Mansion of the mourned changed?

Did someone tweak mansion of the mourned?

after the earlier mess up with crash and code acting weird, there are now 4 centiworms that respawn all over the area…hard to kill there with it hunting and being in rooms u don’t expect it to be

As I’ve heard at origin centiworm were designed to respawn in the special room with 4 exits (one-way exits). These exits were broken that’s why centiworm fell to freezer and stay there untill next crush/reboot. It seems now it’s been fixed.

Kida.

i don’t think u understood my question

there are now FOUR centiworms in the area

seriously, if you imms intend to make changes to an existing area, it’d be good and polite to give us a heads up.

making FOUR centiworms wander around mansion isn’t fun when u have no way of know where they are prior to entering the area, and the moment you open the door, you can get swarmed by 2 of them who hunt and kill you.

i hope this change wasn’t in direct response to the amount of xp I’ve been doing because the only reason I’ve been doing so much xp solo is because I’ve been bed-ridden and on alot the past 2 weeks. Brad on Toxis gained as much xp as I did last week, in ONE DAY of grouping (it was probably like 12 hrs) I don’t see group xp being nerfed, or group areas being nerfed.

I rarely rant about changes and nerfs, but this is the 2nd change to mansion. First the coins, then adding extra wandering aggro mobs.

I believe every area should have a room where the player can feel safe, regroup and what not. When the player doesn’t even stand a chance at times before he even STARTS, it’s kinda silly. Sure i could lite up and kill all the centiworms in the area first. But there have been times where THREE of them wander the same corridor, and it takes about 4-5bolts to kill one now. Taking one out is tough already, taking 2 or 3 out together is virtually impossible.

Bear in mind that other than mattimeo, and one other mob, the xp on mobs in mansion aren’t really that high. Rock Scorpions in earth plane die in 1 bolt, and give 300k-400k xp. Rain storms in air plane give 1mil xp and die in 2-3 bolts. Ghosts in xanth give 800k-1mil+ and die in 2-3 bolts. Feel free to nerf these areas too.

Why am i being forced to choose to group? Sure, reward those who choose to group, but why penalize those who choose not to? Because of a medical condition I can’t stare at the screen for too long at a time, and frequently need to take time out from playing, I don’t wanna group under such circumstances.

Sure, I can choose not to kill in mansion, which I am doing now. But I don’t know if they’re going to nerf the other areas should I make the same amount of xp this week.

This is the second change to Mansion and the reason has more to do with areastats than it does with your player’s xp in the last week. I personally had not seen them until just now when I was preparing for this post. Keep in mind, that I did not however make these changes but I agree with them after researching them for the last few hours.

Here is the information regarding the change:

Mansion of the Mourned is the #1 mid to high level area(#9 area total) that is run with nearly 9,000 kills. Rarely a reset is missed…
With over 9,000 kills, the area had only yielded 72 PC deaths( until the recent changes).

** Bal Harbor Town is nearly as dangerous as Mansion is with 10k mob kills and 60 PC deaths, rather sad

The exp yielded per run is around 13-18 million and can be done in less than 2 sancs with close to .008 chance of death.

***A woman has a greater chance of getting pregnant while on birth control and having sex than a player in slothmud has soloing mansion of the mourned. This may be a bad comparison but it certainly should get the point across.

exp yielded is 3-5x easier than other xp areas( meaning other exp areas that are in the range of mansion have 3-5x the pc death ratio

Its should be quite apparent to everyone, this area needed to be tweaked. We have made the area harder because we feel its ok to reward great exp as long as there is a nice risk factor. We are hoping that the additional danger changes fullfill our requirements.

The area has been on our radar since the inception of the new SlothMUD. Areastats is one way we determine which areas need to be adjusted. There will always be areas that will need some type of change.

Im sorry I did not post earlier but work has been extremely time consuming and tiring, my time for Sloth has been greatly reduced and I am trying to use what I have accordingly.

Enjoy,

Splork

thanks for your post splork :)

i apologise if i souded like i was accusing anyone of trying to mess the game up for us, I was jut ranting coz I was caught off-guard :)

i really appreciate all the work everyone’s putting into the game

keep up the good work….great work i mean

With over 9,000 kills, the area had only yielded 72 PC deaths( until the recent changes).

** Bal Harbor Town is nearly as dangerous as Mansion is with 10k mob kills and 60 PC deaths, rather sad

The exp yielded per run is around 13-18 million and can be done in less than 2 sancs with close to .008 chance of death.[/quote:zgmbbxm6]

It makes sense to inform decisions like this area change with data like the above. However, treating all PC deaths equally yields unreliable results. A new 40-prime catching up on later classes might well accept corpsing 5 times, losing a few million each time, to get 100M exp total. A high 5x40 trying to hit his 6x40 level would never think of doing so; he would lose several times the 100M from the corpses. A level-10 character loses no exp from corpsing, so his calculation is again entirely different. Since a death in a group context usually means a raise attempt, the amortized cost of a group death is only 5-15% that of a lone solo death. When the soloist has an expectation of summoning help upon death, the cost falls somewhere in between. You must weight each PC death to account for its specific cost.

For all those reasons, a comparison to Bal Harbor is especially risky. A lot of killing in Bal Harbor is likely from low-level players trying out their abilities; death costs them little. You also have groups running mayor-galio who can raise their dead and therefore take chances. Mansion of the Mourned has a different player profile. A player determines the mansion works well for him, then runs it with great precision as an exp factory. They learn quite precisely how much each mob takes and deals and determine to minimize undue losses.

Taking the median of your run exp range, 15.5M, and the count of mobs in the area normally killed every run, 20, the average exp per kill is 775K. If we suppose the cost of corpsing at 50M exp (perhaps a player in the final run up to 3x40), the corpse rate at which a player breaks even is .0155. That’s only double the death rate you measured, and no player would run an area expecting to barely recoup corpsing losses. It seems that players who die in Mansion of the Mourned get raises fairly consistently to make it profitable at a death rate this high.

I’m not expressing an opinion on whether the change was right, only on the analysis behind the data-driven justification.

that’s a good point which I brought up over gossip

I’ve died my fair share in mansion, and usually i don’t even wait for someone to come along and rescue me.

However, I do make sure that I don’t run the risk of dying all that often, sinec I’m a crunchy mage. I’ve run the area enogh times to know how much mana I need for the mobs that do have a chance of killing me, and how many bolts each mob should take. If I find my mirrors broken and my hp running too low for safety, i either recall or flee, heal up and mirror up and go back to kill it.

People in groups, however, just die if they’re low. Fleeing and recalling midfight is frowned upon.

I do agree that every area should have a level of danger, and this does indeed make it more fun rather than the usual monotonous hacking and slashing and blasting.

Why don’t you use mansion as a template for good areas that work?

What do your stats tell you about Perseverance? :twisted:

umm my msg got cut off it seems

what i was saying is I’m all for increasing danger in areas, but is it possible to increase the chance of death without decreasing the chance of surviving? make the mobs inside harder, etc…

putting 4 of the same mob that is perma hunt and perma aggro is a bit OTT. not to mention they hit like a truck and aren’t worth the xp.

I did a count of the number of rooms where the centiworms can wander, and there’s only 9 of them. 4 wandering, hunting aggro mobs in 9 rooms, IS excessive if u asked me. not to mention that the rooms are pretty much split up into 4 one section and 5 the other, and the centiworms can’t cross over. So there’s even basically a chance for 4 of them to be in one section tho I haevn’t encoutered that. The worst I’ve encoutered is 3 in the 5-room section.

so yeah, been trying various tactics when doing mansion now…

there’s 3 centiworms respawned in the 2nd section past the closet

that section is un-doable until a reboot/crash i suppose

how am I supposed to kill 3 centiworms together?

nearly killed me both times i tried

I’m not complaining, just giving feedback on what it’s like now

Some people don’t like to group and prefer to go it alone. Heaven forbid it be possible to sort of keep up with those who loaf in bh xp groups.

Some people don’t like to group and prefer to go it alone. Heaven forbid it be possible to sort of keep up with those who loaf in bh xp groups.[/quote:3bex9ckm]

Groups give more xp than solo. Not sure why that should be so but it is.

Personally I dislike most groups because they’re boring if I know the run and confusing if I dont. I just dont understand why we’re forced to join groups if we want to gain xp at a reasonable rate.

Looking at some groups I’d say that for most the time at least half the group is breaking rule 4 … seems its not enforced for groups, worst that happens is a player is recalled … perhaps I can similarly break rule 4 while soloing … both are equally wrong but if I did and was found out I’d be wiped.

(Not asking for permission to bot … just pointing out an aspect of the discrimination against soloists that exists)

That all said I think it unfair to link this what seems a sensible rebalance of an out of kilter area to nerfing soloing. The balance may not be right yet, but it was wrong before.

In response to Atwell, I was only attempting to show that we keep stats of everything in this game from areastats, to mobstats, to playerstats, to lost concentration on spells and to skillstats. And because of this, while they are not perfect, it becomes very obvious to us which areas need adjusting UP and which areas may need a little adjusting down. Or what skills and spells need improving, etc.

 As for Mayor Galio, he has been killed 42 times since the last reset and only 2 PCs have been killed:) 

I simply cant compare other areas to the mansion because the other exp areas in the mansions range are hit 1/4 to 1/5 the times the mansion has and most of those zones have at least triple the death ratio.

This adjustment was nothing more than getting an area back inline with the rest. For those of you who have been around since the rebirth of SlothMUD, we have done very little adjusting of areas and this is the way we would like it. We tried to remain in the thinking that giving back to the players is better than taking away but sometimes this is simply not the case, and this was one of them.

As for soloing against group exp, we have made quite a few adjustments in the exp calculator to give back more exp for soloers and small groups and Im pretty sure you guys are aware of this. We are listening to you guys and for the most part we are all quite happy, I think….

Enjoy,

Splork

Thraxas and Wimpy have sent me emails recently and hopefully I can take a few of their ideas and implement them soon.

[/quote:1cqrpkns]

Thanks for the adjustments, though I can’t say I have noticed any significant change in my solo xp. I’m pretty sure that the 25 people following Toxis around right now are running xp laps around me, despite my best efforts at hitting mobs by myself.

It is entirely possible, however, that I just suck.

yup splork i know the reasoning behind changing up mansion a little

thing is it’s made more annoying now more than anything :P

Mike (minstrel) brought up a good point today

Mansion is run primarily by mages who are at least level 40

Us mages have 4 or 5 mirrors at lvl 40, these give us a real high chance of bailing a fight that isn’t going down well.

Still, I died 20over times last week (or was it the week before) so I don’t think it’s quite as skewed :P

So now it’s better to run areas recklessly rather than safely? I’ll make sure I die a few times every week at whatever area i find good to kill in now, just so the areastats don’t get skewed! kidding :P

Just out of curiosity, why is the “official policy” of the mud admin to encourage grouping? Ppl will group no matter what, because most of them are probably lazy and want fast xp. End result are ppl dying in areas they shouldn’t be dying in.

Turns out soloing is not such a good idea anyway. Hive did me in. I think I’m done.

(Not asking for permission to bot … just pointing out an aspect of the discrimination against soloists that exists)[/quote:14gh997t]

In S3, a leader’s botting accusation normally meant “You’re not doing your job, whether you’re an automaton or just a human contributing poorly.” Your contention seems to be in that spirit; it’s hard to imagine that S4 suddenly attracted numerous people busily writing scripts to automate the bulk of their group duties. Being lazy or afk in a group is not itself a rules violation, and it’s also something that players can punish quite well on their own.

That said, hypothetical enforcement would vary. Group automata span the continuum from ‘auto-assist" on up, but a plausible solo bot would be at least two orders of magnitude more complex. Solo bots would never toe the border land of legality like a group bot can do.

Turns out soloing is not such a good idea anyway. Hive did me in. I think I’m done.[/quote:3e0b71id]

Bennett, your class order seems absolutely perfect for nailing hive. Talk to me in game sometime and I’ll help ya out.

Solo xp has always been less that group xp. When you add people, the total xp goes up, but the difficulty goes down. I’ve always thought the idea behind this was to push people to be social and interact in big groups.

Personally, I like small groups or solo. I’m glad solo xp was raised. But honestly I think it’s the bigger open xp groups that keep our numbers up. If there was no group xp bonus, people would be more selective about who they group with and it would be harder for noobs to break into groups.

I don’t really like how the xp groups zoom people past the early levels. I like the low level areas. I think they’re very fun and playable. But lots of players just soak up xp from the xp groups and never bother with the low level areas. What’s the perfect balance? I don’t know.

agreed juggs

it’s too easy to soak up xp in those bigass xp groups

and most ppl care too much about getting xp fast, to bother teaching the new players much

which is why i chose to solo when this new version of sloth came out

I led tons in sl3, and mostly joined groups…and I realised how little i know about the mud or mudding in general

it’s kinda funny to see how some 3x40,4x40 characters just sitting aroud at the in or well when there aren’t xp goups going around. Been goign aroud poking my nose into ppl’s weekly stats and it’s sad that some people don’t even bother to play when there aren’t groups running

Actually, the imms defined “botting” as gaining exp while not being physically at the keyboard or playing your character. Whether you have a script up to kill mobs automated or are just ebing afk while in a group doesn’t matter.

I remember that a char once got wiped because she went afk midgroup to send her kids up the schoolbus (or so she claimed)

I’ve always kept a lookout for people who don’t do anything while the group is running, either jut standing there while ppl are fighting mobs, or not using their mana at all. Despite the numerous times I brought it up to either a leader or imm, nothing was done, I was even told to STFU by leaders

It’s funny how some people react adversely to dying. Dying bothers me very little to be honest. I’ll just learn (hopefully) not to make the same mistakes.

But it seems now that learning an area well enough to not die in it brings about changes to the area?

But it seems now that learning an area well enough to not die in it brings about changes to the area?[/quote:1s96sf18]

I’ve never understood why changing an area that’s clearly out of line with other areas is wrong. There’s a mob in Mansion that gives me more xp in 1 kill than I can get in most areas in a full run - and I didn’t have to learn it, I walk into its room while lit and I blast it.

You said you’re soloing this time around to learn the mud, but you’re admittedly squatting on 1 area and running it to death. If you’re able to get such good xp in that area, and you are able to run it without dying because you spent the time to learn it, then find another area even close to being comparable. If it wasn’t out of balance, then there should be other areas that you’re able to run and get similar xp.

With your logic, you should be able to camp out in any area, run it to death without getting killed, and the immorts would change it. It would be something fun to try. Do it in sky elves, where the xp is insanely low already, just to see if it gets changed.

The upper limit of my solo runs is about 4m (a lucky olympus run). I can get that in 3 mobs in a group… why should I solo for xp when I am so weak… simple equation for players not running mansion? hehe.

With prongs and terra’s cut… you’d have to raise solo xp by several times to even interest me at the moment. I sure am glad Toxis and Rogue are around to get me out of the early caster blues. Toxis is a good leader, but I think he claims a bit of the credit for his wife… :D and you can’t do good xp with out a good tank whose nearly always there when he leads like Rogue. So they are a good team.

I will have to improve my grip to about 20 damage, or my mana by over 200, and gain 4x40-5x40 shift forms before I can even get close to doing what a group does in 3 mobs.

At avatar on s3 I could run more xp solo than BH xp. I guess we will have to wait and see what it’s like now.

In general less than 3x40 players (exclude thieves/mages) are pretty weak, and I’m afraid 80-150k solo mobs isn’t good enough. But that’s about all we can do to use the full duration of our sancts and mana for the longest xp period. Sure we can kill 1.5m mobs… but we have to regen, and most 400k mobs hurt too much or take to long.

Might I point out… group xp is even higher these days, because we can get cheap levels to boost our totals in another 4 classes. I’m not quite 3x40 but I don’t remember getting as much xp from groups as what I do now.

For me the gap between solo and group has never been greater - this is my overall point[/color:3or7uodv] - in all my time on sloth. Looking forward to monking on lyme, I am banking on the fact I can run solo here, pity you nerfed the heck out of my mobs.

I don’t see Thraxas in groups, so it’s a bit cheap to moan about it, but I think there point is valid. Poit joins when he can/wants to, which is a wise choice in my opinion.

You might have raised solo xp, and I’m a fan of the work Juggleblood does to fix most poor areas, but it seems you raised xp on mostly crap areas and nerfed the heck out of my old favourites.

How is a mage going to get solo xp on lyme any more? Fight over Necropolis?

Areas I applaud the changes in are Hive, Underdark, Dark Chasm these areas are back in vogue in my opinion.

I honestly expect the solo situation to get better as I get more powerful, but honestly immortals… right now it’s the worst it’s ever been for me on this game to solo xp. It’s a < 4x40 kind of problem mainly, it will get better, this is an observation, not a whine, I’m afraid grouping is way too good at the moment to be disappointed. So good, I have to loan money each day to pay for levels… can ya do something about group coins? :P

if you’d get your head out of your bunghole and actually see what I solo in, you’ll know that I don’t squat in mansion.

I already said I’m all for changes, but this “change” is just a lazy and sloppy way of getting people to die

I don’t see Thraxas in groups, so it’s a bit cheap to moan about it, but I think there point is valid. Poit joins when he can/wants to, which is a wise choice in my opinion.

[/quote:1rqdjoov]

My point is I dont really like being in groups (… so why should I join? For the common good perhaps?) My objection is that I’m forced to join groups to get xp at a reasonable rate … actually right at the moment I just not joining groups and therefore havent levelled in a month.

Calling me cheap for not playing the aspects of the game I dont enjoy is just well typically jezer … enjoy

I agree the area may have needed changes, but making it a death trap by spawning 4 aggro hunting mobs across 9 rooms probably isn’t the best way…reduce mob xp and give credit to those who know the area well and want to continue to run area. If it isn’t as profitable, they will run other areas as well. Just because ppl make killer xp in an area and they don’t die doesn’t mean you need to necessarily force deaths…just means you need to find a way to allow them to run it without the extreme benefit of unbalanced xp.

I’m with you on this one. I’m not a fan of following the xp train either. It’s just a necessary evil on sloth.

The group xp multiplier is a pretty core aspect of the game. I don’t imagine this will ever change.

Maybe it detracts from gameplay, for the reasons you said. But I really believe that withouth this feature, our playerbase would shrivel up and die. A lot of people log on, look to see if anything interesting is going on, and if not, log off.

We’re perfectly willing to entertain suggestions on how areas can be improved to be more playable. The mansion change isn’t part of an effort to nerf solo xp. It’s an effort to balance out the areas. How can we improve other areas, if the players insist on camping out on a select few. Left unchecked it gets to the point where players are fighting with each other over a few areas while the rest sit empty. And it’s hard to improve the other areas without player feedback.

despite having solo’ed mostly in mansion the past few weeks, I do hate camping in an area, which is why I’ve been sailing aroud the continents looking for areas to kill in. I’ve also been killing quite a bit lately in air/water/earth/fire planes, and necropolis on lyme.

I’ve lost several hundreds of millions from dying in mansion, so I don’t see how it’s as safe as it was made out to be. It is still a highly profitable area in terms of xp I do admit.

I suggest making the centiworms “patrol” like the patrol in xanth, instead of having them hunt. spawning several hunting aggro mobs in a confined space of 4 rooms IS a deathtrap.

The “problem” with the old mansion was that much of the mobs attacks in there can be countered with spells. Most of the mobs haev only 2 attacks, so having mirrors up makes it such that if the battle lasts less than 2 rounds, the mob usually doesn’t do much damage to me. Some mobs firewind, that can easily be countered with elemental resistance and spellshield. Although reflection seems not to work on any of the mob blasts in mansion.

Mattimeo’s xp (about 2.7mil if you’ve killed the area a few times, about 4mil if it’s eben up for a while) is excessive. It’s easily taken down in 3-4 bolts, and if I go in with near full hp, all mirros up and spellshield, it hurts me but doesn’t bring me near death.

If the imms decided that the danger level in mansion has to be brought inline with the rest of the mud, then change it according to how the rest of the mud is dangerous. Splork mentioned that even BH town has a higher level of death rate, but I don’t see hunting aggro mobs that swarm on BH.

I suggest reducing the number of centiworms in there to maybe 2, and tweaking the mobs that seem to boost the xp in there. For the longest time I avoided killing mattimeo, and I suspect some lower lvl mages who kill in there do avoid mattimeo and perhaps murdering mind. The xp on the rest of the mobs aren’t really out of line with xp in other mage areas, so to make it such that a lower lvl char can’t kill in there because a higher lvl char can easily make xp in there isn’t fair to the lowbies.

Perhaps the mobs that give higher xp can be placed in an “extension” to the mansion or the 2nd part past the closet. Hence if anyone wants the boosted xp, they have to deal with the dangers that come in that part of the mansion. Or make mattimeo call on/spawn/summon centiworms only if u try to kill it.

Making the area a deathtrap regardless of whether u were even capable of gaining the obscene xp that has been publicized there, is unfair.

Truth is, even if all the mobs there were worth 400k-800k I’d still kill in there coz there just aren’t that many mage areas to kill in at lower levels.

this has nothing to do with mansion of the mourned but speaking of areas where tweaking might be nice.. Undead city on ss with those 2 stupid ambushing vampires that you can’t kill but kill you very fast is getting to be very ridiculous. I wanted to teach someone a spell and couldn’t even find a way to deal with them. I used to be able to toss them and they used to be a couple of winds to kill them. Somewhere they got bumped up so bad that most people can’t even mess with that area b/c of the 2 of them. Shrug just my 2 cents.

Shyla

Are you sure they r bigger than they used to be?

Agreed regarding the vamps, they are just shockingly annoying. You can still run through the area as a ferret, but you can forget soloing in that area at anything below avatar.

Before they werent aggro to anyone with undead visage and were much smaller.

As this has moved onto other areas can I make a plea for players not to leave the cell doors in hellwell open, if you do rakashas will wander into the central spiral and turn that into a potential deathtrap too, but then this isnt new always been an annoyance,

I am not sure they STILL are i haven’t tried killing them recently but before you could kill them in 2-3 winds then they got changed that that didn’t even make a dent in the vampires. And unless they changed it they attack you as a ferret too.

Shyla

Before they werent aggro to anyone with undead visage and were much smaller.[/quote:3o2l6gm7]

Before what?

not sure when they got changed. Someone thought it might have been for a quest and they never got changed back but they got changed about 2 years ago or so no notice they were just NASTY.

Shyla

not sure when they got changed. Someone thought it might have been for a quest and they never got changed back but they got changed about 2 years ago or so no notice they were just NASTY.

Shyla[/quote:1u5uxffw]

They have been reset back down to a manageable level for a month or two now. I don’t know if it’s because people didn’t know they were toned down again, or if they’re still pretty big that people are still experiencing problems, but they aren’t what they had been.

Thanks blackmore I for one didn’t know that I haven’t even tried them because they were so close to insta kill before it wasn’t good to even try. I will have to try next time I am on and see how it goes

HUGS

DEB

The main problem I think about when I read these posts is the easy fix. Instead of beefing up the areas that suck it seems the good areas get nerfed, to bring them down to the level of the crap areas. I am not saying the mansion is that much worse now but I just feel like it serves the mud better to spruce up the areas that nobody goes to instead of beating up the popular areas. I concur that sometimes grouping is not in order.

We are always adding things to the older areas, just last month we added over 30% exp increases and gold increases to probably 40+ areas.

That still does not change the fact that when a few areas are obnoxiously better than others its impossible to expect us to bring the other 300 areas up to the 3 areas level. Its a more reasonable expectation to understand that we are going to bring the other 3 down some. Even with the changes we make to these areas, they will still rank as the most run areas because thats just how out of whack their exp or gold was.

Splork

And I agree, I dont think everyone should have to group, and they dont…

From the top 20 list, it is evident that those who decide not to group are in general making a lot less xp than those who group. This includes those exploiting “obnoxiously better” areas.

The fact is, groups keep this mud alive, it keeps the playerbase strong, social, and hungry for more. Without groups this mud would not of survived 3 yrs, none the less the twentieth year that we will soon be reaching.

Sorry, this is a group mud. We have made great strides with solo xp and we will continue to try to improve in this area. However, group exp will always be higher. This has been and always will be a “group” mud.

Thats really the last time Im going to apologize for it because to be honest, its the main reason we have survived and Im very content with where our mud stands today. We are in a far better position than we were a year ago.

If your a player and you want to make as much exp soloing as you do grouping, this is probably the wrong mud for you. Thats as honest as I can get.

Enjoy,

Splork

Hey rick

you don’t need to apologize for anything.

truth is we enjoy this mud for what it is. I enjoy soloing even with all the challenges faced. You and the rest of the team have done a great job with the mud, keep up the good work.

again, no need to apologize for anything!

If your a player and you want to make as much exp soloing as you do grouping, this is probably the wrong mud for you. Thats as honest as I can get.

[/quote:2al2kjjk]

I think the issue is more that even if you solo and exploit the “obnoxiously better” areas that are so unbalanced as to be broken, you STILL get blown past by the trivially easy BH group cycle. Death on BH groups is pretty rare, even for the tank. There’s not too many area procs, and no instakill silent disengagers unless Uhhhl spawns. Add that to the guaranteed raise attempt by a well-bonused cleric and those 72 deaths in mansion seem pretty damned dangerous by comparison.

14m if you genocide a full (broken) area. Tox made over 100m without stopping to regen last night - even without the leadership bonus the rest of us got insane amounts that run too. Solo XP is not in any danger of overtaking that.

As an aside, are you tracking deaths or corpses? BH will have a really skewed corpse count do to soloers being recalled and shocked/unraised at WG.

Right now the only thing I ever solo for is coins (and the smaller AQs), just to keep up with the level costs of group XP. (Group coin area please! I’ve had to say ’no’ to groups because I couldn’t afford the level I’d have gained in them!)

I did make 101 mil my share last night before we regened but I have also had groups where I make 15 mil my share. Keep in mind there were a lot of bonuses on last night as well. We just happened to have some very powerful players in the group, nearly a perfect group, and that happens very rarely.

My average exp run is still around 25 to 35 mil my share.

Please, someone design a good group gold area please.

-Toxis

I two ran Luhhan in westwood the other night with full pets and got 1.7m xp. I half ran an aged prison wight in skeep last night and got 2m xp even. I simply don’t bother doing xp at the moment solo, because 3hrs solo = 1hrs group. There is a HUGE CHASM in the xp given by some area’s compared to others. My top example is only 4x diff. I bet I can find areas 8x better than another area, for time/xp. Killing a maenad on BH takes more effort for 50k than a poor man in oly for 500k.

Typically shadow keep and murkwood runs suit me the most. Most days people are running these areas so I can’t. Not being able to relo or far gate makes it inconvenient to go to another continent. There really isn’t solo xp on BH (>1x40), and too weak for Lyme without groups. On a good day I get shadow keep to myself… only to find the second runs yield 30% less in the next run, or even less when you factor in age xp. (A total of 50% less)

So slothmud is group orientated… do you know how hard it is to get leaders and groups running some days… do you know what it’s like to play in a non US time zone on weekdays? Loose players to boredom, it’s a simple equation.

Here’s another simple equation… 29.3b for me till 5x40. 3m xp per run. That’s a little under 9800 solo runs… at 10mins each… 67.82 days of consecutive playing and hitting shadow keep to get 5x40… BTW this is only 33 levels away for me. Who is going to do this and still feel like playing? I dare you to stick to your guns, say slothmud is a group mud… do nothing about solo xp…

In my opinion there are three factors killing solo xp on sloth.

1, MAJOR HUGE differences in area’s for xp (10x diff and higher)

2, Kill history stamp is too heavy for solo

3, Melee Dam by < 3x40 compared to magic is a fraction low (tested in the arena) OR xp given for Mob Hit Points is too low (Maenads have more hp than a poor man in Oly, seems xp to dependant on dam and mob level than the simple fact more hp’s makes a low level mob harder to kill)

Please, someone design a good group gold area please.

-Toxis[/quote:3skca777]

not good enough to just bot for xp?

Word. What Al said.

Great, two pricks on the mud now.

Al is all talk. He’s a sweetie at heart. I on the other hand am the right hand of Cthulhu.

[img:35ih06y4]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_DyGGlXVMdOg/SQ2gWTrHzCI/AAAAAAAABKc/48O45ZTUpZs/s400/cthulhu4prez-preview1.png[/img:35ih06y4]

back on topic, since there’s still interest in this discussion.

comparing group and solo xp just isn’t that helpful. if you read this whole thread you’ll understand the rationale of the admin. feel free to disagree of course. Are there really that many players who want the group xp multiplier nerfed?
yes, xp values between zones vary quite a bit. Stop comparing things to skeep please. When this rendition of sloth opened up, we got barraged with complaints about skeep, because the new xp formula nerfed the xp there big time. So as a concession to the players and in honor of skeep being so popular historically, it was brought back up somewhat artificially. It wasn’t just skeep tho, Splork put xp bonuses on a LOT of areas to encourage people to try out new stuff. So xp and difficulty are certainly not perfectly congruent across zones. It’s trial and error.
If you have specific ideas on how an area could be improved, follow up on them. I got a pm on Hive for instance saying it was a deathtrap. Then the same player pm’d me back saying that no, it’s ok, he was just pissed that he died. Another player gave me some positive feedback on hive changes and said it would be great if certain bees were slimmer. But then when I reply and ask which bees, I get no answer. I get reports that there’s a mob in theris which is unhittable. I reply ‘which mob?’ and get no answer. I finally had to check the ac of every mob in the zone and figure out which one was the problem.

I would love it if xp, gold, fun, and challenge could all be optimized. But it’s a lot easier said than done. The devil is in the details.

Another player gave me some positive feedback on hive changes and said it would be great if certain bees were slimmer. But then when I reply and ask which bees, I get no answer. [/quote:39sttszl]

I replied, the board is screwed up with that PHP Failed thing. It lets the posts through when it does that, not the PM’s. My point to making the bee’s skinner was related to the fact +14 dam is a hard task to scrap together for a 1x40, and it’s who hive is suited for xp wise. So a fraction skinner on the workers/drone at least. Fighters and sentries what ever I guess. Just an idea.

One area that needs a tweak imo is westwood. It used to be small groups could start there, but tomb has taken that spot. Mobs are just too thick for the xp. A group of 3 can’t even really get decent xp there.

SHADOW KEEP[/size:39sttszl] is 4x better :twisted:

What if Westwood was a bit more like ogres? It would be great to encourage 3-4man xp groups there.

I’m not comparing group and solo xp

I’m comparing the vast disparity between how group and solo xp are treated on th mud.

When the admin sees good xp made in popular group areas, they bump up the “unpopular” areas to make them in line with the popular ones.

When the admin sees good xp made in popular solo areas, they nerf it to make it in line with the ones nobody runs.

The blanket statement is simply incorrect Gimlet. The only solo area that has been touched since the beginning of this version of Slothmud is Mansion, which was, at one point, probably dealing out 10-12x the xp rate of any other area and the majority of the player base knows it needed adjusting.

At around that same time, I amped up the exp in over 40 other areas, and plenty of them were solo. So Im not entirely sure where your last post is coming from because you of all people knows this stuff:)

[

Splork

heh yeah i dunno why i posted that either….got carried away after reading jezer’s posts :P

group hug

hug request accepted

One other thing to consider when we talk about zones being incongruent, is that a mob that is very easy for one player can be very challenging for another.

With regard to Westwood for example, it might be crap xp for one player, because it’s thick, but to a smaller player it could be awesome xp because he don’t hit well. Think about how choppy valk mobs are, and the noobs love em.

I can remember leveling rub as a noobie on the boys, girls, and ladies of westwood. They were pretty good if I remember correctly. And I remember grouping with other noobs on the bigger mobs. To larger players, those mobs would have been a waste of time.

I realize the xp formula affects things. Players can just figure out which mobs are best for them now. I’m a bit skeptical that a low level area like westwood would change much. I still think it’s decent for a low level tank (-8 ?) and a few lowbie followers. If it’s not, explain to me why pls.

westwood[/quote:62p5vzql]

Villagers and what not are fairly exceptable, as good xp for lowbie high ac characters. Not as good as murkwood, but ok. They also have more coins, but they flee :(

As for the bigger mobs, [u:62p5vzql]I think they just have two many hitpoints[/u:62p5vzql]. Lets think, 4 man group, high warrior/mage/small cleric and a necro.

9 Attacks say, a lil blast. 300-400k for the lowbies… 700k for the tank. 1-2 mins per mob. Meh. Shrug. I dunno, maybe your right… you just don’t see 3-4 man BH xp groups much, they run too slow. Why would you run westwood? Go run wights/stalkers at the end of the day.

I do see small groups. While people in the western hemisphere are bumbling around in small groups, you are probably sound asleep. I remember when I was in Riyadh, I could catch parts of the big xp groups, but generally activity was low during my prime playing hours.