Tree of Savior Forum

Exp Curve and Boss Pacing

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#1

I have some general thoughts on the current rate of EXP gain in the beta and Boss Encounters after about 10 hours of play. I don’t profess to be an expert on the game at all, but according to the game’s own ranking system I’ve seen enough to put me in the top 10% currently.

I have a level 30 Highlander, for reference.

I found the first 3 or so hours of gameplay to be truly sublime. Combat feels great immediately, excellent production quality on animation, VFX, sound design-- everything sings together, and the pacing is perfect. You level up at a good clip, get new abilities, and before you know it you’re ready to pick your second class advancement, it all feels really great right up until the high teens or so.

The first speed bump the game threw up for me was the Quest bosses in the Crystal Mines. Both the Specter boss and the other big guy whose name I don’t remember are very abrupt spikes in game difficulty. Difficulty isn’t even the right word, the bosses simply start having ten times as much HP as any you faced prior. From this point on fighting these bosses became an absolute chore. Didn’t matter if I was solo or grouped, the boss seemed to scale (or maybe I just played with bad players).

The bosses getting a sudden spike in difficulty is probably related to this area being the starting point when Quest EXP begins to fall behind the level of the zones you’re playing in. I was still a few levels beneath the Specter when I beat it, and from this point on the game and my own progression felt out of sync. I started filling in the gaps by making sure to kill extra monsters encountered while traveling through the map, especially any big packs, and this was enough extra effort to keep things glued together until the late 20’s.

Around level 27 or so I had completed every quest outside of Tenet Gardens, a zone recommended for levels 35+. The bosses and monsters in Tenet Gardens hit too hard to bother trying to complete quests in that zone, so there is truly nothing else to do but start grinding. It’s pretty much sucked out any enthusiasm I have for continuing to play that character.

I saw many people in the global shout channel also hitting a similar wall and asking what they were supposed to do or where they were supposed to play in this specific level range.

People should not have to be straight up grinding in their first evening of play. The game currently has a level progression into the hundreds, there is no cogent argument to introduce hardcore grinding at such a low level. I’m not opposed to grinding on principle, and it should be a reasonable leveling strategy for people who love to grind, but the needs of players who dislike grinding need to be met too. The quest system is obviously designed for that purpose, but its tuning during this test is leading players into the weeds.

I very much hope this is a part of the game that continues to see more iteration.

To pre-rebut the inevitable apologists: All my gear is enhanced to the safety level. I explored every map over 95% and talked/interacted with every NPC and object I saw, the only way I’m missing quests is if they are exceptionally well hidden.

25 Likes
#2

Now this is a review.

This game can be grindy, it works for this game, but a majority of people don’t want to hit a massive grindwall on their first day of play.

Lower that wall a little, or people are going to hit it hard, and fall off fast.

Ragnarok was grindy yes, but it wasn’t grindy at level 25.

There’s 200 levels in beta, and 500ish levels in total it seems like. If your gonna hit massive grind walls at 25, then this game caters to a very minor group of people, even Koreans have complained about this.

I agree fully with everything said here.

19 Likes
#3

You know the grind is bad when Koreans start complaining.

13 Likes
#4

WHEN they have an exp boost we don’t.

3 Likes
#5

I reached level 26 and my biggest frustration is that EXP Cards are not worth it, they give too little exp compared to this exaggerated grind and currently Tree of Savior lacks of a certain fluidity in terms of leveling.
I talked to almost ever NPC and done every quest in Tenet Garden too, we killed the Spider Boss who was 10+ above us, and then we returned to grind lv25 mobs as if nothing had happened…
The best way of leveling (apart from grinding) is to find blue mobs and kill them, they give more exp than EXP Cards…

2 Likes
#6

My view is mostly opposite to this. I haven’t quite made it to 30, but with the help of other players by forming parties, I haven’t had too much difficulty in defeating bosses as a Cryomancer. The Mine F1 boss was a real wake up call, but my group did the repeatable quests in the Miner Village and then we were ready for business.

I’ve been thinking of experience cards almost as quest experience. I’m fine with the amount the give me. On the other hand, I’ve found normal enemies almost worthless to fight. I can’t sustain a fight for very long without using an SP pot or two, and so the cost to exp ratio is too large.

If I were to make any suggestions it would be to add more repeatable quests, as I haven’t come across any since the Miner village. Boss HP is also a bit harsh, whether it’s their defense or abundance of HP. My suggestion here I suppose is to increase the effectiveness of weaknesses at least in the early game. For example stab attacks often deal +50% damage. This would be great if it was at 75% or 100%.

#7

I didn’t feel any sudden power spike on bosses, tho. I could solo all of them, but one, until my current level 60 (KR).

As for the EXP, I will just quote what I posted in another topic.

#8

I appreciate that you took the time to comment, but your experience on the Korean test is not really applicable here. We know that the EXP rate on the international test is significantly lower, so it doesn’t mean much to hear that you breezed through 60 levels on a different version of the game. It’s likely that the apparent difficulty of bosses on the international test is due to players being left underleveled, which is why you didn’t see it.

1 Like
#9

I’ve been hearing that the exp rates for this iCBT are significantly lower than the exp rates for the third kCBT. Specifically the exp cards also give 2-5 times more exp in kCBT. So for the kCBT they’re progressing at a steady pace relative to the strength of the areas they go through, while we’re falling behind.
The likely reason behind this change would be that all of the kCBT content isn’t translated / finished yet so they don’t want us getting to it, and their solution was to just lazily kill our exp rates without considering how it’d affect the earlier content as well.

#10

I think they just wanted us to thoroughly explore the newbie areas.

Rather than comparing it to kcbt 3, what was kcbt 1 like?

#11

I’m all for grinding, but that wall should be at places like level 400-500. Nobody is going to want to have grind parties for literal years just to have access to later zones, or months to reach their circle 6 class.

#12

Well, I usually fought bosses +0 ~ +7 levels from me, so maybe I got it better because I was a ranged class.

Also, I didn’t breezed at all up to 60. OP mentioned he is level 27 after finishing quests on level 35 map. I think I was level 31~32 by the time. Every map I had to grind a few levels.
When I finished the level 48 map I was at 43, and the next map was 51…

I farmed those 8 levels on the level 40 map, which took a few hours.

I was just pointing the grind seemed fair, just not as sick as what you are facing now.

:c

#13

What repeatable quest Q_Q?

#14

I agree about the exp and disagree about the bosses.

The exp until level 23-25 was fine but went south really fast from there, i mean, i’m a level 30 Cryomancer grinding on a map designed for level 40+ players and the exp sucks!

I’m still hyped to play but kinda sucks having to grind so early in the game.

I managed to solo all the bosses so far, the last being the reaper on Temple Courtyard, forgot the name. It’s not that hard, just takes a long time and you have to watch those OHKO skills that are invisible btw.

#15

As I said in my post, the bosses are not really “difficult”, they just take way way too long to kill. They’re not fun to fight because they take so long.

2 Likes
#16

Boss fights don’t take too long in a decent party.

#17

I talked to the GM today and explained what happened and that In addition we have to remember that this is the beta then how do we test the levels deeper to find out if there are bugs later on if we can not move up in level and to top only we had seven days… soo pray again for the gods of games and we will see if they bost xp !!!

#18

i hope that they will boost exp, i say that for the testing purpouse, i actually feel that is quite impossible to reach the last rank class for example, we have only a week after all! and most of us have a life to attend! XD

#19

technically we only have 5 days, 3 hours and 30 minutes (when it started) :pensive:

#20

The point is they have to make grind more funnier to us.