Earning AA's ....

[rhorse]

Do I need to down mobs that are 5 lvls below and up from whatever lvl I am. Or do they have to be 51 only to earn AA's from them. Say if I was lvl 61, would mobs from 56 to 65 be the only mobs I could get exp. from.

Thanks

[Hereki]

No.  You earn AA exp from any mobs you earn exp from normally.

[Oneiromancer]

Mobs above level 55 that are 5 levels or less below you give you an experience bonus...that is probably where you got that number from.

Game on,

[Hereki]

Not quite - the "within 5 levels" modifier applies when you are 55 or higher, not the mobs; or so I understand.  Could be wrong.

[Oneiromancer]

I got this off of Usenet a while back.  I make no claims as to its accuracy, but it's what I've been going off of.  I presume that people with ShowEQ or something like that figured out the numbers, or at least the relations.

The basic formulas for xp go as follows -

Where -
ZEM = Zone Experience Modifier
ML = Mob Level
GB = Group Bonus (1)
HCB = High Con Bonus (2)
N = number of players in group
S = sum of levels in group
PL = player level
B = Base mob xp (3)
XP = Xp awarded to player (4)

(1) For (N=1, GB=1.0; N=2, GB=1.2, N=3, GB=1.4;
(N=4, GB=1.6; N=5, GB=1.8; N=6, GB=2.16)

(2) HCB = 1 if ML < 55 or PL < 50 or PL-ML > 5
else
HCB = 1.95 + ((ML - (PL-5)) * .13)

(3) B = ML*ML*ZEM*GB

(4) XP = B * (PL + 5) / (S + (N*5)) * HCB

The important one in this discussion is the High Con Bonus, or HCB, defined after note (2).  In English, it states that there is no High Con Bonus if the mob is less than 55, the player is less than 50, or the player is more than 5 levels higher than the mob.  If all of the criteria are met then you get a bonus multiplier to your experience of at least 1.95, and increases as the mob's level increases relative to your own.

And I'd just like to point out again that I am not claiming this is gospel; if someone has the source that would be great since I've never seen it published.  Note that there is no mention of how the mob cons to you in terms of color...I'm pretty sure that, for example, light blue mobs have an xp penalty above and beyond the lower mob level would indicate.  So these could be very old formulas.

Game on,

[Hereki]

I have a habit of not trusting seemingly precise formulae found on the net :).  But I do regard quotes from SOE as being more likely to be accurate, which may be wrong, of course.

At the time that exp was reworked after PoP to allow exp in pre-PoP zones SOE made some vague comments about it, which is where I picked it up from.  I don't remember exactly when, but it was after PoP (Oct 2002) and before the group bonus was introduced (June 2003).

CastersRealm keep an archive of announcements, you should look there.

[Dakat]

There were 2 changes that I remember concerning exp changes.

1.  POP exp solo was reduced

2.  Killing mobs closer to the characters level provided a bonus. Due to more difficulty of the mobs at the higher levels.  So a level 65 person killing a level 60 mob would gain alot more exp then say the mob was only level 50.  Both mobs are blue, but the higher mob provided more exp.

[Xarilok]

Ok, here is my question to further this discussion:

Where (if at all) can a level 60BL/Druid duo kill level 55+ mobs?

Where (if at all) can a level 65BL/Druid duo kill level 60+ mobs?

My point is this, if a level 60 duo can kill level 55+ mobs (with the huge power boost at 60) and a level 65 can not kill level 60+ mobs, it would be far more exp/hour if you did AA at 60, than if you leveled to 65.

Anyone know of spots to find and kill said mobs?

[Tastian]

Can do 55+ mobs in the grey (sun revs by lake), droga (further in), planes and other spots.

Can do 60+ mobs mostly in planes, but there are a lot of spots (HoH, tactics, etc).

The thing some people miss is that it's not just the bonus and the exp per 1 mob, but you have to factor in kill speed, mob availability, etc.  If you had a bunch of mobs of 59th level that you could mow down for whatever reason at 65 you might not get the exp bonus per mob, but they are still 59th level mobs and can yield nice exp.  Beastlords especially often make better exp going for kill rate than big exp % per kill.  There really are a lot of factors though, but at both level ranges you have mobs that fall into the exp bonus range.  Overall AA will be faster at 65 just because you are killing higher level mobs and you have spots like BoT where just about any group can do an AA in an hour or so.  I don't know of a spot at 60 that a group could do an AA in an hour at outside of maybe some good old school AE groups.  Also BoT is far from the best, you have some people doing AAs at 65 in ~20 mins give or take.

[Hereki]

You'll get more experience faster, solo or duo, killing low dark blues, until you have a lot of AAs (at least 100, I'd say), and raid level gear (top end Luclin, 500+ point LDoN, or elementals).

Those people doing AAs in 20 minutes aren't beastlords, btw.  Tastian hears of faster AAs than I do - normal BoT groups get an AA in 90 mins, soloers in elementals (Fire tables, etc) typically 30-40 minutes.  I don't know what people are getting in GoD, but I believe it to be comparable.

[TerjynPovar]

Look at it this way.  The XP multiplier from killing a 55th level mob in a random zone is worth 55*55 = 3025.

A level 60 mob, with the HCB(by that formula) is worth 60*60*1.95 = 7020.

Thus, if you can kill the level 60 mobs in less than ~2.3 times as long (including recovery), you will make better XP at the 60 mobs.  Grouping, you can probably make up this time differential.  Solo, you probably cannot...at least not without hordes of AAs.

Other ratios:  

60/51:  ~2.7
60/59:  ~2.01
59/51:  ~1.33
59/55:  ~1.15
55/51:  ~1.16

Hmm, I wish that I knew more about mob hit points, if I did I could really go to town on where the sweet spots of XPing truly are. :)

Note that in the case of soloing mobs in the elementals, not only are the mobs all 61+, thus giving an even better HCB than the 60s do, but the Zone modifier for the elementals is still insanely high too, increasing this even further.  None of the above calculations take Zone modifier into account.

Even at 65 in my completely non-uber gear though, I found the fastest XP was in Nurga, where everything was on the verge of light blue or actually light blue.  As easy as it might seem to increase your pace by that 16% it takes to go from level 51 mobs to level 55 mobs...the mob's hit points scales very quickly as well.

[Kitvear]

Ok, I am like perma camped in GE now and all the mobs there are DB.  I log on, make my pet, log on my druid pet (level 49 now!) toss thorns, skin like nature, and greator wolfform on me, mow down 14 of the DB mobs, then take a break.  I haven't really tracked how fast I get exp in that batch of 14 mobs
BUT, on my druid, that is around a yellow bar of exp.  I think but am not sure that he is getting levels slightly faster then I'm getting aa.

My biggest question is since everything is red to him in there and he gets nice exp, would it make sense to turn off regular exp on him when he hits 51 and get his 6 required aa, then turn on exp again and run him to 55 and get his 72 aa that I want in arch aa.  I'm probably not explaining this very well but won't he get better aa at 51 and/or 55 since the mobs in GE are so much bigger then him even though his is in my group?  Or will it make no difference and if that's the case shouldn't I just run for the levels to get POTG, Cabbage and 9?

[Aneya]

Willsappers and friends in GE are lvl 53-55 or lvl 51-55 so not all of them provide the extra bonus. However, if you go further in past the portcullis, all mobs are 55+ thus providing a HCB on every kill as long as your toons are under 61. On the other hand, mobs past the portcullis are harder to kill so for those over 60 xp might suffer a bit.

Ideally you could take your druid past the portcullis after 51 to guarantee that he gets a HCB on every kill. However, low level toons tend not to do well in that area on their own.

As for when to stop for AAs that depends on what you would prefer for your druid. 6 aas worth of xp would probably get your druid to 54 or 55. You might want to bite the bullet and try for 58 so that the druid has a Cheal. But at 58 you might want to hit 59 for Protection of the Cabage. At 59 your Class aas are now available so thats not a bad place to stop to grind out some aas.

In my experience people shoot for 58 for Cheal before working on AAs.

[Ekss]

I've been working on levelling my bot druid, and she's now 58 with the first CH - and I can tell you it makes a huge difference to her effectiveness as my healer. Spamming Superior Healing just doesn't cut the mustard in places like Riwwi, but now she can support me very well there. I'd definitely recommend getting 58 for that spell alone.

[Kitvear]

Thanks to both of you.  I didn't express myself very well I don't think.  I'm two boxing on a dated machine on dial-up.  My druid  just stares at the wall and I picked GE cuz it's a zone where even if I lag out and go ld then with the pet up and thorns on me, I have a good chance of living anyways.

I'm at the point now where I don't really need the druid at all to solo where i'm at.  Greater Wolfform, Skin like Naturre, Thorns are all nice and yes since I have Improved Healing 2 on the druid and he is just sitting there like a bump on the wall with Kei and SD I do use his little greater healing spell.  But I'm pretty much doing the same thing that I was doing before I reactivated the druid's account.  Just soloing some DB's.  The druid is perma camped there, (bound in DS) so I just log on the druid when I'm soloing in GE, most of the time, i'm not soloing and the druid isn't logged on.  I would like it if the druid was a 65 with 200 aa or whatnot cuz if he was, and I knew another zone where I would be pretty much safe from LD problems (due to the mobs not being too overpowering) then I would problably move my camp.

So my question is: Since he is just leaching exp on mobs that are red to him but dark blue to me,  is there a difference in how much exp he gets since the mobs are red to him?  Assuming the mob levels don't change at what point will he get the most efficent aa per kill?