ETA: The XP reward listing doesn't show up on beta at all (until I logged out and back in) or on Live (until I logged out and back in), so I was unable to see that they now have listed X% for player, and Y# of merc AA. I am satisfied no toggle needs to be in place. ***************************************************************** While I have no problem donating part of my quest experience to my merc right now, when ToL launches, I do not want to share all of my progression rewards with my merc, who is currently maxed. Could y'all possibly put in a toggle, so we can decide if we want to share that exp with our merc? Or make their XP on it completely detached from ours, so we only *share* the XP with them when they're physically present, and the rest of the time, they get a reward of their own? I don't want my leveling from progression slowed down because I OWN a merc. She'd get part of the XP rewards for anything I wasn't actively killing even if I have a full group of regular players. Please give us a choice on that.
Do you have a quest example where before the change you got x and now you get y? On the quests I do most in ToV/CoV, I have not seen a change in the character rewards even though now the merc xp is auto granted. For me the merc xp on my most repeated quests has not affected my character regular xp or aa xp since the start of ToV (for quest rewards only).
I haven't personally experienced it, no. However, some members of my guild were talking about it last night, where they're leveling their alt, doing ToV progression, and their alt currently has 55 merc AA's, without having ever unsuspended said merc. I do not want to waste 55 merc AA's worth of XP when I'm trying to get to 120. =x ETA: Since I don't have a character that can still get both XP and merc XP, I can't test it. I also don't have anyone ready to be run thru the progression without the AA to see if the Achievement XP is being split or not. I didn't write down the exact amount of XP that I gained doing them, and getting the reward from the Achievement. So I can't even check that for sure. That being said, others might be able to, or to confirm that the merc XP is a 'bonus', like it is on Overseer. If that's the case, then that's fine. This is a chance for people to check and see before launch, or for the devs to take a quick peek at the code, and see if that's the case.
According to one of the earlier posts, if a merc has maximum accumulated AA's stored (ie 20 stored AA now, will bump to 55 AA in ToL) it will stop accumulating mob kill exp and you start getting all of it. P.S. Also, 55AA is about 10% of 50% of the 115 level exp total ( i.e. 5% of lvl 115, not pleasant but not life-shattering)
Reward experience earns you mercenary AA, but it doesn't take any experience away from you. Before the last patch, you could unsuspend your mercenary before finishing a ToV partisan, mercenary, or hero achievement to get many mercenary AA, but you'd get the same regular experience whether the mercenary was suspended or not. I haven't tested what happens when you choose character AA as a reward (for rewards that have that option). I expect you would not earn any mercenary AA.
Cap on Live is currently 55. Will bump to 60 at 120 in ToL). I don't worry about sharing kill xp with it. That's fine. I worry about achievement experience and mission reward experience, mostly. Those are pretty big deals, if you're trying to use progression to get you to max level. I can't really test this, because of where my progression and AA's are sitting on all of my accounts. Which is unfortunate, because I REALLY want to know FOR SURE, before ToL launches, y'know?
At one point, I had the regular experience reward at level 115 written down for some of the ToV achievements. Unfortunately, it looks like I deleted that information after I verified what I was interested in. However, I found this old bug report about not gaining the promised mercenary AA for the ToV hero achievements. This post was from 2020, and the poster was expecting 13.89 mercenary AA points for the hero achievements. I can see in game that the hero achievements are still listing 13.89 mercenary AA points, so I think it's fair to deduce that the displayed experience hasn't changed. If you used Overseer, you might also be able to ease your fears. For instance, a level 5 common military task offers 1.00% experience and some amount of mercenary AA experience. It offered the same percent regular experience before the last patch. If you have a non-max character, you could double check that you're still getting the stated experience, even with your mercenary suspended.
I just checked on Live. I don't see XP listed as a reward on the achievements. At all. I see the luminous ice item. I see hero's AA's. I see bags. I see -0- achievements that list the amount of XP they give, even ones that I KNOW give it. Where are you seeing the xp listed? The problem they were facing was not getting the AA, when they didn't have their merc out. Now we will. So that part is moot. The real question is whether or not we will be giving part of our achievement XP to our merc, when we do not want to. I use overseer. Daily. On 3 accounts. I know it's listed separately. I hadn't seen on any achievements that it was listed separately. If that's the case, then my fears ARE allayed. THAT is what I was worried about. The achievements. If I have to repeat a mission an extra time because my merc sucks up mission rewards, okay. I can't repeat the ach's tho. And that's where most of the XP for leveling is coming from. THAT is what I don't want to always share with my merc.
Did you just make these screenshots? Mine are only listing 19.26% of the experience required to go from 115 to 116. I'm on Emarr, so maybe it's just a difference in server. Nevermind. That's a 5% difference. I think I know where that comes from. I am a little surprised that 5% doesn't also apply to your mercenary AA reward, though.
Yes! That answers it. Thank you! On Live, I've done them, and the reward preview doesn't show XP anymore. On Beta, I've done them, and the reward preview doesn't show XP anymore. On Beta, my /betacopy has NOT done them, but it's also not showing XP in the preview window. [Until I logged out and back in, THEN it started showing them. *sigh*] Now that I consider a moment longer, I should have checked on a non-beta character that also hasn't done it. One of my tradeskill bots perhaps. That's the only reward set I did NOT check on. Having seen the screenshots here of the very separately listed merc AA xp rewards like Overseer has, I am quite satisfied that we don't need the toggle, and will edit my original post as such. And thank all of you for not TREATING me like I just fell off the turnip truck yesterday, even if you THOUGHT I did. <3
Glad that helped, although I'm not sure why you aren't able to see the experience rewards as I have those achievements all completed and the experience shows up in the reward preview still.
Food for thought. I powered through the Mercs/Partisans before the change, and took a character from mid 111 to 114.3. ---0 Merc AAs granted. Following this change where mercs get EXP (I dont own one, I dont have one claimed, I dont have one suspended) and they are not present, I took a toon from 111.5 and we struggled to hit 113.4 using the same progression. Merc AAs granted: 186. This appears to be eating our regular exp as theirs. I would like to see this removed as I do not use mercs in my game play. I would like to see a toggle to stop this, or a separate reward option. **In both instances, this is ONLY mercs and partisans and not the zone group missions for Hero.**
There may be a bug, but not necessarily. I'm not suggesting any of the below apply to you; they're just alternative explanations that I can think of. Is it possible any of these could explain the difference you saw? Completing some or all of the achievements on one character during a bonus experience period. Fellowship experience turned on for the second character, or the first character earning experience with vitality. Kill experience going to regular on the first character and AA on the second character. Recruit-a-Friend bonus. Does this apply to quest reward experience? Receiving experience from other places on the first character, e.g. Overseer and collection achievements. I don't have a level 111 character currently to test, but going from 111.5 to 113.4 seems like the more correct result for getting only the 7 mercenary achievements, 4 partisan achievements, and the Champion achievement. At level 115, that's worth 7 x 11.01% + 7 x 5.5% + 16.51%, which is just over 99% of the level.
Are you referring only to the experience given for quests when you do not have your mercenary up? Or has there been a change? Because what you are saying seems to contradict a statement by Daybreak. (bold added)
Yes, I was wondering that, too. I think the resolution is that the mercenary takes a cut from your group's experience, just like another player would. But they don't take experience away from your directly. If you grouped with another player of the same level but only you had a mercenary, you would still get the same experience as your groupmate, assuming one of you doesn't have bonuses running that the other doesn't. A confirmation of this thinking would be great, though.
This sounds correct, except there is a bonus for using real players over mercenaries in a group. https://everquest.fanra.info/wiki/Tips_and_Guides#Group_members
