Quest XP in Kaladim

[Balkin]

I know, not exactly a tradeskills rant, but it still torqued my chain.

They've severly nerfed the XP gained from turning in Crushbone belts/pads, and bonechips in Kaladim. And I do mean Severly.

I have an enchanter on a friends account that she's asked me to level up. Just to be a smarty pants, I decided I'd do quests, and make her take care of spell/weapon skills. :P

So, over the last month I've been collecting a LOT of crushbone belts/pads to turn in with the chanter. I've gotten her from 1st level to 13th doing quests only, so I decided to keep it up.

Last night, 24% into level 13 I sat her down with the mother load of Kaladim quest stuff.

136 Crushbone Belts

10 Crushbone Shoulderpads (5 total turn in's)

400 Bone chips (100 total turn in's)

Following the XP pattern she's been experiencing, this amount of quest goodies should have easily pushed her 75% into 14, and possibly into 15th level!

Instead, she went from 24% to 52% into 13... Thanks SOE. Appreciate it...

I used to get that much on my 19th wizard when he was doing faction turn in's!!!

[Lilosh]

/mourn


This was a cornerstone of Everquest, I can't believe they would do that.


What's next, nerfing Pandos?


-Lilosh

[lonewylfe]

I can believe it...
My druid never did the belts, but later needed to raise Kaladim faction, so she turned in shoulder pads. For every 16 she turned in, she got a percent exp...at level 40.
They probably just changed it to be more in line with the exp from other newbie quests.

[Pojodan]

Massively repeatable quests that yeild exp have been, for the majority, been used to PL twinks.
SoE seems to be making a push to prevent people from doing this sort of behavior (Though they'll obviously never be able to stop it).

I know I'm quite sick of the ammount of high level folks who play as if this is their first time actually using the character. (Such as Beastlords on Rodcet Nife.. UGH!.. Tons of lvl 65s and 95% of them are rude and don't have a clue about either aggro control or pet control)

IMHO the lower levels are the 'fun' part as you gain something entirely new every so often while at lvl 65 it's all about gaining new gear, higher stats, and increasing your current abilities via AAs.


One less avenue for twinking, that is all.

[Cigarskunk]

/agree

This is definately part of thier anti-twink campaign - Sony has been showing a pattern of slowing down and stopping twinking and PLing - probobly in order to keep folks interested longer - if someone is bored and wants to start a new character, why not keep them playing for three months instead of letting them do it in one month - yes/no?

[Kirstin Thornhill]

As much as the lower end game has been trivialized and babyfied, I can't see that as being completely accurate.

If they wanted to truly stop twinks and/or trivialization of the low end game, they would:

...get rid of the PoK books, except from the Nexus. Or, make them one way only, FROM PoK, and make PoK itself a 46+ zone.

...bring back Corpse Runs at lower levels. Teach them to do their CRs while they still don't go too far from a safe area.

...flag ANY quest involving a Lore Item to be completed ONE TIME ONLY per level. Once they ding, they can do it again.

...bring back exp loss below level 10. That teaches them zerg tactics, and they will have to learn a new set of tactics all over again at level 10.

...code ALL buffs to be uncastable on a player that is green to the casting PC.

[Bennan]

If there is a *campaign* its only hurting the truly new players. For less time and effort in gathering CB belts etc. I can powerlevel an alt to 20 with zones like p.c nowdays.

[Lilosh]

A friend of mine pointed something out to me...

The belt/pad/bone chip quest has always pretty bad past 11 or 12.

Back in the olden days, I majorly used it for 1-10.

Shoulderpads were *DECENT* but Kaladim was no long the exp cash-cow it was before 10.

-Lilosh

[Cigarskunk]

It is conceivable that this is an indirect way to also make newby zones more for newbies.

After all, think of all of the times that you've seen some annon red hanging around areas that they have no business being in just to farm certain items which only drop for newby quests?

By nerfing the XP on the turn in for these items, then you're less likely to see some yahoo clearing all of CB just so he can PL his alt up with the belts, as well as making CB less appealing for the super twink who can go in there and own Lord CB at 3rd level due to his twink gear - thus leaving the zone free for the real newbies and the folks trying to do legit XPing.

[Minta Rose]

CITY ZONE XP has been nerfed. . .not just quests.

Felwithe, Neriak Foreign Quarter, Qeynos Catacombs, East Cabilis. . .you can kill for hours and not see visible xp.

[Aiero]

Agree with Minta

The city exp appears to be lower these days. While smacking defective clockworks around in Ak'Anon with my lvl 1 newbie mage, it was taking me forever to gain exp until I went out into Steamfont by druid rings and the exp came in much quicker. I killed about 20 defective clockworks and had barely half of lvl 1 complete when I went to steamfont, it took me 6 decaying skeletons and 2 kobold runts to get other half of lvl.

[Delores Mulva]

Re: city XP

It is lower. And as a side effect of lowering city XP, we've learned something else: the XP from a quest is modified by the ZEM (zone experience modifier) of the zone the quest is in.

Want proof? Get a rogue that can make PoP-level poisons to repeat the part of the Grandmaster quest where they create "A Bundle of Poisons". If they do this combine in PoK, it will give XP equal to about 3% of an AA point solo. If they do this combine in Ak'Anon, it will give XP equal to about 0.5% of an AA solo. The difference? The experience modifiers between the two zones.

Now the real question is this: do the designers realize that quest XP varies with ZEM, and will they increase the XP from quests in cities to compensate for recent changes?

Delores Mulva
Lotus Cult
Quellious

[Hibashira]

Errrr... am I the only one here that stop turning in belts after lvl 12? The xp after 12 is so minimal. Killing is way faster.

[Sanna]

If they wanted to truly stop twinks and/or trivialization of the low end game, they would:

...get rid of the PoK books, except from the Nexus. Or, make them one way only, FROM PoK, and make PoK itself a 46+ zone.

for the love of tunare, no. pok is and is supposed to be a shadowhaven type place; one stop place to get 'everything'. it is a gathering place, a haven, a blessing in not much disguise. and on the pvp servers, it is a crucial haven, especially on sullon, where it becomes one of the few places i can run from the 65 necro with his 63 pet.

we already have enough 46 plus zones. it would not serve anything useful to add pok to that list.

...bring back Corpse Runs at lower levels. Teach them to do their CRs while they still don't go too far from a safe area.

i can see this one. love the /oocs in gfay... 'where's all my stuff! where did my gear go??' you have to go get your corpse. 'why?? never had to before!!'

...flag ANY quest involving a Lore Item to be completed ONE TIME ONLY per level. Once they ding, they can do it again.

.... don't understand this one, but ok...

...bring back exp loss below level 10. That teaches them zerg tactics, and they will have to learn a new set of tactics all over again at level 10.

heh. agreement here. see also the CRs.

...code ALL buffs to be uncastable on a player that is green to the casting PC.

again, no. see also the Pok.
i don't play much on non-pvp servers, but from what i gather, the /con-return-color is different on non-pvp; there is a wider range of levels before a PC returns with green.

on vallon/tallon, i think it's 6 or 8 levels below me before a PC becomes green. on sullon, it's 5 levels below me. on rallos, i think it's 4. for me on sullon, this would mean i can't buff anyone on my 'team', not even with a mere SOW. such a change as this would totally destroy sullon (not that it makes much sense anyway); a lvl 25 cleric would not be able to buff a 15 warrior, not that either of them could survive one attack from a 65 necro PKing in Unrest anyway.

they've already nerfed the kei-type casts (really high spells cast on really low charactors); part of me is glad i was in germany at the time, to avoid all the whining and crying that i'm sure went on.





and more to the point of the first post...
that does suck. i remember turning in belts on my monk.

sony's doing lots of odd things. nerfing the aqua gobbies sellback. nerfing quest xp for noobs. making it easier to be a high end charactor, making it harder to be a low end charactor. odd, odd odd.

[Dunthor Warsmith]

Aww, those quests were fun ... on my gnome mage, I saved all my bone chips from lvls 1-4 (hunting in Steamfront near the druid circle, pre-newbie revamp). At 4, , to raise money for my spells, I went to Kaladim and turned them all in, and just barely dinged 7. I was really surprised, but it was nice.

So many runs to Kaladim for turnins on Dunthor, heh. The belts and pads were highly prized loot, people really cared about the distribution of them. At the time I cared for them more for the faction than the xp (I'm a bit of a faction freak :P ), but all those turn ins probably got Dun a lot of xp (although the hybrid penalty was in full force back then, so it wasn't as noticable).

I'd been doing a bit of duoing on Sullon, and the belts & pads really helped make up for all the time lost dodging PKs and doing the extra CRs.

The lower xp will be missed

I'd always wanted to go on a city raid, and slaughter the den of evil. I figured it would violate the zone disruption clause, even asked on the old General Play boards (and got a blue name response!) saying it was a permitted activity, and so I looked forward to the day when I would be powerful enough to go attack a city. Lately I'd been thinking about planning a raid, but without Grobb, that only leaves 4 evil cities: Cabilis (a lot of people work on faction there, might not want to trash it), Paineel (need a key to get on the elevator, would make things difficult), Oggrok (tempting), and Neriak (I've always wondered what my faction was like there, since originally the Paladin epic had a turnin in neriak). Being faction conscious I keep putting it off and putting it off, knowing that whatever city is raided the faction would be trashed and probably bottomed out with. If they've nerfed the city xp to be insigificant, then that would take away a lot of the fun of doing a bit of an xp spot in a nice, broken dungeon-esque city

Heh, wonder if this means the mages & necros will stop soloing the Felwithe guards...