Giakomo's Guide To Quick Leveling

(v1.13 - some minor updates on 6/27/03)

Special thanks to Aramoug and all others who provided info used in this guide.

This guide is aimed to help you level fighter classes faster, but I'd highly recommend it to people playing other classes as well.

Q: What is leveling?

A: Leveling is the process of getting experience necessary to train for a higher level.

Q: So, how do I level?

A: For pure fighter classes the only way to get experience (other than doing autoquests, which I won't cover here) is by killing monsters. Obviously, the more and faster you kill monsters, the faster you reach level 25. Each time you land a hit on a monster, you are awarded a little experience. You have no doubt noticed that you do not get the same amount every time. This is because experience you gain from a hit depends on what monster you hit, what your level is, and how much damage your hit did to it. The higher/stronger those are, the more experience you will get.

Q: How does damage work and can I improve it?

A: Damage you do with your attacks is controlled by a number of things, including:

  1. Character level. Higher character level produces more damage.
  2. Weapon. Equipped weapon and associated weapon mastery (for fighter classes)

    Better weapons mean more damage, so it's always important to use the best weapon you can (legally) get your hands on. Some weapons, such as once a days, special event items, brills, and questies, will do a lot more damage than the ones you can buy in a store, making them extremely valuable and sought after.

    Weapon Masteries, ranging from worst (lowest damage) to best (highest damage), are: Novice, Intermediate, Average, Expert, Master (What is mastering?).
     

  3. Character stats.

    Character stats and Melee damage:

    High strength (Str) is necessary to do high damage, thus you should try to roll your character with the max Str value possible for the race you pick. Strength can be boosted via the mingster spell (cast by sorcerors), by using rare potions (amber potion, ogre potion, stygian heart, unicorn eye), but these will have only a temporary effect. "Gloves of Might" (also known as GoM) is a special quest item that will increase characters Str by 1 while equipped.

    High agility (Agi) is very important since it determines how often you hit. For druids, it is also important to have high wisdom (Wis), because the morphing bonus druids get from animorph depends on it (see the Statistic Guide).

    Character stats and Magical damage:

    The maximum damage for spell-based attacks is controlled by the caster's intelligence (Int). Gnome sorcerors with 22 Int do a maximum of 156 damage per zot. Several other races with slightly lower Int, Elves (21), Half-Elves (20), Halflings (20), Dark Elves (20), and Humans (20), all do a max of 143 damage per zot.

    The only item capable of increasing magical damage is the "Badge of Honour", which raises character's Int by 1 (while equipped). For the zot spell, each additional point of Int increases the maximum possible damage by 13. There used to be another item called "Ring of Intelligence" that would also increase Int by 1, but I'm not sure if it still exists. Other than that, I'm not aware of any way to increase spell damage at this time.

    Characters with lower Int fizzle and unaffect more thereby reducing their chance to do damage and gain experience. Unaffects and partial damage usually occur when the difference between the caster's and target's Wis is small AND/OR the caster's character level is a lot lower than the target's, because those translate into a higher Magic Resistance (MR) for the target.
     

  4. Character class. Different classes do different amounts of damage even when they are same level and equipped with the same weapon.

    Since you cannot change your class, there is nothing you can do to help when leveling. Here are a few useful facts that might help you along the way, though:

    Of the fighting classes, Barbarians seem to do the most basic damage (not including special attacks of other classes), followed by Druids (but only when morphed), Knights, Paladins, Monks, then Rangers, Assassins then Thieves.

    Monks get a significant damage bonus from staff-class weapons and while using hands. They have a roundhouse ability that is performed after two successful attacks with no "distractions" (moving, looking around, eating, using knapsacks, etc) in between. The third attack, if successful, will do up to two times your normal attack damage.

    Thieves' and Assassins' Backstab ability (consisting of a /hide followed by an attack) allows them to do as much as 4 times their normal damage.
     

  5. Time of day (for night divinity characters)

    Characters of night divinity (Nallyssa followers) get double experience during evening/night hours.
     

  6. Character divinity. You will do less damage against monsters or players that have divinity on you, and more damage against monsters or players that you have divinity on. See the Divinity Guide for detailed information.

    7.  
  7. Various rumors on other factors affecting damage:

    Rumor: Your hit rate decreases when your character becomes hungry/thirsty.

    Comment: I have NOT been able to confirm it.

    Rumor: Intelligence (Int) determines how often your attack does max damage.

    Comment: I do not know if this is true, so just keep this in mind when rolling your character, just in case...

    Rumor: Weapons have hit-rates associated with them.

    Comment: They do NOT, even though game randomization will occasionally make it seem like they do. You must have high agility to hit more often.  Weapons have a set maximum and minimum damage, and some can have bonuses over certain races or divinities, that is all.

Q: How does the game determine how much experience to award me?

A: To answer this question we'll have to dive into the internals of how the game works. When creating monsters, builders [staff members responsible for making up new areas, items, and monsters] assigned each monster various stats, including:

base level
base experience per point of damage (EPPD)
base kill shot bonus (KSB)

The tougher the monster you fight is, the more likely it is to have high values for these stats.

To calculate the exact amount of experience a character gets from hitting a monster, the game adjusts the monsters' EPPD values to take into account the difference between the character's and monster's levels using this formula:

effective_eppd = base_eppd + base_eppd * (base_level - character_level) / 10,

i.e. EPPD changes by 10% from its base value for every level of difference between your character's and the monster's base level.

The resulting value is then used to figure out the "normal experience" you get from hitting a monster:

normal_experience = effective_eppd * damage

In addition to normal experience, the character who deals the killing blow to a monster is awarded the KSB (which is considerably higher than normal experience), calculated using a similar set of formulae:

effective_KSB = base_KSB + base_KSB * (base_level - character_level)/10

Then, total experience from a kill shot is:

total_killshot_exp = effective_KSB + normal_experience

Q: What monsters should I level on?

A: You can go to this URL to view the Monster Experience Calculator. You will find a list of monsters, listing the monsters' EPPD, KSB, divinity, and hitpoints information. Use that information to find monsters that are close to your level, that you have divinity on, and that have high EPPD and KSB and low hitpoints. Those are the ones you want to level on.

Also, check out the following URL (LLSyon's post with some suggested leveling spots for each level/divinity in the official Realms of Kaos Message Board's Info Corner forum). http://www.realmsofkaos.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=33&t=000011

Q: Can you tell me anything else that will help me level faster?

A: These guidelines have proven useful to me in leveling more than 10 characters to level 25. Stick to them and your leveling speed will increase, as well.

  • Level on monsters your character has divinity on.
  • Experiment. Try different areas and monsters. You might find another monster that you can level on faster.
  • Do NOT level on monsters that are more than 5 levels above/below you. They will either be too hard, or give too little experience. While you might be able to kill tougher monsters, the experience you will gain might not justify the effort you put into hitting them.
  • Remember, it might be better to hit a slightly weaker monster 3/3 times than a stronger one just 1/3 times.
  • Some monsters have fewer hitpoints than others, so killing less endurant monsters means you get that nice fat KSB much more often.
  • Avoid dying too often. At high levels (22-24), you might lose as much as a million experience each time you die.
  • Level with a friend. You will get just as much experience but only get hit half as often.

Comments? Suggestions?

Send a telegram to Giakomo2 in game, contact me on AIM as GiakomoKaliostro, or send me a private message on the RokWorld message board.