It can still be useful for some people, especially those that are trying to level up all their classes and want to do it as fast as possible.
Keep PvP on, do critter capture missions, do at least one daily dungeon queue run for your bonus xp (hit or miss depending on your group), follow the public events, keep +xp gain on your armor. That’s the meta for leveling.
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That is the meta, but I found dungeons to be better than public events in terms of exp per time, which is why I want to test it to see if the meta is accurate.
The problem there is that while dungeons are WAY more fun in my opinion, dungeon queue can absolutely go horribly wrong and waste a lot of time. Public events in Highsteppe are easy and can be done solo on a regular schedule. Dungeon queue is a hope and a prayer haha
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I suppose that is true. The problem with dungeons is if your party refuses to learn/listen it can be less efficient. Luckily, I’ve been able to reliable run dungeons without an issue MOST of the time. If anything, I’m causing problems by rushing in as a bard for my exp (though I don’t need to do that anymore since I’m content with taking it slower for overlevels).
Basically, if you are in a 5 player party that can consistently work together to do dungeons quickly, that is the fastest exp (imo). If you are getting fast queues (less than a minute) and have a high success rate, that is the next fastest exp. If you are getting slow queues and poor party members (specifically players who refuse to listen and fail at mechanics), then dungeons are really bad exp.
Events are relatively stable exp, but not the fastest.
This is based on my own experience, but I was hoping to get some numbers to see if that is true or not.
Dungeons are not the best source of XP, if you were to join PVP battlegrounds and spend all of you tokens on Marlowe, you’re probably going to get a lot more XP.
And that is why I’m trying to gather proof of whether that is true or not. Like I said, from experience, dungeons are the best exp.
And why spend my tokens on Marlowe instead of scavenging?
if you spend all 25 tokens on battlegrounds and you’re fairly good at it you can get 10+ golds in a game and since you don’t have to leave highsteppe you can have pvp on for the bonus
I suppose, but with one character at level 30, I can also do salvaging, run a dungeon or two and turn in 5 golds with pvp on. I’d get dungeon exp, dungeon completion exp (plus daily bonus possible), and 5 golds with pvp bonus.
Battlegrounds takes even longer than dungeon to queue unless you have a group running battlegrounds. Unless I already have at least 6 people queued up for battlegrounds, I normally can do 2-3 dungeons in the time 1 battlegrounds pops.
I mean if you do all of that and just do the battlegrounds when its popping its still more exp because a gold is like 12k ish and first dungeon of the day bonus is 10K? +4k and whatever other xp for mobs so 5 golds 60k+14k 74k while the 10+ golds you’re looking at 120k+ xp and the amount of time for the game to actually play is fractions of what it is to do all the scavenging and dungeon queue if battlegrounds is popping which isn’t too rare
At level 26+ I get 17k-22k exp from first dungeon of the day, up to 10k exp from mobs depending on the dungeon, 2k from the bosses + 5 golds (you only get 5 tokens per day anyways).
So in comparison, that would be:
120k xp every two days vs
60k+60k+22k+2k+7k+7k+20k+20k with two days. Or if we are looking at it from a more pure perspective, it would be closer to 60k+22k+7k+20k every day or about 110k per day assuming 2 runs per day (possibly more depending on the dungeon as I didn’t add in boss exp due to different dungeons giving different amounts of exp). Of course, these numbers are probably a bit off since I think the 120k and 60k aren’t factoring in pvp exp, which would make them closer to 140k and 70k respectively.
And since unless the battlegrounds is popping at the time, the dungeon queue tends to pop faster, I can reasonably expect to get that 2 dungeon runs in the same time, possibly even 3.
If we were to then compare it as if you weren’t doing more than 1 dungeon per day, we would then get
70k+22K+22K+20k for 2 days or 134k for 2 days + 5 unused tokens, though you could then use those 5 unused tokens as you turn in missions on the second day for another 70k (turn in dram first, token, next dram, token, next dram, token, next dram, token, breakdown, token, breakdown, but save breakdown turn in for next batch of turn ins). This would put you at 204k exp for 2 days with a reasonable expectation of it taking about as long as battlegrounds with queue accounted for.
(Note: These numbers are based on bomb+pvp (though I believe pvp bonus doesn’t affect dungeons themselves)).
And how long do these dungeons take assuming the mages you hate so much are not in the shard and everyone is pulling their weight and getting hits? My guess would be around 6-10 minutes just due to no one speedrunning through the dungeon (this would be with minimal wipes as well)
The first dungeon of the day is the only one that matters as it has the big bonus. Anything after and you either go too slow to be efficient or people are going fast and you are losing your precious XP to the mages. After your first dungeon you do your mice and then public event hop.
Let me explain why: Gold completions of public events give a base of 7500 XP, that is just 2500 less than all of the trash (depending on dungeon) in dungeon queue for a fraction of the time or around the same time.
Crystal cave, Flying fish, and the Portal event are the easiest and fastest (keep in mind that portal event can be done as many times as there are shards meaning that if there are even 3 shards you are getting 22,500 without xp gear, xp bombs, or PVP and that takes ~3-4 minutes normally which is much faster than dungeon queues if everyone is getting hits and XP credit.)
A good follow up is the Broken Castle event: it is the only one of the defend the circle events complete able solo without headache (the other circle events are also good if you have a public event hopping group)
Then we have defending the obnobi encampment (takes 5-6 minutes and you can get kills yourself meaning kill XP is shared between no one or just your group) and maybe Knights Fort mainly due to the same reason of having kills for yourself.
Assuming that you have trash RNG and got only events that take 6 minutes each and while not accounting for travel time: you are getting 75,000 xp per hour assuming again no pvp, no xp gear, no xp bomb. If you do this for 3 hours you get 225,000 xp. This is not even taking into account any XP obtained from killing enemies. Again this is the worst RNG possible. If you got multiple portal events all with 4 shards to complete then you are getting much higher xp than the 225,000 xp in 3 hours.
There are also ways to predict what events are next. Both Potato’s map and the OrbusVR Armory have a public event tracker. Using either tool you can plan your route to lose as little time as possible. Events are also static as in you don’t have to rely on other players to dungeon queue (Sometimes you can go 5-10+ minutes without a queue pop)
The armory’s can be found here: OrbusVR Armory
To summarize:
- Do your first dungeon queue
- Do your 5 daily missions in mice (the easiest missions)
- Public event hop as long as you want
Edit: I am going to do testing tomorrow on solo dungeon xp on all dungeons with a crude edit I made to a pally heal detector I made (stole the idea from Krunk but I still made it) (will get a tank so I can kill bosses as well and do multiple tests for each to determine time and xp gained on a non first dungeon of the day)
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Not really the point of this topic, but…
In addition to mob exp, dungeons also give bonus exp at the end of the dungeon. I’d say that it takes 10-15 minutes to do a dungeon with a reasonably slow, but steady team. If you have a good team that is willing to stick together and run it together, you can likely drop that to a stable 6-8 minutes per run (excluding airship) with no travel time or wait time. That would then be even potentially more exp than the events depending on the events.
Also, it isn’t so much that I hate runemages. It is that I don’t like the ones that are more selfish even after being asked to slow things down (and go out of their way to make sure they kill everything before the party can). Especially the ones that queue for roles they don’t plan to play.
So basically, Dungeon exp gain depends on your group, but it can be higher than events. Especially on a Quest device that can’t use the tracker or armory without turning off/suspending orbus.
Events are random and may or may not be better.
Obviously that would suggest the best way would be to do a mixture of dungeons, events while waiting for dungeons, and missions.
Like I said though, one or two dungeons can get you 5 gold missions from salvaging. 10 even depending on how you do your turn ins.
Also, do note that dungeon exp does change by level. 21 is probably the biggest change I saw where mob exp seemed significantly lower of a percentage of the dungeon exp. Also, unlike other tier ups, dungeon exp seems lower post 30 than level 29. Uncertain if expected result or bug.
Another thing to consider is that dungeons allow you to gain dram at a relatively rapid rate. This dram can be used to buy exp bombs, so that is something else to consider in.
So my suspicions are this:
Missions can be the best exp per in-game time (whether or not weeklies are worth it is another issue), but due to the limits, is the worst exp per real time if only using missions.
Dungeons are very good exp once per day and decent exp throughout the day, but does rely on having a decent party (though once a decent party is found, this may be potentially the best exp). This might not be the best for leveling a newer tank or healer as there are many mechanics that the tanks and healers need to know, but should be safe enough for a dps to jump into even at lower levels. I suspect that this will be decent exp up to level 30, but might fall off at 30 if the reduced rewards is not a bug.
Events are good exp and can be solo’ed once your level is high enough, but does require the player to have a decent stock of teleportation items and unlocked teleporters or high mount speed, PCVR (link, rift, steam) for interactive Map or the armory. This makes events a bit worse for leveling new players until they start unlocking things.) The rewards from each event can be stable, but knowing how to do events to their potential may require more skilled players to teach newer players how to work together. This does not always happen, unfortunately. RNG also has a bit of an effect on Events. I expect this to be relatively close to dungeons though in terms of effectiveness around 21 to 30. For overlevels, this may be better depending on RNG.
Either way, once Richleth tests, we should get an idea of what the potential exp for dungeons are (though I doubt it will be a full test since that would take some time and effort).
This is due to enemy level; impossible level gives most exp but is hardest to kill going down to difficult, same level, weaker, and no challenge for exp. I do not know the exact modifiers for each but do have no challenge and impossible level, will make sure to grab weaker than, same level, and difficult level as more data for conversion.
I am still collecting data as dungeon queue takes a while: I am only queuing as damage as that is the class I am playing and I am running mage so my dungeons are slightly faster than a normal group
It is also due to the end rewards changing. From personal experience doing dungeons on each class, you get more end reward as your level tier goes up until you hit 30, where it drops down for some reason (even with a group of 30s).
Looking forward to seeing your numbers though. Should give an idea of whether or not dungeons are viable (especially given shards are dungeons, I would like to see more players doing dungeons even if they aren’t the best exp and the numbers should show whether or not dungeons are viable as an alternative to events or as an addition to events or if events are actually good enough that one should always prioritize events over dungeons).
My best guess will be that at lower levels dungeons will give more but at higher public event will give more
So relatively in-line with my suspicions. I think 21 is the first point where there is a significant change and then 30 is the next one.
That said, I’m not sure how important exp is once you hit 30 and get your first few overlevel perks completed (weight, mount speed, and luck). The other bonuses are nice, but not sure if they are enough that I’d be worried about trying to rush leveling.
I need a few numbers from you real quick, based on these strength indicators can you get me what exp you get solo for a Elite Weak Level and a Elite Difficult Level? They have to have the elite flag thing under the star indicating level.
I’ve never seen any mobs with that flag. I’m on the Quest so I don’t think flags even show up. I’ll try to find out tomorrow or Tuesday if I get a chance to head out to Forsaken Isle (I assume that is where the flags are), but the exp changes a little by mob.
Im sure the flags show up on quest. Every dungeon besides Broken Halls has elites:
An example of Crypt dungeon w/ elite groups
(Island only has impossible level elites which I have numbers for already. As a side note the fact you did not know those flags indicate elites is deeply concerning for a level 30 player)