Experience Gain

Summary

As of August 30, 2022 there has been an overhaul to the experience gain system, below is an outline of how the system works.

• Players will no longer need to worry about different damage sources they create (such as Melee Damage, Poison Tick Damage, Pet Damage, Aspect Procs/Special) "competing" with each other for experience: each Experience System (such as Weapon Codexes, Poison Kits, Aspects) will gain Experience simultaneously without conflict
• Players will likely have a much easier to gaining Experience while working in groups due to the Group Experience Multiplier
• Players who run "Support" builds that are geared towards Healing other players or providing Barding support to groups, and typically deal minimal damage to creatures, will now have a dramatically easier time gaining Experience in groups if they are in a Party where multiple people have Share Experience toggled
• In order to provide a better overall experience for players leveling up various Codexes, Tomes, Grimoires, etc we have recoded our sequence of how Experience is distributed for players, and will explain it below in a series of "steps"
• The amount of Aspect Experience received from earning Doubloons by Sinking NPC Ships has been reduced by 50%

Step 1: Creature Death and Gold Value

• A creature is killed by one or more players
• A Creature Gold Value is determined for the creature derived from its DifficultyValue (displayed in the Animal Lore menu for the creature)
• Creature's Gold Value is the "expected" amount of gold that will appear on that creature's corpse on death, before any adjustments to that gold amount are applied for Weekly Server Bonuses, Guild Favors, Fortune Aspect, etc

Step 2: Determine Player Damage Percentages

• Calculate each player's effective Damage Dealt Percent to the target which is (Their Damage Dealt (followers included) / Creature Total Hit Points)
• Players in a Party where Share Experience is toggled, will have their effective Damage Dealt Percent adjusted to become (Damage Total of Share Experience Players / Share Experience Player Count) for their party

Note: The Share Experience mechanic for Parties effectively allows players who did no damage to the target (such as Healers and Bards) to be treated as doing damage to the target, since the combined damage of the party (those with Share Experience toggled) is divided evenly amongst participating players

• Any player whose effective Damage Dealt Percent is 5% or above towards a normal creature is considered a Damaging Player
• Any player whose effective Damage Dealt Percent is 1% or above towards a Boss-type creature is considered a Damaging Player
• Any Damaging Player whose Damage Dealt Percent is below the listed Group Experience Damage Percent Ceiling, that is set based on total number of Damaging Players (see chart below), will qualify for Group Experience Bonuses

Step 3: Determine Group Experience Multiplier

• Calculate the Group Experience Scalar Bonus which is (0.5 * (Total Damaging Players - 1))
• Multiply the player's Damage Dealt Percent by (1 + (Group Experience Scalar Bonus))
• If player's newly adjusted Damage Dealt Percent exceeds the listed Group Experience Damage Percent Ceiling for their Group Size, it becomes capped at that ceiling percent (can't go above it)

Group Experience Damage Percent Ceiling Per Damaging Player Total:
2 Players: 70%
3 Players: 60%
4 Players: 50%
5 Players: 40%
6 Players: 35%
7: Players: 30%
8: Players: 25%
9: Players: 22.5%
10 Players or More: 20%

Boss Results and Party Damage Displays

Even if players have Share Experience toggled and are combining + dividing damage, the Boss Results and Party Menu will still display a player's "actual" damage (since players will likely want to know how they are actually contributing)

Step 4: Determine Experience for Players

• Each player will receive Experience from the creature equal to (Damage Dealt Percent * Creature's Base Gold Value)
• Adjust Experience Earned for player with any applicable bonuses such as Fortune Aspect, Guild Favors, Weekly Server Bonuses, etc

Example
A creature has a Creature Gold Value of 1000
The player has a Player Damage Percent of 30% against the creature

The player will receive (1000 * .30) = 300 Experience from the creature

Step 5: Apply Experience to Systems

Experience Systems

An Experience System is any system on Outlands that a player can earn experience towards by Killing Creatures

Example

• Aspect Gear
• Weapon / Parry Codex
• Summoner's Tome
• Wizardry Grimoire
• Bard Codex
• Poison Kit
• Taming Bestiary
• Mastery Chains

Note: There are some outlier "Experience Systems" such as the Thieves Codex that are unique and do not earn Experience from creature kills, and instead earn them from actions such as Stealing, and therefore are exempt from this Experience Squence and not listed here

Applying Experience to Systems

When a player receives Experience, it will apply that amount of Experience to ALL Experience Systems that the player currently qualifies for, even if technically they did not inflict any damage utilizing that system/mechanic against the creature killed

Players MUST, however, have the Required Skills, Required Codex/Items, or Tamed/Summoned Creatures needed for that system in order to have experience applied to it

Assumptions: For all systems except Aspect 1 gold = 1 xp, so 250 gold = 250 XP, for Aspect 100 gold = 1 xp, so 250 gold = 2.5 xp

Example
A player earns 250 Experience

The player has a Fencing Codex, a Poison Kit, and a Bard Codex in their backpack
The player has a Mastery Chain, and are wearing an Aspect Weapon and an Aspect Armor
The player has the following character skills:

• 100 Fencing
• 100 Parrying
• 100 Tactics
• 100 Poisoning
• 100 Musicianship
• 100 Discordance
• 100 Healing

Regardless of how the player inflicts damage in combat (and even if they inflict none at all while in a Party with Share Experience toggled), the player will have the following Experience amounts applied:

• 250 Experience towards their Fencing Codex
• 250 Experience towards their Parry Codex
• 250 Experience towards their Bard Codex
• 250 Experience towards their Poison Kit
• 250 Experience towards their Mastery Chain
• 2.5 Aspect xp is awarded to equipped Aspected Weapon or Spellbook
• 2.5 Aspect xp is awarded to equipped Aspected Armor

Special Handling for Certain Experience Systems

Experience for Weapon/Parry Codexes

If a character has multiple weapon skills that can earn Codex experience, then the amount of Experience earned will be applied in full between all of those weapon skills that are below the maximum rank (i.e. those that can earn experience still)

Parrying, however, will always receive the full Experience amount (and will not be divided)

Example
A player earns 250 Experience

The player has the following skills on their character and has all necessary Codexes for each:

• Macing (Codex Rank 7 [Max])
• Fencing (Codex Rank 6)
• Archery (Codex Rank 4)
• Parry (Codex Rank 5)
• Tactics

The player will earn the following:

• 250 Experience towards their Fencing Codex
• 250 Experience towards their Archery Codex
• 250 Experience towards their Parry Codex

Experience for Summoner's Tomes

When players earn Experience towards Summoner's Tomes, they will divide the Experience received towards each Spell Upgrade between the Summoned Followers they have alive at the time

Experience Towards Upgrade = Experience * (Total Control Slots of Creature For Spell / 5)

Example
A player earns 250 Experience and has the following Summons active:

• Fire Elemental (2 Control Slots)
• Earth Elemental (2 Control Slots)
• Summoned Grizzly Bear (1 Control Slots)

The player will earn:

• 250 * (2 / 5) = 100 Experience towards the Fire Elemental Upgrade
• 250 * (2 / 5) = 100 Experience towards the Earth Elemental Upgrade
• 250 * (1 / 5) = 50 Experience towards the Summon Creature Upgrade

Alternatively, if a player had 2 Fire Elementals active, they would earn 250 * (4 / 5) = 200 Experience towards the Fire Elemental Upgrade

Note: The Blade Spirits spell gets a 2x Experience bonus due to the limitation on players only being able to have 1 Blade Spirits summoned at a time

Experience for Aspects

If a player earns Experience, it will apply that Experience amount to both the player's Weapon/Spellbook Aspect and also to that player's Armor Aspect (if either/each exist)

However, because a player can switch between multiple Aspects for both Weapon/Spellbooks and Armor during combat at various times, handling for applying Experience towards Aspects can vary.

If Player Has Damaged The Creature

If a player has inflicted damage on the creature while wearing any Aspect Weapons/Spellbooks or Aspect Armor, it will distribute Experience between those different Aspects the player has used based on what percentage of damage they did while equipped with each aspect

However, if an Aspect's Permanent Tier Level is at the Max (Tier 14) and it can no longer earn Experience, it will not be considered in this calculation

• Aspects that have reached maximum xp due to pending upgrade will also not receive experience. In both cases the experience that would have been applied is "lost."

If Player Has Not Damaged The Creature (Party Share Experience)

It is possible for a player to earn Experience despite inflicting no damage on the creature, due to being in a Party and earning Experience through the Share Experience toggle

If this occurs, the player will earn Experience towards Aspects based on what they are currently wearing at the time of the creature's death

Example
A player earns 250 Experience

• The player did no damage to the creature, and earned their Experience entirely through Share Experience in the Party system

The player is wearing an Air Aspect Weapon, and earns 125 Experience towards Air Aspect
The player is wearing a Void Aspect Armor, and earns 125 Experience towards Void Aspect

Alternatively, if the player was wearing both Air Weapon and Air Armor, they would earn 250 Experience towards Air Aspect

Aspect Experience Display Numbers

It should be noted that for *most* Experience Systems, the amount of Experience earned directly translates into a 1 to 1 ratio: i.e. if you earn 250 Experience towards the Bard Codex, it will display in the Bard Codex menu that your Progress for that codex has increased by 250

The Aspect System is an outlier in that it utilizes a 100 to 1 ratio, meaning that earning 250 Experience towards an aspect will display in the Aspect Menu as having earned 2.5 Progress towards an Aspect

This is simply due to our Aspect system predating most of our other Experience Systems by nearly two years, and was setup using a different scaling range

So players should be aware that displayed Experience for Aspect Experience will be 1/100th of what those are for other systems, but players will be earning them at the same "actual" rate