Jim_G

Good point about the travel time.

I agree with the spirit of the "well-built team" but it goes beyond the purpose of the guide to discuss that. I also find that trying to put together and manage a good team generally takes longer than simply soloing. But if you can get on a good team, by all means go for it!

I wrote this guidelette because I had some curious arguments about getting the most XP during the last 2XP weekend. Many people insisted that we should fight every mob in a mission since they wanted “to get the most XP they can.” Others wanted to run all missions at the highest difficulty even if this resulted in a lot more debt, since “the extra experience makes up for it.”

If you want to get the most XP, then here’s the basic rule to follow—whatever gets you the most XP under normal conditions STILL gets the you most XP during the 2XP weekend. The increase in XP does not affect what strategies and tactics you should use to get good experience. If anything, the doubling of XP should make you stick with the tried-and-true methods more seriously.

Let’s look at a simple example that makes this clear, using nice easy numbers since I know math makes a lot of people’s eyes glaze over. A good comparison is running newspaper missions vs. story-arc missions. As you probably know, it’s generally better XP to skip to the end of a “defeat the boss” newspaper mission and clear out the final room than it is to do story arcs which require finding glowies or clearing out all the minions. So, just for example, let’s say the numbers are like this:

Normal conditions

Standard story-arc mission: kill everybody in base
End-of-mission bonus: 10,000 xp
Experience from all those minions: 30,000 XP
Time: 10 minutes
Total experience: 40, 000
Experience per/minute: 4,000

“Kill the Boss” newspaper mission
End-of-mission bonus: 10,000 xp
Experience from mobs in final room: 5,000 XP
Time: 3 minutes
Total experience: 15, 000
Experience per/minute: 5,000

Difference in XP=25%, or 1,000/minute


Double Experience Weekend

Standard story-arc mission: kill everybody in base
End-of-mission bonus: 20,000 XP
Experience from all those minions: 60,000 XP
Time: 10 minutes
Total experience: 80, 000
Experience per/minute: 8,000

“Kill the Boss” newspaper mission
End-of-mission bonus: 20,000 xp
Experience from mobs in final room: 10,000 XP
Time: 3 minutes
Total experience: 30, 000
Experience per/minute: 10,000

Difference in XP=25%, or 2,000/minute


In both examples you still get about 25% more experience doing the newspaper missions than you do with the standard missions. But since the 2XP weekend is doubling the total amount of experience it results in getting 2000 more xp points per minute instead of 1000.

I am not saying these numbers are anywhere close to accurate. The point is, if something gets you more experience under normal circumstances, it continues to do so under 2XP conditions. Furthermore, the experience difference has doubled, so in this example instead of making 1000 extra XP you get 2000 extra XP. Stopping to kill every mob gets you more experience that it does normally, but the newspaper mission still is 25% better, and the percentage difference between the two methods does not change .

Now about debt. It’s true that the 2XP weekend will partially compensate for the XP lost from debt. If you want to get the thrill of high risk / higher gains, go right ahead. However, keep in mind you are essentially giving up the bonus you get from the 2XP conditions and simply getting your normal experience level. If you want to maximize your experience than staying out of debt should be a high priority

Thanks for this excellent guide! I'm a /kin corrupter, and many of us try to squeeze by on Siphon Speed and no travel power until late in the game. This guide will really help! I will recommend this thread to other /kin.

Also thanks for the tip on Siren's Call and the 30 minute temp powers--extremely useful.

Chris:

Thanks for the reverse unsidekick trick (that phrase has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?). It might actually be easier to do that than do the hunting mission myself, since people immediately understand the idea of going on a mission together. Not to mention that my lowbie companion will get a huge boost to xp from doing it that way, so it can be pitched as a limited form of powerleveling. THAT should get people's attention, as long as they realize I'm not offering to powerlevel them the entire way. "Want to join me for a mission to get the sidekick powerlevel bonus at the end?" They won't understand what I mean, of course, but it won't be any harder to explain, and will benefit them more.

That suggests using something like the term "exemplar bonus" for anything in which exemplaring gives you a bonus boost to experience. The boost at the end of a mission would be the "exemplar mission bonus." The general advantage to hunting would the "exemplar hunting bonus." Of course, there's little chance of these terms being adopted outside our personal circle of friends, but we can always hope.

I think your XP guide is very well done, btw, and I learned several useful things from it. I'm a little surprised there's not more people discussing it in the thread. If it had been posted a few months ago there would have been more people saying "This is the best guide in the whole world" and "You people are destroying this game, hell holds a special place for you, and I hope you go there soon."

By the way, is it really true you type 102 words a minutes, or are you just bragging on your resume? ;-)

Just a little follow-up to this thread. The last 4 times I've taken a ride on the ambulance, I've used the trick of doing a hunting mission and exemplaring down for the final kill. It has always wiped out ALL my debt. It takes just a few minutes to do the hunting since you can just do grays, and it actually takes longer to find somebody to bring me down. Not many people seem to be aware of this trick, the don't understand what I mean even when I say to them "we don't have to hunt together, this will take 90 seconds of teaming, I just need to be exemplared down so I can kill this last mob myself and finish the mission." They always think I'm asking them to travel to me and help fight the mob, when I just want them to stay on their end of the map and lower me to their level. I wish I could come up with a good descriptive name for this tactic. I'll have to think about it.

This weekend when I have some more time I plan to find somebody about 8 levels above me, SK and do their mission, and then un-SK just before the mission completes. It seems like a great way to actually be a useful team member for 98% of the mission, and still get a big xp boost at the end.

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I've gone ahead and incorporated this tip (and a link to the thread) into my Comprehensive Guide

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Great! I'm pleased I could contribute something to the greater community. This is a good example of a tactic that in retrospect seems obvious, but for most of us only in retrospect.

About the temptation to run off to a second group and squeeze in another battle: I've found doing a little mini-herding is much safer. Find two groups that are close together, hit somebody in group one so they aggro, run to second group, and fight them both at once. The counter intuitive thing is that you should make the more dangerous group the second one you run to. There's a lag time for group one to reach group two, so they actually spend less time getting smacked/burned/iced/sliced/diced.

Candy popping should be even more useful when issue #3 goes live. Increased mob hitpoints and xp will make it very tempting to stay near a contact and munch. We'll have to adjust to longer battle times, though, which might make the double-grouping kind of risky.

Anyone recall offhand when you get more than 10 candy slots? My other heroes I barely noticed, but I'm really looking forward to more slots now.

Kevin_Schultz: Thanks for the thoughtful additions--you make several great points.

It's funny, Positron posted "Our goal is for you never to run out of missions or things to do... 'street hunting' should be an absolute last resort... not just something you have to do from 34 to get new missions at 35."

The thing is, if you really want to advance effectively, candy popping and street cleaning is generally far easier and safer than missions, at least for the solo hero. Last night I decided to do a timed door mission to reconnect to the spirit of the game, but then at the end I had a missing glowie I had to spend 15 minutes hunting down. I was more connected to the "spirit" of the game cleaning the streets than I was running around playing "hunt the missing object." I hope they add a power to lets you see glowies and mobs on the map: THAT would really be useful!


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Someone was giving me a hard time about it, and I told them, inspirations 50 inf, not getting hit/held priceless.


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Yeah, it's funny, the different attitudes people have about this, like Eric saying that level 1 inspires are crap. They don't seem to be thinking things through, but to be having a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of anything being "level 1." Or perhaps the person who saw you doing that had the opposite reaction--rather than the inspirations being usefuless, they made the game too easy.

Oh well, just another way people who use their brains can rise to the top! ;-)

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ive NEVER seen anyone lvl22+ use this ability

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Right now I'm level 23, and continuing to candy pop in Independence Port, although I'm usually loading up and leaving rather than eating them right at the contact. Three purples, three reds, and two yellows fit in my tray just fine, and provide a big boost to my powers. It's harder to find a group of red mobs now, but within 2 'ports distance I can usually find a group of oranges near a group of yellows, herd them together, and have a nice little battle.

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1st lvl inspires are crap by then.

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I think you're accurately expressing the general attitude, but of course they're still exactly the same level of + to defense and damage that they were at level 1. Three reds and purples are +75% to each. Most heroes don't have either defense or damage at the cap, so the candy is still a big boost.

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It kinda gets old though.

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Yeah, I'm sure it will, but the xp I'm getting is so lovely it's hard to stop. In a different thread somebody said "A power gamer is someone who, if they find they can get experience most effectively by standing in one place and jumping, will do that for hours, and honestly have a good time doing it."

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you think your the first person to figure this out?

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Nope. I think I'm the first person to write about it in an easily accessible form, include specific tactics like the order of candy munching, and share the information on the boards.

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Very cool idea. Never thought of doing something like that.

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Thanks! It's funny, but now I've gotten used to these pumped-up battles, and I find it a little hard to go back to standard missions. Normally, a large group of whites with a few yellows is actually threatening, but I've been pummeling oranges and reds for two levels and I have to readjust. I know people talk about "embracing your debt," but I'd rather keep it far, far away. Kind of like a distant aunt you only hug when really necessary.

Here's another little exploit-ey trick for soloing that I stumbled on a few days ago.

My main scrapper had just hit level 21, so I was starting to hunt in Talos Island, but I got a contact in Independence Port. The Port is still a risky place at 21, even around the train everything is at least yellow and red.

The contact was right near the station, fortunately. While I was getting a mission from him, I noticed I could see a group of red minions from the Family just a block away. I glanced at his store, and saw that he's one of the contacts that actually sells all six flavors of inspiration-candy. Then I realized that although the relative cost of enhancements has of course gone up with each level, that isn't true of inspirations. The basic ones still cost 50, which is just pocket change after you get past level 15 or so. Essentially they are free, the limit the devs place on us is just how many you can carry at once.

Except that since the mobs were just a few yards away I didn't have to carry anything, so that wasn't really a limitation, was it? I decided to push my luck and go after the reds. At 21, soloing a group of reds is a good way to eat pavement, so it all depended on how I managed the inspirations. I only had 8 slots, so I bought and ate 4 reds and 4 purples (you can eat the candy without even leaving the store). Then I quickly bought and ate 3 yellows, and grabbed few blues and greens in case of trouble. I 'ported over to the scary looking group of reds, said a prayer to the gods of mayhem, and jumped in.

It wasn't easy, exactly, but it was possible, and a heck of a lot of fun. I was careful about the order I had eaten the candy, so when I saw my reds starting to drop I knew I had just a few seconds left to finish or retreat before the purples expired. Fortunately they were all down to a sliver and a single AoE dropped the remaining three. The influence I got was something like 10 times the cost of the inspirations, plus they dropped several high level DO enhancements worth far more.

I just stayed in the area, candy popping the contact, and taking out groups for the next two levels. This is certainly a high risk/high gain kind of strategy, but it worked very well, and made for short, intense battles. I died several times, but the xp was good enough I didn't really mind. I'm on a dial-up connection, and the biggest risk was getting a map server disconnect because of all the hero activity near the train station. Dropping your connection in the middle of a pack of reds pretty mucn guarantees you a ride in the ambulance.

I'm hesitant to mention this last point, since it's REALLY on the edge of an exploit--you can even pull a group back to the contact, go in to the store, and keep on fighting while you munch that sweet candy! I tried to avoid this since other heroes need to come to the contact, but the fights are generally pretty short when you're standing there gobbling reds and yellows as fast as you can buy them.

That's a very plausible argument, and it's possibly correct. I wasn't aware that one aspect of the high-low game is getting "an inordinately large XP bonus at the end." Interesting. But I wouldn't be shocked if they tweaked the code to scale xp to your "real" level, not your virtual level.

The xp at the end of the mission--I take it this doesn't happen when you are sidekicked to be in the same range as the other people in the mission, right? Since being an exemplar is a "reverse sidekick," I'd think the intention is to have the xp payoff for a mission to be in the same ballpark as what you get when you're sidekicked--no bonus.

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Not only does the end-of-mission reward XP go entirely to reduce debt, but it is scaled up by the number of levels between your exemplared level and the level you were when you got the mission.

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Whooboy. Thanks for the tip, but that sounds basically like a bug, or more accurately an overlooked design flaw. I work in the software industry so I go looking for them, but experienced gamers get a feel for them too. I bet the devs didn't think thsi through completely, having high-level missions getting completed while at lower levels.

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Thing is, fighting at your own level you will, eventually, gain NEW levels and powers that may make gaining XP easier.

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The key word here is "eventually." This guide is written for people who want to level sooner, rather than later. I find that going exemplar and then returning to my own level permits me to advance more quickly.

This is a brief post, but addresses one of the main discouraging issues we face in later levels: perma-debt. The fastest way to bring down debt is to use the exemplar feature to temporarily lower your level. I continue to meet people who have heard of exmplaring but never used it, don't realize the advantages, and don't know they can use it to conquer a mountain of debt.

This is not simply because all your xp is going to debt reduction. If that were the case, it would take roughly 50% of the time to eliminate your debt, since you're working it off at 100% instead of only 50%, In practice, you should eliminate all debt in MUCH less than 50% of the time it would take at your current level.

Why be an exmplar, instead of simply hunting at your current level? The main advantage is that hunting at the lower levels is usually MUCH easier. The lower mobs are unlikely to mezz or use special attacks, or to support each other with skills like healing. Furthermore, there were probably specific levels and places which you can remember went very well for your particular level and play-style. You can return to those places and reapply what you learned to wipe that debt clean.

One good example of this is Perez Park. Perhaps you remember going to Perez Park and taking on large groups of mobs with little danger? Welcome back to those glory days! And at the low levels, teaming with specific AT's yields even more of an advantage than later levels. High-damage classes such as scrappers and blasters are leveling machines in Perez, and teaming with them should make the debt melt away.

An interesting advantage of the exemplar relationship is that it doesn't seem to be effected by distance, unlike sidekicking. You can have someone on the opposite side of the map bring you down successfully, so you're not even forced to hunt near them.

There are some things to watch out for when you exemplar. If you have gone through a respec, you will get whatever powers and slots you chose for that level during the respec process. You might get a mild case of "power nostalgia" if you removed powers from your build that you've outgrown. In a more severe case, you might find yourself without a travel power if you added it on at the end or respec. About the only things you can do are take the exemplar process into account when you're respecing, or make sure not to exemplar yourself down to many levels. It's a good idea to plan the respec out in the hero planner beforehand.

As a final bonus, if a battle is going badly you can unexemplar and immediately be returned to your normal level. Simply bind a key that you can find easily (such as z) like this:

/bind z unex

Now when you hit z you will instantly go back to your normal level, and probably find yourself surrounded by harmless grays.

In an earlier thread some of us discussed what it would mean to be born into a super-family, and what effect that would have on how you view the world and your powers. Here's the best description I've done so far:


Jim O'Hara was born into a mutant family with super-parents and brothers, but with no powers of his own. He competed fiercely with his super-siblings, and developed his strength and agility to peak human levels. His parent's friends and connections resulted in his acquiring armor and magical items that give him limited powers such as damage resistance and teleportation. He channeled his frustration at being the "special" kid into studying the katana, military tactics, biochemistry, and lifting weights. He married, had children, and was about to settle down as a normal guy when the Rikti invaded. In the initial assault Jim defeated a pack of hunter-drones that were attempting to abduct his children, and spent the next 48 hours fighting to defend Paragon City. Afterwards he found that he had defeated nearly twice as many attackers as his super-brothers, who had little tactical training or knowledge. Jim patrols the streets as Knightsword, and now feels driven to create a safe world for his children. He still has trouble believing that he's a registered hero, and feels a little intimidated by his new peers. His parents and brothers are extremely proud.

A few comments:

I think two things are getting confused, and the result is that the uberness of blasters is getting exaggerated. Consider that 1) people who like to powerlevel choose to play blasters because of the advantages this class has in gaining experience, and 2) powerlevelers are willing to do things to maximize their experience that the average person would find incredibly boring, or against the spirit of the game. Look at the suggestions for how to play these blaster builds, including killing swarms for hours, deliberately replaying door missions, and ignoring Lt and bosses to move to the next group.

When you add the efficent builds to the powerleveler's "maximizing xp is the ONLY priority" mindset, you get characters that develop way more quickly. This is because powerlevelers do boring things very effectively, and we create characters that do exceptionally well at the boring stuff, and the game rewards that behavior with quick xp. That's one reason why people who play the game get annoyed with us and occasionally have to yell at us and say "Don't you guys care about FUN or PLAYING the game at all?"

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I'm really beginning to wonder whether or not the people who played in beta are just plain idiots or devious or both.

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I work in the software industry. Here's what I've started to tell other people" "You really, really want to have a beta team before the software is released. Not because they will help you find bugs, although this is great. Not because they will help you improve the design, although they will. You want a beta team because a few weeks after release, other users are going to come to your public forums and say 'This is the most untested software in the history of the universe, and the people who did the QA are idiots, or blind, or both.' When that happens, you want to be able to point to the beta group, and point out that you had a few dozen, or a few hundred, or maybe even a few thousand people testing your software for weeks, and they didn't find the flaws that IN RETROSPECT seem obvious."

This thread is fascinating, and a great read. However, we're starting to branch out into unrelated areas about personal builds, and it's losing steam. I know that when I read a post with specific questions about a build, I just skip over them, and from the low response it looks as if most other people are too.

This is not to discourage people who have questions! But you will probably get more answers if you started a new thread with an appropriate subject, like "Which power to take at Level 24?" or whatever. Otherwise, you won't get many answers, and this thread will decay. Yes, it would be nice for the original poster, RSRobinson, to give you personal advice on your build, but if you review the thread you'll see he isn't doing that for anybody.

Thanks!

Great comprehensive post! I strongly encourage you to at least post a link to it in the Forum on Guides and FAQs.