We basically concluded that it should be possible to lvl up in 2 weeks doing pure pt grinding and then set about proving it was possible. The conditions were:
- No cheats (botting, gold buying, pk2 edits, plvl)
- Play for max 5 hours a day
- No tickets
- No buying armour and weapons from stalls. NPC equipment and drops only.
The Theory
Assumption 1 - A chinese solo 24/7 bot nuker can reach lvl 80 in 8 weeks. On Hera the bots reached 80 in 5-6 weeks and legits reached 80 in 6-7 weeks.
Assumption 2 - A wizard can do 60+% more damage = 1.6x multiplier. We tested this on various mobs. When you consider the nukes and cast times available to a wizard, you could argue that the extra damage dealt over time is a lot more than 60%. For now though, we'll stick to 1.6x.
Assumption 3 - Not having to run = 4x multiplier i.e. there is always a mob for you to kill near you so you never have to move. Those of you that have sp farmed in den know the benefit of always having a mob spawn near you and not having to run between mobs. We did some additional testing of this at sunsung, yetis and niya guard and got a multiplier that is closer to 5x than 4x. For now, we'll stick with 4x.
Assumption 4 - Always have at least 5 mobs together = 3.5x. In other words all your AoE nukes always hit the maximum number. Wizard AoE nukes kill 3-5 mobs at a time. There are complications in that the mobs have to be close together for some skills like Meteor. We made sure the number of mobs was nearer 10+ in the end and we managed to work out a technique for getting them all in one spot (more of that later).
Assumption 5 - Buff and debuffs = 1.7x. Cleric buffs give you about 10%. Bard dance gives at least 10% to whole party. Warlock curses and raze give you anything from 1.5-2x although at rare times we got more than that. In other words, 3 wiz+1 lock = same damage as 6-7 wizards. The wizards would Target Support off the warlock to get maximum damage.
Assumption 6 - We kill higher level mobs than a bot would = 1.2x. This is a difficult one to determine. Bots normally kill a few level below. Going after +11 mobs doesn't work though because they have double HP and they give you double exp but you do half the damage. Overall effect is that you gain exp at half the rate because it takes 4 times longer to kill a mob for only 2 times exp gain. If you hunt mobs your level though, they die too quick and the number you have at any time drops below 5 because you can't lure fast enough and the spawn rate can't keep up. So in the end, we found that the best seems to be about 5-7 levels higher. The general rule should be to hunt the lowest level mobs possible where the lure rate matches your killing rate. Also, having hand grinded various chars before, we knew where all the best spawns were.
Assumption 7 - Half the party are there for support and don't do any killing = 0.5x. The party make up is discussed later.
Assumption 8 - Only grind for 20% of the time = 0.2x. We can't play 24/7 and only play for 5 hours a day.
Cumulative multiplier. If you combine all the multipliers above, you get 4.5x. We'll round it down to 4x for simplicity. So in conclusion, if you manage to achieve the above, you can level up 4 times faster which means you can reach 80 in 2 weeks.
Party method
Party make up
- 1 Warrior/Cleric
- 1 Rogue/Cleric
- 1 Cleric/Bard
- 1 Bard/Cleric
- 1 Warlock/Cleric
- 3 Wizard/Clerics
Party play
8 sub clerics means we can have constant double bless from lvl 30 which give us 90-95% damage absorption. 3 wizards gives us constant earth fence. At lvl 40, warrior uses RD and cleric becomes bard so we get extra damage from dance buff - this worked pretty well but there were times when he would switch back to cleric if it was laggy or we screwed up our bless coordination.
Initially, coordinating 8 bless spells was a pain but we soon got the hang of it. Using Vent helped a lot here. The lower level bless was used a few seconds after the higher lvl bless. Most of the time, the higher level bless would not cancel the lower level one but we never really worked out why.
The positional technique we used was to have a small killing circle with the warrior and cleric in the center of the circle. The rogue would constantly lure. Everyone else would be on the edge of the circle killing mobs in the middle. If you got attacked by mobs outside the circle, you would press V and run to the other side of the circle so that the mobs would end up in the center. No-one ever use kb or kd skills except early on when the warrior would use Shield Trash to protect others.
We had a serious problems with gold. I guess we were killing less mobs so we got less gold and drops. At times we could not afford to buy equipment. Usually, by the time you got to lvl 40, you'd have at least 5 mill. None of us had more than 300k. We intended to get wolves but none of us managed to get one.
We also lacked SP - no surprise here. We tried to keep our Cleric mastery at 0 gap so that we could wear higher level armour. The wizards were the main damage dealers and were the most sp starved because they had to maintain all elements since it was important to have all AoE nuke available. We did wonder whether we should have farmed at Ongs for a day but we didn't really enjoy our time at Ongs because they are so hard to target. Most of the time, you ended up targeting a party member. By the time we got to Generals, our wizard mastery was only at lvl 55 or so. Our overall damage got gradually worse and we took longer to level up.
Durability went down fast for some (less than 30 mins). The warrior and warlock carried 3 weapons. Everyone else carried 2. Eventually we enlisted a 9th player who had a lvl 10 and could teleport to us through Guide Riise. We used him to repair and buy stuff for us and we never went to town.
Zerg filled up really quickly. We almost always had someone beserking all the time and the warlock went every few minutes.
Party roles
Rogue - The most important member of the party and the hardest to play. We shared this account because this required the most concentration so we each would take turns to play this. Only one skill was used (Fast shot which has extra 15m range) and you needed to make sure you got back to the party to give/receive bless spells. On slow mobs, this was hard to play because far away mobs would stop running towards the party as you moved away. For a while, we stopped leveling Moving March because speed was too high until we found a better luring technique which was to run in a circle about 10-20m away from the center of the party. Luring was a full time activity and the lure area was pretty big.
Warlock - Second most important member. Below lvl 30, we would all Target Support the warrior but switched to the warlock above lvl 30 to get the maximum damage. The warlock is singularly responsible for the increased (50-100%) damage output of the whole party and is a lot more effective than having a second bard.
Warrior 1h - Had important role earlier on when everyone else needed protection but less so after lvl 30 when everyone could tank. Mainly used to lure mobs closer together. Used RD at lvl 40 and Switched to cleric at times to better attract mobs.
Cleric - Important role earlier on. Switched to bard dance after lvl 40 when the warrior got RD. Still buffed everyone phy/mag def though.
Bard - Surprisingly, the bard hardly ever attacked. Keeping all members mana topped up took a lot more time than anticipated. We would kill non stop for hours without even a second break so I guess it makes sense.
Wizards - Probably the least tiring role to play overall. Coordinated Earth barrier.
Trying it out
We created new accounts and characters on a new server straight after inspection. We used new accounts because we wanted to share the accounts between us so that we all got to experience the different roles and shared the workload. We got to lvl 67-68 by the next inspection. We were all pretty tired after the first week and stopped playing for a couple of days. Each day consisted of grinding constantly for the 5 hours with a 10 min break after 3 hours. Every 20-30 mins the lvl 10 would come to resupply 2-3 members for 30 seconds but the rest of the pt would continue killing. So each daily session was pretty intense.
Day 1 - lvl 23 (22 levels)
Day 2 - lvl 32 (9 levels)
Day 3 - lvl 40 (8 levels)
Day 4 - lvl 48 (8 levels)
Day 5 - lvl 55 (7 levels)
Day 6 - lvl 62 (7 levels)
Day 7 - lvl 68 (6 levels)
Day 8 - lvl 72 (4 levels)
Day 9 - lvl 75 (3 levels)
Day 10 - lvl 77 (2 levels)
Day 11 - lvl 78
Day 12 - lvl 78
Day 13 - lvl 79
Day 14 - lvl 80
We wanted to reach 24 on the first day but didn't quite manage it. We all soloed until lvl 8, then formed a party, and worked our way up to crabs. We went briefly to Evil Order Soldier but they were slow and the spawn rate wasn't that great so we went back to crabs. At lvl 24, we went to kokoru because we had constant bless and we leveled up to 25 in less than 30 mins. We tried Ongs but they were too strong for us even with constant bless. Anything more than 4 pt ongs and we would all die. Later on we tried Huns but their stun and aoe was too annoying. At level 30, we started using double bless and it took us a while to get it working smoothly. Overall, we wasted a lot of time in day 2 and should have leveled up a lot faster.
We had the most fun on day 3 at sunsung where it was bot free and we were trying out different strategies. We were earning 3-4% a minute. We kinda dreaded having to move on to bot infested Hotan. On day 5, we looked forward to the caves but that turned out to be a disappointment because there were a few times when we cleared a room and lots of times when we had less than 5 mobs on us. We eventually went to Yetis which was ok. Caves are ok if you solo but when you have a full time lurer with very long range it is better to stay in the open. Day 6 was good in that Karras and to a lesser extent Bones were surprisingly relatively bot free and the area underneath the temple is a good spot.
The second week wasn't that enjoyable because we were grinding on generals in west niya remains and we'd all spent the last 6 months farming there on our old server. We all spent most of the last 2 days on 79. On the last day we played for a bit longer to get everyone to 80 - Wizards are always the last to lvl up.
From start to finish was actually 16 days because we took a 2 day break in the middle as some of us were not available. We played for 14 days. If we were to do it again, we would have gone for a 2 gap all the way and would probably have leveled faster especially in the latter stages. It didn't help that we wasted sp on certain skills as we were experimenting at times.
Credits: dwckiter
Quelle:
Find ich ehrlich gesagt recht interessant .. in 16 tagen lv 80 mit euro chars is schon net schlecht damit kann man jeden bot beim leveln als handgrinder abhängen .. und ich mein wenn man statt 5stunden am tag 3stunden spielt ( Standart Ticket Time ) dürfte man es in 3 wochen auch schaffen , weil 5stunden sind bestimmt für den ein oder anderen bisle zu viel
Was haltet ihr von dem Theorie ??? meint ihr es ist möglich so wie oben beschrieben nur mit Teamplay in 2-3 wochen lv 80 zu werden ???
Silence