wathombe
31-08-2004, 03:26
For the nine months I've been playing Diablo, I've played almost entirely solo. Once every month or so, I will get together in one place with two RL friends and three comps to play our realm characters together in a party, which is great fun, but that only accounts for a small part of my playing time.
In the past two months, and especially in the past two weeks, I've met a number of other players in our mutual pursuit of the mythical new runewords on ladder season 2. Disconnected as I am from the D2 playing public at large, however, I'm a bit unfamiliar with public game standard operating procedure. Weekend before last, one of these players (the extremely helpful and friendly Zephyrus, if anyone cares to know) helped me out with a few nm Baal runs, as my Tesladin (intended for hell countess runs eventually) was having trouble with the beginning of Hell. The runs were fun, and I levelled once. He told me, though, that next time we got together we should do Baal runs in a public game, as I'd get way more experience.
Well, I'd certainly read reams of posts about players doing public Baal runs, 8-player private Baal runs, et cetera, and had always assumed these runs were the optimal method for experience (and drops, although that's not the issue here). After Zephyrus suggested this, however, I wanted to know just how much more xp a public game could net, so I checked Arreat Summit. After reading what I found there, I concluded that either AS is incredibly vague and poorly written, or the common assumption that an 8-player game yields more xp is wrong. I'm guessing that AS is just extremely vague, but I'd like somebody to explain this to me, so I'll walk through my understanding as explained by AS.
The total experience earned for killing a monster is increased by 35% when a party member of the killer is in the same named area, defined as the "level" on the Automap. Then the pool is divided as explained below:
The total experience earned for killing a monster is divided evenly among all party members. Each member's share of the experience is equal to the member's level divided by the sum of all members' levels.
(The site then goes on to explain that each player's Experience Share is modified depending upon the difference between the player's level and the monster's level, but that's not important here, either.)
Now, given this information, let's run through a few examples:
Let's assume one or more clvl 50 characters, in the Kurast Causeway, on nightmare difficulty, killing one Hierophant, which yields approx 10,000 experience (rounded for easy calculation).
If one character were to kill the Hierophant in a game alone, he would recieve 10,000 xp.
If two partied characters, both in the Kurast Causeway, were to kill the Hierophant, they would each receive 6,750 xp (each character's share equals 50/100, or 50%, of monster xp plus 35%, or 13,500, thus 50% of 13,500 equals 6,750).
If more than two partied characters, the xp only goes down:
if 3 chars, each would receive 4,500 (50/150 equals 33.3%, thus 33.3% of 13,500)
if 4 chars, each would receive 3,375 (50/200 equals 25%, thus 25% of 13,500)
if 8 chars, each would receive ~1,687 (50/400 equals 12.5%, thus 12.5% of 13,500).
Now surely, surely I am wrong. But if I'm wrong, Arreat Summit is, too.
I searched for threads on experience, but none of them addressed this question. Most offered one link back to the Arreat Summit page and one link to a page on the Strategy Compendium which, when followed, yielded only a white screen with the small words "You are banned." (wtf?).
Somebody please set me straight with some real numbers. Thanks in advance for any enlightenment.
In the past two months, and especially in the past two weeks, I've met a number of other players in our mutual pursuit of the mythical new runewords on ladder season 2. Disconnected as I am from the D2 playing public at large, however, I'm a bit unfamiliar with public game standard operating procedure. Weekend before last, one of these players (the extremely helpful and friendly Zephyrus, if anyone cares to know) helped me out with a few nm Baal runs, as my Tesladin (intended for hell countess runs eventually) was having trouble with the beginning of Hell. The runs were fun, and I levelled once. He told me, though, that next time we got together we should do Baal runs in a public game, as I'd get way more experience.
Well, I'd certainly read reams of posts about players doing public Baal runs, 8-player private Baal runs, et cetera, and had always assumed these runs were the optimal method for experience (and drops, although that's not the issue here). After Zephyrus suggested this, however, I wanted to know just how much more xp a public game could net, so I checked Arreat Summit. After reading what I found there, I concluded that either AS is incredibly vague and poorly written, or the common assumption that an 8-player game yields more xp is wrong. I'm guessing that AS is just extremely vague, but I'd like somebody to explain this to me, so I'll walk through my understanding as explained by AS.
The total experience earned for killing a monster is increased by 35% when a party member of the killer is in the same named area, defined as the "level" on the Automap. Then the pool is divided as explained below:
The total experience earned for killing a monster is divided evenly among all party members. Each member's share of the experience is equal to the member's level divided by the sum of all members' levels.
(The site then goes on to explain that each player's Experience Share is modified depending upon the difference between the player's level and the monster's level, but that's not important here, either.)
Now, given this information, let's run through a few examples:
Let's assume one or more clvl 50 characters, in the Kurast Causeway, on nightmare difficulty, killing one Hierophant, which yields approx 10,000 experience (rounded for easy calculation).
If one character were to kill the Hierophant in a game alone, he would recieve 10,000 xp.
If two partied characters, both in the Kurast Causeway, were to kill the Hierophant, they would each receive 6,750 xp (each character's share equals 50/100, or 50%, of monster xp plus 35%, or 13,500, thus 50% of 13,500 equals 6,750).
If more than two partied characters, the xp only goes down:
if 3 chars, each would receive 4,500 (50/150 equals 33.3%, thus 33.3% of 13,500)
if 4 chars, each would receive 3,375 (50/200 equals 25%, thus 25% of 13,500)
if 8 chars, each would receive ~1,687 (50/400 equals 12.5%, thus 12.5% of 13,500).
Now surely, surely I am wrong. But if I'm wrong, Arreat Summit is, too.
I searched for threads on experience, but none of them addressed this question. Most offered one link back to the Arreat Summit page and one link to a page on the Strategy Compendium which, when followed, yielded only a white screen with the small words "You are banned." (wtf?).
Somebody please set me straight with some real numbers. Thanks in advance for any enlightenment.