Gains

Levelling Gains

Gains refer to the increase in hit points(HP), mana(MP) and Movement points(MV) achieved upon increase in Level. The value amount is varying on a spread based upon game code.

You have now obtained experience level *!

Your gain is: */* hp, */* mana, */* mv */* prac.

Factors influencing levelling gains are kept secret by the creators/moderators of the game. Speculation of these factors are held differently by players and below are some theories based upon limited anecdotal and experimentation info. Confirmation and further information is required, and the following discussion is provided for further sampling and a bit of fun speculation:

Levelling and Typical Bases

Levelling gains testing (Based upon Thief)

Your initial hit point setting at level 1 appears to be solely dependent on your race. This is may be due to the different CON settings on new characters of each race. There does not appear to be any influence for diffferent gender selections.

The level 1 hit point bases observed are:

	drow	dwarf	elf	gith	gnome	h-elf	halfling	h-ogre	h-orc	h-troll	human	pixie	sea-elf
Level 1 HP	21	26	18	24	17	23	17	25	26	27	20	15	18

Your gains per level is reliant on having a maximum constitution. If your stat is not maxed you can expect to observe lower than typical hit point gains. The range of hit point gains on a thief with maximum constitution stat is 12 to 17 hit points per level which results in the following graph of typical avatar hit point bases. Theoretically a minimum base is 12*49=588 + level 1 base and the maximum is 17*49=833 + level 1 base. Statistically speaking there is no reason why the game would need to have any code to suppress these bases, the formulas show the odds of achieving a base below 692 or above 771 is less than 0.0001%. For every 10,000 thieves leveled you would expect to see at most 1 such base. Special factors such as the Deck of Many Things or other special quest prizes may alter a characters base post-leveling.

This graph demonstrates the percent probability for each race and final avatar hit point level. When you ask "what is a normal base" you would have to be specific with regards to race and confidence. A strict statistical answer is possible, but for simplicity, looking at the "50% of characters will have this base or higher" line we see values ranging from 725 to 735 depending on race. On the other hand only 10% of half-ogre thieves ever leveled are expected to be observed at or above 750 hit points (only 1.61% are expected to be exactly 750).

We see from these charts that the explanation for why some races produce higher based thieves than others is entirely explained by level 1 offsets. More experimentation is required to see if level 1 con is significant in the non-max level 2 advancement hit point gain, thus favouring higher bases on characters who have higher/max con stat selection in preauth.

It is worth noting that beyond base hit points many players find inherent resistances/affects, deity options, access to equipment pieces like froggy girth or race equipment sets like the drow set, Vast Horizons totem items, racial skills like tinker or prestige dual class options to be more critical in character planning.

Various Levelling Gains Theories/Speculation (Compilation)

Theory 01

Gains are a function of stats or a combination of various statistics particularly Constitution for HP gains, Dexterity for Movement points(MV) gains and Intelligence for MP gains (see help file for reference). Race and Class also play a roll in the spread range. Gains are purely random beyond this.

Theory 02

Gains are a function of a number of different fixed factors and dice roll factors (TL;DR - Experience Ratings influence dice roll for level gains towards desirable value, Blithe).

• Fixed factors included in this theory are:
  • Constitution for hit points(HP) gains, Intelligence for mana(MP) gains and Dexterity for Movement points(MV) gains directly (see help file for reference).
  • Mental state through factors such as hunger and thirst and affects like poison impacting MST.
  • Race and Class also play a roll in the spread range.
• Dice roll factor included in this theory are following :
  • One of the dice rolls is influenced by the relative experience rolled on level gain (due to variance in dice roll of damage, mobs level, mob defense values (AC, con, etc), etc).
    • • Experience gained on hit on level up is relative to mobile Experience Ratings and to the players level (and reference exp at that player level).
        • Note: Experience gained by attacking mobile beyond 10 level difference, the game code implements lower experience gained (this is originally to stop power levelling).
        • Note: Difference in level of mob to player also influences damage output of player relative to level of mobile effecting damage output and therefore effecting hit/damage value influencing the dice roll gain.
        • Based upon this, speculatively the sweet spot is attacking a mobile approximately 5 levels above player level give or take a few levels.
        • Levelling up on a mobile below your level is suboptimal due to the experience gained relative to Experience Ratings and therefore presumably negatively influences the dice roll and therefore level gains.
      • All statistics effect level gains, however this is due to the indirect influence on the diceroll (outside of Constitution, Dexterity and Intelligence). See following:
        • Damage (and therefore relative exp) is effected by player's DR/HR, weapon damage or spells/skills which are in turn is effected by players other stats (Strength / Dexterity / Luck for (most) attack skill / melee and Wisdom / Luck for (most) attack spell).
        • High Wisdom directly influences increased experience, therefore indirectly influencing the relative experience gained and subsequently the chance of desirable level gain.
      • See also ingame: HELP LEVEL for additional factors that may influence experience bonuses (and therefore potentially gains if level gained on kill).
      • Using melee skills and shields like fireshield iceshield and shockshield provide less exp per hit relative to the reference experience at level and negatively impact gains; for example the hit on strike causes a level.
      • Spells providing improved exp per hit such as necromantic touch may positively influence gain dice roll relative to the hit and Experience Ratings if they land on a level gain.
        • This doesn't mean that a max/min hp/mn gain is mutually exclusive from using skills/spells, however it is theorised that it influences the dice roll due to the impact to relative experience gained.
      • Kill Buffer Tracking influences gain indirectly in so far as the relative experience gained on hit is impacted (due to experience dropping on killing the same mobile repeatedly).
      • Whilst a mobile may provide a lot of total experience (EXP) and be desirable to gain experience with due to having poor defensive statistics (low AC, no dodge/parry/etc dice rolls) and thus making it useful for levelling due to total experience provided and/or ease of killing relative to total experience provided, with respect to gains at level the relative experience of Experience Ratings and the players level the mobile provides may be influencing the dice roll and subsequently the hp/mn gain in a desirable or undesirable way seperately.
      • Having said the above, this does not preclude a maximum level gain or guarantee a poor level gain, as the damage (and therefore experience gained on hit) may be exorbitant mitigating the Experience Ratings. This is particularly noticeable at low levels with a well geared character.
      • Similarly damage is increased as mobile is nearing death, so mobiles health may influence dice roll due to relative experience gained on hit improving with damage output.
    • Levelling up through quest hand-in provided exp is not recommended, due to the dice roll being missing from the equation and anecdotally having poor outcome.
• Combination of fixed and dice roll factors are combined (likely additive) to output the final gains for HP,MP and MV.

Theory 03 and beyond

Please add further theories below for discussion.