With GU53 came the option for players to be able to convert their combat experience into alternate advancement experience, something we all saw in EverQuest and something I personally missed a LOT in EverQuest II. Before GU53 you would have to have been level 80 before your combat experience converted.
There are a lot of benefits to this new feature, one of which is visiting older content. In fact a lot of the features from GU53 has players returning to older content and I couldn’t be happier.
To the right is Ishbel, my new iksar bruiser. She leveled to 15 along with Feelix her trusted Kerra friend (paladin) and then both of them turned off their combat experience by setting aa to 100%.
Now, there are a few differences when you do this at a level lower then 80 – and you may actually want to stop gaining experience at level 79 so that you can take advantage of these.
First of all – turning your achievement bar to 100% takes certain factors into consideration. It’s not just that you’re gaining aa but that you’re gaining it based on what you would normally be gaining for combat experience. What do I mean by this? If you have vitality, that will add to the experience. If you use a combat experience potion, this will also add to it. If you have a bonus to experience based on the fact that you have other level 80’s on your account, this will also contribute as will any experience you gain while there are server events going on. Once you hit level 80 this is not the case. It doesn’t give you a bonus for anything aside from mentoring someone lower then yourself.
Ishbel may only be level 15, but she’s got 35aa so far and counting. Her and Feelix headed to Wailing Caverns, Commonlands, Antonica, Blackburrow, and The Firemyst Gully (an instance in Antonica) to take down encounters. Now that Lore and Legend quests have changed (you no longer have to hunt down books, but simply examining a piece to the collection will grant you the starter quest) she also managed to finish off a few of those – which is something I’ve never actually completed while “on the go” before. L&L have always been something of an after thought, if I was near a book I may pick it up but other wise chances were that I would not be. While you may think to yourself “dang, this seems almost TOO easy now!” I think the motivation is a welcomed change.
Speaking of things being too easy – there are specific reasons these changes are coming. In February the game will raise by another 10 levels, which will mean 90 levels total. While people who are veterans of the game will have little trouble with gaining those levels there is also new players out there who will find 90 levels exceptionally daunting and may even see them as a deterrent to the game. By allowing some things to be ‘easier’ it opens the game up to those people. I tend to agree with people that some things may be a little too easy (like skill ups, I barely hit a mob and I raised my skills effortlessly) but I can also understand why these changes were put in place.
What do you think of the new alternate advancement slider? Have you taken advantage of it yet? Any plans to? Let me know below!
In the mean time, happy gaming and I will see you in Norrath!
As far as I know it is limited to 50% on the PVP servers.
My AA slider only goes up to 50!
The AA slider is great. I stopped playing my alts because even with disabled combat XP leveling was to fast. Now I’ve played a few days with the slider at 90% and this was very fun. No more wasted XP. :)
I didn’t know that about L&L items. That is great news. :)
Wow, 35 AAs by level 15? That’s very impressive. I remember betting someone I could get 50 AAs by level 20 and failing miserably :)
I love the option to have an AA slider. I also love you for posting this information! I was going to level to 80 and then work on AA. Clearly that isn’t the best thing for me to do. While I think it is kind of silly that you’re basically penalized for being max level it isn’t that big of a deal if you know. I’m going to have to turn off regular exp myself!
Ahhhh crap. Listen up Stargrace, you HAVE to stop blogging about EQ2, OK? I am currently neck deep in WoW, EVE, and Aion and I simply cannot afford another game, yet I come to your site, read about some new feature or adventure you are having and it makes my clicky finger start reaching for the SoE bookmark in my browser.
Seriously though, I am more tempted than ever to start playing again thanks to the AA slider. I loved that feature in EQ1 and always wished it existed in EQ2. In fact, the way that EQ2 allows you to lock out exp has always been great. I always play MMOs with my brother but he, having a lot more free time, inevitably blows past me. Using this system he could continue playing, dumping points into AA without surpassing me too much in level. Brilliant!
I love the slider. I made a level 10 Bruiser the other day and then moved the slider to 100% AA and with in two hours I was up to 30AA. After I hit all the ~10 areas I am going to level up to 14 and lock it there until I can’t spend the AA.
I love the aa slider. I created a dwarf zerker this weekend and was able to get him level 12 with 31 aa. He’s crazy over powered, but it’s fun. I wish my 80’s were able to do this, as it stands, my warlock is 80 with 179 aa. But if all goes to plan, my zerker should be 100 before 70 (not sure what the pre-80 cap is now that we can get 200).
@GA — You’ll only get 50% bonus xp if you have 5 (or more) max level chars. Before that it’s 10% per 80 (so +20% if you have 2 level 80s, and so on) — at least, that’s how it works for crafting; I may be making an incorrect assumption regarding the combat side of things.
As for the AA slider, I LOVE LOVE LOVE it. I don’t do combat much, and I really hated the idea of turning off xp so I could try to catch up my AA. As a result, I’ve never really done that and it always seemed to me like a waste of xp I’d been earning. Having the slider ensures I’m getting all my xp, I’m just allocating it differently, and for someone who does the non-crafting side of things as little as I do, that’s a big bonus. Since the AA stuff has become quite important in one’s character makeup, I think it’s good that people will have a chance to accrue a reasonable amount of it without having to become all OCD about it.
I could see myself using the slider to throttle exp gain in the 20-50 range, where content is plentiful, and it is easy to outlevel zones, even without 50% bonus exp for max level characters. Sure, I could always have level locked before, but that means giving up something of value for nothing. I don’t know that I’d want to turn it off altogether, but a slight slowdown would let me see more content while contributing to my AA pool.
And that legend and lore change is a huge improvement. It’s always irritating to have items you’re going to need later cluttering your bank because you don’t have the book yet.