Nightmare Tide leveling woes

[StrawberryZebra]

Hello Ladies and Gents.

I picked up Rift recently and I've been enjoying my time in Telara. As luck would have it, I managed to get myself to level 60 literally hours before the Expansion was live, and I was hoping that it would give me a good chance of catching up enough to give Rift the chance to impress it deserves.

The problem is that I've missed a total of 17 quests, 11 of those being Carnage quests, throughout all of the Nightmare Tide content and I've been doing any Rifts, Footholds and world events I've come across with the odd IA here and there. But I'm currently over 20 million XP short of level 65. Considering that its just over half a levels worth of XP, I'm wondering if I've missed out something I should have been doing along the way? There's clearly not enough XP from 60 to 65 from questing alone, so there must be something to bridge the gap surely.

I have tried to make up the difference running dungeons, but most of those end up with the group kicking me as soon as they can for not having X amount of Hit. There are a few repeatable daily quests which offer some XP, but playing Manugo daily for as long as it takes is a disappointing way to spend game time. I'm really not sure what my options are at this point short of just grinding it out and any help would be very much appreciated.

[Lathais]

Hello Ladies and Gents.

I picked up Rift recently and I've been enjoying my time in Telara. As luck would have it, I managed to get myself to level 60 literally hours before the Expansion was live, and I was hoping that it would give me a good chance of catching up enough to give Rift the chance to impress it deserves.

The problem is that I've missed a total of 17 quests, 11 of those being Carnage quests, throughout all of the Nightmare Tide content and I've been doing any Rifts, Footholds and world events I've come across with the odd IA here and there. But I'm currently over 20 million XP short of level 65. Considering that its just over half a levels worth of XP, I'm wondering if I've missed out something I should have been doing along the way? There's clearly not enough XP from 60 to 65 from questing alone, so there must be something to bridge the gap surely.

I have tried to make up the difference running dungeons, but most of those end up with the group kicking me as soon as they can for not having X amount of Hit. There are a few repeatable daily quests which offer some XP, but playing Manugo daily for as long as it takes is a disappointing way to spend game time. I'm really not sure what my options are at this point short of just grinding it out and any help would be very much appreciated.

Instant Adventure, Dungeons, PvP, just about anything you do really give s you XP.

[Edge-]

Strange. I'm finding myself at 64 and not even finished in the second zone with nothing more than normal quests/carnage and doing the first dungeon once (plus a few short nightmare rifts, but those weren't squat for experience).

Are you sure you picked up/completed all the optional quests out in the world and managed to complete all the carnage quests? Because there seems to be more than enough experience from quests alone, at least for me.

[StrawberryZebra]

I've had to complete more or less every quest I've been able to find in order stop myself falling too far behind the leveling curve. More out of necessity than choice, but I liked the underwater theme so much that I wanted to stay in those zones. Looking at the zone achievements, I've missed very few quests overall and certainly not anywhere like enough to count for the massive disparity. I'm can't say if the achievements are for doing all of the quests in a zone, but they're good to use as a benchmark .

Reading through some of the server chat tonight, it seems others have similar problems as I have, (though most of them not as severe). From the sound of it most of the people who avoided getting stuck have been using XP boosts of one sort or another. I came into Nightmare Tide without even any Rested XP, and 40% extra on kills adds up quickly given the sheer volume of mobs you kill leveling. I get the impression Trion assumed almost everyone was going to be using boosts and that an XP shortfall was intentional rather than accidental. But lets not derail things with P2W discussions and conspiracy theories.

Am I right in thinking you get full XP for quests if you mentor yourself down? I missed out 3 of the zones in Brevane, going back and finishing them is at least some XP while I'm waiting on dungeon queues.

[Edge-]

Oh, thinking on it, I'm subbed so I have the 40% buff on, which probably explains a lot. Without that I'd probably be well behind in experience and would need to run a lot more dungeons/rifts and do some IA's to make up for the experience difference.

[Yizu]

People kick you for not having hit on normal dungeons? Strange.

Do the dailies they give 400k exp each, you can start doing them as soon as you finish questlines on those hubs

http://riftgrate.com/2014/10/22/guid...ide-notoriety/

[Edge-]

People kick you for not having hit on normal dungeons? Strange.

Do the dailies they give 400k exp each, you can start doing them as soon as you finish questlines on those hubs

http://riftgrate.com/2014/10/22/guid...ide-notoriety/

And bookmarking this. Thanks for the link, notoriety has been on my mind a bit but I've not done any looking into it (though minions have definitely been helping).

[Khelendros]

Nightmare Rifts give a ton of exp, and you need the rep. You should be doing those. Aside from that dungeons.

Rift for some odd reason is treated differently than WoW. In WoW people run dungeons during the leveling experience, its just part of leveling. In Rift people never seem to do this.

And for the record the fault of this lies not with Trion. It was our (the alpha testers) suggestion that the exp curve be increased on the backend because you could literally get to 65 in about a day without any vials on PTS originally. Thats not good.

Now granted they should have added in some more carnage quests or side quests to compensate, but I think its perfectly ok to require that people actually do a little (half a level) of stuff other than questing. Questing is great but its a small part of the game. There are dungeons, there is pvp, there is rifts, zone events. Pretty much anything as Lathais said. But moreover, this is exactly why IA's were invented. Its just group questing. But the thing is, you never run out of quests! It does bother me though that they didn't do IA's for Draumheim and Tarken. I think they just ran out of time.

[Lazuli]

It feels like using a xp vial sets you on what normal level curve should be. I switch between quest, rifts, warfronts, dungeons.

[ShinChuck]

Rift for some odd reason is treated differently than WoW. In WoW people run dungeons during the leveling experience, its just part of leveling. In Rift people never seem to do this.

Really? I have a few capped characters starting with Wrath, and my wife has several more starting with Burning Crusade, and we never did any dungeon leveling at all. We never even needed to complete all the new zones, even right after expansion launches before the nerfs.

I can only speak anecdotally, but running dungeons has never been a part of my leveling experience in WoW. It was an optional path, like many things, but pure questing always capped us.

[Lathais]

Nightmare Rifts give a ton of exp, and you need the rep. You should be doing those. Aside from that dungeons.

Rift for some odd reason is treated differently than WoW. In WoW people run dungeons during the leveling experience, its just part of leveling. In Rift people never seem to do this.

And for the record the fault of this lies not with Trion. It was our (the alpha testers) suggestion that the exp curve be increased on the backend because you could literally get to 65 in about a day without any vials on PTS originally. Thats not good.

Now granted they should have added in some more carnage quests or side quests to compensate, but I think its perfectly ok to require that people actually do a little (half a level) of stuff other than questing. Questing is great but its a small part of the game. There are dungeons, there is pvp, there is rifts, zone events. Pretty much anything as Lathais said. But moreover, this is exactly why IA's were invented. Its just group questing. But the thing is, you never run out of quests! It does bother me though that they didn't do IA's for Draumheim and Tarken. I think they just ran out of time.

Myself nor my guild ever ran dungeons in WoW while leveling either. My guild in Rift always runs dungeons while leveling and I remember an argument on the O-Forums once about people queing for Heroics and not knowing anything about the dungeons and a group of people were saying they ran the dungeons while leveling and they thought everyone should. If they did not, they would kick them from their Heroic groups.

I think approximately the same percentage of people run dungeons while leveling in both games. In WoW though, there are more people, so even though it's the same percentage, there are a lot more people running them so it's easier to find a group.

[StrawberryZebra]

People kick you for not having hit on normal dungeons? Strange.

It was more prevalent during the first few days, things have settled down now, though it does still sometimes happen. Hit just seems to be the stat people use to measure how good someones gear is, and mine is admittedly horrible right now. Anything that would be a significant upgrade tends to require Planewalker: Water, which I've not got yet. To top it off, for whatever reason most of the Mage rewards have lots of crit power, but give you very little crit chance to along with it. The end result is I've got 14% extra crit damage, but just over 5% chance to actually crit, (that's without the Mastery that gives you 7% damage in exchange for -4% crit chance, before anyone asks).

Thanks for the daily quest map. They do only give just over 200k XP for me, but its a lot better than nothing at least.

And for the record the fault of this lies not with Trion. It was our (the alpha testers) suggestion that the exp curve be increased on the backend because you could literally get to 65 in about a day without any vials on PTS originally. Thats not good.

Now granted they should have added in some more carnage quests or side quests to compensate, but I think its perfectly ok to require that people actually do a little (half a level) of stuff other than questing. Questing is great but its a small part of the game. There are dungeons, there is pvp, there is rifts, zone events. Pretty much anything as Lathais said. But moreover, this is exactly why IA's were invented. Its just group questing. But the thing is, you never run out of quests! It does bother me though that they didn't do IA's for Draumheim and Tarken. I think they just ran out of time.

Rumour has it that people hit level 65 in under 5 hours anyway. I'm not sure if those are true or not, but it seems pretty likely given that people were hitting 65 on release day.

To be clear, to make up the last half a level it is going to take either 50 story quests, 100 side quests or daily quests or around 200 carnage quests. Alternatively, it would take around 200 IA's. If I chose to just grind it out it would take about 3000 kills, and considering that most mobs have over 200k health, they do take a decent length of time to kill. I'm not sure where you got the impression that there is only a "little" gap to fill, the gap is so wide that people could easily fall into it and never be seen again.
To help put it in perspective, its an entire zones worth of content.

As it stands right now, there just isn't enough content to get you from 60 to 65 without using XP boosts. This should probably concern most longtime Rift players far more than being able to hit 65 quickly, its a huge barrier to new players. Even the ones who don't pay a penny are still content for people who are, without them its going to make filling up your raids much harder, dungeon and PvP queues are going to be longer, etc etc.

[Lathais]

It was more prevalent during the first few days, things have settled down now, though it does still sometimes happen. Hit just seems to be the stat people use to measure how good someones gear is, and mine is admittedly horrible right now. Anything that would be a significant upgrade tends to require Planewalker: Water, which I've not got yet. To top it off, for whatever reason most of the Mage rewards have lots of crit power, but give you very little crit chance to along with it. The end result is I've got 14% extra crit damage, but just over 5% chance to actually crit, (that's without the Mastery that gives you 7% damage in exchange for -4% crit chance, before anyone asks).

Thanks for the daily quest map. They do only give just over 200k XP for me, but its a lot better than nothing at least.



Rumour has it that people hit level 65 in under 5 hours anyway. I'm not sure if those are true or not, but it seems pretty likely given that people were hitting 65 on release day.

To be clear, to make up the last half a level it is going to take either 50 story quests, 100 side quests or daily quests or around 200 carnage quests. Alternatively, it would take around 200 IA's. If I chose to just grind it out it would take about 3000 kills, and considering that most mobs have over 200k health, they do take a decent length of time to kill. I'm not sure where you got the impression that there is only a "little" gap to fill, the gap is so wide that people could easily fall into it and never be seen again.
To help put it in perspective, its an entire zones worth of content.

As it stands right now, there just isn't enough content to get you from 60 to 65 without using XP boosts. This should probably concern most longtime Rift players far more than being able to hit 65 quickly, its a huge barrier to new players. Even the ones who don't pay a penny are still content for people who are, without them its going to make filling up your raids much harder, dungeon and PvP queues are going to be longer, etc etc.

That's a F2P game for you. Buy boosts or grind, that is the choice. The option is there for you to be able to get it without paying though, so it's fine. Get in on a Nightmare Rift group, you'll be needing to do plenty at 60 for rep and achievements anyway. I would suggest going heals if you can and contributing that way. You'll get your XP and be working on your rep and achievements.

[Slipmat]

With over 400 quests alone, not including Carnages, i've no idea how people can "run out of quests" before reaching level 65

The latest Hotfix will now increase XP from running Nightmare Dungeons by 30% if you find yourself skipping quests or whatever to make up that missing XP

DUNGEONS AND INSTANCES

* Increased XP granted from killing mobs and bosses in Nightmare Tide dungeons by 30%

[Edge-]

With over 400 quests alone, not including Carnages, i've no idea how people can "run out of quests" before reaching level 65

The latest Hotfix will now increase XP from running Nightmare Dungeons by 30% if you find yourself skipping quests or whatever to make up that missing XP

Without the 40% buff, it looks to me like it's totally possible (and I'd be curious as to 400 quests not including carnage quests, unless you're including all the daily quests/level 65 only quests, which would be silly). I'm 64 just heading into the final zone and I've been rolling with rested experience and the 40% patron buff, so without those (or without the buff, at least) I would easily be well behind 64. And I've been making it a point to do every story/side/carnage quest that I possibly can.

[Slipmat]

I'd be curious as to 400 quests not including carnage quests

If you check under Achievements you can see what the basic requirement is for quests in each zone. It works out as Goboro Reef 129 quests, Draumheim 132 and Tarken Glacier 138 which adds up to a total of 399 quests, excluding the various dailies and excluding the Carnages which add to only 182 for all three zones

[StrawberryZebra]

With over 400 quests alone, not including Carnages, i've no idea how people can "run out of quests" before reaching level 65

When you consider that without XP boosts its going to take you either 100 Story quests, 200 side quests or 400 Carnage quests to get from level 64 to 65 alone, I'd say that running out before that point is a very real possibility. That's without including any XP from kills, and of course you'll do a mix of all three types of quests along the way, the point still stands. There isn't as much quest XP as there appears to be at first glance.

But I was more interested in finding out how to fix the problem without having to resort to 2 weeks of nothing but grinding and dailies rather than how it actually happened in the first place.

[Lathais]

When you consider that without XP boosts its going to take you either 100 Story quests, 200 side quests or 400 Carnage quests to get from level 64 to 65 alone, I'd say that running out before that point is a very real possibility. That's without including any XP from kills, and of course you'll do a mix of all three types of quests along the way, the point still stands. There isn't as much quest XP as there appears to be at first glance.

But I was more interested in finding out how to fix the problem without having to resort to 2 weeks of nothing but grinding and dailies rather than how it actually happened in the first place.

nope, sorry. F2P account = grind it out.

[Khelendros]

I still don't see the problem. Now granted I'm old school. But why do modern MMO players require questing all the way to the level cap. Shouldn't the game be nudging you to do stuff other than play solo. I mean this is a MMO.

Said it before, I'll say it again, the best EXP (and source of void stones) if you have done all the quests and carnages is Nightmare Rifts.

[rnbwtrout]

i'm right there with you OP. i was only 63 when i made it to the last zone. i tried to do all the carnage quests in the area also, but xp gain was really slow. not a problem for me tho cause my build puts out lots of dps. i finally finished questing in tarken glacier yesterday and was just barely over 64. but...i found a great way to gain xp: zone events. the xp gain was pretty amazing. sit at a wardstone that's being heavily targetted, hit your planar super power and watch your xp jump; and, you get the new sourcestone thingies for participating too. run a good aoe spec, hope people are there with you, and it's the best way to get xp.