f13.net

Some interesting things I have noticed.

My friends and I are varing levels.  Ranging from 7-16th.  We all got into a group so they could help me with a quest.  The total party consisted of my 7th level Warrior, a 10th level Warlock, a 11th level Rogue, and a 16th level Hunter.  I was in Razor hunting the Bristleboars to run the bristle quest.  I was getting full xp till the warlock and the rogue showed up.  I still got some xp, but not full xp.  The 16th level stayed in the barrens and was really just in the group for chat.  We noticed that we can actually have a single group setup with varing levels and still run full quests and get good xp unless we are in the range bubble that would mitigate us being a Team.  I like it.  What do you think?  Or am I not explaining it well enough.

I'm not clear on how your xp was after the level 16 showed up. Did it decrease?  Also, how much did it decrease with the warlock and rogue... from the tone of your post, the decrease was acceptable.

I have some friends that started off trying to play it like a normal EQ clone - group up, find camp, pull and kill.  They claim that you have decreased xp in a group as opposed to solo.  I'm not sure I buy that, or at least, that it's that simple.  So I'm curious about how it all works.

My experience per kill goes down when I group. But since I group so little, usually only to finish a tougher quest, I don't see a decrease in leveling speed, mainly because I'm solo when I complete the quest for the xp reward.

No decrease for the 16th.  Never got in the bubble range.  NO sharing of items or xp if your out of the bubble.  In the bubble, I got the same share of xp that the warlock and rogue got.  Which was roughly 1/3 the monster kill.  You always get the % reward for the quest.  Don't think any level grouping causes issues with that portion.  The nice thing is that you can have five people grouped up, scattered across the land and if you need to pull together to help one of those with a difficult portion, you already have a line'o'sight to find them, as you get that nifty arrow pointing their direction.  Just damn nifty.  Blizzard might not give you anything special for grouping, but they don't take away anything either.

One of my huge problems with grouping is the following:

FUCKING RESOURCES ARE ISOLATED! If I could get in a group and we could hunt in one area where there were skinnable creatures, humanoids and mineral deposits - I'd group all fucking day.

As it stands, there's just no way or reason to group outside of an elite quest. The game is too easy and it's the first I've seen where crafting forces you to solo for maximum efficiency. Unless you have a very philanthropic friend.

I agree with that, group fighting over mineral nodes has already become a small pain in the ass for me. I usually just bow out to the highest blacksmith in the group if its a higher level resource like tin or silver, but if its copper I insist on getting a fair cut. Usually the way I've found is to work that out beforehand, but yes, it is a pain that resources are so finite. I would love to see grouping standard where one person mining puts ore in every pocket and the same for other gathering classes. That way you could group miners, skinners, and herbalists together for shared profit hunting groups.

I've found myself actually grouping quite a bit, sometimes all night if my friends and I have a decent amount of somewhat difficult quests to do.   Any sort of kill the main baddie and his swarm of goons, any sort of escort through hostile lands or just quests that are probably outside of my killing ability we group for.  This also goes for any quest that's just a massive pain in the ass (ie the stupid scorpion eggs one).  It helps that they both got to 30+ in closed beta and know ahead of time what quests are likely to make you swear in 3 different languages.

After that we just head our merry ways and solo.  It's worked out well, and since they're both a couple levels ahead of me it's allowed me to finish a lot of orange/red quests.  I could easily just solo my way through most of this, but it's been more rewarding and fun to have a small group to work with.

The trick is that the little swarm-buddies effectively extend the aggro range of the swarmers, and they're hard to see.  Fuck them in the ass.  And the lvl20 scorpions that lay eggs that spawn lvl20 buddies in 5 seconds?  FUCK YOU, TOO.

As you were.

Bring a mage.  Luckily my ex-roome is one.  Frost nova eats up those little bastards unlike my fire nova totem which they kill on drop.  (Only have to still deal with the damn scorps because a tin vein is on the road in the area)