don't really want to use in combat) or go out to another area to gold farm while dumping all of that XP into those few skills I turned on to training.

 

We had that back in UO... I'm not sure if it worked out so well... So lets see if this here will work ... or maybe not work...

 

It worked in the sense that people understood the system (you were allowed 700 skill points) and that it forced people to specialize. It didn't work in that it encouraged min-maxing. Nobody would take 10 points in some frivolous skill since it would stop them being able to GM a skill they really cared about.

A system that does work is skill development in Eve: Online. Skill increases slow down tremendously as you get to higher levels in a skill. So it's possible to be a generalist, not terribly good at anything. But if you want to be really good at anything, you need to specialize.

 

You do realize that you can still drain your XP faster than you can earn it by only having one skill active, right?

Sure, the amount of skills in training does affect it, but disabling skills doesn't fix the issue.

 

Heres the thing though.
If your smelting 200 ingots, that means uve mined what? 800 ore? Even running all 4 mining skills on gain, you should end up with more exp in your crafting pool then what you spend smelting.
If your running evry skill in gathering for all types, then your not going to end up with a lot of pooled exp. If your only running mining, and run a balanced run, your crafting exp pool will sore.
If your literally doing nothing but smelting, with 0 gathering skills, then yes you will run out of exp. Turn off field dressing and go skin 50 wolves. Bam enough exp to smelt for another week.
Or dont run all 4 of every gathering skill, do balanced runs, and you shouldnt run out.
If your trying to take up evry skill, you have to do the extra exp farm.

 

In those kind of systems I always end up not being able to access 1 or 2 skills I'd really like because they are too far down a skill tree I'm not into and I've run out of skill points. The advantage of this system is that you can pretty much get at least a taste of any skill you want, though you can't be an expert at all. It was kind of off-putting to me at first as well, but once you get the hang of managing your skills/xp pool, you really start to see the potential depth of building really unique characters. It does sometimes mean, though, that you can't just do one thing all the time and get consistent progress.