Zone Experience Modifiers. some data.

After reading through one of the threads yesterday where people were arguing about ZEMs I decided to just go do some simple tests tonight across multiple zones. It's not scientific data by any stretch, but it is a little actual EQ world data instead of just baseless forum arguments. I killed anywhere from 1-10 mobs in each zone (in most zones I was able to find a normal level 47 mob to make things easily comparable), recorded the amount of AA exp I got at level 60 to the hundredth of a percent according to my ui, and recorded the level of the mob. Killing multiple mobs in the same zone with the same level only fluctuated by 0.01%, so it should be somewhat accurate. I normalized it all to 100 to make it easily comparable.

Lowest was all of the normal outdoor kunark zones (1.1% aa from lvl 47 mob). Highest was a tie between kedge and velks (2.59% aa from lvl 47 mob).

So, here it is, feel free to argue about it and go test for yourself

If someone wants to format this into a table that'd be cool. It's 3am and I'm too tired to figure it out right now.




Akheva Ruins 148
Burning Woods 131
Chardok 192
City of Mist 100
Dawnshroud Peaks 170
Deep 175
Dreadlands 131
Emerald Jungle 100
Great Divide 131
Griegs End 202
Kael 148
Karnors 165
Kedge 235
LGuk 184
Maidens Eye 171
Old Sebilis 175
Sanctus Seru 187
Solusek B 201
Ssra 209
The Grey 153
Trakanons Teeth 100
Umbral Plains 158
Velketor's Labyrinth 235

238 Velketor's Labyrinth
235 Kedge
209 Ssra
202 Griegs End
201 Solusek B
192 Chardok
187 Sanctus Seru
184 LGuk
175 Deep
175 Old Sebilis
171 Maidens Eye
170 Dawnshroud Peaks
165 Karnors
158 Umbral Plains
153 The Grey
148 Akheva Ruins
148 Kael
131 Burning Woods
131 Dreadlands
131 Great Divide
100 City of Mist
100 Emerald Jungle
100 Trakanons Teeth

I hope you a) stayed the same level and b) had the same amount of spent AA while doing your research, because both of that will alter the XP income.

b) might be a myth -- I heard people talk about that but never could verify on my own (didn't bother).

a) I am 100% sure about. You get less AA XP from the same mob at level X than you get at level X+1.


Nice work -- thank you!

You need to add Veksar though ;-)

read his post? he is lvl 60... killing lvl 47 mobs... and doing AA exp to compare with...

B is true. It isn't on the scale of 1-10 AA,, or even 100 AA. It's somewhere like 0-999 AA = some %, then 1000-1999 AA, etc. I'm not claiming those as factual points of the XP change, but that's more akin to how it impacts AA XP gain. If you want to verify that it even exists, check something around 2000-2500 AA vs 4500-5000 AA and you'll see a notable difference.

I don't know for sure about all the different ZEM's, but I'm fairly positive that I remember dreadlands having a negative ZEM.

I'm also not 100% sure about it, but I recall there being a difference in XP, not solely based on NPC level, but also NPC type (race, class, etc.). Meaning, a spider wouldn't necessarily have the same XP value as a Froglok or a giant. This may have been altered years back when they tried to "normalize" the mob difficulty system something like 20 years ago.

nothing to see here. bad editing on my end.

I did. Did you use your brain?
Was just fishing for confirmation he stayed at 60 and on 47 mobs during all testing. It's easy to gain an AA or two when visiting 23 zones and kill 1-10 mobs in each.

Ah, cool. Thanks for the input. I seem to not be impacted then since I only play on Agnarr where you cap AA below 1000.

This is solid info - I was in the process of doing something similar but was starting with lower-level zones.

The numbers seem to make sense and reflect what I remember Aradune to be like...although City of Mist seemed like I got no exp whatsoever.

Blearg. They readjusted all ZEM's in 2018, so NM me here. It was 0 and has been changed.

Yup. CoM used to have a nice ZEM and got hammered. per OP's finding, CoM basically has 0 modifier anymore. (100 being the base XP gain)

Yeah I recall CoM being a magnet for many players. Mob yielded big XP and they had like half the HP of other mobs of similar levels. Then it was all nerfed into the ground. Mobs still have low HP but XP is really bad now.

People always seem to leave out respawn rate in this, yes you can have a great ZEM but if you are waiting 20-25 minutes for a respawn exp can still suck not matter how much you get from each kill.

You can often get better exp per hour killing in a lower Zem zone where mobs respawn quicker.

This is a great point that often gets forgotten about.

Mob volume, density, respawn rate, TTK (time to kill) the distance between camps as well as XP per mob & ZEM all play a role in whether a zone is going to be a great spot to grind in or not. It's not as straightforward as ZEM alone unless all you do is solo kill.

When you take all that into account it is easy to see why GE & Velks are favoured hunting spots for groups.

Risk, too, though this is pretty well figured out at this stage in EQ's life. Getting splatted on a bad pull can sometimes make a great camp a little worse than a good camp that's safer.

ZEM is one thing.
Respawn time is another.
A third, and quite important factor is the time it takes to kill the mobs. later expansion mobs tend to have way more HP/AC and thus die slower.

That's a shame about the CoM ZEM. I loved going there, yellow boxws on my xp bar filled fast.

On the non classic tlp's an important thing to note about these zems is that when these zones are the weekly hotzone target for Franklin Teek the maximum limit for exp gain per red con killed is doubled. I refuse to believe that griegs end and the grey have any significant exp modifiers. I have leveled many a toon from 1-58 on my server and those zones are total . Its PC to 15, Tofs to 35, Velks to 58 if you are being PL'ed by a shaman or a DS class, add 5 levels if not being PL'ed. If you get velks as a hotzone the week you are leveling from 35 to 58, expect to do this in about one day. The exp and exp cap is just so damned amazing in this zone.

Shaman is the best PL class in the game when Dragon's of Norrath releases. You can setup a macro with puma to join their party and buff a 1+ minute puma buff on their melee merc and themselves and they just obliterate reds in seconds. So run out on shaman gather up a train, then buff them and have them slowly widdle down every single mob and the shaman pet can just assist damage cause there is no DS so all the damage done is applied to the PL'ed character no fear of stealing the exp with helper damage.

Mercs don't come out until SoD so you can't really buff them during DoN.

If I'm not too lazy before Mischief launches I want to test a lot more in a few of the 50+ zones because one thing I noticed is that claiming it as a flat % zem may be right, but there are (obviously) other things going on in the exp calculation. The higher level the mob the more exp you get, but it actually scaled upwards exponentially instead of linearly, and the exponential gain per level was faster in "high zem" zones. I'd like to compare exp per mob level curves in multiple zones.

If you look at the list I posted it would imply that exp in ssra is 41.2% higher than akheva. In practice though if you kill a level 50 mob in each zone the difference is only 40.8% but the difference in a level 52 mob is about 41.5%. This means that in both zones you are getting more exp for the higher level mob, but the exp is scaling up per level faster in ssra.

I believe that this may be one of the main factors in why everyone says that grouping is so much better than soloing. While soloing, on average, people are most likely killing lower level mobs than they would be if they were in a group. The group exp bonus is awesome in its own right, but even better is that it is compounding on the exponential exp you get from higher level mobs.

edit- btw this was all on my lvl 60 monk, gained a few aa on him doing this but was somewhere around 120 the whole time. shaman buffs but no exp buffs or anything like that.