Skills take 4x longer to level / use 4x less XP

Today's patches appear to have drastically reduced the amount of Adventuring XP that is consumed per cast.

Yesterday and today I've had roughly the same amount of Adventuring XP pooled (about 550K).

Yesterday I leveled Life Power from 82 to 83 and Life Reach from 60 to 65. Each life spell I cast used about 1.2K xp.

Today each life spell I cast is using about 200 XP. Both Life Power and Life Reach are still set to Train.

That's a pretty big difference.

Is this intended?

 

Yep, seeing similar. Thought it was supposed to be 0.1% of your XP pool? But with a 300K xp pool, my Summon Water Elemental (at 49) only uses ~80-90 xp when I cast it instead of 300.

 

Some skills use the % formula from the start I think, but many don't switch to a % based gain until the skill reaches level 80.
So you may actually get faster level gains after 80 than before 80 if you have sufficient pooled xp

 

@Chris @Berek Would you mind taking a look at this?

I just re read the patch notes and don't see anything in there about skills using much less XP than the did prior to Friday.

Can a mod move this thread into the bug report forum because I don't think this is intended...

 

I was definitely already getting faster gains at 40+ than I was 20-40 for these abilities. Only had pools of 30k or less for 20-40 - so there was a big difference there.

Each level might still have a minimum uses threshhold to prevent people from gaining a pool of 100 million and advancing skills with single uses.

 

So after further review, not all skills have this issue.

I have only found the following skills to use 4x less XP (or more) than other skills:

- Beneficent Blessing
- Spell Power
- Train Intelligence

Perhaps all innate skills now consume less XP?

 

I think the reason this is because they nerfed how much experience people can get per hour because some people were farming exp too quickly, level 100+ people I guess... now that leveling is so much slower I imagine they tried to cut back some of exp drain by leveling our skills. Otherwise it would take us a month to GM one skill.

Please let's not give them something else to nerf, I'm afraid soon my login feature might get nerfed where I cannot login game anymore...

 

Yep, sounds about par for the course. Hardcore guys grind out so much that they have to be reigned in which in turn makes the game painfully grindy for more casual players. My #1 complaint is that I don't really have time for social events in the game, as if I did, I could never really progress my character.

 

Am I the only one that thinks a month to GM one skill isn't bad? now if you're talking about 1 month of all in game time, playing constantly 24/7. then that's a problem. But if I play 2-3 hours a day, a few days a week, a month sounds totally reasonable... it's generalities like these that do a disservice to the discussion, imho.

 

Noticed a change in production exp as well. Skinning Elder Wolves in Twins Foothills used to give 500xp, they now give 300xp. Definitely some changes in exp this patch.

 

But who plays leveling one skill at a time? (probably everyone... which is unfortunate) That seems very min-maxish and not very natural. Playing as you describe, since persistance, I am adventure level 64. My highest adventure skill is at 81. I am working on getting my others to 80 at the moment. I have a single crafting skill, Tailoring, at 99. Just on the precipice of GM. I don't really have as much issue with that speed of advancement as I do with the repetitive grinding it is taking to get there.

Of course, I think part of that is also just frustration with the flow of the game. I've reached the point where some tier 4 zones are kind of easy, but others are challenging (mostly the ones that have 3 or 4 archers in a single combat pull. Going for archers first doesn't work when they are all archers!). Though the loot isn't any better than the lower tier 4 zones. Most tier 5 map zones are too tough for me still. I can handle mines, for the most part.

So my choices right now are grinding in the mines for silver and xp. I use the silver for masterworking my tailoring, so not much gold earn from this.

or

Grinding Fighters for Halberds in Serpent's Spine Foothills to sell for Gold.

Sessions where I go exploring in new zones are almost always low return on progression. I do it from time to time because it is more fun, but it doesn't really get me anywhere.

Hopefully once every scene is uncloned and the loot tables are all overhauled, the flow will go much better for new players.

 

It might be neat to provide an xp bonus for the first, maybe, 5 hours you spend in a previously unentered scene. That would be great for explorers and would maybe incentize those who've been grinding away at the same scene for a month to go see the rest of the world.

 

Great Idea! Would get me out of Twins Foothills

 

just remember, this change does not actually matter. Yes it happened but now I see that my xp pool that used to sit at 100K xp now sits at 200K xp so my over all XP use per skill is about the same. It may even be better now since I can clearly cover a death.

If you have far to many skills set to learn, it will though.

 

I still has an affect though, particularly for things that cost reagents. Like, if your approach was to maintain a million xp pool while leveling a skill, now you need to raise your pool to 2 million or use twice as many reagents. I suppose, under some approaches like yours, it naturally scales up your xp pool, but when trying to maintain a large pool, you are going to spend a lot of time with no skill gain to get back up to your previous reagent efficiency. I think from that perspective, it matters. A million xp grind is like a week or so for me. Not a big deal in the long run, but can sympathize with a little short term frustration on this (and the never ending issue of things being easier for people who played pre-release, even if minor in this case).

 

A good idea.

 

@Chris Can we get verification if this is intended or a bug? I know of me and another person who are currently holding off on doing any armor enchanting because we don't want to waste the ore if the skill is drawing 1/4 the XP from our pools as intended (and thus using 4x as much ore to level the skill). If this is intended, I can at least proceed with my leveling instead of being in a holding pattern awaiting word.

Thanks!

 

I would love to see stuff like this in the patch notes.

 

Crickets means not a bug... time to start enchanting .