Which expansion does missions become the primary source of XP?

Hey all, I'm playing on a TLP right now, which is in House of Thule. I plan to go all the way to live, but Have never played past HoT before.

I keep seeing posts about kill xp going away and missions/overseer being the primary way to level later on.

I know the grind is still a thing in HoT, but was just wondering around what expansion that changes?

ToV

At levels 111+, the experience required per level was inflated more than was expected. For ToV, and every level-increase expansion since, the one-time progression achievements reward much, but not all, of the experience required to gain the 5 levels of that expansion.

Paragon, gained by completing each mission once, gives the largest chunk. The next largest chunk comes from the Hero achievements, of which there is one per mission. Not far behind is the Champion achievement, which is gained by completing all of the Mercenary and Partisan achievements. Each Partisan achievement gives less experience than Champion, and the Mercenary achievements are even farther behind.

In Rain of Fear, the Merc/Partisan quests were a huge chunk of 95-100 prog. Doing two or three zones worth of these on a double exp weekend used to get you all of the way there.

I don't really mind leveling being tied to expansion progression, but with personas now it'd be nice if the Champion of ___ or even Master of ___ achievements gave a player flag that increased non-AA exp from mobs for that expansion by like 10x.

Its also complicated by the fact that if you are in era, beating all of the tier2 missions might require you to already be max level and in good gear. So much of the mission exp is wasted.

I wouldn't go as far as saying "missions become the primary source of XP", but starting in ToV there is a sufficient boost to the experience part of quests' and missions' rewards and achievements that completing those will be the quickest way to level.

evolving items are the new spot to xp

When I leveled up my toons when I've returned to EQ during TBM era I did indeed gain experience in HoT by killing trash mobs. At level 90 or so I was killing trash in Fear Itself and did side quests at the same time (small quests like collect 5 biles from spiders etc.) It was a continuous grind: grab the task, kill the trash, collect the drops, turn in for extra 1-2 % of the level experience. Rinse, repeat.
The same routine continued in Veil of Alaris. City of Argath mobs are the same strength as Fear Itself, and there are several quests in there of the same nature - kill so many of that kind of mob etc. Repeatable, adds up extra % or two. Overall - a decent stream of leveling experience.
Same deal in Rain of Fear, though some quests are more rewarding - they reward with level experience and a few AA's at once.
Level 100 expansion Call of the Foresakes has changed the pattern by a lot. Progression tasks, especially Heroic Adventures reward with an outsized chunk of the experience while giving close to nothing mob-killing experience. Adventures happen in instanced zones. Static zones in CotF are mostly abandoned as they provide very little reward.
So, CotF grinding consists of repeated missions with rewards at the end. Rewards are boostable by Lesson of the Devoted and various experience potions and modifiers. Still a never-ending grind by of a different flavor from before.

The Darked Sea, The Broken Mirror and Empire of Kunark are level 105 expansions with "back-to-basics" trash mob grinding. There are still progression quests tasks and missions with gear rewards, some AA rewards but not much of leveling experience rewards. Noticebale, but not impressive few % for completion.

Ring of Scale and The Burning Lands are level 110 expansions. Both are notably more difficult than before, while TBL was a hell in-era. Still, there are a few sweet spots in those expansions where a group can grind their way into the max level (110 at that time)

Staring from Torment of Velious at level 115 the path has changes. In max-level-increase expansions ToV(115), Terror of Luclin (120), Laureon's Song (125) the progression (Mercenary, Partisan, Hero and overall) Achievements reward with an outsized amount of experience, which allows groups of players quickly reach the maximum level by doing the expansion progression instead of just grinding trash. Same-max-leel expansions Claws of Veeshan (115) and Nights of Shadow (120) do not have such rewards. Progression mostly rewards with AA's and just a few % of a level overall.

There is no "experience cliff dive" in trash mobs killing rewards. Every new expansion the level experience per mob kill got slightly reduced. AA experience per kill has actually increased. It all relates to the increase of experience needed to level up, not the mob experience being reduced.

That is just a cumulative effect. When experience per mob kill gradually decreases over the course of years from, say, 0.5% per monster (takes about 200 mob kills to level), and decreases every new expansion to, say, 0.45%, 0.4%, 0.35%, 0.3%, 0.25%, 0.2%, 0.15%, 0.1%, 0.08%, 0.06%, 0.05% etc then people start noticing. Once you need to kill, say, 1000 monsters per level people whine and complain.
But it is not "sudden", it was all gradual. And to compensate for that DPG focused on progression experince rewards, which not only helps people in leveling, but also enhanced the gameplay as more people have to quest instead of just grinding in one camp.
And now we've got Overseer, which delivers a steady 12% of a level per day and takes less than 5 minutes per day to handle.

Through TBL, you can grind your way to max level. Prior to RoS, you could repeat merc/kill tasks for xp to supplement the grind. Doing missions and tasks also helps, but isn't necessary.

Once you hit 111 (which is ToV), the amount of xp needed each level increases dramatically, making grinding mobs to level an exercise in futility. The only real, viable way to level is doing progression for the achievements. You can use Overseer as well to help you level, but spending 10 min a day to collect your log-in rewards isn't really "playing" EQ.

Thanks all for the input. I don't mind doing progression, which I enjoy...but I do have a few persona's that I keep max level, so was really concerned with how I was going to manage that when it goes to progression based experience.

These responses help a lot, thanks again!

The cliff was the exp needed to level not the exp given per mob but it had the same effect. Exp per mob suddenly became much less relevant to leveling.

The exp per mob as a percentage of the exp to needed to gain a level ToV and onwards dropped sharply. In simpler terms it suddenly took a LOT more mobs to get a level with ToV onwards.

No, no and no. There was not "suddnely" or "sharply".
I level up alts periodically and I do not notice any cliffs.
GMM orcs (TBL, last lvl 110 expansion, a nice grinding spot) have 6-7 million HP and give on average 0.07% per kill at level 110. ToV EW/GD trash has 12-15 million HP and give 0.06% per kill at level 110.
Going from 0.07% to 0.06% is no way a "cliff" or "sudden" or a "sharp drop".
I personally like to grind in Maeratas where mobs have 10-12 million HP and give slightly more exp than GMM, although there are fewer mobs in there but pit camp has nameds with loot.
When characters are "new" and just starting leveling up ToV mobs seem to be much harder, have much more HP and take more time to kill, and as such create a perception of much slower grinding experience flow.
But when I PL with a level 125 locomotive there is hardly any difference at kill rate - trash dies as fast as it respawns. So for my alts, grinding experience in ToV is just slightly (maybe 5-10% overall) slower than previously in TBL. No cliffs or sharp drops.
So, ToV+ is a cumulative combination of small experience reduction per kill, small health and dps increase of mobs, small reduction in respawn rate (TBL respawns are really fast). When all those factors combine they create the percieved "cliff". Meanwhile, actual numbers do not support that perception.

Yes and Yes. Sorry to disagree. I know because in ToV I did my first three levels grinding. And the facts are the facts. Exp per mob as a percentage of exp for a given level in the expansion dropped dramatically. Go back through the posts where it happened.

So a cliff and a sharp drop. I found it taking MUCH longer to grind levels and I have the numbers on my side.

And there have been multiple discussions at the time that confirmed all this.

Basically, you call going from 0.07% per kill to 0.06% per kill a cliff and a sharp drop. And I call it a small reduction.
We'll agree to disagree.

This I find odd because I leveled my boxes to 115 in the GMM mission. Boring as it was, I like the place. Anyway there are 45 kills? in the mission and I was getting at least 12% exp per run.

LOL First off when I talk about it it will always be exping in the actual expansion I am not of of those folks who go to old expansions to level because I need the gear from girinding and killing namers so dont talk to me about TBL as we are talking about ToV. And the drop was much larger then that.

When GMM was released the mission gave almost 10% peward for the completion. DPG has nerfed it down several months after GMM release.
I ran that mission in a chain fashion (could be done like that before DPG nerfed that) and has leveled up my mains to lvl 113 before I ever went to ToV (beastlords get new warder at 113).
In fact, I came back to GMM mission for a while as a break from ToV and managed to level up many of my alts to 115 in there while it lasted.
Not anymore, the mission gives something around 2% of the level and has 5 hours hard lockout timer these days.

Ok, let's talk about current expansion LS.
Should I remind you that there were several level 125 characters on Day 1 of the release?
My own mains were level 123 on Day 3 without leaving Guild Hall.
Then I've ran both missions multiple times on my mains and TA'd some alts for Paragon achievement and my New Year my mains were level 125 and most of my alts were 123+.
And then chain-running of Final Fugue mission to the point of most of my characters have the necklace and all have a full compliment of tier 2 armor and Tier 3 weapons.
Today is March of the current level increase expansion and all my alts (at least 6 per account) are level 125 and I am spending my time leveling up f2p alts and personas (due to bonus experience) and plan to go back on my alts to do NoS and ToV progression to unlock Evolving gear for my alts once the bonus ends.
So, let's talk about experience cliff of grinding in LS.
What grinding?

I didn't do the mission when it was released, I took over a year off and when I came back I was not AA'd or equipped to deal with Velious, nor could I box the missions for fast exp. So I just grinded out GMM and it was pretty fast even over L110. It might have dropped to half exp by 114 if I recall, maybe 6% a run, but I kept doing it until max level and it didn't take that long. Maybe a week. I did poke around in Stratos in between runs but only to lazily camp nameds to fill gear gaps.
I remember getting around 1% exp per 4 kills. I almost certainly have screenshots. If you look into forum posts about the exp dropoff, it's all complaints about ToV. "Why did you nerf kill exp so badly?" With the general consensus being that it feels 10 times slower than before.