The Dragon Brother Experience Papers

[gogoblender 3,070]

Dragon Brother is too modest to put his work here. I had to plead with him for permission to publish his work here in the DarkMatters Sacred 2 guides section after seeing the stellar job he did on the SacredWiki Experience page. He has included graph, subsections, explanations and tons of links!

 

First class work, Great job DB!

 

 

gogo

 

 

Originally published in SacredWiki by Dragon Brother July 19th/10:

 

 

Experience Basics

A character gains experience for each kill made in game and for the completion of the hundreds of quests scattered through the land of Ancaria. After sufficient experience has been gathered, the character will advance to a new level, allowing Skills and Attributes to be increased through the allocation of points. The experience required to reach the next level increases with each level obtained, making each successive level more difficult to achieve. Also, other factors such as penalties for staying in a difficulty longer than necessary were implemented to make achieving level 200 a great feat.

 

The largest penalty imposed by the developers was that of an experience decrease from level 100 onwards. For each level gained from 100 through to 200 there is a penalty applied to the experience gained for each monster killed. This penalty increases every level with a greater penalty factor being applied each 25 resulting in a larger and more visible drop in experience gained when leveling from 99 to 100, 124 to 125, 149 to 150 and 174 to 175. The following penalty factors are found in the balance.txt file in the Sacred 2 install folder.

 

 

 

 

 

Experience Penalty Factor

Level New Penalty Factor 100 98.5% 125 98.0% 150 97.5% 175 97.0%

The penalty is applied through a simple method of multiplying the penalty factor with the current penalty rate. From level 1 through to 99 there is no penalty and thus, the penalty rate is 100% (meaning 100% of experience is gained, not 100% is penalised). At level 100 this factor is multiplied by 98.5% resulting in 98.5% as the new penalty rate. At 101 the rate is again multiplied by 98.5% giving a penalty rate of 97.0%. At level 102 this is multiplied by 98.5% giving a new penalty rate of 95.6% and so on until the character reaches level 125. At this point, and at each breakpoint shown in the table the new penalty factor of 98.0% is applied for each level from 100 to 125, resulting in the penalty rate going from 98.5%²⁴ (69.6%) to 98.0%²⁵ (60.3%), a decrease in experience of almost 10%. This trend is shown in the following picture, note that by level 200 the experienced received has dropped to below 5%.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other Factors in Experience

Your level is not the only factor in the experienced gained. While the experience gained from a quest is dependent only upon the quest itself and the difficulty in which you complete it, experience gained from killing mobs however is not quite so simple. In both singleplayer and multiplayer games gear with the item modifier Experience per kill +x% present, such as Mentor Potions, will increase it by the percentage stated, Hero of Ancaria Statues will increase it by 100% briefly and some combat arts provide it as a modification option. There is a bug present in the Ice and Blood expansion however that prevents statues or combat art effects stacking with gear bonuses. This means that if the character already has any Experience per kill +x% gear equipped neither hero statues or combat arts will provide their bonus, despite it displaying in the summation tool-tip (Σ). In multiplayer games experience is also increased if there are more players in the server, up to 5, any more will not provide a larger bonus. This also has the side effect of increasing monster toughness making it a double edged sword. Partying with other players will increase the overall experience, but may mean you get less as it is shared between those in the party within a certain distance of the kills made. This slight reduction is offset by the fact that more players can round up larger mobs and kill them faster than one player could normally achieve. Both singleplayer and multplayer games can suffer penalties to experience from staying in difficulties too long, if you are overlevelled for a difficulty then monsters are in most cases going to be a much lower level than you giving much less experience, most monsters with a grey danger circle will provide less than 50 experience, a painfully small amount when tens of millions are required for a level as you approach level 200.

 

 

Overcoming the Penalties

While the penalty imposed as you climb past level 100 will appear daunting its effect can be delayed slightly through equipping more gear with Experience per kill +x%, if playing online, playing in more servers, moving to the next difficulty as soon as possible, fighting in higher monster density areas such as the Swamp Region and other areas with lots of champions. Another possibility is, that as the penalty becomes too much, to start completing high experience rewarding quests. Large chain quests such as the main chain quest in one of the regions added in the expansion, the Cursed Forest. This quest chain, The Cursed Forest, provides large amounts of experience; completion of each stage has a high chance of a set item as a reward and the high monster density in the region is also good for experience, along with the large number of bosses you must kill throughout the quest.

 

 

 

 

 

Miscellany

A table containing approximates for the maximum monster levels in each region can be found in Enemy Levels to help you to find the highest level monsters in the difficulty you are in and the Experience table shows just how much experience is required for each level and what a daunting task it is to achieve level 200 when such massive penalties are applied to the player. This is especially unfortunate for those that play singleplayer games only as they are unable to play with full servers to increase the experience gained, however changing the ExpLS100, ExpLS125, ExpLS150 and ExpLS175 values all to 1000 will remove this penalty altogether in singleplayer ONLY.

[Dragon Brother 619]

Well thanks for the Kind words you didn't have to plead though, I wouldn't have been bothered if you had just mentioned this. Still, it's nice to be appreciated, and it makes me appreciate all the hard work you and all the other contributors have done so thanks to you all as well. Looks like a couple of the wiki links got a bit messed in copying it across and I don't think the table works away from the wiki, but otherwise it's all there.

Edited July 20, 2010 by Dragon Brother

[Rotluchs 82]

outstanding , ty !

 

btw, it is interesting to read how other people made the same observations in the past,

 

and most of it has even been officially confirmed in the process :

finale experience  = //Formula: experience = value(CRBONUS_EXPERIENCE) * BonusFac * LvlDiffFac * LvlCapFac * MobFac * LvlDampFac *MultiFac * ( (expTeamBonus / 1000.f) ^ (teamSize-1) * ( ((9+stufe) ^ 2) / teamLevel )

 

 

the 'experience level-factor damping' happens at the observed levels, when reaching level 101, 126, 151, 176 ..:

 

 

I posted the quote from the german thread some time ago,

in the "Bits of Information from Sacred 2 Developers...?" thread over here..

 

http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?s=...t&p=6883826

 

unfortunately it is in german and I was afraid of just translating it into english, not sure about the outcome

[chattius 2,526]

Party experience

 

Rotluchs I did a bit of translating in the turle-experience thread some while ago, where the graph developed.

[Munera 1]

Wow nice work there DB!

 

lol it really cheers me up to see such an amount of information, but damnit it's so disappointing to read about the experience behaviour

[Dragon Brother 619]

outstanding , ty !

 

btw, it is interesting to read how other people made the same observations in the past,

 

and most of it has even been officially confirmed in the process :

finale experience  = //Formula: experience = value(CRBONUS_EXPERIENCE) * BonusFac * LvlDiffFac * LvlCapFac * MobFac * LvlDampFac *MultiFac * ( (expTeamBonus / 1000.f) ^ (teamSize-1) * ( ((9+stufe) ^ 2) / teamLevel )

 

 

the 'experience level-factor damping' happens at the observed levels, when reaching level 101, 126, 151, 176 ..:

 

 

I posted the quote from the german thread some time ago,

in the "Bits of Information from Sacred 2 Developers...?" thread over here..

 

http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?s=...t&p=6883826

 

unfortunately it is in german and I was afraid of just translating it into english, not sure about the outcome

 

 

Party experience

 

Rotluchs I did a bit of translating in the turle-experience thread some while ago, where the graph developed.

 

Yeah, I had read this info, and your translation chattius but I figured that was maybe to mathematical and all I really had to mention was the different factors. If you can come up with a way to summarise it really neatly though it might make a useful addition.

[gogoblender 3,070]

Hey guys!

 

 

James and chattius, the experience page on wiki is open to all for adding/editing, so I hope if you or other peeps here have even more to add to the page that can help game players, they'll reach for that edit button.

 

DB has created this great base. a reflection from everyone in that earlier topic about the turtles' experience compounded by my whining and crying

 

Wiki's always open for more goodies from even more fans!

 

 

 

 

gogo

[Schot 407]

Impressive page write up Dragon Bro. Nicely done!

 

Something that might be interesting to add is the distribution of experience when a low level player is partied with a high level player. There's an odd sort of experience cap applied to the low level player eh?

[claudius 104]

I don't understand what the % modifier of the experience after digga digga is (the y axis of the graph). Correct me if I am wrong..

 

 

There are other factors which are increasing the drops which relate to the characters level c and monster level m.... The y axis is a factor this is multiplied against call that fy© = the graph we see...

 

This graph would say you get 10% of the xp at level 200 than level 100 when actually it can't be that much smaller. I mean say a rat gives 5000 at 100 with a gear set up. It would then give only 500 at 200? That doesn't seem like it can be true when it is also true that the xp to reach next level keeps growing like mad..

 

So there is another function f2(c,m) = different graph which slope is positive...

 

So the actual xp would be f2(c,m) x fy© or in other words it would be the second graph times another factor which increases at higher monster level..

[Dragon Brother 619]

Yeah, I meant what you've just said Claudius, I'm not so sure that I actually said it, but I think what I tried to say was that that graph is just one factor in the experience you get and then mentioned other factors. I or you should probably add what you've said about the toon level and monster level increasing the experience at the same time the penalty is applied. You do however get less experience as you level up though, there are plenty of people posting there experiences of getting less experience from the same monster after leveling up or ridiculously low amounts compared to the amount needed to level ie 3k from a champion Orc.