Lower level enemies?

I'm trying to put together an AE mission I can solo from 1-10 or so to get the first few levels of the game out of the way with a minimum of running around Mercy Island.

Is it possible to put an AE mission together so that the enemies it spawns are one level below the player? This wouldn't impact xp too much below 10, and would be much faster.

Under Mission Parameters you can set the Mission Pacing to "backloaded." This will make the enemies at the beginning of the mission -1 and -2, and the enemies at the end even-con and +1. Since you're a lowbie, you'll probably level halfway through the mission, as long as the map is big enough, so you'll be fighting stuff a bit lower level than you throughout most of it.

Awesome, that'll do exactly what I was looking for and should help immensely from 1-5!

Thanks very much!

You might also search for [LBMA] and [LFMA] tags, which are community-adopted designations for lowbie-friendly arcs. I've written two myself, designed for levels 1-10 as a change of pace from running your initial contacts.

LFMA stand for Lowbie Friendly Mission Arc, and LBMA stands for LowBie friendly Mission Arc. LBMA was the tag originally proposed in the tag thread, but LFMA is more commonly used in MA. If you have room, throw them both into your description so you can get visitors from both camps.

Cool, thanks. I've been kicking around an idea for a lowbie villain arc ("no snakes - guaranteed!") but I'm kind of at a loss to justify the time put into it when (apparently) so few people play anything non "agriculture-related" in AE. I'm hoping the more I think about it and plan the more I can rustle up some energy to start on it and get it done, and this info helps me do that.

My husband and I maintain a review thread of lowbie arcs. We're altaholics and always have lowbies around to play arcs. We got kind of tired of the fact that so many MA arcs tend to skew high level (or skew farm really), so we figured we'd try to help out the lowbie arc creators out there.

I'd definitely encourage you to make lowbie arcs. All of my arcs are for lower levels myself, and while they don't have tons of plays, I've gotten feedback that they're enjoyable. So they're serving their purpose at least.

For your new lowbie arc, I'd suggest a few things:

• Make something you enjoy and play it a lot. I can't even count the number of times I've run my own arcs to tweak them. Even if very few other people play your arc. You'll always have something you can run on your own new alts, and enjoy.
• Start small. Try to make a story that fits into 2 or 3 missions. I have learned from personal experience that people gravitate toward the shorter arcs over the longer arcs. If you've got a simple but tight story that fits into a small arc, I think you'll get more people playing it. I think a lot of arc creators underestimate how much other players value their time.
• If this is your first arc, don't get bogged down in feeling you have to create custom mobs. There is tons of canon out there that is under-utilized. Just grab something that intrigues you and use standard mobs. I'm not saying you shouldn't use custom mobs, just that it's not necessary.
• Design the story so that the player feels important. I have complaints about the lowbie content in the game, because a lot of times it feels like you're just trudging through Snakes again wishing you were higher level. Some of the better lowbie arcs I've played tend to let lowbies do something with a bit more impact.

Custom mobs tend to be quite a bit more powerful than standard mobs at low levels, no matter how much you try to gimp them. I suggest using them sparingly.

And yes, shorter may be better, especially for lowbies, who level quickly and have to squeeze in some non-AE time if they want their mayhem/safeguard badges. Epic stories are really more suited for higher levels, from an immersion perspective. You can still create a compelling story that doesn't rely on a level 5 character to save the world.

A tiny fragment of the playerbase probably knows about the player-designated tags. Frankly I'm surprised more of them didn't make it into the AE interface...maybe something to ask for in the next round of improvements?

I know this sounds elitist, but the fact that a tiny portion of the playerbase knows about the player-designed tags makes them more useful than the built-in tags. This tiny portion found out about the tags through reading a section of the forums dedicated to helping people create better arcs. As opposed to the "easy" tag, that anyone can click to "get more plays" or because they found the arc easy with their purpled-out level 50 Scrapper. I personally find the "easy" and "challenging" tags totally useless, due to differing opinions on what constitutes easy and challenging. I have had much better results searching LBMA, which there are enough of to keep a lowbie busy for a few levels.

Yes, I agree, the tag search needs to be more obvious. I also totally second the idea of a level range search rather than a "my level" search that gives you all the level 1-54 custom critter arcs.