negative xp from lower level areas

Posting on behalf of my guildmate. She's frustrated by losing producer XP from skinning animals in lower level areas. She says she likes certain areas aesthetically and doesn't like being pushed out of them. I went out and tested this, my field dressing level is 66 and when I skin spiders I lose 296xp in my producer pool when skinning spiders in Kingsroad. Is this a bug...?

Or is it designed to make players go to more difficult zones? If this is the case, could the XP gain in lower zones be capped at 1xp instead of negative xp?

 

Go play in harder areas turn off and manage some of the skills.

 

Oh true.. she could just turn the field dressing skill off? duh.

 

Can work the three useful field dressing skills one at a time till the zone can't keep up to any one of them being on. Then move on!

 

Like Kvow said there are not one but 4 skills there if all 4 are turned to raise every one eats up exp, go look, figure out how much each take on a gain, figure out how much you earn each dressing, then trade off if you want to keep losing points or want to gain a skill.

 

Yeah she'll just turn off the skills. Thanks. She likes being in certain zones because of the convenient location, the layout, the way they look, etc. I know in games these days there's a big emphasis on progression and moving forward, but that's not what she wants to do. The feeling of being in a race to play the game is disconcerting and not relaxing for some people.

Other games handle this sort of xp situation differently (automatically) so it just takes more manipulation of the skill system in this one. Not a complaint, just an observation of what new players need to be aware of.

 

You are NOT losing XP's in your pool, the XP's you are getting are going into raising your Field Dressing skills.

 

You should be aware that the higher your skill, the more XP it will take from the pool to level up. It's more the skill level itself than the area..

 

Ahh right. I get so focused on raising the xp in my pool.

 

But not everyone wants to always go to harder areas and/or turn off things. Maybe there's only a half hour available to play and there are certain areas you like and enjoy more than others and you just want to wander around and gather a few things in the small amount of time you have to play, you know, to just kick back and relax versus the higher difficulty. Personally, I can relate to what the guildmate is saying, and certainly, I am not fond of being forced to completely stop playing my favorite areas because I leveled out of them so to speak. I would rather the system calculate what would net to zero and just apply nothing or a lower amount to the skill(s) thus not resulting in negative XP, versus not playing the favorites, or deal with going negative unless I turn off most skills....and I wouldn't forget *cough* that I turned them off, like last week, or anything like that...

 

I don't particularly object to the mechanics of how the skill gain and XP pool works, but I still find it rather odd that some rabbits are harder to skin, and have more effects on your skills, based on the 'postcode' where you happen to find them....

 

You always gain the XP and your adventure/producer levels always go up as you do relevant actions. The bars you see at the bottom are the surplus XP that you have, which will increase if you gain more XP than the amount consumed by the skills.

 

Yea, the bars at the bottom show your xp pool. This is earned xp that you haven't spent in any skills yet.

Anytime you use a relevant skill for each pool (skinning would be one for producer) then the points you earn while skinning another creature will go towards training up the skinning skill tree skills you have set to train.

Then, depending on the level of creature being skinned and the current level of your skills, you will either have leftover xp to add to the pool.... or you will take the balance needed to satisfy the skill raises you've selected to raise from the xp pool... just enough to meet the total required.

If you turn off all skinning tree skills, you will never see a drop in the pool bar because none are being spent as you skin... they all just go into the pool instead.

Don't think of the xp pool bars as progress bars, think of them as currency to spend on skill ups.

Hope that helps explain the system better.

 

Here's yet another way to put it - if you skinned a gustball (if that were possible..) you would get +0 xp added to your producer pool. The act of skinning would however still exercise the skills you have set to "train" in your field dressing skill tree, by amount depending on:
a) the size of your producer xp pool, and
b) the level(s) of your field dressing skills.

For example level 66 is already relatively high so if all your field dressing skills are anywhere near that, the act of skinning could easily take more than 300xp of xp from the producer xp pool -- and the little skill bars below the (field dressing) skill icons would be raised accordingly.

I am almost certain that the amount taken from the pool does not depend at all on the level of creature skinned, so skinning a grey wolf or an obsidian wolf would take exactly the same amount from the pool (of a certain size). At least with adventuring skills it does not matter (I haven't tested the producer side -- so someone please correct this if I'm wrong). I don't personally like it at all, but it's a design decision, not a bug.

So as said before in many comments, if you do not want to train skill X, simply set it to "maintain" or "do not train" mode. If you want to work in low level areas without draining your xp pools, you can do that by setting your relevant skills (esp. high level ones) to "maintain" mode. Or alternatively do some other high producer xp giving activity to build a surplus.

 

Turn all skills off.. raise pool to 1 mil turn on a skill GM it in a day, wash rinse repeat.. if your want to always show pooled xp gain, and raise your single skills the fastest.
1. By turning off the skill ALL gained XP will fall into your pool.
2. By only training 1 skill at a time you reap the most benefit per xp point spent per use (only contributing to 1 skill vs 3 per use).
3. having 1 million pooled xp allows more xp transferred to said skill per use. ( the larger your pool the more xp per use in any give skill hell take it to 3 million pooled if you want to see that green bar actually move every use.)

 

I would balance that advice by getting enough skills up actually survive tougher areas first..

 

Question. Will SOTA be offering advanced degrees in XPology or do I have to settle for a bachelor's degree when I finally understand this about four years from now. These xp/pool mechanics make me wee brain scream, then pout.

 

Nothing is stopping you from going to these areas, but whoever it is needs to learn how to manage their skills, leave only on set to gain, and I am sure they can gain exp while still training a skill.

If oyu don't want to do this, then I an sorry but you are going to lose all your exp then you wont be able to train anything.

So, as some are so eloquently throing ths back in my face, Learn to Play the Game.

 

He almost has it down, yeah it can work but he fails to point out that this percentage ONLY applies when a skill hits 80 and above.

1,000,000 works great and cannot hurt to try and keep it there when you are trying to work HIGH level skills but is NOT necessary

 

I would like to expand on that advice by considering the practical value of "GM" for most folks, given that one can level about six skills up to 80 with the "cost" of one GM...