Lost Pages of Taborea: Elaborating on XP gain and leveling alts
This week I want to elaborate on experience gain, the honor party, and other ways of leveling alts. I received some great feedback from last week's article that suggests to me an interest in a much wider discussion of power-leveling. But before I get to that, let's clear up XP gain in Runes of Magic.
Most MMOs that I know of -- including RoM -- dish out XP based on the character's level and the level of the mob being slain. If your character is the same level as the mob, the game will give you an adequate amount of XP as a reward. If the mob is higher, you'll get even more experience, but you'll get less XP as you out-level a mob. If you've played any MMO, you're probably aware of this. In RoM, you'll stop collecting XP from mobs 10 levels lower than you. Naturally, fighting mobs slightly higher than you can be more efficient. You can continue to fight increasingly higher-level mobs, but at some point, there's just no way you'll be able to survive, which is why you may want to get a higher-level player to take you just about anywhere in RoM to power-level you. When a high-level player starts towing you around, though, the XP you gain will be based directly on the amount of XP that player would get from any mob he kills. Read on to see more about this and alternative ways of power-leveling.
Not only is the amount of XP you gain determined by the higher-leveled player, but the amount is also split between the two of you. It also means that the amount you earn will increase or decrease based on the level of the mob in relation to the level of the character helping you.
Dungeons and honor parties
Last week's article dealt with a dungeon that slightly changes the standard method of open-world XP gain: Instance-mobs give out more XP than their open-world brothers of the same level, and there's a small level-range for the mobs. You get a bonus from more XP, but you can't form a regular party if the higher-level player is going to be more than 10 levels above the mobs. If you're going to be power-leveled in Necropolis of Mirrors, the level-requirement for the would-be killer would be less than level 48. But the honor party will negate that restriction, because then the XP gain becomes based on the level of the alt. Now you can go ahead and ask that level 62 to clear out the dungeon and power-level you faster.
This method isn't restricted to NoM, either. All dungeons operate like this, but the honor party only allows helping low-level players up to level 30, and it doesn't matter that only one side of your class combo is below. A level 10/31 is no longer eligible to join someone's honor party. It's possible to do this in other dungeons, but some won't permit it as a result of quest restrictions. Heart of the Ocean, for example, requires that the character entering complete certain quests in Weeping Coast, which is a level 50+ zone. It might be possible to tag along and protect a low-level and help her with the quests to complete the requirements to enter HotO, but then you'd be negating the reason to power-level. It would be very hard to keep her alive, and it would take longer than other methods of leveling. It becomes a matter of judging overall efficiency based on a player's game time, guild status and other personal situations.
Alternative methods for power-leveling
Running an honor party in NoM is just one of many options for power-leveling an alt. I chose it for its easy access to a wide variety of players. The player creating an alt needs only what he gets or can buy himself, and he needs only ask a high-level player to spend 5K gold and travel a relatively short distance. Many of these high-level players will be in different locations and financial positions, which can sway a decision on how and where to power-level.
Some players multi-box, are in guilds, or don't have money to burn. If you're a solo player without a guild who's just looking for a helping hand, you may or may not find a player kind enough to use a teleport rune -- that he paid money for -- and take you to bleeding edge content for some quick power-leveling. Maybe you're a well-established guild member who multi-boxes and has numerous accounts to easily teleport a bunch of alts anywhere for some serious leveling. There's also the question of which gear mods the high-level player will have equipped. Can he get you to Limo and kill the mobs his level easily and quickly enough? Or what about players who participate in siege wars regularly and come away nightly with XP orbs?
Conclusion
As you can see, this type of power-leveling quickly becomes an issue of efficiency based on your specific circumstances. We could try listing all the methods that suit general player-types, but I don't think that would be much fun for this article. It would also take too many words to squeeze into one week. What I think would be much more fun is to hand this over to you. What is the most efficient way for you to power-level?
Keep in mind different circumstances that you or others might be in. There might be some ways of power-leveling that at first seem inadequate but turn out to work quite well for different reasons. I still think forming an honor party and power-leveling an alt in NoM is relatively efficient for a large number of players. We're likely to come away with many different ways of power-leveling alts that we never thought of before -- methods that are as time-saving, out of reach, easy, or hard.
Each Monday, Jeremy Stratton delivers Lost Pages of Taborea, a column filled with guides, news, and opinions for Runes of Magic. Whether it's a community roundup for new players or an in-depth look at the Rogue/Priest combo, you'll find it all here. Send your questions to jeremy@massively.com.
