[AC] FAQ - Level Cap

[Ziv]

[turbine]

Q: What is the new level cap going to be?

A: Throne of Destiny will increase the level cap from 126 to 275.


Q: What will my new level be? Third-party apps tell me that I'm level 210 already. Will I be level 210 after I install Throne of Destiny?

A: Either 210 or a level very close to it. Your new level will be calculated based on your total available and invested experience, which is generally how most third-party applications calculate it.


There are actually some situations in which a character who is under level 126 will gain a level after installing Throne of Destiny. When you train a skill at character creation, a small amount of experience is put into that skill in order to give you 5 additional points in the skill. (This is as opposed to specialized skills, which receive 10 points free, without any experience.)


This small amount of XP will be taken into account when your new level is calculated, so it is possible that characters that are very, very close to their next level will gain that level the first time they log in. This will also happen to level 1 characters that were created before Throne of Destiny – some of them may be recalculated at level 3 the first time they log in.


Q: Will the caps on maximum skill level be increased?

A: Not in Throne of Destiny, no.


Q: What about the extra experience? If I can't spend it on capped skills, what do I do with the experience I earn at the highest levels?

A: You can use it to buy Augmentation Gems! Augmentations will grant one of a range of interesting abilities; we'll be publishing the full list of gems very soon.


Q: Will the level limits on XP-sharing fellowships be changed?

A: We don't anticipate that this will be a huge issue immediately at the launch of the expansion, so we're not planning on changing the system as part of Throne of Destiny. We are, however, considering redesigning parts of the fellowship system through the monthly updates in order to make it generally more social and inclusive, and we will doubtless address this issue at that time.


Q: What about allegiance swearing? What will you do about the fact that my level 126 character used to be able to have anyone swear to him, but now won't be able to take the same characters as vassals if they're over 126?

A: We're making some major revisions to the requirements for allegiance swearing in order to make it more flexible. After Throne of Destiny launches:


Any character will be able to swear to any other character, regardless of level.

If you swear to a character who is lower-level than you, you will not pass up any experience to that character (or the characters above him/her) until that character's level is equal to yours.

Once you begin passing experience up to your patron (or if you are currently doing so) you won't stop passing experience to your patron, even if you outlevel him or her.

These changes will be true for all characters, whether or not they purchase Throne of Destiny.

Here are some examples of the new system in action:


My level 100 character is sworn to Aldryth's level 80 character. I currently pass experience up to him. Nothing will change in AC:TD; I will continue passing experience up to him.

Meanbeard wants to swear his level 100 character to Aldryth's level 80. Right now, he simply can't do it. After AC:TD, Meanbeard will be able to swear to Aldryth, but he will not begin passing up experience until Aldryth catches up to him. If Aldryth hits level 100 but Meanbeard has gotten to level 105, Meanbeard still will not pass experience to Aldryth. Once Aldryth does catch up to Meanbeard – if Aldryth hits 105 while Meanbeard is still 105 – Meanbeard will begin passing up experience. After that happens, Meanbeard will continue passing experience to Aldryth for as long as Aldryth is his patron, no matter which one is higher in level.

We decided to use this system to create maximum flexibility – in many ways this is even better than the way things work now. For example, right now if I outlevel my patron and then accidentally break from him, I can't re-swear until he catches up to me. Once AC:TD ships, I'll be able to re-swear to him immediately, although I won't pass up experience until he catches up. The new system allows players to focus on the social aspect of the allegiance without being restricted by experience pass-up concerns.


One last note on this topic – Throne of Destiny will also remove the penalty for breaking from your patron. This penalty will be removed from all characters regardless of whether or not they have purchased the expansion pack.


Q: If I get to level 275, won't the experience that I get for creatures that are listed as level 150 decrease because they're now well below my level?

A: No. We are removing the experience scaling system completely. Under the old system, if you were killing a creature that more than a few levels below you in level, you received only a fraction of the experience for that kill. This was meant to prevent high level players from camping low level areas for experience. However, because of the exponential experience curves in Asheron's Call, even the full experience value of a creature more than a few levels below you is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to what you are likely to need for your next level or another skill point. So high level players aren't going to be camping low level areas for experience anyway, because that practice just isn't very efficient. Given that, it makes more sense to simply remove the scaling system.


Q: What is the exact experience point curve from 126 to 275?

A: The exact chart is rather too large to be posted here. The best way to describe it is that the well-known extrapolations of this table that currently exist in the player community are close enough for basic planning.


Q: Will we get more skill credits?

A: Yes. You will receive a skill credit at the following levels:


130
140
150
160
180
200
225
250
275

This means that a level 275 character will receive 46 skill credits over the course of his or her lifetime, not counting skill credits received from quests. The cap on the number of credits you can spend on specialized skills will not change.


Q: Will there be any change to the rate of advancement for uber-level characters?

A: Throne of Destiny includes some content specifically designed to improve the rate of advancement for very high-level characters, without unbalancing the rate of advancement for lower-level characters. We'll be posting more information about this content in the near future.


Q: What about the number of items that I drop on death? Will that change?

A: Yes. The number of items that you drop on death currently depends on two factors – your level and the cause of death – that is, whether the death was caused by PK combat, PKL combat, or by some other cause. We will be adding a new factor to this: is the character on a Throne of Destiny account?


The "old formula", ignoring all other factors, is currently your level divided by ten, with a chance of dropping an additional one or two items. This formula will generally apply to characters on accounts that have not purchased Throne of Destiny.


The "new formula", again ignoring all other factors, will be your level divided by twenty, with a chance of dropping an additional one or two items. This formula will generally apply to characters on accounts that have purchased Throne of Destiny.


Here's the full system:


PKL Deaths: No change – No items dropped, as before.

NPK Deaths at or below level 10: No change – No items dropped, as before.

NPK Deaths from level 11 to level 20: No change – 1 non-wielded item dropped, as before.

NPK Deaths above level 20: Changed.

Non-Throne of Destiny: Uses the old formula, but only non-wielded items may be dropped.

Throne of Destiny: Uses the new formula, but only non-wielded items may be dropped.

NPK Deaths above level 35:

Non-Throne of Destiny: Uses the old formula. Since characters without Throne of Destiny can only reach level 126, the maximum number of items dropped is 14.

Throne of Destiny: Uses the new formula, for a maximum of 15 items dropped.

PK Deaths: PK deaths will always use the old formula but will cap at an effective level

of 126. So a PK death will never drop more than 12-14 items (126/10 items plus a chance of one or two additional items). This is true whether or not the character has Throne of Destiny.


So in conclusion, characters on a Throne of Destiny account will generally drop fewer items from an NPK death than they did before, and at the very highest levels the number of items dropped will be about the same as at the very highest levels before. We felt it was best not to change the death penalties in PK – taking a foe's death items is one of the rewards of a successful PK kill and we didn't want to change the existing balance.


Q: What about vitae? Will that change?

A: Yes.


The vitae system has not changed substantially since Asheron's Call launched in 1999. Since that time, the experience awarded by killing creatures has increased considerably. This means that a 5% vitae loss currently is much easier to work off now than it was in the past. In addition, the maximum cost to work off a point of vitae was capped at 12,500 experience points.


Currently it takes, on average, 2-3 creature kills to work off 5% vitae loss, up to around level 55 or so where that begins to drop off because of the 12.5k cap. With Throne of Destiny we are revamping the vitae curve. After the expansion pack, vitae will scale higher for higher characters, as it was always meant to do.


A low level character will still be able to work off 5% vitae loss by killing 2-3 creatures of an appropriate level. (By "appropriate level" we mean creatures intended to be fought by characters of that level.)


The cost to work off a single point of vitae loss increases based on character level. By level 15 or so, it should take about 5 kills to work off 5% vitae loss. Around level 70, it's 10. It reaches 15 around level 160 and 20 at level 275. This is true for all characters, whether or not they are on a Throne of Destiny account.


Yes, this does make death sting a bit more – however we feel that this balances out well in combination with the lowered item drop described above.


Q: Are there any other new level-related systems coming with the expansion pack?

A: There is one that we'd like to mention here, which is tied to the Rares system.


If you kill a creature that is lower-level than you, and is lower than level 100, it has no chance of dropping a rare. This is to prevent high-level characters from, say, farming Drudge Skulkers to try and find rares. At higher levels, the difference in power between creatures and players begins to flatten out enough to counteract this concern, so we chose the arbitrary cutoff of level 100. It's a nice easy number to remember if you're hunting for rares.


Q: How will %-based rewards like Tusker Tusks and Gaerlan's Sword work for level 126 characters and above after Throne of Destiny?


A: Experience rewards based on the amount that you need to get from your current level to the next level are referred to as "PXP" rewards. After Throne of Destiny, all characters – those who have the expansion pack and those who don't – will have PXP rewards correctly calculated. There are two caveats – the first is that characters that have hit the maximum level cap of 275 cannot earn more experience at all, so they will not gain experience from these awards. The second is that many PXP rewards will have their maximum reward capped so that very high-level characters can't get a reward that isn't appropriate for the comparative difficulty of the quest.


In all of these cases, the cap is at least the amount that you can or should get for completing the quest at level 126. For example, currently a level 126 character who turns in a Gaerlan Sword receives an experience award of 15 million points. As the quest is intended for characters up to level 126, we've set the cap on the reward to 15 million. Characters above level 126 will receive 15 million experience for handing in the Sword.


For another example, consider the Tusker Tusks. Currently the tusks that grant a PXP award do not properly award level 126 characters. This will change with Throne of Destiny – characters at level 126 will receive an appropriate reward; the rewards will also cap at the experience reward for level 126. A character at level 250 who hands in a Rampager Tusk, for example, will receive a reward as if he were level 126: approximately 11 million experience.


Under no circumstances will a character receive less experience for a PXP reward after Throne of Destiny than they would receive today.