Experience points

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Experience points (or XP) are a measure of how much a player has learnt from their experience. They are earned by various means - most significantly by killing enemies - and can be spent to increase levels in skills.

Gaining experience points

There exist many ways by which experience points can be gained:

Kill and burial XP

Kill XP is earned when a player kills an enemy, and burial XP is awarded when the corpse is buried. The amount of XP rewarded increases in relation to the 'difficulty' of the target killed.

Note that:

  • You can only get burial XP once per victim - recovering the corpse and re-burying it does not award further XP.
  • You can only get burial XP within five minutes of the npc dying. Corpses buried after this time give no XP.
  • Even when npcs seem identical, they often give different amounts of kill and burial XP. E.g. three farmers in the melon farms outside Djelibeybi will give three different amounts of XP.
  • Npcs that don't leave behind corpses--such as zombies, vampires, mommets, eggplants--seem to just give kill xp.

Kill and burial XP are related, but work somewhat differently. Kill XP appears to start out the same as the burial XP, but it's adjusted downwards in a few ways that burial XP is not:

  • If the victor is of higher guild level than the victim, then the XP is scaled down according to the ratio of their levels (eg. a level 200 player killing a level 100 victim only gets half the XP that a level 100 player killing the same victim would).
  • The XP is scaled down in proportion to the victor's wimpy level (so a wimpy of 10% results in 90% of the XP being awarded, for example).
  • If the victor's XP rate is over 100,000 XP/hour, kill XP is scaled down, apparently according to the ratio of 100,000 to your rate (so that when your rate is 200,000 XP/hour, you'll get half the kill XP you normally would, and when it's 500,000 XP/hour, you'll get a fifth).
  • If the npc is in combat with you, but you are not actually in the room when it dies, you only get half of "your share" ("your share" being the amount you would have gotten if you had been in the room when it died and not grouped with other combatants) of the kill xp.

Burial XP, on the other hand, is only penalized when your hourly rate reaches 500,000 xp/hour (as with most types of xp), apparently according to the ratio of 500,000 to your rate. Also, unlike with kill XP, if you're not in the room when the corpse is buried, you still get your share of the burial XP (although you only get your own share, not any shared burial xp from groupmates).

There are several things you can do to get rid of corpses besides burying them normally:

  • Ritually bury: When you ritually bury a corpse, you get the same burial XP as usual--but at the same time, you get XP from the command itself. If you fail to ritually bury a corpse, you get the command XP, but not the burial XP--if this happens, you can still bury the corpse normally to get the burial XP.
  • In some rooms, such as on bridges, corpses that are "buried" show up in the room below. You get burial XP when you "bury" it this way--there's no need to go to the room below and bury it again.
  • Order creeping doom to devour: Ordering a creeping doom to devour a corpse is incompatible with getting burial XP from that corpse. You get no XP when it devours it, and it won't devour a corpse that's been buried.
  • Turn corpse into spectre: If you perform Unquiet Spirit to turn a corpse into a spectre, you won't get burial XP. You can, however, perform the ritual on corpses that have been buried and recovered.
  • Destroy with Withering Touch: If you perform Withering Touch on a corpse to destroy it, you will get burial XP. You can only perform the ritual on corpses that haven't been buried yet.

It makes no difference whatsoever who deals the deathblow or who performs the actual burial. Even if someone who wasn't in combat with the npc buries the corpse, you'll get the same amount of burial XP.

Division and sharing of kill and burial xp

When an npc is fighting multiple people[1]--who are either in the same room or at most one room away[2]--the kill and bury XP awarded by that npc will be affected. First, the kill and bury XP are divided by the number of people the npc is in combat with (again, only counting people in the same room as the npc or immediately adjacent rooms). Then, a small amount--perhaps 10 or 12 XP for two people--seems to be added.

After any division that takes place, kill and bury XP are shared with groupmates as follows:

  • Up to half of each person's kill and burial XP is shared with any groupmates who are in the same room and less than five minutes idle. This sharing takes the form of giving free XP to your groupmates--your own XP isn't diminished by it.
  • If a groupmate's guild level is less than half of your own, you only share a fraction of your kill and burial xp equal to (their guild level/your guild level), instead of half.
  • You do share kill and burial XP with non-combatant groupmates. However, combatants will get more kill and burial XP overall, since they get their own share of the kill and burial XP in addition to shared XP from groupmates.

Note that pets and fruitbats being in combat do cause the xp to be divided, but they don't share any, even with their owners or summoners. This includes moon dragons--despite the fact that as soon as they're attacked, they fly up to perch on your shoulder and so aren't involved in the combat beyond draining xp.

The end result for the simplest case--where all combatants have the same guild level and are grouped with each other--is that each person gets half of solo XP, plus solo XP divided by twice the number of combatants, plus a bit (from the small amount that is added after the division, and then shared).

Grouped combatats Approximate kill and burial XP for each combatant
1 100%
2 75%
3 67%
4 63%
5 60%
6 58%

Since non-combatant groupmates in the same room will get half of their combatant groupmates' kill and burial XP shared with them, this adds up to 50%[3] regardless of the number of combatants.

It's worth emphasizing that this only holds true for that simplest case. More typically, group members will not all have exactly the same guild level, even if they are similar, so they will get different amounts of kill xp to begin with (and, of course, share different amounts of kill xp with their groupmates).

Interestingly, groupmates with lower guild levels can raise the overall amount of XP you get from an npc, because their lower guild level causes them to receive more kill XP, which is then partially passed on.

Totems and dust devils are a little more complex in the way they share XP. They will share up to half their kill and bury XP with their summoner, but only a quarter of it with the summoner's groupmates. So, for the summoner, they act as an extra groupmate, but for the summoner's groupmates they'll "drain" more XP. If one of these minions disappears (i.e. is dismissed or dies) before the npc dies, it won't be included in the division: it will be as though the minion was never in the fight. However, it if disappears after the death but before the burial, it will be included in the division of burial XP, but won't share any of the burial xp. It's therefore a good idea to bury before your minions disappear.

Command XP

Nearly all guild commands give XP when executed. For the most part, the amount of xp they give is twenty times the amount of gp spent. However, if the gp spent is 5 or less (such as with value, or fueling a broomstick with 5 gp or less), no xp is given.

This XP award is reduced based on how often the command in question has been executed and how many other commands have been executed in the meantime. Every time the player executes a command (or casts a particular spell/ritual), the MUD increments a count for that command. The counter is halved if the command hasn't been executed in the last 5 minutes. The XP award is divided by (1 + count) if the count is less than 10, and is set to zero if the count is 10 or more.

As of November 1, 2012[1], command xp is no longer shared with groupmates.

Heartbeat XP

The simplest of all XP to gain, heartbeat XP is a uniform 3 XP per 'heartbeat'--until your xp rate reaches 500,000 XP/hour, at which point it drops to 2 XP per heartbeat (and further drops when your xp rate reaches higher amounts). The heartbeat rate is approximately one per two seconds, though this varies in periods of lag.

Exploration XP

Exploration XP is a small amount of XP  research If this has been marked on a page, it's because there was something that probably isn't known, that the person who edited the page thinks could be found out. Perhaps you could figure this thing out, and be famous evermore.  awarded to a player whenever they enter a room that nobody else has entered for a while. You can get exploration XP from entering a room which already contains an npc or another player (although the other player presumably must have been sitting there for a while), and you can get it from entering a room you just looked into. For the most part, you get exploration xp from non-terrain rooms--rooms in cities, villages, etc. While you usually get no xp from terrain rooms, you can sometimes get small amounts on the roads in the terrains.

Exploration xp seems to range from around 0 to 470 xp per room, with the higher amounts being rarer. It's unclear what determines the amount you can get; it may be random.

Rooms don't seem to give exploration XP shortly after a reboot.

There are achievements in the Exploration category for getting various amounts of exploration XP:

Mission and job XP

Jobs, or missions, give varying amounts of XP and money, depending on the specific job. You can do them as many times as you like.

Some jobs have a waiting period before you can get another one. With others, you can get another one of the same type right away (if it's available), but you'll get less XP and money from it.

With sausage-making missions in particular, if the mission is done while grouped, the xp is split evenly among groupmates.

Agatean family missions work differently. You cannot apply for a specific mission, but are assigned one randomly when you ask for a mission. You must be a member of the family to do missions for them, and you must wait half an hour between finishing (or failing) a mission before you can get another one.

Quest XP

Quests give an amount of XP related to the QP value of the quest  research If this has been marked on a page, it's because there was something that probably isn't known, that the person who edited the page thinks could be found out. Perhaps you could figure this thing out, and be famous evermore. .

Level XP awarded
1 15000
2 40000
3 75000
4 120000
5 175000
6 240000
7 310000
8 400000

Achievement XP

Achievements give an amount of XP related to the level of the achievement, as follows:

Level XP awarded
Minor 5000
Small 15000
Moderate 35000
Large 75000
Huge 155000
Massive 627500
Epic 1267500
Legendary 2547500
Mythic 5107500

Teaching XP

Teaching another player skills results in the teacher being awarded the XP spent by the student raised to the power of 0.8 for each level that the teacher was able to teach without difficulty, reduced by 50% for a level where the teacher failed the teaching skillcheck.

Newspaper XP

Writing articles for newspapers gives XP as follows:

  • The authors of the each article get 60000 XP.
  • The newspaper's editors get 10% of the total article XP, plus 120000 XP; the editor XP is divided up between all the editors.

Resurrection XP

Successfully resurrecting someone gives the priest a portion of the xp that the former ghost got returned. This seems to be equal to the xp returned to the ghost, raised to the power of .77 or .78. However, this xp is subject to penalties due to xp rate.

Spending XP

Players spend their XP by increasing their skills, by one of the following means:

  • Advancing their skills at their guild.
  • Learning from another player.
  • Learning from themself.

Advancing skills at the guild is significantly cheaper than learning from players. Learning from another player is marginally cheaper than learning from yourself; the cost saving is dependent on the ratio between your level and their effective teaching bonus.

These graphs show the cost of advancing via various means:

XPlearn0 300.gif XPlearn300 600.gif
Cost of advancing 1 level
(levels 0 to 300)
Cost of advancing 1 level
(levels 300 to 600)

Death and losing XP

The only way to lose XP without spending it is to die. What happens next depends on how the player is brought to life again:

  • If raised, then they come back to life with none of the XP they had when they died.
  • If resurrected, then they will come back with a percentage of their former XP dependent on the Pishite's skills. This can be up to 75% of the xp they had when they died.

Any xp gained while dead will be kept when either raised or resurrected. While dead, you can gain exploration and (ironically) heartbeat xp.

XP rate

Your XP rate--or at least, the rate that is relevant here--is always your rate over the past hour[4]--in other words, the amount of XP you've made in the past hour. Quest and achievement XP are not included in your rate. Heartbeat XP, exploration XP, kill and burial XP, command XP, resurrection XP, family mission XP, and XP from jobs are included.

Your rate only seems to change while you're logged on, with time spent logged out not counted.

The easiest way to check your xp rate is by checking your progress on any unattained achievements in the Numberchasing category. You may also be able to get plugins for your client which will tell you your rate, though some will show your average rate since you logged in or reset the plugin.

There are several achievements related to your rate:

Allowing a broader definition of "rate", there are also two epic achievements for gaining 5 million XP in a single session, during--respectively--a single Disc day or a single Disc night.

XP reduction

XP reduction is applied to all forms of income (though not in the exact same way for all of them): kill, bury, command, teaching, resurrection and even heartbeat XP. Income is reduced based on the total XP earned by a player in the previous hour (XP rate). For types of XP other than kill xp, no reduction is applied until a player's rate exceeds 500,000 XP/hr; as a player's rate increases futher, the reduction is also increased. The formula for determining the percentage of your normal xp that you actually get for XP rates over 500,000 XP/hr is:-

XP percentage = 50,000,000 / XP rate

So, for example, when your rate is exactly 500,000, your percentage is 100%: you're still getting full xp. But if your rate is 750,000, your percentage is 66%: you're only getting 2/3 of the xp you normally would get.

Kill XP is reduced earlier, when a player's rate exceeds 100,000 XP/hr. For it, the formula is:

XP percentage = 10,000,000 / XP rate

So, when your rate is 500,000, you're only getting 20% of your normal kill xp.

The XP cap

You can't carry an unlimited amount of XP: the amount you can have at one time is capped at thirty million. The way this seems to work is that if getting a chunk of XP would put you over the cap, you don't get any of it. For example, if you have 29,999,800 XP and you do something that would normally give you 250 XP, nothing happens. Therefore, when you get very close to the cap, you'll begin to stop getting XP for things. Given this, if your heartbeat XP is, at that time, 3 XP per heartbeat, you might stop at 29,999,98; 29,999,99; or 30,000,000 XP exactly.

Even though you don't get XP yourself at this point, you can still share XP with groupmates. It appears to work normally, except that you share out of what you would have gotten, had you been able to, instead of what you actually got (0).

It's generally a good idea to spend your XP far before you reach the cap, as dying at 30 million will cost you, at minimum, 7.5 million XP.

See also

Footnotes

  1. Note that "people the npc is in combat with" can include: other players (whether grouped or not), pets, fruitbats, hired mercenaries, totems, and dust devils. (Skeleton warriors from the "Grisald's Reanimated Guardian" wizard spell are a special case, and don't seem to count at all: you can use one without any reduction in xp for yourself or your groupmates.) The calm ritual will cause the npc to stop fighting anyone who's not in the room, as well as the performer. Chant has a wider effect--it can also cause everyone in the room to stop fighting, though it is pk-checked. However, just "stop"ping fighting will not make the npc stop fighting you.
  2. Changed on December 6, 2015, and announced here.
  3. More precisely, 50% of the average of what each combatant groupmate would get from killing and burying that npc solo.
  4. Actually, the MUD appears to use the amount of xp you've made in the last fifty-nine and a half minutes or so--NOT a full hour--for your rate. The exact amount of time seems to vary somewhat, though. You can see this effect if you check your progress in a numberchasing achievement repeatedly about an hour after you gained some amount of XP, and see when that chunk of XP disappears from your rate. This does, however, assume that the achievements are tied to your rate as calculated by the MUD for other purposes, and that they don't have some separate system for calculating it.