Managing Your Experience Pool

Hello!

I feel like I'm starting to get a grasp on the basics for the game but the experience pool system is still alluding me. I feel like I spend a relatively significant amount of my time trying to manage my experience pool and I'd like to try to understand it better. I had a few questions. I understand that I need to turn off some skills to allow the pool to build up and not be exhausted.

Will you skill up faster (i.e. You'll gain more XP per swing of your pick axe) if you have a larger pool? Someone had mentioned that it's a percentage of your pool as opposed to a flat amount.

Should I leave all of the skills I'm interested in eventually having turned on or should I focus on one at a time?

It feels like I'm out leveling my current areas (my pool drains faster than it fills) but I'm too weak for the next area. What do I do?

This whole system seems to run a little counter to "if you use a skill you will get better at it." It's not very intuitive!

 

Unless you plan on power leveling on certain skills, just leave everything on train should be OK.

By the end of last iteration before the last wipe, I experimented with having all skill turned on and just played. I was able to handle most of the 5 skulls locations at ease. ADV level play big factor into this. So the more you kill, the more you progress. If the mobs are too easy then move to harder areas.

After the last wipe, I'm still using the same technique. Right now I can handle 3-4 skull levels and still playing casually.

I feel it's more enjoyable than trying to min-max the skills, but whatever tingle your dingle

 

Thank you so much! I will try the 3 skulls again or maybe even try out a 4 skull to see if that helps. I'm down to about 300xp in my pool but the Necropolis quest is way too hard!

 

whats your secret? heavy armor? I cant seem to handle anything beyond a 2-skull and im useing leather and polearms.

 

Im using sword and board with heavy armor and I struggle in 2 skull areas. The wolves simply overpower me. I know I'm doing something wrong because it should be that difficult.

 

I'm coming up on Adventure level 50 as 2hand sword/chain armor with death and fire magic (ignite weapon really really helps).
I can fight through Vauban pass fairly efficiently (5 skull). Its just a matter of not getting in a hurry, both fighting and changing areas.

As for pool, I have everything on (heavy armor, tactics, swords, death, fire, life (heal), earth (strength) I'm usually holding about 6,000 xp in the pool with it going as high as 10,000 (at which point it really seems to drain fast). Again its just finding an area that you can fight through fairly easily, if its taking you too long to kill you arent building pool as you are eating everything every fight.

 

as an aside, you can just run straight through just about every part of that quest, only stopping to talk to the undead NPCs in the storyline. otherwise, just run and dont fight anything that aggros, and you can complete the quest.

 

Thank you! I was doing pretty well until the spiders rooted and swarmed me

 

I had a very painful start as a pure mage knowing the Ankh position blindfold or so it felt starting out as a cloth wearer.

My feedback would be keep your intensity in skills gain to a minimal amount of tree's to begin with whilst raising Str, Int & Dex in line with your adventure level / just above it if necessary as all innate skills each exp pool. I stick with 3 skull levels still which are yellow to me at adv lvl 52 and run round AoE'ing stuff for maximum exp pool gain while using advanced skills and that skill innate to raise then swap out and raise another tree's when I get to level I'd targeted it to raise to during my play session. Another great way of raising exp if you belong to a guild is get into the eight player control point stuff, brilliant faster exp experience but more so great to be grouped with others and the chests on some control points drop nice add on cash and items to sell to vendors.

This might not be relevant but getting groups if new to this release can be difficult unless you joined with friends as most people seem to play in friends mode to avoid lag / sharing hunting spots with other groups. If this is what happens to you my tip would be to join one of the larger guilds like EVL (I'm a member so biased and there are many other fine guilds out there) who run control points / have hunting groups every day and many new members jump right in to hunting parties all the time from what I see, just don't be frightened to say 'hey can I join in' as if there is room and you can survive we always believe in being inclusive.

Pre adv lvl 30 I aimed to keep a pool of exp at 25-35k, and now I tend to keep mine at 150-220k pooled as levels cost so much more each raise plus I am now trying to raise my additional tree back up skills / buff's shields etc... up too for my final (ish) combat deck though by adv level 80 I expect my pool to be minimum 1-1.5mill pool which whilst sounding daunting prospect is no different to getting 200k exp pool a few levels back!

 

I generally move my skills up in stages.

I'll leave all my core skills open and take all general skills up to 40 and as they hit 40 lock them until some of the others catch up. Then increment by 10 to 50 and lock. Eventually I'll lock them all and raise a core skill like blunt up to GM as the first one approaches 80.

 

I dunno, I've had a little bit different experience.

I used to keep a lot of skills open but then ran into the same issue as you. The pool stayed low and not a lot of skills were leveling. I have yet to get my pool greater than 50-60k before using it all. What I found to be best was this. When out hunting, keep 1-3 active abilities open for xp. Depending on how often you use them, I would turn more off. So if I am lvling one of my main skills, I might only have that skill open or maybe that and one other active ability open that I don't use as much. For instance, your main active attack and a buff for example.

From there I would have 1 passive skill opened for xp. If your just beginning, I would suggest either STR, Dex, Int, or HP. If you get all of those 4 to 40 then I would then start looking at your main combat tree's first abilitiy to increase dmg with that weapon or some of the other innate abilities. Note: Especially for melee, there are multiple str passive abilities to be lvled in a couple trees, so take a look around.

I would then hunt to my hearts content. When I get back to town then I would open specific abilities up and lvl while in town. Now you can easily go into combat in town and lvl any buffs you may have, however if you want to lvl active abilities then you need to get yourself a Gust Ball. You can purchase these from Digit in Ardoris. He is in a shop with the all seeing eye in a triangle near the boats in the warf section of the town. The gust ball you put on your non-combat bar and when you hit the button it puts a gust ball on the ground. You go into combat, target it (G by default to target) and hit your abilities when they are up to put xp in them. Some of the passive abilities like the stats mentioned above, will go up just by turning on auto-attack and leaving it.

Do this till all your stats, active abilities and primary combat/utility abilities are all lvled to 40. Once one hits 40, turn xp off for that ability and move onto something else. Mainly working on 1-3 abilities at a time. Once they are all lvl 40 then go back to passive stat abilities and start lvling them above 40. (All abilities 40+ take massive amounts of xp to lvl up)

Quick Tips/Tricks:

1. Make a deck specific for lvling in town. Lock some abilities so you can just spam them when not on cool down, just make sure to change them often as you lvl them to 40.
2. Passive abilities like hp and stat increases take the most xp to lvl, so don't have multiple turned on unless you wanna drain your xp pool.
3. Get in groups often when trying to lvl skills. Groups are where you will get the most xp, especially doing control points.
4. The more you have turned off the quicker other skills will lvl (as long as your using them) and should be quicker then having a ton of stuff turned on.

I would also suggest as another poster does to get in a guild that has active players. This will allow for an easier time getting groups. Right now I am playing a plate wearring polearm user and recently have just about all of my abilities to 40 and some above. Only a couple defense abilities are still low and what I am lvling now. I've found this to work well for me and allow me the ability to fight in 2-3 skull areas with out much worry other than getting to many mobs on me at a time. I know a lot of ppl are using summoning creatures as well because they are hefty tanks and if your build has good ae/dps can take a bunch of mobs at a time but not something I have worked with myself, so can't speak much to it other than I know it is a current strategy.