I’m fairly certain flags don’t show up on quest untethered. Just like how names don’t always show up and don’t show for non-combat enemies. I can check next time I see those mob groupings, but I’ve never seen those flags before. Could just be that I didn’t know what to look for, but I’d expect that I’d notice considering I’ve fought overworld elites before.
I can confirm that i have seen those flags on monsters both quest 1 and quest 2 untethered
Yeah, I think I get why I can’t see it. I’m not the best with colors and it is just a slight difference in shape for me.
Looks like all dungeon enemies are no challenge to me.
Alright so I am done collecting my data and feel public events should also be tested as to have a real comparison vs dungeons. Fortunately I can do a bit of simple math to on average say the exp you get per minute: I counted the “throwing mini-game” events (Portal, Flying Fish, and Crystal cave as 1.5 minutes each), the “circle” events (Scav outpost, Hulthine’s Vale, Broken Castle) as an average of 3 minutes, and I counted the “Defend until time runs out” events (Knight’s Fort, Obnobi Encampment, Gate Defense, Wagons Graveyard) all as 6 minutes as that is the completion time unless you intentionally fail the event (which you can do and still get max exp reward). This averaged out to 3.75 minutes per event. Adding 1 minute and 15 seconds for travel time gives you 4 minutes for 7500 exp on average or 1875 per minute.
This is a low-balling estimate though not counting events that can be completed multiple times due to multiple shards and also not counting enemy kills during those events. The circle events in general can be completed faster than 3 minutes especially with a group.
Now into my numbers for dungeons: I did a minimum of 5 runs for each dungeon queuing by myself and only as damage as I was playing a mage; this testing was done on a xp bomb and half of the numbers got the boost and half did not (this is a known bug). I figured since the data was half with and half without I was fine and did not have to retest numbers. When it came time to making the data fit with each enemy difficulty level I used a subtraction of 4500 (this subtraction was necessary due to dungeon complete EXP not increasing with how difficult the enemies are, I used 4500 due to again the EXP bomb bug)
These are the individual times and EXP gained on that run for each dungeon level (impossible to no challenge enemies). This is just the raw data in graph format.
I found that across those days my average solo queue time was 3 minutes and 5 seconds (had one queue that took forever) with around 300 players online at the times of testing and I was not asking players to queue. This is important for the next graph as dungeon queue (at least as a solo queuing as damage only) takes a while. Due to this we can add the average queue time to the average time it took to complete the dungeon to get the amount of time it takes to complete a dungeon from the moment I queued on average.
Keep in mind that my quick calculations at the start of the post detailed that public events on a low-balling average give 1875 per minute. According to the graph on the left (The one with queue time not factored in) if the enemies have the “Same Level” icon above their heads then public events give more exp on average. However, at lower levels where these enemies have the “Difficult” or “Impossible” icons above their heads you are actually gaining more exp on average. Although, the graph on the right (the graph that depicts when queue time is factored in) you are only getting more exp per minute if the enemies have the “Impossible” icon.
This shows that dungeons, on average, based on the calculation at the top of the post: Give less exp if the enemies are not “Impossible” level.
In conclusion dungeon queue alone is not viable in comparison to public events on average based on the public event EXP per minute calculation at the top of the post. However this does not mean that dungeons are worthless! Dungeon queue is something you should do if you only have long events left (only if those events just started or have more than 3 minutes and 45 seconds remaining) or if you are doing events solo and you got unlucky and only have the Hulthines and Wastelands Circle events left to do (or if they are the only two events that popped up due to bad RNG). However the meta remains established the best exp method:
- 5 Critter Capture Missions
- Daily Dungeon Queue for Daily Dungeon EXP
- Public Event Hop
Due to there being 5 level indicators I made another graph showing how much dungeon exp you get at each level on average.
Basically just the same graph but as a scatter plot and the level indicators converted to an average level (there are 5 so I just did 30/5 to arrive at around 5 levels for each difficulty indicator)
Here is the link to the spreadsheet I detailed my data in if you would like to look.
I want to just address this real quick; you can pull up the armory public event tracker on a phone or laptop and it still works, you don’t need to do it through headset. (not the most phone friendly website but still very doable)
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Except you’d have to remove your headset even then, which is buggy for some people (even I get logged out sometimes if I remove my headset, in which case I often have to restart my headset or I’ll get crashes).
Based on your data though, I’d say I’d have a slight correction to the meta:
Pre 21 (or pre 16):
- 5 Missions (Critter capture or salvaging dram/breakdown)
- Daily Dungeon Queue.
- Dungeon Queue if level 8+ damage or level 10+ tank/healer (lower level is possible if you know what you are doing as tank/healer. Lower level damage is also possible to run with if you know what you are doing, but too many lower levels in a dungeon will make the run less harder than it has to be).
- Public Events while waiting for Dungeon Queue (skip dungeon matchmaking found if you are at a fast event set, such as 4 shards of portal event (you’ll probably only get 3 of them)).
21-25 (or 16-25):
- 5 Missions (Critter capture or salvaging dram/breakdown)
- Daily Dungeon Queue.
- Dungeon Queue if fast queue or doing events are slow (slow events, no reliable interactive map/armory access).
- Public Events while waiting for Dungeon Queue.
- Dungeon Queue if slow events.
26+ (Basically current meta)
- 5 Missions (Critter capture or salvaging dram/breakdown)
- Daily Dungeon Queue.
- Public Event Hop if fast public events
- Dungeon Queues if Public Events are slow (can always queue while doing events as well, but the data does show that exp is decreased once the enemies drop down if the enemy difficulty is too low).
The reason why I suggest salvaging as another option to critter capture is because you can do events/dungeons at the same time. You can do an all queue to speed up two runs for that critter capture, this way you are gaining exp as you do missions. I’ve only had a few people go out of their way to pk someone at an event, though I’ve seen some accidental hits when doing aoes.
Another reason why dungeons are more effective at lower levels is due to having less access to various locations (excluding people who are working on extra classes). Since you might not survive (without a group, in which case you can probably do dungeons) the higher level areas at lower levels, doing those events, especially solo, is not as viable.
Each day, for about an hour or two, I get fast damage queues (I actually get instant queues as damage. Tested several times by trying healer, then tank, then damage as separate queues within a minute in that order), so that would be another time where dungeons are fairly useful.
Another issue with events is participation. Bards, for an example, have a bit harder of a time with some events due to the participation issue. When you have players that are going out of their way to deny participation of other players, that also affects event exp. (I had one ranger who was spamming fire arrows in an event (They should’ve gone point blank and used spread arrows, but I didn’t expect them to get no participation so I didn’t mention it) and didn’t get a single credit because Gravity orbs to group the mobs -> at least 8 paladin smashes (sorry, I was one of them, though I started using the book later once I remembered that I only needed to provoke - though my book also buffed everyone’s damage so that was probably actually worse than just smashing now that I think about it), at least 2 runemage aoes, at least 1 charged impact orb+weakness… the enemies died before the rain could start (and you can imagine that the mobs suddenly moving didn’t help matters. I swear it was intentional too. The bard there didn’t say anything so no idea if they got exp there). At one portal event, a low level got no credit participation and another low level got silver because I and several others grabbed all the crystals before they could (to be fair, I only grabbed until I was certain I had three in and I was getting them snatched from me as well, which made it harder to tell (and I was a lowbie as well at the time)).
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