The Reaper XP problem

[nenetteblackmoor]

Most quests don't take that long once you know them and are comfortable moving fast. For leveling, most quests are well below 10 minutes; even quests like madstone only takes about 8 to 9 minutes(as long as people know how to split). At cap, 2 hours of gameplay would be me doing a full saga or two and maybe a few other quests on r10. But I also know people that'll take 45 minutes to do quests that I do in under 5 minutes solo; there's a wide variety of what people do and how they do stuff; as long as they're having fun then there's no right nor wrong way to it.

I think that's spot on.

That's why I want you to work backward from the final goal and calculate how many days it would take to earn 156 points by considering the daily playtime and the experience gained from it, all from the perspective of those preparing to undertake the Reaper challenge, rather than from the standpoint of players who have already cleared R10.

People who can gain a lot of experience tend to only focus on the best experience, the best playing environment, and the best results for some reason.

 

[PraetorPlato]

I think that's exactly right.
That's why I'd like you to think from the perspective of those who are planning to undertake the Reaper challenge, rather than from the viewpoint of players who have already cleared R10.

I want you to reverse engineer and calculate how many days it would take to earn 156 points by considering the daily playtime and the experience gained from it.

People who can gain a lot of experience tend to only focus on the best experience, the best playing environment, and the best results for some reason.

The "best" environment is a weekend XP bonus with full pots grinding all weekend, ideally with a box or three to reset leg first-time bonuses. I think people have gotten wings in sub-48-hours in that setup. More realistically, let's say you play 2 hrs/day, 15 mins/quest (10 mins at the beginning of play session to find a group, then 10 minute quest completions with some time in town, reforming groups, etc.). 9k or so rxp a quest gives exactly 500k a week. Do that for 3 weeks, spend a week doing an ITR. That's reaper wings in ...abt 3 months? 156 points will be later, but if you're gunning for 156 points, you should be able to get those 15 min completions down to like 6 on average—reaper wings are the vast majority of power anyway.

Compare that to the realistic speed you're getting racial comp at—assuming a life a week (probably a slightly more optimal speed than that reaper xp setup, it's very hard to hit 14 hours a life without pots), it's almost a year, before you account for heroic, iconic, epic, etc.

 

[Shardrena]

I think what some people, especially those who view the level cap as something to race towards, forget is that while a long time vet who's ran a dungeon hundreds or thousands of times can clear most dungeons in 10 minutes, that's not true for someone who hasn't ran a quest before. Even when grouping, long quests can be cleared within minutes... But this is only possible if you run past practically everything in a race to fight the dungeon's boss.

The reason The Pit has always been such a hated dungeon is not because it's a hard quest. Rather, it's hated because it's a lengthy quest that you can't really race through. Nor can the party split up to accomplish multiple goals at once. Personally, I like the quest. Always have, really. But yeah, running back and forth in a confusingly laid out dungeon can be tedious. And for those who prefer to zerg every dungeon to get maximum XP per hour, being forced to slow down is their kryptonite. As I recall, you can't even memorize the rune wheel puzzles, because the solutions are randomized. And trying to brute force them takes too long, due to there being 5 or 6 rune wheels.

I've said it before, and I'll probably end up saying it again... Gamers are known for optimizing the fun out of their hobbies. Then they look around after racing towards their "the real game starts here" end goal, and realize there's nothing to really do now that they've reached "the real game". Personally, I've always thought the mentality of figuring out the fastest way power level to the level cap in any given MMO was silly. People who do that inevitably end up complaining that there is no content in the end-game, or not enough content. And they do so without understanding they raced right past the majority of the game's content.

Reaper XP and the "problems" surrounding it are the same, IMO. You have people who raced to 156 reaper enhancement points, for some reason thinking once they reached that point the real "Reaper" system would become available to them and they would be provided the challenge they say they want. Only to not realize in their rush to max out the Reaper trees, they were racing past the very challenges they were asking for, then expecting the system to still provide challenges. Same thing happened with reincarnation. There's a bonus for reincarnating from each class 3 times? People raced to do that as fast as possible, only to then complain that there's nothing to do but farm content they are now over powered for.

 

[PraetorPlato]

I think what some people, especially those who view the level cap as something to race towards, forget is that while a long time vet who's ran a dungeon hundreds or thousands of times can clear most dungeons in 10 minutes, that's not true for someone who hasn't ran a quest before. Even when grouping, long quests can be cleared within minutes... But this is only possible if you run past practically everything in a race to fight the dungeon's boss.

The reason The Pit has always been such a hated dungeon is not because it's a hard quest. Rather, it's hated because it's a lengthy quest that you can't really race through. Nor can the party split up to accomplish multiple goals at once. Personally, I like the quest. Always have, really. But yeah, running back and forth in a confusingly laid out dungeon can be tedious. And for those who prefer to zerg every dungeon to get maximum XP per hour, being forced to slow down is their kryptonite. As I recall, you can't even memorize the rune wheel puzzles, because the solutions are randomized. And trying to brute force them takes too long, due to there being 5 or 6 rune wheels.

I've said it before, and I'll probably end up saying it again... Gamers are known for optimizing the fun out of their hobbies. Then they look around after racing towards their "the real game starts here" end goal, and realize there's nothing to really do now that they've reached "the real game". Personally, I've always thought the mentality of figuring out the fastest way power level to the level cap in any given MMO was silly. People who do that inevitably end up complaining that there is no content in the end-game, or not enough content. And they do so without understanding they raced right past the majority of the game's content.

Reaper XP and the "problems" surrounding it are the same, IMO. You have people who raced to 156 reaper enhancement points, for some reason thinking once they reached that point the real "Reaper" system would become available to them and they would be provided the challenge they say they want. Only to not realize in their rush to max out the Reaper trees, they were racing past the very challenges they were asking for, then expecting the system to still provide challenges. Same thing happened with reincarnation. There's a bonus for reincarnating from each class 3 times? People raced to do that as fast as possible, only to then complain that there's nothing to do but farm content they are now over powered for.

I love the pit! One of my favorite quests (and also quite efficient for the xp—rune wheels have fixed solutions, btw)......

More generally, I think it's silly to complain about rxp as a uniquely bad issue when a. reaper is optional, and b. reaper xp is by far the best designed grind in the game—it's very front loaded, shorter, rewards playing challenging content (rather than easy content as fast as possible), and incentivizes more people to play socially.

 

[nenetteblackmoor]

reaper is optional,

Given the current abundance of Reaper recruitment, isn't it becoming more of a default rather than an option?

 

[PraetorPlato]

Given the current abundance of Reaper recruitment, isn't it becoming more of a default rather than an option?

Meh—it's becoming more and more common because people are bored in elite. if you're not, there's no reason to run reaper—elite's probably more efficient anyway.

 

[GrizzlyOso]

I think what some people, especially those who view the level cap as something to race towards, forget is that while a long time vet who's ran a dungeon hundreds or thousands of times can clear most dungeons in 10 minutes, that's not true for someone who hasn't ran a quest before. Even when grouping, long quests can be cleared within minutes... But this is only possible if you run past practically everything in a race to fight the dungeon's boss.

The reason The Pit has always been such a hated dungeon is not because it's a hard quest. Rather, it's hated because it's a lengthy quest that you can't really race through. Nor can the party split up to accomplish multiple goals at once. Personally, I like the quest. Always have, really. But yeah, running back and forth in a confusingly laid out dungeon can be tedious. And for those who prefer to zerg every dungeon to get maximum XP per hour, being forced to slow down is their kryptonite. As I recall, you can't even memorize the rune wheel puzzles, because the solutions are randomized. And trying to brute force them takes too long, due to there being 5 or 6 rune wheels.

I've said it before, and I'll probably end up saying it again... Gamers are known for optimizing the fun out of their hobbies. Then they look around after racing towards their "the real game starts here" end goal, and realize there's nothing to really do now that they've reached "the real game". Personally, I've always thought the mentality of figuring out the fastest way power level to the level cap in any given MMO was silly. People who do that inevitably end up complaining that there is no content in the end-game, or not enough content. And they do so without understanding they raced right past the majority of the game's content.

Reaper XP and the "problems" surrounding it are the same, IMO. You have people who raced to 156 reaper enhancement points, for some reason thinking once they reached that point the real "Reaper" system would become available to them and they would be provided the challenge they say they want. Only to not realize in their rush to max out the Reaper trees, they were racing past the very challenges they were asking for, then expecting the system to still provide challenges. Same thing happened with reincarnation. There's a bonus for reincarnating from each class 3 times? People raced to do that as fast as possible, only to then complain that there's nothing to do but farm content they are now over powered for.

I love trying to use an example against people, implying they don't know these quests because they "can't zerg", and then not knowing the example yourself. Pit absolutely can be split to some degree , puzzles aren’t random, the key for speed in pit above all else is ddoor. Also one of my fav quests along with cruci, etc. It's about 3k / minute xp wise, totally fine at that level. I for sure run it every time I have ddoor, and sometimes, without.

But also, love trying to say vets don’t know what it’s like to take a long time in a quest. How do you think the vet knows the quest ?

I normally run new content on (sometimes casual!), norm , hard , reaper something and explore the whole thing. If “noobs” did that they wouldn’t be noobs, they would be vets.

 

[DBZ]

The pit can be duod fast 1 guy does all the stuff with dd the other guy marios fast 40k

 

[Mickeymouse]

Was going to write something about how this reminded me of when it was considered fancy to cough blood in the early 20th century.. but nah.

 

[Shardrena]

I love trying to use an example against people, implying they don't know these quests because they "can't zerg", and then not knowing the example yourself. Pit absolutely can be split to some degree , puzzles aren’t random, the key for speed in pit above all else is ddoor. Also one of my fav quests along with cruci, etc. It's about 3k / minute xp wise, totally fine at that level. I for sure run it every time I have ddoor, and sometimes, without.

But also, love trying to say vets don’t know what it’s like to take a long time in a quest. How do you think the vet knows the quest ?

I normally run new content on (sometimes casual!), norm , hard , reaper something and explore the whole thing. If “noobs” did that they wouldn’t be noobs, they would be vets.

I love how people make bald assumptions about me.

Why can't The Pit be handled by the party splitting up to do different objectives at once? Because you can't do those objectives at the same time. You physically can't enter each important area unless you're at that stage of the quest.

Are the rune wheels in the quest random? I've never been sure. It certainly feels like it. Granted, I don't run the quest back to back to back to back, and have never felt the need to take notes on each rune wheel's solution, since you can easily check the in-game clues.

And Dimension Door doesn't really help speed things up as much as you claim. Yes, I've used it in the quest myself. It lets you get back to the entrance area, but you then still have to run the length of the dungeon to whichever objective is next. While hopefully remembering the exact route, which you might not if it's quite literally been years since you last ran the quest. Dimension Door also doesn't really help much with the 1st and 2nd, or 3rd furnaces. This is particularly true if the person trying to do them lacks feather fall and keeps falling down. Seen it happen before. I'd volunteered my monk or the task since I had Slow Fall. The paladin party leader insisted THEY were the one to do the furnaces, since they "know where to go and what to do" and didn't trust anyone else to be able to do it. Party leader kept falling, and didn't have a feather fall item. Eventually I just did the puzzles before grabbing their soulstone and dragging the leader to a rez shrine, again.

 

[Lazuli]

The thing is, what you're saying doesn't make sense, Shardrena. The pit is not hated because it cannot be raced through. In fact, it is a fast quest for the xp it gives when you know it.

People hate this quest because they don't know the way (this is usually the complaint I hear the most from my pugs) or because they hate jumping; Mario Quest style is not for everyone.

The thing about not being able to be a zerg doesn't make any sense, you can zerg this quest like any other. I have done it many times.

The wheel puzzles are not random lol. I have the key runes in my characters bio because it is a quest that I do every non-iconic life.

 

[Silverfox]

Why can't The Pit be handled by the party splitting up to do different objectives at once? Because you can't do those objectives at the same time. You physically can't enter each important area unless you're at that stage of the quest.

It most certainly can be done by splitting up and waiting for the objectives to be completed.

Are the rune wheels in the quest random? I've never been sure. It certainly feels like it. Granted, I don't run the quest back to back to back to back, and have never felt the need to take notes on each rune wheel's solution, since you can easily check the in-game clues.

These are static turns.

And Dimension Door doesn't really help speed things up as much as you claim.

This most certainly can speed up the quest if used correctly.

I have soloed this quest in 15 minutes and know others who have done so in less than 10 minutes.

 

[GrizzlyOso]

I love how people make bald assumptions about me.

Why can't The Pit be handled by the party splitting up to do different objectives at once? Because you can't do those objectives at the same time. You physically can't enter each important area unless you're at that stage of the quest.

Are the rune wheels in the quest random? I've never been sure. It certainly feels like it. Granted, I don't run the quest back to back to back to back, and have never felt the need to take notes on each rune wheel's solution, since you can easily check the in-game clues.

And Dimension Door doesn't really help speed things up as much as you claim. Yes, I've used it in the quest myself. It lets you get back to the entrance area, but you then still have to run the length of the dungeon to whichever objective is next. While hopefully remembering the exact route, which you might not if it's quite literally been years since you last ran the quest. Dimension Door also doesn't really help much with the 1st and 2nd, or 3rd furnaces. This is particularly true if the person trying to do them lacks feather fall and keeps falling down. Seen it happen before. I'd volunteered my monk or the task since I had Slow Fall. The paladin party leader insisted THEY were the one to do the furnaces, since they "know where to go and what to do" and didn't trust anyone else to be able to do it. Party leader kept falling, and didn't have a feather fall item. Eventually I just did the puzzles before grabbing their soulstone and dragging the leader to a rez shrine, again.

No one made an assumption about you, although, your initial post I responded to was assumptions about other people, which are clearly not true. What assumption do you think was made? You are the one doubling down on not knowing the pit, while claiming others don't know the pit, because they "don't like hard quests". Your point, not mine.

You can't argue against splitting up and at the same time argue you have to run across the dungeon. Not being able to literally do them at the same time is why I said partially, but skipping the run is huge for time and why ddoor is important (or planned splitting).

Off the top of my head, how to ddoor: From first room (up right) - no need. From first furnace, avoids the entire run back up, security is immediately up-right (1 min?). From there, security, ddoor helps slightly in running back out of that corridor (20 sec). From 2nd furnace, ddoor, immediately back up to power (1+ min?). From power, drop down to puzzles at bottom, then ddoor avoids run up ramp (30 sec). From there ddoor is 50/50 but faster to 3rd. From 3rd ddoor up to top to finish (1 min?).

It is clearly much faster, some of those runs are long.

Not having feather fall, or jerk paladins, has nothing to do with anything.

I won't even go into why you won't believe the wheels aren't random. They're not random. They're on the wiki, and correct every time.

 

[The Narc]

I love how people make bald assumptions about me.

Why can't The Pit be handled by the party splitting up to do different objectives at once? Because you can't do those objectives at the same time. You physically can't enter each important area unless you're at that stage of the quest.

Are the rune wheels in the quest random? I've never been sure. It certainly feels like it. Granted, I don't run the quest back to back to back to back, and have never felt the need to take notes on each rune wheel's solution, since you can easily check the in-game clues.

And Dimension Door doesn't really help speed things up as much as you claim. Yes, I've used it in the quest myself. It lets you get back to the entrance area, but you then still have to run the length of the dungeon to whichever objective is next. While hopefully remembering the exact route, which you might not if it's quite literally been years since you last ran the quest. Dimension Door also doesn't really help much with the 1st and 2nd, or 3rd furnaces. This is particularly true if the person trying to do them lacks feather fall and keeps falling down. Seen it happen before. I'd volunteered my monk or the task since I had Slow Fall. The paladin party leader insisted THEY were the one to do the furnaces, since they "know where to go and what to do" and didn't trust anyone else to be able to do it. Party leader kept falling, and didn't have a feather fall item. Eventually I just did the puzzles before grabbing their soulstone and dragging the leader to a rez shrine, again.

All false, you should go back to arguing about how it was better back in the day when people required your sorceror in STK.

Part of your issue is that you are pugging with people that dont know what they are doing.

 

[Dielzen]

People who can gain a lot of experience tend to only focus on the best experience, the best playing environment, and the best results for some reason.

This is absurd. If you have a goal of 200 past lives, why do you want to take longer per life? If you can do a life in 3 days or 30, you still want to be EFFICIENT or you’ll never have a chance at getting there. It’s not a race to the end, it’s a race to get there before the game shuts down lol

 

[rabidfox]

I think that's spot on.

That's why I want you to work backward from the final goal and calculate how many days it would take to earn 156 points by considering the daily playtime and the experience gained from it, all from the perspective of those preparing to undertake the Reaper challenge, rather than from the standpoint of players who have already cleared R10.

People who can gain a lot of experience tend to only focus on the best experience, the best playing environment, and the best results for some reason.

I did 27(26?) reaper points off a season of HC just by playing an hour or two each night (and bit longer on the weekends) off r4's (that was each quest at cap done on r4 one time with a 50 pot). From my view, 156 is a long term goal and wings are an easier aiming point. I think it took about 1.5 years of pugs to get my wings (I got them back before I was in a nice solid guild so I pugged everything, got total completionist off pugging too).

And what did I do once I hit 156 on my main? I started working on my 2nd favorite character. It's about having fun, because there's always a new goal if you want one. I don't really think the time to hit 75/156 is too hard for those want it but it's not really meant for total casuals IMO, there's other objectives they can go for (same way I've never bothered going after certain objectives in other games, they're just not there for the way I play them).

 

[Kessaran]

To my understanding, reaper was never designed to be the "norm". It's only become so because of power creep and player builds improving. There's also 0 reason rexp should be easier to farm. Even assuming Keep on The Borderlands rexp, you'd get 119 rexp every single quest you complete on R1. Assuming ~150 quests from 1-20 at 119 exp each that's 4 reaper points (17,850). Since quests linearly scale up the reaper exp from Keep on the Borderlands quests you can assume roughly 25-30k rexp each life if all quests done on R1. With 158 PL's to farm, that would total up to 3.95m rexp assuming only 25k rexp a life and ONLY tring at 20 which is obviously not going to happen. meaning it only gets higher from that point.

TL;DR 3.95m minimum rexp for a total completionist.


There's no reason to farm it at 32, and if your complaint is that rexp isn't shared between characters that's purely your gameplay style and of course it will be punished. Most people farming reaper are doing so on 1-3 toons, and most of those toons have a plethora of past lives. My advice? Quit spreading out your toons so much and start focusing on specific toons. The game isn't about playing a single life toon and making an alt once it hits cap. It's about reincarnating to get stronger each life. To each their own, but saying reaper is too difficult, even at legendary, and that rexp is too difficult to get is just plain absurd. I got my reaper wings doing R1 for Racial/Heroic completionist (and some iconics/repeat lives thrown in). I have about 80 PL's and have done under 150 Legendary quests above R1. Most of my high reaper quests were done in a single life to go from 71-75 RP.

 

[Shardrena]

No one made an assumption about you, although, your initial post I responded to was assumptions about other people, which are clearly not true.

Not sure how long you've been playing. But I started the same day DDO originally launched, and was fairly active on the original forums from about the same time. Although my posting rate dropped off over time as I played MMOs less and less. And yes, people were hating The Pit because of how long it is, and the fact they couldn't zerg rush it, thus ran other quests which could be zerg rushed. Any time a group I was in suggested running the Pit as a level appropriate quest, it was angrily rejected in favor of yet another STK Elite run due to The Pit being "bad xp/hour, it's too long and you can't run past everything". Anything that had (gasp) puzzles got avoided because puzzles "ruined xp/hour", anything with long and confusing routes you have to traverse got avoided for the same reason. At one point, I DID have the pathing memorized, but then I didn't run the quest for a good 10 years due to how many other quests got added, and characters mostly being beyond the level 7-9 range.

But back when the level cap was still 10, I ran that quest so damn often because it offered decent xp on elite, and I could solo it on Elite with a sorcerer between the STK runs I'd inevitably get roped into despite being level 8. I got so damn tired of running STK. That, and Delaria's Tomb were seemingly the preferred quest chains for people racing to the level cap at the time. Occasionally a group would run Sorrowdusk Isle or Ruins of Gianthold, but Delaria's Tomb and STK were more common.

 

[Anuulified]

Getting reaper experience is about consistent playing. Stop waiting for r10 groups and GEAR to solo r4+ at speed. Grouping just makes it faster.

 

[Kimbere]

That's why I want you to work backward from the final goal and calculate how many days it would take to earn 156 points by considering the daily playtime and the experience gained from it, all from the perspective of those preparing to undertake the Reaper challenge, rather than from the standpoint of players who have already cleared R10.

Multiple players get 40+ reaper points on a first life toon even in the shorter Hardcore leagues (~2 months).

If a given player "chooses" to run quests in a manner that is sub-optimal from an xp/rxp per minute manner, well... that's their choice.

Each person reaps the benefits and suffers the consequences according to their choices. If they don't like the consequences, they're free to choose differently.