The solo leveling limit conjecture

I'm actually considering trying this, at least for a while. If I did so I'd probably do something like:

- Pre-purchase and craft three sets of IOs: a low-level mix of generics and frankenslotting for the teen levels, a frankenslotted set of level 25-ish IOs to slot around 22 or 23, and a full set build to be slotted in the 30s once I have a full attack chain and sufficient slots per power to actually get the good bonuses. I'd also start the character off with some inf to cover TOs and early DOs, market teleporters, and such.

- Run AE missions until I have a travel power and good survivability against general spawns, buying new TOs when I run out to level and swapping to my pre-crafted IOs at 12 or so.

- Switch to newspaper missions and story arcs to preserve my sanity once I can get around quickly and no longer need to fight hand-picked opponents to avoid downtime.

I'm not sure what AT would be best... perhaps a Katana / Regen Scrapper since they combine excellent survivability, early endurance management, and solid damage with some AoE capability. A Fire / Mental Blaster would probably be better but would also require more expensive IOs that I'm not sure I want to spring for just to test leveling speed.

(If anyone wants to loan me some low-level recovery uniques, LotGs, and ranged defense sets I'll be happy to try the Fire / Mental... )

You can set up AE missions to have allies with no attacks and a bunch of buffs. Buffs which make surviviability, end management, accuracy, and enhanced damage non-important. All you need is a good attack chain.

When you have mindless, enslaved cold, kin, emp, and thermal defenders following you around, normal constraints do not apply. I do not know if you can get to 50 in 30 hours that way, but it does eliminate the endurance constraint.

I personally consider that "cheating"... it's certainly possible but I don't really consider that true solo leveling any more. I'm 100% certain Arcanaville's times can be beaten using enough AE tricks, what I'm curious about is if they can be beaten with normal missions and "standard" AE missions (no allies or exploits, just normal enemy groups chosen to match the character).

There are some really intriguing ideas here...

So, assuming for a moment that someone is going to take a stab at beating this,
(I have no idea whether they can), these criteria seem vital to me.

1> Choice of AT - Obviously a critical item. What AT kills fastest???

2> A pre-planned mid's build for the AT from #1. That's not necessarily a purpled-out
Rikti-Pylon build, but one that can go efficiently, safely, and quickly at each level.

3> Pre-built shinies in the base - eliminate slotting/selling/buying decisions and
time up-front. At the various levels, just pop into the base, slot the goodies,
and pop right back to the fight.

4> AE or Content? My guess is AE - so, handpicked custom missions for the
various stages. This can tailor the threat to be overcome easiest at each level while
still maximizing XP at each step along the way. Also, these missions can/should?
supply the appropriate "pets" to speed/ease the process and make up for
any "gaps" in the AT's build.

I'd be curious to see what the practical thoughts are for each of these steps.
Clearly, to even approach the challenge, all the ducks have to line up perfectly
to maximize kills, and time spent killing. Funds, IO's, and missions need to
thought out and in-place beforehand.

The AT needs to carve through mobs non-stop with no risk of dying, (Statesman
would cry at that last bit - an added bonus ), if solo levelling speed is
the only goal.

I find the idea intriguing. I'd like to be involved if a group of min-maxers wants
to take a stab at this... Like most record-setting ideas, the success really
hinges on the upfront preparation and planning (imho)... The rest, is just killing...


Regards,
4

Semirandom thought:

With AE (as with ouroboros) you get to choose your level. At some point they upped levelling speed for 11-20 and 40-50 - and they did that not by lowering the XP per level, but by increasing the XP per badguy.

If you pick baddies that cap at 20 or 16 (do Skulls cap at 16 or am I misremembering?) you get to keep Stamina and stay in your happy kill zone.

If you pick the right IO's to frankenslot you don't lose much, if any, damage and acc in your happy kill zone.

I don't think it's possible to do it faster than 36 hours solo.

OK, time to do some math in public... I'm not going to be anywhere near optimal, I'm sure, but here are my numbers.

From the Luck Charmers episode, I have a note that I beat, over 10 minutes, 210 Zombies [and shamen] giving 21 Zombies Per Minute, or ZPM. (I was running a Fire/Elec blaster, I think. Maybe my Fire/Ice.) Exemping a 36 blaster to 24, I have the following raw data:

EDIT: I had patrol XP. This is now taken into account in the final step.

Even-con BP zombie: 726 XP
Even-con BP shaman: 3630 XP
Even-con spectral: 871 XP

Even-con Sky Raider captain: 2419 XP

ASSUMPTION 1: If 10 of my 210 "zombies or shamen" were shamen, I'd have the XP equivalent of 25 ZPM. I am assuming at least 5% shamen.

At level 36, it is 855K XP to level.

ASSUMPTION 2: I can reliably get that same 25 ZPM against +1 enemies (I was fighting -1 and -2's for the drops, at the time) and I can do it forever. Zombies are fire-weak and I was using AOEs extensively.

Therefore I would get (726*1.3) or about 940 XP per zombie. I have notes that say
You have defeated Dry Husk
You gain 984 experience and 230 influence.

I presume that is for +1s although, at one point, I saw +2s in that mission.

So it is 869 zombies to level, or 34.75 minutes.

(edit to add) Multiplying time by 1.5 (for "bonus XP has run out"), I get 52 minutes, or .867 hours.

Your theoretical time for level 36 is .94 hours.

Is this enough of a disproof or do you want me to mow down a good chunk of Dark Astoria with a timer going?

He had double XP in effect. I believe he multiplied his time-to-level by 1.5 to adjust for that.

Another wrinkle to throw in for a speed-run is Double XP.

While those events are fairly infrequent, would it effectively lower your 36 hours
down to 18 during such an event? How far towards "cheating" does that go?


Regards,
4

tl;dr People who refuse to exemp to below their level make me chuckle.

I leveled from 6 to 20 today in 1 hour, 40 minutes (before, after - beware largeish images). I ran entirely solo at +0/x1 through an AE mission consisting of nothing but spawns consisting of one boss and one minion. I was exemped to level one the entire time, and always fighting even cons. My claws/WP brute ran with High Pain Tolerance and Fast Healing, using Swipe, Strike, Jump Kick, and Brawl for damage. I used no enhancements. In those 100 minutes I killed 278 spawns. The bosses were Luminous Eidolons; the minions were Coralax Green Hybrids.

The limits given by the chart in the OP suggest 1.1 - 0.06 = 1.04 hours to go from 6 to 20, so my time of 1.66 hours doesn't show much until you extrapolate out the numbers. 278 spawns in 100 minutes means that I can kill 2.78 spawns per minute, or 166.8 per hour. Both the mob types I fought yielded exactly 1.2 times the standard mob xp for their level as given by the wiki at every level from 6 to 19. I assume this is maintained all the way to 50. Since I'm exemped to 1 the whole time, kill speed does not change as I level beyond 6. Therefore, the amount of time required to get to any level can be fairly easily calculated: each spawn is worth the minion xp plus the boss xp for its level, times 1.2. The total xp required divided by this number gives the number of spawns required to level, and this divided by 166.8 gives the number of hours to level. Tersely,
xp to level / ((minion xp + boss xp) * 1.2) / 166.8 = leveling time in hours.

Example: At level 20, a minion gives 50 xp and a boss gives 500 xp, so a spawn gives (50 + 500) * 1.2 = 660 xp. Level 21 requires 28000 xp, so I will have to kill 28000 / 660 = 43 spawns, rounding up. This should take me 43 / 166.8 = 0.258 hours. Or,
28000 / ((50 + 500) * 1.2) / 166.8 = 0.258 hours.

To get from 30 to 31 should take
254000 / ((210 + 2100) * 1.2) / 166.8 = 0.556 hours. Incidentally, this is the first level at which this method surpasses the limits given in the OP.

40 to 41 should take
1692900 / ((892 + 7582) * 1.2) / 166.8 = 1.001 hours

and 49 to 50
4973400 / ((2464 + 14784) * 1.2) / 166.8 = 1.445 hours.

The entire 1-50 trip, according to my calculations, should require killing 4457 spawns and take less than 27 hours. Honestly, I'm having a hard time believing this can be right, but there it is.

Notes and considerations:

• I can't think of a better way to kill things at level 6 than Swipe/Strike/Jump Kick with full fury, but that doesn't mean there isn't one. In particular, JK is less DPE than it "should" be, which might matter at higher levels when free end refills are less frequent. I completely forgot about vet powers, so I don't know if they would have helped or not.
• Similarly, there may be better mobs to choose than Vahzilok and Coralax. In particular, the Vahzilok bosses must have had some sort of defense ability, because I would see my hit chance drop to around 60% sometimes. If there's a boss with worse defense and a better xp value, this could increase xp rate by quite a bit.
• Still similarly, a larger map might have been good to minimize downtime during loading screens. The one I used had room for 32 spawns and I ran through it 9 times, meaning 17 loading screens (I didn't leave the last mission before taking the second screenshot; I guess I should have but 100 minutes was just too perfect). Also, a single spawn with several minions in the front of an indoor map would help to rebuild fury quickly after zoning in, but I don't know if this is feasible in a way that increases xp/hour.
• If there's a way to eliminate minions from the map, that would help too. As is, I don't have the survivability to let them live. Mostly they died in one hit anyway.
• Over the course of the run, my end recovery looked like:
  55 CaB's * 25 = 1375 end
  13 TaB's * 33.333 = 433.33 end
  100 minutes * 100 = 10,000 end
  14 levels * ~75 = ~1050 end
  So I used around 12,858 endurance, 78% of which came from natural regeneration, 14% from insps, and 8% from dings. I never ran out of end without a blue in my tray, and I could have been slightly more end efficient if I had managed Sprint and Ninja Run better. Thus, the lack of dings at the high levels might hurt me, but probably not more than a few percent.
• There was one point where I might have died if I hadn't had any greens in my tray. Only happened once though, and it was probably avoidable. So survivability shouldn't be an issue.
• I ran the mission on a level 44 character and got standard mob xp, not standard * 1.2. I don't know when they stop giving bonus xp, but even if they gave standard xp for all 50 levels the time would still be under 33 hours.

Has anyone done the math to figure out how much faster people will be lvling in the 1-20 level span with fitness as an inherent?

I would if I could, but I can't, so I won't.

Really dumb question: didn't they change the damage output and hit points of upper level bosses back around the time they announced ED? Doesn't that make the +2 boss target increasingly more difficult as you level, and if so wouldn't that impact your level time? Would it be significant?