Skaljard Experience Cuts

[Scraps]

I just think these nerfs were really, like crazy overdone.

Tin Mines sits at 1k experience now? That's equal to killing rats in the granary or the founders cave. A quest in Brog offers more than double that to fight the same Xvarts and the same boss, without 10 AB Beetles that can hit a PC for 14 damage, or a 20+ AB War Beast spawn.

Minotaurs getting its experience halfed. How? Why?


Skal Fell writs?



These are not easy quests. The boogins in Guldorand are more than double this reward for the exact same monsters and boss.

Actually a lot of these quests have surface parallels which have the same monster make-up, or easier with now twice or more the reward.

[Nodders]

I'm not generally one to complain, but this gets a big 'what the hell is the thought process here?' from me.

No, really. What -is- the thought process here by these 'minor' nerfs?

God forbid we find out what a major nerf is to XP.



But this is I believe stuff being handled in the thread here. viewtopic.php?f=37&t=25911

[Kaeladin]

I would have to agree with the sentiment that these cuts don't feel good. From the screenshots + comparing notes from other people's writ XP rewards, it looks like XP rewards got cut by 50% and/or capped to provide no more than 2k (with probably the exception of the Dragon).

I'm a regular Skal leveler/visitor, and in general having a nice "backloaded" XP reward from doing the writs in Skal was really nice especially for people, such as I, who are on more time crunches/inconsistent schedules and who are unable to generally grind out on mobs or campfire RP for long stretches.

I am a bit surprised with also the XP nerfs hitting the lower to early teen range writs, especially with how much tougher the early levels feel, given that mobs can have some pretty wild swings in power (the werecat in the granary, beetles in the Tin Mine, etc.) and the early/early-mid leveling experience is honestly much tougher than the mid/late teens.

[Security_Blanket]

I thought the main purpose to Skal was for folks to have another environment to grind between those levels, nerfing the writs in anyway compared to writs on the rest of the server seems counterintuitive. Some folks thought they were leveling too fast and complained, those people have the option to turn on adventure mode, or you know, not level up. All because you hit level 17, doesn't mean you have to take the level up and leave Skal. Isn't there also a way to turn off XP if you want?

[Eyeliner]

Skal is also much more time-consuming to navigate as the dungeons are large and the outdoor areas are enormous. Especially the tundras which if you haven't memorized are filled with maze-y "gotcha" dead ends. I like Skal but it never seemed faster than Arelith proper.

I don't want to complain but it does seem like after we had the slow leveling writ option added this shouldn't have been necessary?

[Ork]

I have a hard time seeing people complain about fast leveling. If anything, people complain about having to leave. This wasn’t an xp problem but a level cap problem.

Let’s just go ahead and make skal streamlined. What made it special was the lack of settlement mechanics, not the lower level content.

[Spinal]

Hi, I've been playing characters on Aerlith for the past 3~ months. Skal has been a blast and feels like a nice, tight leveling experience. It serves a perfect introduction to the server and is a great experience from start to finish.

Reducing the exp feels super bad and feels completely unnecessary. Complainers about leveling "Too fast" have options to nerf their own exp if they so wish. I don't see the benifit of taking the leveling experience of 2-3 months and dragging it out by another month, especially when it feels really like you are prohibited from being able to meaningfully participate in pvp until you hit max level (Outside of skal).

It just seems like a rare negative change on an otherwise amazing server.

[Richrd]

These nerfs seem silly.
What could possibly be the goal here?

Make players play less on Skal because the area is too overpopulated, going against the server's vision? Well, then stop giving it well done content expansions. More on that point, I personally am under the impression that Skal might be the most updated and expanded upon area in Arelith. And it being so isolated from the rest of Arelith just further reinforces this.
Was there a sense of "Skal leveling was too strong and it needed to be nerfed for balancing reasons"? No, even years ago people universally agreed on surfacers having an easier time with the Cordor route.
Does the nerf to EXP and gold rewards fit a theme? No, with the Trackless Sea Adventuring company being the only ones to offer these writs across the surface hubs it makes no sense for Skal specifically to suffer a reward penalty in that regard either. A contract killing the same exact enemy type and boss should pay the same on both Skal and mainland Arelith.

This is one of the rare cases where I can't find a reasonable angle, no matter how hard I twist my neck. Hoping that I am just blind to something here.

[Seekeepeek]

My guess is Irongron listened to a selected few players, when he made that change. - if you just read his update text...word by word.

I however think the decision was based on giving players two options:

People that want to level slower can pick skal.
People that wanna level normally can pick cordor.

Of course there will sadly be people stuck at Skal now, that didn't sign up for that.
But they will leave skal at some point anyway, so that problem will go away with time.

Suggestion:
You need to be warned when you pick the Skal as starting path, that leveling is slower and at what level range the experience will last.

[ElevenOne]

It really feel odd the writ rewards were reduced because fast leveling.

Did the players that gave the feedback to apply this change:

Where they doing 3 writs per day without skipping them even a day?
Did they had a low ECL?
Did they level alone or in a group?
What classes they were playing?
Where these players doing minotaur's cave / tribes cavern over and over and over?
Did they spent hours and hours RP'ing in Skal enough to sap all the adventure exp they gained?
Where they high RPR rating, getting more exp per tick?
Where they experienced players that know each Skal map by memory so they don't even RP asking around where the writ areas are?

-----------------------------

Level 17 needs 136k exp, 1k or 2k exp less for a couple writ is not the end of the world, is just a couple times running the minotaur cave or similar level areas.

The lower level writs rewards reduced sounds a bit painful, Skal is a terrible place before level 5 or 6 for a non "optimal" build.

I believe the issue is not the writ exp reward was reduced, is just the cap level is low, character's power have sky rocketed to the point we don't even need to rest that frequently and new writs /areas make it even faster to reach the limit.

In my experience, every time I play around Skal somehow everyone knows magically know where the writ areas are, where is the boss and some sort of strategy to kill them. Everyone has ESF: Divination because they even know where the traps are.

My last time on Skal I was worried to do the Myconoid writ without mind protection, but the group I run it just mass murdered them so fast that lacking the protection was not an issue at all.

We already have ways to reduce exp gain, if someone really wanted to not level fast they could:

1) Use -adventure mode.
2) Use the new writ type that gives less exp.
3) Stop doing writs and take a breath and sit/RP around and enjoy the area.
4) Not take a level to stop getting tick exp.

So if I heard someone saying "I leveled too fast in Skal", for me is "You did not even RP a bit there".
In my opinion the writ reward was not needed, still, the reduction is not the end of the world, just a couple more hours of some mindless grinding or just 1 extra day to run one of these new writs.

Perhaps we could get a command to stop the ticks exp every in game hour or that stops getting adventure exp? This could be an awesome tool for someone who really wanted to slow down leveling.

[AstralUniverse]

I thought the writ rewards in Skal were already kind of lower than Cordor across the board and I'm concerned that people will probably vote with their feet and ditch Skal.

[xf1313]

I feel I am punished (again) because there are dedicated grinder with op build and huge group who play 10hr a day complaining things are too easy. I bet they never even touched on rp build who suffer. Like, my lv23 wizard with 115hp? I would not know what to do with her if I made her after the nerf (she hit 15ish before the lv cap nerf so ....)

Next time I wish dm can just swap the contract on whoever complains leveling is too fast, coupled with a xp half. I tried, the freelancer one is nice and slow XD, suits them nicely.

[Zae]

Here is my thinking, not only about Skal experience cuts but also the ECL removing :
- I always loved the leveling on Skal, nice place, nice design, if only we had a place like that on the mainland. Guldorand don't have the same flavor for me. And you don't have 'high' level running around (not in my experience). You can leave with a decent stuff, ressources, a good amount of gold, and some contacts.
- Bashing more minotaurs, giants (ogres and the like), gnolls, or farming the master's lair ? Well, why not. But I'm not okay with that. It's annoying, boring, and not fun at all~ :/ (Same for the death recovery after a respawn)
- Now I think I'm done with Skal, no more leveling there (because I loved how fast it can be). And with the ECL reducing it was better~ Basically in day one I'm lvl 7-8 with ECL -1 (as cleric).
- Skal Fell is challenging, even with the fire elemental and earth elemental (greater and ancient). Boss, not the dragon, are less a threat.. Black wyvern, snowbeast, and few others (inside the singing stones) are a real threat~

To finish, the whole frustrating point (about this, or the ECL reducing) : why ? I mean you gave a reason, Irongron, for the writs reducing XP, but what about ECL reducing ? I mean.. there is more annoying-frustrating features than this. Like said on the forum and discord : UD early writs (and it's not new, also I'm not an UD player). And from my PoV : waiting with harsh malus because of a respawn for 1h and half real life time.. meh, nop. I have better to do. :/

[Irongron]

I'll take another look at some of these. Possibly I was too heavy handed with some of the reductions, at least for now. I would prefer to leave them at current level but add in yet more dungeons overall so as to limit the necessity to repeat.

[Wethrinea]

As to the question of why the Trackless Sea Adventuring Company offers less reward for the same work on Skal than Arelith, the obvious answer is "because Skal is a backward, isolated village on the edge of civilization where people are desperate enough to do more work for less pay".

I almost always pick Skal as my start for new characters because it is so very different from the other options. True frontier feel, no epics to help you out with gear or difficult writs and no settlement positions for people to hog. I like the reduction in writ xp because it slows down the overall tempo compared to the rest of the surface which I feel is a rather frantic race to 30. Which is fine, as it is now so ingrained to the server culture. But that does not mean Skal needs to be the same.

Skal is, and I hope will continue to be, a rather different experience than "main land Arelith". Also in leveling speed.

[AstralUniverse]

I almost always pick Skal as my start for new characters because it is so very different from the other options. True frontier feel, no epics to help you out with gear or difficult writs and no settlement positions for people to hog. I like the reduction in writ xp because it slows down the overall tempo compared to the rest of the surface which I feel is a rather frantic race to 30. Which is fine, as it is now so ingrained to the server culture. But that does not mean Skal needs to be the same.

This is very well said. I just hope that it wont create a trend of level 16 hard stuck stagnation in Skal and reduce the very high traffic I love about Skal. So many characters are made and are gone every day in Skal. The ratio of the new/old faces you see is highest in of all arelith probably. I hope it stays that way.

[Whosdis]

Whilst I didn't leave because of the writ nerfs per sé (I didn't know just how heavy-handed the changes were), I did notice Skal was empty the morning after the writ nerf went into effect and promptly went to the main isle. A shame, because I wanted to experience some of the higher-end content, which his what this writ change was allegedly about, but if you kill the groups doing Skal, you can't do the content.

On the flip side, if the minority of people who want slow levelling are given an olive branch in the form of Skaljard, I actuallu think it's a decent idea to have those people utilize Skaljard and allow the rest of us to have a smoother levelling experience elsewhere on the Arelith servers.

[Aog]

With the addition of Skal Fell, it felt like we had challenging content with appropriate, satisfying rewards. It felt absolutely perfect. Now it feels like challenging content with insultingly low reward.

That's obviously not anyone's intention, but it's very discouraging personally.

[Inf]

Just throwing in my two cents that I "finished" my Skal journey before the recent writ XP decrease and thought it was a good experience overall.

I'd like to see players use optional features like -adventure or the new writ contract to slow their leveling curve instead of making leveling slower for everyone on Skal to satisfy them. Everyone gets what they want that way.

A bit unrelated, but I also like that there is some kind of level cap. Skal being ruled by whoever is playing on Skal at the time is a chaotic but welcome difference from mainland Arelith. It's never stagnant. And you can make waves if you bring friends or have some come with you.

[Kaeladin]

Hi all,

I've leveled two characters on Skal post-XP nerf (one starting on 6/10, the same day the nerfs went live, and another on 6/15 with a group of friends). I've been keeping track of XP rewards for every single writ on both characters, and I've completed every single writ at this point (except for the two hardest ones, the Singing Stones and One Final Glory). I wanted to share some observations of what I've experienced after taking a look at my data. But first, a few tidbits I wanted to start off with:

- A few days post-nerf, some of the writs did get their XP bumped back up a bit ; Tin Mine was awarding 1k immediately after nerf, but 2k by 6/15. Harbage went from 2k to 3k. Wyverns went from 2k to 3k. There's probably a few others as well where this applies.

- If I counted correct, there are a total of 36(!) writs in Skal. This does include some of the extremely poor payout writs, which leads to...

- There are four writs with abysmally poor payouts (even pre-nerf) that I would recommend skipping. They are: two of the patrol writs (Patrol the Weald and the Tundra) and the two courier writs. The latter doesn't even give any XP at all!

Alright, onto some data points:

Total Number of Writs in Skal: 36

Writs that payout 0 XP: 2 (the two courier writs. Hard skip; not sure if this was always by design)

Writs that payout 500 XP: 2 (Patrol the Weald and Patrol the Tundra)

Writs that payout 1k XP: 4 (Rats, Founder's Cave, Goblins of the Weald, Demonologists? Could have sworn the last one used to be 2k)

Writs that payout 1.5k XP: 1 (Patrol the Skal Fell)

Writs that payout 2k XP: 14 (HUGE variance in difficulty, ranging from Baccanhagen at the lower end to Minotaurs/Skal Naga at the highest end)

Writs that payout 3k XP: 10 (ranging from the Kurgan at the lower end, Gnipahellir in the mid, to Wyverns at the highest end)

Writs that payout 4k+ XP: 2 (Lost Laird and Singing Stones)

Writ that pays out 10k XP: One Final Glory

Basically, it looks like a bunch of the 4k payoffs got reduced (into the 2k - 3k range). The 2k XP variance is kind of big; the minotaurs paying out only 2k but sharing a similar level range to the Skaldark Spiderherders, which is ludicrously easy, seems a bit off.

One final musing is that the early game/pre-10 range of writs was still the "worst" feeling experience due to the lower number of writs in that range, the low payouts for the super early writs, and the general competition/overcrowded nature of hotspots like the Tin Mines, Rats, Founder's Cave, Kurgan, etc. Once I reached the early teens, the number of writs and areas available in that range really didn't make that experience too bad, though I wish some of the level 12+ writs were bumped back up to the 3-4k range (notably the minotaurs, northlanders, and ESPECIALLY the boogin). Maybe also consider bumping up the 1k payouts into the 2k range, since there's only 3 of them and it would help with some of that early game pain that I feel Skal struggles with? Even just bumping up the patrols into the 1k+ range would be nice; as it is, the patrols and especially the courier writs are a bit of wasted opportunity (in terms of time spent to rewards earned).

Anyway, just some observations!

Update: Finally finished every single writ, including one I missed at a very low level (Demonologists). Updated the count and XP values.

As of 6/22, I think I want to edit my feedback. I'd actually say the only thing I'd maybe offer is making the 1k payout writs (all the low level ones) up to 2k, just to make getting through the early levels of Skal a bit easier. The pre-level 8 section of Skal is by far the worst. Once you hit 10+, it REALLY opens up with the variety of content available.

I'd love to see Boogins and Minos up to 3k, but ultimately not a big deal.

[MRFTW]

Writs that payout 0 XP: 2 (the two courier writs. Hard skip; not sure if this was always by design)

Pretty sure I did the two courier writs on my current character and got XP.[EDIT: no I didn't, lol] Repeats of the same courier writ only award gold and adventure XP, which might be what you're reporting here.

Also worth noting that the Boogin on Skal don't seem to have any Boogin Blood Pufferfish with them (the smallest, true strike + KD monks) that're found in Guldorand. Those guys are, imo, the real threat, especially to melee. Casters can just use a KD immune elemental and ignore them, and their sneak attacking friend. The boss there was always not much stronger than a normal mob, anyway, a trait shared with the Kurgan.
I don't think the dragon is hard enough to warrant the 10k (!) XP reward.

[Kaeladin]

I did the two courier writs fresh on my paladin and got 0 XP. I definitely checked my XP totals before and after, and I know for a fact I didn't do them prior.

[MRFTW]

I stand corrected. I usually do multiple writs so it was probably the reward from other, apologies.

[xf1313]

Agree with the feedback

And I just want to voice that UD low level is even worse, I grinded my toon from 9-11, during that I waited in hub and rp, my exp pool is drained...if I want to solo the next writ, chances are I need to grind until 13. If ask for help? That would solve some current writ but I would be much under levelled for next set of writs.

The thing I really regret now is I did not took freelancer writ for her, or at least she can rap her way until required level, and grinding become optional.

The nerf in adventure exp also deserve attention along side immediate exp. in average, a lower level normal writ only provide enough for about...30mins rp?

It was something like 250-375 to the exp pool.

[Cabarcos]

I selected the low XP option for the writs with my last characters.
For the tundra patrol and the hermit writ, I got 125xp and 500xp.
Level 8 at the moment with 28000xp, and 24000 adventuring XP in the pool.

It takes more time to level up but not too much. You usually get much more XP for the necessary monster killing to complete it than for the writ itself. After leveling some chars this way over level 10, I don't feel the need to level as soon as possible anymore, not so much at least.

I think I've never run out of adventuring XP, after getting some levels at least, and with several characters over level 20 could have got them to level 30 just passing time at the inn or whatever.
It depends a lot on what you do while not doing writ work. You get adventuring XP too for crafting, exploring new areas, and killing new types of monsters. If you pass a lot of time just RP/chatting with friends I guess you will reduce the adventuring XP to zero.


We all have our own opinions and preferences and what for someone it's right, will not for others.
I think that it should be taken into account that this is an RP server and as in RL, not all the rewards have to be fulfilling, or what you expect or wish.