Howdy y’all. I hope a handful of people recognize me as the Singing Saltzpyre.
First time posting to the forums, so please be gentle if I mess up some formatting here or there. (but shred me to pieces if I say something wrong, lol) I’m putting this post here in Gen Discussion, as I’m not sure if there’s a better place to put this. My intent for this post are as feedback for Fatshark and information for players. Anyways,
I’ve seen a fair amount of discussion about the leveling process across different forms of media and thought I’d do my best to try and put some numbers to it, so I created a new character and tried to record my entire leveling process this past weekend. Putting some 30 hours into the project. 25 of which went into playing through 44 missions (1 failed) to hit level 30.
Each Mission’s Base XP Value is:
T1 Sedition: 1900xp
T2 Uprising: 2000xp (+5.2% xp from previous difficulty)
T3 Malice: 3100xp (+55%)
T4 Heresy: 4250xp (+37%)
T5 Damnation: 5450xp (+28%)
My Total xp gained by the end was 134,480xp, I believe. Most of you may be aware of this, but the docket and experience displayed when at the mission terminal provides the condition bonuses already added to the base value. So where a normal Malice mission will display: 7,440 Dockets & 3,100 xp, a “High Intensity” Malice mission will display 13,390 Dockets (+80%) and 4,900 xp (+60%) instead. Additionally, Scripture rewards are focused more on XP (+40%), whereas Grimoires are focused on money.
The fastest way I’ve found to level is to play a High-Intensity + Scriptures mission on a difficulty you’re confident that you can complete, as this will provide a player with twice as much XP as running a base mission on that difficulty, and surpasses the xp gain for going up a difficulty level. Otherwise I’d recommend Lights Out or Hunting Pack, as they give +40% xp, but you won’t have to deal with as many elites. I didn’t record how much of a bonus those conditions combined give.
Across My 44 Leveling Missions:
Total Dockets = 320,595
Total Plasteel = 7,625
Total Diamantine = 2,500
Nothing too special to note here imo, I just recorded it for reference.
This link here is a graph showing the xp per mission. I did my best to simulate a new player experience by playing T1 missions through Level 10, T2 missions from 10-17, and going up to T3 missions for 17-30. Around level 25 is when it really started to drag for me, and I ended up running a couple of T4 missions as well, as I had gotten a Mk5 Combat Axe with Brutal Momentum and felt like I wasn’t heavy weight for the team.
One of the other things I measured was the Emperor’s Gifts. This link here is the graph of the base rating of the items I was given. while this graph here is the full rating of the items, including perks + blessings. The full stats list that I used to make them can be seen here.
There were a couple of things that stood out to me in particular.
- I got my first blue weapon on Mission #15, at level 12.
- My first T2 blessing was on Mission #24 while at level 17
- The first T3 blessing was on Mission #39 at level 25
In that regard, I don’t have any issue with this. I think that blessings increasing are scattered at a pretty good pace from Emperor’s Gifts while leveling. The part that weirded me out though is right at the end, with how much base ratings on the weapons vary. With the Emperor’s Gift from Mission 42 being a blue weapon, it’s base rating is 73 points higher than a purple weapon from 2 missions/character levels prior. It feels like Emperor’s Gifts rolls their total rating and rarity first, often sacrificing the base rating of a weapon to give the player higher tier Perks/Blessings. I think that system might work for players who do double condition Damnation games, as a weapon with a generated total rating of 500 will have T4 blessings. but it leaves the Malice/Heresy players with 400/450 rating weapons, leaving them high and dry without Tier 4 blessings.
I’m still collecting data on this, so take my analysis with a massive grain of salt as I don’t have a full picture yet. Just a hypothesis.
Lastly, just a hodgepodge of miscellaneous observations that I made while leveling
- Players who struggle with the game, and can only play T1 Missions, have just as bad of a mission selection as players who want to play T5 Missions.
- I have seen low level players struggling with rager combos when they have their ranged weapon out, as getting hit stops your character from shooting at all, and they don’t know how to dodge yet. Not sure what a good middle ground would be though.
- Weapons when just starting out don’t have enough stats to make them stand out from each other. Which is fine in my opinion. New Players won’t know what combos are or how to use them properly.
- The basic shop feels WAY better than it did on launch. 14 Weapons on display feels great, I even had triple eviscerators offered to me at one point, let alone also having chainswords, chainaxes and thunderhammers in there as well. Really well done.
- I loaded into a game once with a single bullet in my shredder pistol out of 43 shots. That was weird but funny.
- There are so many players who will knock an enemy onto the ground but not kill them, and then turn their back to them. as they deal with the rest of the horde. I do my best to save them.
- With the deacreased enemy density on T1 difficulty missions, its so much easier to pull out your gun while idly walking through the level and shooting every guy you come across. Adding on the low ammo reserves from low weapon modifiers, almost every T1 game I played, everyone was at half ammo for half the mission. Amused me greatly.
- Players just starting out don’t have good tools to deal with a Daemonhost. I’m very glad it’s reserved to taking out just 1 player on Sedition Missions.
And that’s all I’ve got for today. I’m tracking both the basic shop and melk’s shop using my 5 level 30 characters, so hopefully I’ll have something to contribute on that front soon. Cheers and here’s the full imgur post for my graphs: here