Feedback Only-Test XP and Loot System - Updated

KaiRal Windspar · Post by **KaiRal Windspar** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 7:38 pm

Correct. Zero XP for the 40's.

PlasmaJohn · Post by **PlasmaJohn** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 7:51 pm

KaiRal Windspar wrote:Correct. Zero XP for the 40's.

I've commented on this over in the Discussion Thread:
http://www.blackdagger.com/viewtopic.ph ... 89#1003189

ShadowViper · Post by **ShadowViper** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 9:03 pm

yorlik wrote: Loot was nice, one dye was found by the group on a slaver.

Nice, I must say it was very nice ok one dye but so what. Among the better loot I found was a:

a magic pouch
Slaver Though barbarian axe (great axe with 1d4 fire damage)
Slaver scout gaurd armor (studded Leather armor with +2 AC vs magical beasts)
Rod of Negate Psionics (beatrs me what it does but the name sounds nice

)

After a few times testing the new loot system I must say I love it, you guys did some great work. My completements to the ones who made it couldn't have been easy. I hope to see it life soon.

Oh and a word of advise make sure you have some skill points in lore when you go loot testing, we had a three man team and none of us could identify the magic loot that was dropped, not even the rogue's.

Crunk · Post by **Crunk** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:07 am

I must say that the lot system is impressive, Ive been testing quite a bit and the varitey of items dropped seems endless. there do seem to be quite a few hand axes dropped, i would probably lower that number a bit to coincide with the other thrown type weapons.

Pathos Street · Post by **Pathos Street** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 4:58 am

Took a quick run through a couple areas with an uber test PC. I really like the idea of the on-the-fly loot drops. The best part was when I knocked off some mages and got scrolls, and when I took down an annihilator and got a double-bladed sword.

Seeing it in QA a bit and seeing it now, the loot system is a masterpiece. But the mona lisa smile would be to have more arrows, bolts, and melee weapons, things that characters would use or at least think about keeping around, and fewer throwing axes which will by and large just clog up biomerchants.

Verandis · Post by **Verandis** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 5:58 am

Went and visited the minotaur caves as a level 7 (level 5 rogue/level 2 sorc); was grouped with one level 40- got 56 xp a piece, which I now realize is indeed cap xp/kill due to multiclass penalty.

One small issue- the minotaurs dropped some cool 'Minotaur' Items, including some 'Minotaur Throwing Axes' (one set +3 enhancement, and another +3 vs dragons) and some 'Minotaur Armor' (slashing resist 5/-). However, there was an extra space between the 'Minotaur' and the name of the item. (Minotaur[space][space]Armor). I don't know if this is specific to the minotaur caves or specific to renaming items, as I didn't find any other renamed items I can recall.

DanishPastry · Post by **DanishPastry** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 11:47 am

Loot:
I gotta say, the loot drops are awesome. The [monster name] [item] code really adds some flavor to the whole thing, and I love how various equipable stuff (helmets, weapons, boots,etc.) drop, not just the same item over and over. The more variety the better.

XP:
With a level 40 PC in the Warrens only Champions and High Shamans yielded xp. I am sure that Elites and the wolfies are of a decent CR so if anything above CR X should give 1 xp per kill, this doesn't work quite as intended. The PC was a half-ogre Barb(28)/Fighter(5)/WM(7) so there should be no xp penalty.

Notes:
It seems that the likelyhood of a good drop increases with the CR of the monster/NPC. Killing Epix Finmaegen Keep Guards yielded some very good stuff (amongst other things a +4 AC Helmet) and although attacking keeps without DMs watching borders/constitutes abusal of AI then it's a proven fact this would happen on a near-daily basis if the chance for awesome drops was there.

A way to prevent or discourage this could be setting one NPC in the spawn to Immortal same way as the two Dominators guarding Lady Finmaegen are; they still take damage but their health can't drop below Near Death. This could symbolize the overwhelming presence of Guards, Army Personnel etc. at the keep and would at the very least assure that a PC couldn't waltz around to each spawn, buff up and start the killing. This could be also applied to other places/cities where one should not be able to pull a Lord Silver (the guy who won Mikona... or was it Le'Or?).

Of course, if part of a DM event/plot or if a DM is monitoring the whole thing he can simply remove the NPC and spawn whatever he feels like.

PlasmaJohn · Post by **PlasmaJohn** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:28 pm

5 PC's, 40, 28, 21, 20, 15. Mine was the 21.

XP:
We poked at the Slavers first and I was getting 10 for Bombers, 19 for Warriors and 54 for I forget. The 15th level was raking it in. We estimated that she'd hit cap by the time we got to the west slave pen. Myself and 20th would certainly hit cap if we did both levels and quite possibly just the 1st level.

Next up: the Warrens. Outside I was getting a mix of 27 and 150

The 20th was getting 200's. Inside I was getting 150 for everything except the champions which yielded 200. The 15th and 20th level hit cap shortly after we entered the cave and I hit the cap in another fight or two.

Notes: The 40th only got xp for the Orc Champions for a grand total of 93xp for the night. Token xp really needs to come back. See my comment in the discussion page. The 28th level made about 2k for the time we were there and we certainly did not clear either place.

We were going a lot slower than we normally would because we'd pause and discuss the xp and the loot. If we were going at a normal pace, including IC RP, I would have hit cap within 15-30 min. in the Warrens and an hour or so in the Slave pens.

We also spent some time speculating how this would affect player behavior, I'll stick those in the discussion thread.

Loot: (wasn't really paying all that much attention):
An Orc Champion dropped some bronze armor with a minor enchantment.
A bugbear Warrior dropped a ring of 10/- Fire
A bugbear Champion dropped a ring of CR20 Magic reistance
a ton of meats and hides... might want to dial back on these a bit

KaiRal Windspar · Post by **KaiRal Windspar** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 3:49 pm

KaiRal Windspar wrote:Correct. Zero XP for the 40's.

My mistake. That should have read 'No Reported XP for the 40s'.

Apologies.

Aeveras · Post by **Aeveras** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 4:49 pm

Stabbed some stuff with my twinked out localvaulter, Lord Dark, level 24 with no multiclass penalties.

Was getting 11xp per bugbear and worg in the warrens (didn't explore the caves). Found some gold, +2 will save boots, minor gems, and a thingamabob 2 (Isaac's Lesser Missile Storm(13) 5 charges/use).

Strutted over to the minos and poked them a bit too. Was getting 16xp per cow.

Something unusual for an IC point of view: the worgs dropped word meat, which had 1/use cure moderate wounds. Ok, cool! I'm eating worg. The odd thing though: sometimes the worgs used this item before I could keel them. Word uses worg meat.... is it cannibalizing itself? o.0

- Aeveras

spool32 · Post by **spool32** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 5:01 pm

It would be useful to hear from the FEATers in this thread... apparenty they were able to get a lvl20 PC to hit their weekly cap in under 2 hours.

I think consensus is starting to build around the idea that 10x your lvl for xp from a single monster is way too high.

Maybe 2x or 3x max. That's what I'm thinking.

-spool32

Grunt · Post by **Grunt** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 5:13 pm

*points up to PJ's post*

That's what you're looking for Spool.

Post by **MadK@** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 5:36 pm

Test server updated with fixes to xp and loot.

Arieanne · Post by **Arieanne** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 5:55 pm

I made a short solo trip, lvl28.

I haven't noticed any significant changes when it comes to xp. Regular 3-5 xp for the Bugbear Veteran, 6-8 for the Bugbear Elite Warrior, none for Hill Giants, Trolls, Ogre Mages, Jaguars, Village Boy (

). Weird xp for Scrags: from 0 to 7, is it intended? Never saw such a difference in xp for the same type of creature.

Loot: VISIBLE changes and ambiguous impressions. First of all, even those creatures which are suppose to drop loot, do it really rarely. I killed like 45 bugbears and found maybe 3 loots on them. Money - really not much, 21, 39, 55 gp. In addition very nice item: Bugbear Elite Warrior's Ring of Fire Resist /-10. Troll also dropped "related" items: Troll dart +2 Divine dmg. Scrags still dropping scrags blood, village boy - baby doll. Some things never change

Grunt · Post by **Grunt** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 2:40 am

The named items (Ogre Mage Spear) could use more variety in the name because of the number of different effects. Currently the lack of variety in the naming of items from the same creature will make them a p-merchant or ep-chest nightmare, and a normal p-chest won't be so happy either. Maybe adding another keyword to the name, so instead of Ogre Mage Spear, you get Ogre Mage Spear of Defense against Evil (+1 AC vs Evil)? Other than that, I like the random loot.

M'checkian cave bear...used it's own meat to heal itslef, while it was still alive. I think that's a bug

Hellhounds, Fire elementals... dropped gems. Water elementals did not. The fire elemental gems ranged frmo Alexandrite up to rubies and emeralds and were always in stacks of 2.

Lord Derrington 5xp for a level 40 (me), 29xp for lvl 12 ...errr...theoretically, yeah

Other than him, I'm pretty sure I got nothing for anything in the bachwood caves, and 3xp for the bandit chief by Nelthrope. There were things that usually gave token XP (Scrags) throwing a big 0.

loki70 · Post by **loki70** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 4:39 am

Grunt wrote:
M'checkian cave bear...used it's own meat to heal itslef, while it was still alive. I think that's a bug

No, no, he is just that badass...

yorlik · Post by **yorlik** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 6:11 am

loki70 wrote:
Grunt wrote:
M'checkian cave bear...used it's own meat to heal itslef, while it was still alive. I think that's a bug

No, no, he is just that badass...

I saw that on a Worg near the deers as well.

Post by **MadK@** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 5:14 am

Test XP Updated

Crunk · Post by **Crunk** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 7:19 am

tested a level 30 through entire warrens not a single xp. Then tested a level 12 in warrens and on m'chek soldier (who are higher CR) and not a single xp.

MaxWebster · Post by **MaxWebster** » Sat Jul 28, 2007 5:33 am

Crunk wrote:tested a level 30 through entire warrens not a single xp. Then tested a level 12 in warrens and on m'chek soldier (who are higher CR) and not a single xp.

Ditto with a 19th level even managed to kill an elite...nothing at all

Post by **MadK@** » Sat Jul 28, 2007 5:19 pm

Updated to actually grant xp now