Relative xp - how does it work?

[Yumyums Inmahtumtums]

I'm not sure and that's why I'm posting this.

The way I've always understood this is that it is best to fight dark blue mobs as any higher than that and they will beat through your AC and resist your spells. Makes sense. On the other side of this you are advised to stay away from light blue mobs because they don't give much xp. The end result is that you are best off fighting as low level dark blue mobs you can find (again, ideally just before they go light blue). My assumption, given that I do not have a fancy UI that quantifies experience points is that there is some kind of experience modifier that is applied to each "con" with a positive being applied to whites, yellows and reds, none to blue and negative to light blue. If experience is applied linearly, this theory seems to flesh out although my theoretical application of the penalty/reward might be different.

The question I have is - can anyone confirm that there is an experience penalty applied to lb mobs or have a number they can post to verify this? In addition, how would a modifier work within a group where one member may con the enemy dark blue to your light blue con of the same mob? Is the penalty removed? How about white - red? Same thing?

Thanks for your help p99!!

[YendorLootmonkey]

Pretty sure it's just ((Mob Level ^ 2) * Zone XP Modifier * some constant) for a solo kill. In later expansions there was a "high con bonus" that I don't believe is implemented here.

So it becomes just a matter of how much XP can you get over a set time horizon killing mobs of a certain level, including your downtime/medding/regenning/etc. There are also some variations in mobs of the same level hitting harder/softer, having less/more HP, etc (i.e. bloodgill goblins in LOIO seem to die fairly easy for their level).

[Jaxon]

There is no experience adjustment to mobs that con blue or higher. Light blue mobs will only give 25%(or 50%, not sure) of the normal value, and green cons will generally give you 0% of the normal value. Remember that what your client reports as light blue does not exactly coincide with what the server considers to be a light blue mob -- sometimes you will get full experience for a mob that cons light blue if it is near the edge of the range. In the same manner some green con mobs will give experience as well.

I'm not sure how the group dynamics work. I can see it working one of two ways when a group kills a mob that is lb to the highest member but blue to the rest of the group. Either the light blue penalty is applied before the split and everyone gets a really small slice of exp, or the penalty is applied after the split and only affects the higher level player.

In Eqemu (https://github.com/EQEmu/Server/blob/master/zone/exp.cpp), the mob exp is split among the group before the con modifers are applied, but that is non-classic code and it might(and even probably does) work entirely differently on P99.

[Jimjam]

You get full xp for mobs that are close to your level. This is why at level 4 you can kill level 1 mobs even though they are way less than 2/3rds of your level.

Mobs outside below this threshold give half, or even quarter xp of what they would if the mob was killed by a player the same level as itself.

There is also a cap on the amount of xp you can receive per mob.

This means in spankntank groups you want to be killing stuff about 3 levels lower than you as your AC should still work reasonably well against these (and you'll hit pretty well in melee / have fewer resists too).

In PL groups there isn't much point killing stuff that gets the XP capped as it is more work than needed to receive the xp.

[Fregar]

From what I have read (so maybe not 100% correct), light blue is a range of two levels: highest one gives 50%, lowest one 25%.

By the way, the light blue concept is not supposed to exist in kunark o.0
It's been added... somewhere around luclin launch?

[August]

Is it really the AC that makes the difference or is it the skill/level?

I ask because I've been leveling a monk recently and have noticed a really strange trend, anecdotal as it may be.

When I was in WW killing giants the evergreens at one point were yellow to me. While yellow, they would often hit me for their max damage. At this point, we'll say my AC was 450.

Well then, I get two levels, and they are now blue. However as a monk, i take off my AC to carry more weight. When you level up defense, your AC goes up. Well, my AC was up to, let's say, 470. Then I started getting coin/loot and my AC fell down to 450 again. However, I noticed that I was still plowing through mobs and they were barely touching me - tons of misses, and almost no full melee swings. However, my AC was at or lower than it was 2 levels ago.

This made me think that checks were made against defense / level rather than actual AC, and that AC is in fact worthless.

[drktmplr12]

While your evidence is anecdotal...it can be proven that:

Defense is the single most important factor in damage taken. It influences all mitigation. That's why casters have defense that maxes at 200 and not 252.

AC makes a difference, but not a HUGE difference like Defense. I've heard that the first 100 worn AC is much more important than anything after 100 (depending on class also)

Especially for a monk at lower levels, HP >> AC because mend scales with max HP. Best leveling you will find is killing mobs that are ALMOST light blue.

[August]

While your evidence is anecdotal...it can be proven that:

Defense is the single most important factor in damage taken. It influences all mitigation. That's why casters have defense that maxes at 200 and not 252.

AC makes a difference, but not a HUGE difference like Defense. I've heard that the first 100 worn AC is much more important than anything after 100 (depending on class also)

Especially for a monk at lower levels, HP >> AC because mend scales with max HP. Best leveling you will find is killing mobs that are ALMOST light blue.

Have a recommendation for a 35 monk? I just ran all the way to lguk because I got tired of frontier mountains :)

[drktmplr12]

Solo front of Paw. Can replenish bandages and sell at aviak village. Lguk is good if you can find a group near the front. I heard FV drolvargs were plentiful.

[eqravenprince]

Have a recommendation for a 35 monk? I just ran all the way to lguk because I got tired of frontier mountains :)

Cazic Thule gators

[baalzy]

The short of it is this: A lvl 25 mob gives about 20% less xp than a lvl 28 mob. If you're level 30, you'll have a much easier time killing that lvl 25 mob then killing a level 28 mob (probably kill 3 lvl 25s for every 2 lvl 28s). If you had an endless supply of mobs to kill of each level you will gain significantly more experience overtime if you focused exclusively on lvl 25 mobs due to better efficiency (less damage taken, less time to kill and less mana used if relevant).

If you have the choice of two camps, one with 3 level 25s and one with 3 level 28s and you always were back to full by the time repops occurred, then the camp with the 28s would be better xp/hour.

http://wiki.project1999.com/Game_Mechanics#How_Experience_Works
You might want to start reading the section above it on experience requirements per level

Short workup:
XP = L^2 * C
where L is the mob level and C is the zone experience modifier. The vast majority of the zones C is 75 (most outdoor zones).

A level 25 mob is going to be 25^2 * 75 = 46875
Vs a level 28 mob being 28^2 * 75 = 58800

11925 more xp per mob for the 28. Hence the ~20% I got above.

[Yumyums Inmahtumtums]

The short of it is this: A lvl 25 mob gives about 20% less xp than a lvl 28 mob. If you're level 30, you'll have a much easier time killing that lvl 25 mob then killing a level 28 mob (probably kill 3 lvl 25s for every 2 lvl 28s). If you had an endless supply of mobs to kill of each level you will gain significantly more experience overtime if you focused exclusively on lvl 25 mobs due to better efficiency (less damage taken, less time to kill and less mana used if relevant).

If you have the choice of two camps, one with 3 level 25s and one with 3 level 28s and you always were back to full by the time repops occurred, then the camp with the 28s would be better xp/hour.

http://wiki.project1999.com/Game_Mechanics#How_Experience_Works
You might want to start reading the section above it on experience requirements per level

Short workup:
XP = L^2 * C
where L is the mob level and C is the zone experience modifier. The vast majority of the zones C is 75 (most outdoor zones).

A level 25 mob is going to be 25^2 * 75 = 46875
Vs a level 28 mob being 28^2 * 75 = 58800

11925 more xp per mob for the 28. Hence the ~20% I got above.

The question I'm asking I guess would be how adding a lb mob to a group of mixed levels would affect the total amount of experience each player receives if the enemy conned differently to each member of the group.

In my experience and from what I can tell, there appears to be a negative xp modifier tied to lb mobs and so I'm interested in finding out how that modifier is handled by multiple-level groups.

Great post though, fantastic info. Going to check out that link and see if my questions are answered there.

[August]

I can only go off what I know to that question.

If you are grouped with someone with whom the mob cons green, then no one gets experience.

Is it too much of stretch to think that mobs that con light blue will suffer the same exp penalty the highest member would receive? I guess the question would be if the formula applies the penalty to the full group (which happens in the case of a green mob) or to only the members who violate the light-blue mob contract.

Please also keep in mind that in a group your experience doled out is equal to a percentage:

Your Total experience earned / Total experienced earned by all group members.

Meaning that if everyone is identical in their level, class, and race (same exp mod) at the exact same point in their level, exp is split evenly. I know there is a js app somewhere around here that tells you what your split of experience is based on group composition. If mob exp penalties are applied evenly based on highest members, then you're basically getting hit with a double whammy:

1) your exp is less than even since you have a high level in your group
2) Your exp is then factored by some fraction of 1 (25% or 50%) of the outcome of (1) .



I guess in general: Don't kill light blues!