Hi all,

I see all kinds of references to "insane" XP for this and "amazing" XP for that, but I was just wondering - what is considered good XP (or even "insane" or "amazing") for a 60 druid soloing (no AA's to speak of, regular clickies - Epic, ES Vambs)? I am just trying to figure out if the XP that I am getting during my solo sessions is sucking wind or if I am doing OK. Please consider this question in the context of %XP/hour and the slider being on either 100% regular XP or 100% AA XP.

Just for comparison purposes, I would also be interested in reading about XP (AA or regular) while grouping. I rarely get time to group, but it would be interesting to know none the less :).

Thanks much,
Tiny

I dunno, when I was leveling I always considered 1 yellow(20%) an hour or better to be good experience. For AAs, one per hour is good.. I usually get about one per 45 minutes when going for AA, LDoN is slower AA then PoP, but of course has other things to compensate.

[Edit] Though, 59 was a hell of a lot slower since when I did it was a hell level =-p

[Edit 2] Besides LDoN this is mostly duo, though I still considered 20% of a level per hour good experience when I soloed, but I never soloed for 60-65, so.

LDoN is good/average AA exp, with an AA every 2ish hours.

Grouped in Sol Ro it's kinda above average, but not on par with the next level, but it's worth grouping simply for the ornate drops IMO.

PoE groups are above average with 1 or 2 AAs per hour, depending on pulls. HoH Dire Charm pet groups is another place that consistantly nets an AA an hour grouped, but never 2 AAs per hour cause you always are waiting on repops.

PoF solo (quadding) or duo exp is insane with 3+ AAs per hour.

Out of all the above, LDoN easily is my first choice, with Sol Ro and PoE tying for 2nd.

My EXP bar is set to it's usual 90% AA/10% Level settings and I'm level 65 with 67 AAs currently.

I judge getting EXP like this:

If I solo say HoH courtyard with a DC'd pet, I can expect a bit more than one FULL BLUE AA bar PER KILL (or roughly 4-5% AA EXP per kill). So in 5 kills, I'd have over ONE YELLOW AA bar, in 24-25 kills I'd have a full AA point. This can easily be done in around 2 hours, averaging about 12 kills per hour. And this is SOLO.

If I'm in a full 6-man GROUP in BoT, getting the full group bonus as well, I can expect that same AA point in about an hour and a half. This is a GOOD group of constant pulls.

I have yet to experience it myself, since I'm not Elemental flagged yet, but I'm told EXP in the Elemental Planes is an AA per hour.

Before I got DC I used to hunt in Nadox or Torgiran, doing the root/rot or charming the Bloodtusks with CoK. I would say I was averaging an AA doing that every 4 hours.

Maybe you can base your own experience on these figures to see if you need to change your strategy some. Good luck!

Well, couple things to keep in mind, original poster said he was 60, with few AAs and no spectacular equipment. Also, assuming no flags, he can't go to HoH, SolRo, etc. The main point here is, "great XP" isn't some constant rate, it varies by your level and equipment/spells. Also, a level 60 killing the same mobs in the same zones as a 65 will get MORE XP per mob than the 65, because of the way bonus XP works.

Tiny, you don't mention whether you have a horse/lizzy or not, that is the most crucial item to effectively root/rot, since you're always medding as long as you don't move. With a horse, I was able to do AAs in about 3 hours at 60 with no AAs, at toiler hill in ME. That's a good benchmark to compare other camps to. Once you start getting AAs like SCM, that time will decrease, since you will use less mana per mob. Interestingly enough, at 60 with no AAs, quadding and root/rot took the same time per AA at toiler hill.

Camps where you can do better than 1AA/3hours, I'd say charming WWs in PoN, or root/rotting Gargs in PoN. However, with Gargs, they break our sub-61 roots A LOT. At 61 and 62, though, this is a great camp, you should be able to do an AA in about 2 hours here. Also, at 60, WWs no longer give bonus XP, so even though you can kill a lot more per hour, the XP rate is still pretty similar to the gargs.

Once you get CoT at 63, there are good camps in PoS and Tactics, probably others, too. I can easily get 1AA per hour at the frogs in PoS. But that's at 63 with 60 AAs.

Regarding soloing vs. grouping, well groups are more fun, and you can tackle camps that you can't do solo, but the XP rate usually slows down unless you stick to camps where you get bonus XP. The mob need to be within 5 levels for you to get bonus XP. As a comparison, if every group member is the same level, you can compare kill rates for same level mobs in the same zone (so same unadjusted XP per mob). Say you get X% AA per mob solo. You get 60% of X with 2 people in the group, so you need to be killing the mobs 66% faster (1/60%) to get the same rate of XP. With 3, you get 46.6% of X per mob, with 4 it's 40%, and with 5 or 6, it's 36%. So with 5 or 6 in the group, if you kill mobs at 3 times the rate you could solo, you're getting more XP per hour than if you were solo.

So, after all that long-winded answer, here's my opinion on "very good" XP rates:

60, no AAs: 3 hours
63, 50-60 AAs, mediocre gear (basically me right now): 1-1.25 hours
65, many AAs, nice gear: 30-45 minutes.

Hope this helps,

Tat

Gosh I suck. I think I have gained maybe 1 and a half AAs in the last 60 hours of play, and one of those was from a flag.

LOL Greggo!

Actually I have gained less than 1 full AA in the last 3 days /played. But I've been working on some tradeskills, including farming, and PLing some alts.

Grats on the flag, though!

Tat

Insane exp is relative. For the old timers, insane exp meant a yellow bubble every two or three days playing four hours a night. Now days, insane exp meant a level every 4 or 5 hours.

On my druid - at 64/65 LDoN was about 7% regular xp. That 7% would normally take me close to 4 hours to get solo. Granted my gear isn't the best and I'm not in a raid guild so I basically pet tank in PoM, or just root rot if I'm not into being too observant. In BoT, in a group I probably was getting a little better xp than in the LDoN..which at my level I consider 'uber xp'.

I think alot of the druids here could easily get better, with better gear and access to better xp zones I likely could too...but for the average casual player like me I think 7% in LDoN or getting a good group in BoT is great. I got lucky one day..our guild decided to do an all day thing in BoT, I think I got close to 30% and I was REALLY REALLY happy with that.

I think alot of it depends on where you are in the game, gear wise, guild wise etc...

The thing about LDoN is what level mission you get relative to your level. My first several missions I got 25% AA per mission (about 90 minutes, set to 100% AA), which is pretty slow. This was as a level 62 in a "level 60" mission. The last one I got about 3-4 times the XP, and I was still 62, but the group avg. was high enough to get a "level 65" mission. Apparently, in the level 60 mission, hardly any mobs were in my bonus range, but in the level 65 mission, most were.

Tat

Heh, when I was your level "insane" exp meant getting a whole yellow AA an hour quadding otters, plus it was great pp~I figured it up once that I must have killed around 50,000 otters and made a few 100,000 pp from selling crusty, gems and otter pelts~from 55-60 and about 80 AA or so. You kids have it easy these days lol =p.

I wanted to add that at level 60 you can score some of the cherry xp locations but others know about them as well and those places will be pretty camped. As you approach 65 you may run into camps that are contested or you may run into players like what sciccoro(sp) met when camping PoS. In other words, you may run into players that train you or give you grief for camping "their" spot. Players know about nice locations and you need to weigh solitude versus competing for cherry spawns.

all depends on perspective, imo. i consider 1aa a week good, but then i dun care much anymore, since hitting 200.

I wanted to add that at level 60 you can score some of the cherry xp locations but others know about them as well and those places will be pretty camped. As you approach 65 you may run into camps that are contested or you may run into players like what sciccoro(sp) met when camping PoS. In other words, you may run into players that train you or give you grief for camping "their" spot. Players know about nice locations and you need to weigh solitude versus competing for cherry spawns.

Thanks all for the replies! They are greatly appreciated! I feel a little bit better now about the AA XP I am getting - it doesn't seem so dismal any more :). I do wish I had more time to get involved in groups because they were always fun and, from many of the comments, they certainly seem to have a pretty good XP factor in the right areas as well. Real life calls at odd and uncertain intervals though, so that just ain't going to happen :).

Thanks all,
Tiny