How am I in debt?

I noticed I get a message that advises me i'm working off a debt! What the hell? I don't remember borrowing nothin' in the way of money or stuff?
I did Sidekick with some level 50 guy last night, but surely that doesn't affect this in this way, am I right?



Any ideas people?

You died.

You don't get debt for defeat until level 10.

As for answers to everything else, check out the Paragon Wiki article on debt.

Don't sweat it. Over the years, they've made debt almost meaningless. It's trivial to work it off in a few minutes, and depending on where you log off (patrol XP), it's entirely possible that you don't have to work it off at all.

Hi,

welcome to the game

You have to be at level 10 or above before you get debt after being killed.

This is specific to each toon so if you have a level 50 and a level 6, the level 6 will not get debt till it hits level 10.

The amount of debt per death increases as your level increases but as your xp earnings is higher as well it sort of evens out. If you get defeated a number of times in a row the total amount of debt is also limited by what level you are at.

it is a normal part of the game so do not sweat over it There are even badges for earning debt!

Have fun and in any case it helps you find the hospitals easier after a while

Cheers

Yeah, just clarifying that you don't technically lose XP when you die. You gain debt.

While you have XP debt (you can tell by the dark purpleish bar in your XP bar) half of your earned XP goes towards paying the debt.

There's also the patrol experience (http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Patrol_Experience) to factor in. As your characters are logged out you get patrol XP which causes you to earn 1.5 x normal xp earned for a certain amount of XP. This increases at a fixed rate, for up to 10 bulbs of patrol xp. If you have patrol XP built up when you die, it will be subtracted from that and you won't get any debt. If you have debt and log off, your debt will be reduced at the same rate as you earn patrol XP until your debt is gone (at which point you'll go back to earning patrol XP normally)

Yep... just your standard MMO penalty for dying, City Of style.

Where other games remove XP, force body runs, and/or equipment repair fees; we just.... halve your XP gain for a short while after you hit lvl 10.

I recall it used to kick in much earlier, and the cap for accumulated debt was higher... I remember on occasion there was heck to pay for causing people to earn debt. Now, with xp smoothing an a plethora of ways to reduce it... xp debt is just an epic badge.

I've always looked as debt as way of slowing a characters development for people that may need it. If your dying, you likely need to work on this level a little longer

For people like me, with severe Altitis, I just park the character for a little bit and build patrol XP to pay the debt off while I play another toon.

If your alt-itis is bad enough (like mine) you never play a character that doesn't have plenty of patrol xp to make death a non-event (besides a loss of pride - I hate dying). I lose a blue patrol bar and that's it... When I do accrue debt (like in a TF or something) it actually takes me by surprise to see that purple bar.

I recall people quitting (not talking about it, actually people I know with names canceling) the game because they had accrued so much debt, that they felt that there was no point in trying any further.

Now all you have to do is logoff, make a sandwich; login, and you have zero debt and bonus XP.

You are correct. Debt started at level 5 back in the day. Darn hazy memory.

They also reduced debt across the board by 20% in I11, on top of the 1/2 debt inside a door mission change.

Debt is nothing.

As I understand it, pre-issue 2? 3? there was no cap to debt and people could and did occasionally end up with multiple levels of debt. By the time I started playing at the start of issue 3 debt started at level 5 and the maximum debt you could have was 10 deaths worth, which I think (having to remember back a ways) amounted to what, roughly half a level?

Then we got issue 5 and the Global Defense Nerf which you'll occasionally hear us old timers cuss at... it drastically reduced defenses on all characters and came with a slew of other power reductions. As a bit of a bone we got the "half debt" in missions... if you died in an instanced mission you only got 50% of the debt you'd get outside. This quickly became looked at (not entirely logically, but what can you expect) as a debt PENALTY for dying outside a mission.

At another point the debt earned by dying was reduced again by 50%... I can't offhand remember just when that happened, maybe around issue 8 or 9 and I believe the total debt cap was likewise reduced at that time. Nowadays with patrol XP eliminating debt first, and applying to reduce it even while you're logged off most of us old timers tend to regard debt as meaningless now; it's literally a shadow of what it was in the early days.

Oh, I guess I'd better explain just what debt is. When you get killed in game you incur "debt" which must be worked off. While you have debt you will earn XP at 50% of the normal rate until the debt is gone. You can never get more debt than the debt cap which is 5 deaths worth now I believe no matter how often you die and it's worked off so fast that you could go into a typical mission with max debt and you'd be out of debt before the mission was over. Heck, usually one death is worked off after a couple of spawns... if you die to an alpha strike you could well be out of debt by the time the team kills the group that killed you.

In short, don't worry about debt, it'll go away on it's own quickly and all it does is slightly slow down your leveling speed. Just dust yourself off and continue on, that brown stain on your XP bar will wash out soon enough.

Oh yes, I remember the days of debt that lapped multiple levels.

1.5 mil was the debt cap back then! Yea, I remember getting a toon to 45 and being able to get into my 1st Hami raid. The deaths... oh the deaths. Ended up at the cap I think on 4 deaths.

Oh how I wish they would bring back the original debt. Srsly