Basic Guide to Budgeting Exp in PFO

Greetings new players! This is a brief post about how to manage your oodles of Exp when you (finally) get to join in the game.

When you start, you should have around 16,800 experience points. That's a lot! But it is not as much as you might think- it can go very quickly. More importantly, however, is that there a few Exp "sinks" down which you can toss your experience without getting any real benefit (or none!). This is aimed at pointing some of those out to you.

If you follow this guide (loosely), you should have enough experience to acquire about level 4 in all four roles, provided that you can meet the Achievement requirements.

1. Do not spend more than 1000 exp for anything when you are first visiting the trainers. That is a lot of dough to be slinging around when you first get in the game, and the only things that will cost that much are not worth the investment. You can relax this guideline later on once you get familiar with the feat system.

2. Do not do not DO NOT buy level 2 of any attacks. It costs 640 experience and gets you absolutely nothing over level 1. The higher level attacks are for when you get weapons with +'s on them (i.e. Longbow +1). You will almost certainly not see a +1 weapon in the few short days you will be able to play in Alpha. But if you are lucky enough to get one, ignore this rule and go upgrade some attacks!

3. Do purchase the following feats so you can start to learn where things go on the paper doll:

Armor Feats: Mage (Wizards) Archer (Ranged Fighter) Dragoon (Melee Fighter) Crusader (Melee Priest) Evangelist (Ranged Priest) Scout (Ranged Rogue) Swashbuckler (Melee Rogue) - These are all dirt cheap so go ahead and buy the first two levels of all of them.

Defensive Feats: Iron Will, Great Fortitude, Lightening Reflexes - Buy all three but only level 1 (see guideline 1 above)

Utility Feats: Evasion (Ranged) Charge (Melee) Trip (Melee) Bullwark (Defensive) Shield of Faith (Cleric Defensive) Divine Favor (Cleric Offensive) True Strike (Wizard Offensive) - You can afford to buy all of these and play with them all, so go ahead and do so!

Reactive Feats: Master of Opportunity (Any) - just buy 2 or 3

Feature Feats: Glory Domain (Cleric) Evoker (Wizard) Cut-Throat (Rogue) Weapon Specialization (Fighter- pick one, any one! Or two.)

Finally, the following feats don't do anything, so don't buy them:
Charm Domain (Domain, Feature)
Conjurer (School, Feature)
Abjurer (School, Feature)
Enchanter (School, Feature)
Necromancer (School, Feature)
Tiring Critical (Reactive)
Bluff (Skill)

To see a full list of what feats are in the game and what they do, just go here: Nihimon's Formatted Data

If you are looking for a home in Early Enrollment and live to be a Ranger or Servant of Erastil, Blackfeathers Keep is open to you.

I will be in game as either Trainer or Sspitfire. If you see me on, you are welcome to hit me up for any questions. (to whisper, type "/w <player name>, <message>" That comma is very important!)

If they don't get in until EE (Sept 25th) they aren't going to have that hefty package of xp.

There will be a full wipe on the 24th, or so I am given to believe.

Nevertheless that is a nice recipe you've cooked up for them!

This is fantastic!

I am assuming (and hoping) that folks are able to get in sooner. GW made a BIG promise to let folks in in the last days of Alpha. I honestly don't see how they can not keep that promise- even if it means one more delay to EE.

EDIT: The promise wasn't just to Month 1 EE folks. It was to everyone from Month 1 access to OE sign-ups.

Can you add a parenthesis after each feat with an explanation of what it's used for such as: Feature Feet ("explanation of what feature feet is and why you need it")?

I know that would help with some confusion on what all these feats are actually for.

Finally, the following feats don't do anything, so don't buy them:

Charm Domain (Domain, Feature)
Conjurer (School, Feature)
Abjurer (School, Feature)
Enchanter (School, Feature)
Necromancer (School, Feature)
Tiring Critical (Reactive)
Bluff (Skill)

Conjurer is required for Acid Dart.

Sure they have that much XP??

My assumption was your timer starts when you create your very first character and you start with 1000 XP.

The second and third character starts gaining XP when the first one did - so starting with more XP.

Otherwise - great work. I still have to do a write-up of my experience with the minimal viable economy - part 3. But this is the stuff that really helps.

Will it be error free - no.

But it will be a lot better as when someone tries on his own. Saw my wife play today the first time. I generated a placeholder on day 1 - so she had lots of XP.

She bought everything on offer - click, click, click ...

Giorgio wrote:

Finally, the following feats don't do anything, so don't buy them:

Charm Domain (Domain, Feature)
Conjurer (School, Feature)
Abjurer (School, Feature)
Enchanter (School, Feature)
Necromancer (School, Feature)
Tiring Critical (Reactive)
Bluff (Skill)

Conjurer is required for Acid Dart.

Abjurer is required for Mage's Resistance.
Enchanter is required for Daze.

The features also provide keywords for your spells. Admittedly I'm still waiting on tech for their passive bonuses :) .

Thank you for the corrections :)

@sspitfire1 - you may be confused or I may be reading your message incorrectly but I think you're assuming something that is not true.

There will be a wipe on the last day of Alpha before the Early Enrollment period begins. Nothing earned in Alpha carries over into Early Enrollment.

Nobody will have access to the game on the first day of Early Enrollment but people with Alpha and Early Enrollment accounts, and the Early Enrollees may not choose to begin using their game time. Accounts don't get XP backdated to the start of Early Enrollment regardless of when they start playing. We're going to have a little "smoothing function" of XP for the start of Early Enrollment so that people don't feel like OMG MUST BE IN SECOND ONE MINUTE ONE HOUR ONE OF DAY ONE OF EARLY ENROLLMENT OR MISS ANY XP FOR ALL TIME, but that smoothing function will end, probably before the Explorer Enrollees join in Month 2.

Note to self: Cancel planned panic login for start of EE. May comfortably delay to Second Two. ;)

@ Ryan: This was in anticipation of all the folks that would have gotten to try out Alpha 8 (Alpha 9?) had things worked out for the stress test on Monday. I suppose there is still about 48 hours for said stress test to happen; but I am guessing it won't be :(

But this brings up a good point. I suppose I should probably make a new budgeting guide for EE. I wonder what that will look like...?

@ Ryan: That brings up a more important question: Is there any way GW would be able to get OE players in to Beta for a week or so in the first or second month? Just so they can check it out and so you could make good on the promise of letting them in for the stress test of Alpha (assuming it doesn't happen)? To my mind, it would make good marketing sense on a number of different levels; but more importantly, it would be good customer relations.

@sspitfire1

Following this update we are going to open the game (but NOT the forums - see below) to all players that have Open, Explorer, Early and Alpha access (and of course all the people who have received Alpha invites will continue to have access).

I'm not sure if this is what you were talking about, but they were already planning to get the Open Enrollment players into the Stress Test.

Yes, but if the stress test doesn't happen because we go straight in to EE, then those folks are going to be a touch let down. So, to make up for it, get them into Beta for a week or two after Beta has been up for a month or two.

Note to self: Cancel planned panic login for start of EE. May comfortably delay to Second Two. ;)

:)

I would add hitpoints, recovery bonus and base attack bonus to that list.

Thanks everyone. Bumping this as we begin to get an influx of new players today.

One final note: advancing feats requires achievement points. You earn these by doing various things in game. Here is a rough guide (I'm sure others are elsewhere):

Martial/Divine/Arcane/Subterfuge: Killing things with the appropriate weapons

Subterfuge/Divine: Working on certain escalation quests

Adventure: Killing PvE baddies like goblins, wolves, bandits, etc. Each has their own Achievement branch

Adventure: Harvesting from nodes

Crafting: Refining and Crafting things

Achievement points are cumulative with previous levels of an achievement and with other achievements of the same type. For example:

If you go kill 10 goblins with your club, you will have 1 Adventure point (10 Goblins) and 1 Martial point (10 "Hammer" kills).

Say you then go 10 wolves with your club. Now you have 2 Adventure points and 3 Martial points: 1 Adventure for 10 Goblins + 1 Adventure for 10 Wolves; 1 Martial for 10 Hammer kills + 2 Martial for 20 Hammer Kills.

You find a longsword and decide to use it! You go kill 10 bandits. You now have 3 Adventure points and 4 Martial points. 1 Adventure for 10 Goblins + 1 Adventure for 10 Wolves + 1 Adventure for 10 Bandits; 1 Martial for 10 Hammer kills + 2 Martial for 20 Hammer Kills + 1 Martial for 10 Heavyblade Kills

Thanks for this work, emailing it to all my players. :)

@sspitfire1 - you may be confused or I may be reading your message incorrectly but I think you're assuming something that is not true.

There will be a wipe on the last day of Alpha before the Early Enrollment period begins. Nothing earned in Alpha carries over into Early Enrollment.

Nobody will have access to the game on the first day of Early Enrollment but people with Alpha and Early Enrollment accounts, and the Early Enrollees may not choose to begin using their game time. Accounts don't get XP backdated to the start of Early Enrollment regardless of when they start playing. We're going to have a little "smoothing function" of XP for the start of Early Enrollment so that people don't feel like OMG MUST BE IN SECOND ONE MINUTE ONE HOUR ONE OF DAY ONE OF EARLY ENROLLMENT OR MISS ANY XP FOR ALL TIME, but that smoothing function will end, probably before the Explorer Enrollees join in Month 2.

That's good to hear. I hope by smoothing you mean everyone who activates within the first week or so of month one EE has the exact same XP by the start of month 2.

@sspitfire1,

Check PM. :)

I would add hitpoints, recovery bonus and base attack bonus to that list.

Base Attack bonus requires Achievements (adventure 3, IIRC)

Not that that changes anything, you just can't purchase it right when you log in to the game.