One of the most memorable (PvE) experiences I have from vanilla DAoC, apart from grinding 4fins, was "zerg exping".

I remember a guy on Hib Prydwen organizing a zerg of 10 8-man groups, leveling on very difficult content with high-BAF. I think we begun at level 8-10 on Dampwood Mites (which were around lvl 18-20 and always BAF'd). I also participated in a similar experience with another guild that went from Mid Pry to Hib Excal, and leveled the exact same way, but with a little less people.

Every group had 1-2 PBAEers, which made pretty much all contents super-easy, as long as the tanks just spammed taunt, keeping the PBAEers safe. The important thing was that the camps respawned fast.

I am very curious if this will work on Uthgard.

On Genesis, people quickly figured out that this worked great, so people leveled characters to 50 on fins in Breifine in less than 24 hours. It was a lot of fun, and leveling was so fast and easy, that you barely had time to get bored. Everyone was included, there was always room for people, since this wasn't limited to 8 people.

Would people be interested in testing this in the beta?

If it works, it's important to figure out which camps have a good enough respawn rate to accomodate this.

I hope that this won't work on Uthgard 2.0. While it was fun for a few hours on Genesis, it pretty much ruins the oldschool XPing experience. You don't have to put effort into forming groups, you don't have to travel to different spots, you just stand there and zerg stuff down. No social interaction needed, no bonding with your realm mates, just basically an instant 50 option.

I really hope that this won't be a viable way to level on Uthgard 2.0.

So "zerg" exping should work on Uthgard, but nothing like Genesis.

I don't know what was exactly wrong with Genesis, but in short it was probably 20x more effective than it should have been.

So good thing to test in Beta!

Xalara wrote:I hope that this won't work on Uthgard 2.0. While it was fun for a few hours on Genesis, it pretty much ruins the oldschool XPing experience. You don't have to put effort into forming groups, you don't have to travel to different spots, you just stand there and zerg stuff down. No social interaction needed, no bonding with your realm mates, just basically an instant 50 option.

I really hope that this won't be a viable way to level on Uthgard 2.0.

I see your point, and I agree with pretty much everything you're saying...

But then there's the other side of me, that's 30 years old now, with a full-time job.

Life is a DAoC-killer.

on Uth 1.0, I remember zerg xp at SH at Mid, but you had to be 40+, it was not that easy (low % to wipe, but still), it had to be well organized and so on. That was nice, because u could level up 2-3 times in an evening, which was pretty cool, but at the same time it wouldn't kill the exp process from the start to lev 50.

On Genesis it was just like this: bring a toon, search for grp, hit mobs aoe just 1 time per pull... 50 in 1to5 days...

So personally i wouldn't ban the zerg xp at all, but it should not they way to go from lev 10 to 50.

Llaw wrote:

Xalara wrote:I hope that this won't work on Uthgard 2.0. While it was fun for a few hours on Genesis, it pretty much ruins the oldschool XPing experience. You don't have to put effort into forming groups, you don't have to travel to different spots, you just stand there and zerg stuff down. No social interaction needed, no bonding with your realm mates, just basically an instant 50 option.

I really hope that this won't be a viable way to level on Uthgard 2.0.

I see your point, and I agree with pretty much everything you're saying...

But then there's the other side of me, that's 30 years old now, with a full-time job.

Life is a DAoC-killer.

Yea, of course it's not possible for a lot of players anymore to nerd 24/7 like back in the day. It's not gonna take as long as back in the day, though, to level up to 50. Even without zerg XPing. People know the game way better nowadays, know the classes, mechanics, group synergies, know where to xp etc. This helps out a lot. I think it's gonna take maximum a few weeks, if playing a few times in the evening. That's okay, I think, still makes leveling long enough to meet people and enjoy the experience but not as long as it used to be back in the day.

I remember a time when mids had level 40+ zerg exping groups in Malmohus. Those Drakulvs are vulnerable to cold damage, so dark RMs have been evenly split between 2-3 groups. The exp has been ok and i had fun watching those giant werewolves getting hit by dark nukes.
Unlike the zerg exping on Genesis, it still took alot of time to get up to level 50.

Nezix wrote:I don't know what was exactly wrong with Genesis

If you touched a mob your group got full XP for it.

Anyone expecting to zerg xp on uth is going to be disappointed.

Top wrote:

Nezix wrote:I don't know what was exactly wrong with Genesis

If you touched a mob your group got full XP for it.

Anyone expecting to zerg xp on uth is going to be disappointed.

Zerg XPing is always worth it due to daoc mechanics if you find propper spots to chain pull. More attackers = less resists/misses/more dmg on mobs. You will always benefit from that.

To avoid confusion...

Genesis/Origins zerg xp = did anything, got 100% exp

Real zerg xp = need to do more, don't get 100% exp, but because you and a bunch of people are mowing stuff down its a good rate of return.

It's basically (these numbers are examples)
Player A kills a mob, gets 100 xp
Player B and Player A kill a mob, 60 xp each.
So total earned XP is higher. Now do that with a zerg. Maybe you only get 10 xp each, but you're killing the stuff 20x faster etc.

Your calculation 60+60>100 is just valid till the grp is full. You get sth like 12.5% extra exp/rp per grp member.

back in the day zerg xping off the sentries in avalon city was a common thing on bedevere, it's how i dinged 50 on my inf!

they were very high level mobs and even then, if you were in a full group without a lot of damage, the xp was bad.

pweet wrote:Zerg XPing is always worth it

I said anyone expecting it.

It can happen on Uth but there are a lot of barriers to what the OP is talking about in this thread.

1) We're talking about release of the server, specifically Uth where the 'rules' are a bit different.

I think most people recalling zerg XP are either thinking of Genesis, which had way more low level item drops than Uthgard so the chars had better gear early on (not to mention zerg XP was much easier to do there), or they're recalling zerg XP from live where people already had geared level 50 pbaes they brought to help level their alts.

Neither of those situations will be present on Uth.

2) The best XP places are in frontier/frontier dungs/DF. There aren't any nice SI camps to go to where you're safe. If you're trying to zerg XP in a contested zone after the first week, I'm going to come kill you.

If XP bonuses are the same as Uth 1.0, 1 efficient group in frontier dung should be at a pretty similar XP rate to what most people would get from a good zerg group.

Top wrote:

pweet wrote:Zerg XPing is always worth it

I said anyone expecting it.

It can happen on Uth but there are a lot of barriers to what the OP is talking about in this thread.

1) We're talking about release of the server, specifically Uth where the 'rules' are a bit different.

I think most people recalling zerg XP are either thinking of Genesis, which had way more low level item drops than Uthgard so the chars had better gear early on (not to mention zerg XP was much easier to do there), or they're recalling zerg XP from live where people already had geared level 50 pbaes they brought to help level their alts.

Neither of those situations will be present on Uth.

2) The best XP places are in frontier/frontier dungs/DF. There aren't any nice SI camps to go to where you're safe. If you're trying to zerg XP in a contested zone after the first week, I'm going to come kill you.

If XP bonuses are the same as Uth 1.0, 1 efficient group in frontier dung should be at a pretty similar XP rate to what most people would get from a good zerg group.

1) Zerg XP was a thing long before Genesis.

2) It was done long before SI and rarely in frontiers.

woooosh