Experimental gear in Dungeon Maker is the fastest leveling ?

the only people that have a problem with this is the people that have a pl service that does not use the DM. they hate the competition .

Hope they don't change the DM before I get around to buying CoE and trying it. Used to get a little over 300k xp an hour on a lvl 10 SK before they stopped letting me in on tradeskill level.

One thing I'm really surprised they haven't fixed is the way vitality works in DM. If you go in with any vitality at all, you get the bonus for the entire dungeon, because you accumulate xp as you kill the mobs, but the vitality doesn't go down until you actually leave the dungeon and receive the xp. I always considered that to be a bit of an exploit.

its not a exploit , you use vitality as you gain exp and you dont gain any exp at all in a DM zone until you zone out , so thats when you use the vitality.

Yes but the XP is calculated as if you were "spending" vitality, even though you aren't. It's easily testable: go in with no vit, kill some mobs and check xp. Wait a while for .5% vit, then kill more of same mobs - you'll now be earning twice the xp you were earlier. So you can get the bonus from upwards of 400% vitality in one run, even though you've only gone in with 0.5%

Seeing how you can only get 1 level at a time in there (at most 199.9% exp) its really not as efficient as mass pulling a contested zone.

AA's are a bit faster, but one run is going to suck whatever vitality you have, then you end up getting like 3 per run (more if you have pots and other bonuses)...

I think a bigger deal is being made of it than needs to be. Especially given the knee jerk reaction they tend to have with this game. All they will do is emergency patch (probably in the next day or so) and turn of XP in DM, then implement a real fix that will have all kinds of added 'features' that will take months to fix (bc things like lvl agnostic game play works so well), and likely have an effect on game play outside of DM (changes to the way gear works).

all because taking 2 hours to get 280 aa instead of 2 days is game breaking...

I played with this tonite. And my conclusion is that this is basically overblown and not tested by the OP. Yeah, take a L22 in experimented gear and run DM. You can basically run into a pile of mobs, just like he said. You might dip down to 70% health. The problem is that as you level up, your gear is still L22 and they are higher level mobs. By around 28, you can't take 100s at a time. Maybe half a room. By 35, you'll only be taking 10-15. So you have to continuously update your gear for this to work. Yeah, it's probably a bit faster than traditional PL'n. But if I've got to experiment on about 8 pieces of gear every 15 levels or so, I'd rather stick with traditional.

I also played with a few variants to his strategy:
1) I grouped the 30ish char in experimented gear with a 95 (unmentored). I was curious as to whether the gear "upgraded" with the disparate levels. It didn't. The buffs helped some. But I wasn't pulling significantly more than I was before.
2) I invited a 3rd friend for the added buffs. The mobs upgraded and I couldn't pull as many as I was previously doing.
3) Duo seemed to be my best bet, so I went from 8 experiment pieces to 12. It still wasn't getting through the front loaded damage I was facing. Several seconds and then dead.
4) I had the 95/320 SK use experimented gear and the 30ish char was just a PL'd bot in the room. My survivability was siginficantly longer, but I still wasn't mass pulling / killing mobs by the truckloads like the OP was insinuating.

Now I haven't tried with 100% of the blessings & smites. And maybe I'm missing a strategy. But my feel is that the incoming damage is just going to be way higher than the outgoing heals. So before the SOE Devs lay down the nerf hammer or suspend the content, I hope they check it out for themselves. From my perspective, this is nowhere in the ballpark where the previous DM exploit was (an AE that could one shot unlimited targets outside of aggro range). This is probably good enough to breath some life back into DM. It may not be what they intended, but it does work. It's not without risk and it does teach a lesson in what you can pull.

I think you are misunderstanding how this works. Take a lvl 20 toon, equiped with all the pieces that can be made from the lvl 20 reactant, and that have been experimented on to get the best stats possible. Finish the armor with the best dropped pieces that you can find, and then add the best adornments available. Now move the AA slider to 100%, so that you don't level (or on a free account, disable adventure and quest experience). Now you can take someone else in the dungeon (or your own toon on a different account), and just let them stand there and do nothing. The lvl 20 can then slaughter mobs all day long.

That example is a little extreme, not necessary to have near so much armor. And I definitely agree that it gets substantially harder as the group size goes up, if not outright impossible.

Aye. I don't PL at all, and could care less if people do it, but heck, SoE might as well make $$ of those people on their 20th alt or something.

Gotcha. Even still, this doesn't seem to be that bad in the scheme of things. It's very similar to the spider cave where you can have a jillion of the suckers beating on you and you just AE them. The xp with the DM doesn't scale up so you get 350ish xp / kill (no vitality, xp potion, vet bonus). This is a lot at lower levels. As you go on, it gets kind of meh. I could see this as a way to get to 80, but by then I'd be wanting to switch over to SS which is still the fastest xp.

DM is set so no matter how much experience you get, you can ONLY level 1 adventure level per run. Sure you can snag like 20+ aa's with a potion and vitality in some dungeons, but the mechanics will only allow you one adventure level. I can sit in frostfang or other zones at level 10-12 level-locked and do the same, 200 aa's in a day and a TON of items to transmute! Or boxes of items to broker for those that want to start transmuting!

Those with CE of latest expansion, get an item to click and presto, 280 aa's.

Rumor around the campfire is nerf incoming, Jan 2....still have double xp weekend!


Not sure if nerf will be the armor or limit to zone, etc.

Just to clarify the ONLY 1 adventure level per run observation. You actually will gain enough experience to complete your current level and 99% of the next. It isn't a big deal but the formula is as simple a "1 level".

So if you are 32 + 30% level and go into for a DM run you will cap at 33 + 99% towards 34th.

To quote every SoE employee I've ever encountered on any issue over 8 years of gameplay...

"WORKING AS INTENDED" ;-)

I was thinking about loggin in this weekend to try this out, and had a couple questions:

I have a 90sk that i used to use for PLing, I think he had a couple ward items etc. am i understanding this right, that i am better off using a lvl 20ish toon with experimental gear for the blessing/smite effects instead of using those same items on my sk and mentoring down?

If so, do you mentor the toon Being PLd down to the lvl 20 guy you are using to PL then? sorry for the dumbas s questions, but I am just trying to understand the method before i get into the game.

If you've got a decent SK, roll with that instead.

For DM purposes, its level agnostic, so if you mentor, you will be unmentored when you enter DM, and yes your better off with a lvl 20sk in handcrafted experimented gear then a lvl 95 in HM raid gear.

**edit**
HAHA, never paid enough attention to realize just how fubared and skewed that is.

Isn't this the say guy to complained and got the nerf-bat broken out on the gathering goblin?

Don't think so, that was one of those things that was never tested in beta, so it sliped into the game live, and now everyone is doing it till it gets nerfed. If sony is smart, they will nerf the experimented gear, and not DM, the exp out of those using normal gear, and a merc to keep you alive is bad enough as it is.


and for everyone who is wondering how this exactly works.....

make a second account, level a PLATE fighter to 20, level lock it, make full set of handcrafted stuff, bless the jewerly, smite on the other stuff (experimented on). Find a Dungeon Maker dungeon with a TON of mobs in there, I am talking 200 or so per pull. Log on your main account you want levels on, group with your little lvl 20 (again make sure exp is disabled). Clear the zone with your lvl 20 while your other character sits back at a safe distance.

If you are looking for a PL zone on Butcherblock server, look under Chardok maps - Epic Powerleveling - 500k exp, 795 tokens, in 7 minutes (crazy). This one seems to be set up for 3 person PLs, but works fine with 2. If you rotate 8 or so alts you will always have at least 0.5% vitlity maxmizing the exp output. (just be sure to set your AA up to a % that lets all the bleed over exp go somewhere, seeing 2 levels is the cap).


CAT IS OUT OF THE BAG - enjoy before they nerf the thing lol

Leveling alts gets BORRRING fast, I have leveled 12 to 95 the old fashioned way. It stoped being fun after 4. If there is a way I can level a class up I wanted to try at 95 (when the game really even starts if you like to group / raid) good for people who find these things. I can get alts up to 95 and go back to decorating, making dungeons, grouping, raiding, stuff that I enjoy and are the reasons I play this game.

If you enjoy seeing the same zones from 1-95 that is your choice. Personaly I like all the plat I save not having to gear up every 10 levels, spam clicking quest text just to get the quests, so I can start getting exp....

This has been out in one form or another for quite awhile. Prior to this specific scenario, it was done using a high level Warden thorncoat cast on a very low level tank (usually 11) that had been tradeskilled up to 20 so you could zone into DM. And, when they inevitably fix this there will be something else. Who cares?

What I find amusing is all the people who complain about it. They try to say that these types of things somehow make for a crappier playerbase, but as someone who has played EQ1 and EQ2 since launch, I can tell you there will be poor players regardless of how they level. Manually leveling a character is no guarantee that you have any idea what the F you're doing when you get to end game content. We went through this same conversation before they changed the group exp recently to placate all the whiners complaining about auto follow leveling. Again - who cares? How does how I level my alts affect YOU in any way? If you think I'm a crappy player, no one is forcing you to group with me. If you then complain about the lack of groups, take it up with Sony for having such a low population or remind yourself that this is an old game that has long since been eclipsed in mindshare by the other MMOs.

Last but not least, I love how people talk in hushed tones about this being an "exploit" and how people should have this or that happen to them as a result of taking advantage. To that I say (as I mentioned before), it is "working as intended" until they fix it. I can't tell you how many times I've petitioned a broken quest, bugged encounter, or some other game issue only to get the robotic "working as intended" response until I prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it isn't, and still not get resolution. It goes both ways - if I have to suck it up and deal with poor code impacting my game experience with the excuse that it is "working as intended," then why should I be penalized for getting a benefit out of the same thing?