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I just went from level 1 to level 9 in one day after transmogrifying. I'm wondering if anyone can get to level 10 in a day? When I hit level 9 I still had 1-hour left to fight crime but don't think that's enough time to get another level. Anyone out there able to figure out the limit one person could get in a single day?

I'm personally very interested in this, because it might tell me if things need adjusted any. I suspect that the XP range on some of the levels needs to be expanded a bit. I think I've heard Mad Hamish say he could get all the way to level 12 in a day, which just seems too high. It seems like for appealing game play it ought to take at least a couple or three days to get that far.

I think if someone could get a full complement of all the buffs from turn number 1, level 1 it'd be possible to get higher. I'd like to talk to Hamish about this more myself to see what he was doing to reach level 12. I know for sure it's not the overall time that will limit your rise in levels as it's easy to go till 7am. Rather it is figuring out how to maximize XP to get higher.

I don't know if Mad Hamish can hit level 12, but he can certainly hit 10.

Also, one dayers? What's your stance? Require some crazy amount of skills and items?

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Before i quite understood the multi abuse rule, i did try this out.
You can, (if played just right) get to fifth level and dusk to dawn a NEW character and knock off a few quests in your first day (specicly officer down, arsonist, mind bender and the galerea.) this was achieved by tossing over a set of leathers, a set of titanium welded bits, and some dark arts. either tossing over a bray or burinign a few minutes in the virtual games network (or a couple of mr t's) woudlbe required to D2D.
This is opposed to my first playthrough, where it too 4 days play to reach the same level.
Thus i think if you use equipment (the pouch will help this low level crawling hugely)) and buffing to hammer the higher dificulty areas (the bay, the city of lost robots, or other xp rich areas), 10 levels should be entirely feasable.
the corolory is withotu the initial equipment boost, there is no way. realy.

Its quite symple, you dont do the damage, the buffs do... Equipment includes IotM's and stars to raise HP, then you go to the cube, let the buffs do the killing, and heal every turn at the hospital... Its quite expencive but it works...

You cannot reach level 12 on a regular day. Not with the current areas you can fight in. Level 10 is the theoretical maximum, and I still have yet to achieve that on a non-frayday, though I did get there at 6:56 AM last frayday, and was 586 xp away on my last psion run, despite using about 40 minutes of play before I transmogrified that day. But I also used 8 lost phones, a stack of blue pills about shoulder-high, spend thousands on healing so I could use graphite, PDA's and a digital voice recorder to come that close and fail.
I think with all the IotM, a full 13 hours, and a bunch of item buffs, and using xp boosting accessories, consistently getting to level 10 each day would be doable. However, until Ryme gives me back my 646 million chips, I cannot afford it. Not even close.

As a matter of fact, hitting level 12 in two days (as I tried to do for the robots) is no easy task, either, as the second day you don't get as many adventures from adrenaline rushes, plus there's no real way to fight enemies beyond your level once you've gotten that high.


On Frayday, of course, all bets are off in regards to how far you can make it. However, when you're bringing 21 hours of play over rollover, adding another 4 with caffeine and then start using adrenaline rushes, it makes for quite a long day. I imagine one could hit level 12 twice if one were willing to spend the money. Level 11 twice isn't difficult, but we are talking 45 hours worth of turns here (21 rolled over + 4 caffeine + 20 adrenaline rushes) which is the equivalent of 3 and a half of your regular week days. To play that at the level necessary to hit level 12 twice, one would need tons of chips to provide extra buffs, and probably about 12 hours of real life time with which to heal after nearly every single battle over the course of your 600+ turns. Ugh. Not for me. Fraydays already take me far too long playing lazily.

The ability to deal damage yourself, instead of relying on buffs reduces the costs dramatically. So does the ability to heal yourself with pp. Hence why I play Psions as much as possible. Generally when I push with the Psion, it's only the first two levels that I really need the combat buffs. Once you've hit level 3, telekinesis gives you enough power so that you can finish off your opponents even without serious buffage. The Elementals can do even better, but lack a decent healing spell until level 10. Gadgeteers seem to score a good number of hits even at a low level, at least with Rod's set and martial arts. No matter what class I play, though, it's quite important to figure out a way to deal damage to my opponents beyond my buffs, as it's quite easy for my buffalo and wind warrior to decide to play stupid for a battle, and if your opponent's not missing, you can't always count on a victory without some self-generated pain.

I think what ought to be done is that after transmogrifying you no longer get adrenaline rushes from leveling up. That will slow down people trying to repeatedly transmogrify for stunts without hurting newbies on their first run.

Yes, but the question is, is there a major issue with that? Do you realize how much work there is in trying to do a transmogrified run? Mad Hamish doesn't put effort. He puts effort.

So, think about what it takes before you say something like that...

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This would create a situation where no one would transmogrify except as a chore. The way I'm doing it is at least fun. It's certainly not earning me a lot of chips. Eliminating adrenaline rushes for transmogrifiers would also effectively freeze the SUIT and ASX boards with the names on there now. As it is, a dedicated player could find themselves a spot within 3 weeks of creating their character.

Thanks for the detail hamish.
One day when I'm realy $%^&*( bored, i might seek rhyme's permission to do some serious multi abuse and try again with uplifing a new character. BUt i honestly doubt, even with all the current IOTMS that i could get a noob up past 6 or 7 in one normal days play

Time: 5:30:20 AM
Level 10 in One day. This is using some 24 blue pills (big thanks to Elusive) and the support of much of chat to provide me with In Communicado for most of the day in addition to my standard buffs. Apparently I overdid it, as I have nearly an hour and a half remaining.

Eh. Right now, this isn't striking me as a problem. It's sinking chips, phones, pills, and PP restores (I sucked down about 13 sky waters to buff Hamish with MD this morning) from the game. Also, any newer player that is mid level and needs chips can make them farming up pills in the Sanatarium.

Also, just because Hamish can rocket up to level 10 when transmogrifying, it doesn't mean he'll be able to do it after a retcon. Just like KoL (NS11), the hard part of a 1 day ascension wasn't getting the stat points, it was managing all the quests and miscellaneous hoops you had to jump through. If Hamish had to do all the quests again, I doubt he'd be getting nearly as far as he does now (for one thing, he wouldn't be jumping right to the Cube).

Finally, Hamish is a very experienced player with donation items. True newbies are rarely getting much past level 5 on the first day, and that seems fair to me. After all, it gives a great sense of accomplishment ("Wow! I leveled 4 times!"), and lets them experience quite a bit of the game, even on their first day. Right now, I'd say the XP levels are fine.

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The churches are empty / The priest has gone home / And we are left standing / Together alone
--October Project: "Dark Time"

I'd suspect a true noob would have trouble pushing 5, since with a slightly uplifted noob and knowing certain things, I had to work hard to crack 5.

I made level 4 with my first character, an Elementalist, before deciding I didn't like the name "Momoka" for a Super-hero, and made a Naturalist, Ratatosk. Rata made 5. This was my first day of play, no spoilers.

You do gain the first few levels fairly quickly. I don't think this is really a bad thing, though. It makes the game easier to get into than, say, KoL. It is a bit interesting that it's harder to get as many turns (without Transmogrifying) as you level, though, because you don't get as many Adrenaline Rushes. But that's not really a "problem".

AS MH also noted, lvl10 in one day is possible if you've got one of two things:
A) Loads of +xp items (blue pills, lost phones and equipment that gives xp bonuses)
or
B) Loads of RNG love and get the cube non-combat more than usual.

(For the record: a combo of those two also works, I managed to get to lvl 10 with 3 turns to spare without being on the effects the whole time but I got more non-combats than usual)


This strategy wouldn't work on a first time run though since you need to unlock some areas. I think that should mean that it can't be used for one day-runs when we get an ascension-system

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Kind of to add on to this topic. Does anyone else think that 31 hours of play time seems excessive to get on a Frayday? After banking turns for a couple days as I was out of town I logged on Frayday and transmogrified. By the end of the day I'd run 31 hours total and hadn't really even tried hard to level. Hard meaning spending chips on buffs, exp. items, and such. I just drank a couple Mr. Teas and went to town. I bet I could have done 35 hours easy if I'd saved another days adv's to start with and worked harder on leveling.

Dacada, what would you see as a solution the problem you've identified? I'm not quite sure what you're asking. I can cut down the number of minutes that carry over from day to day, so you don't bank as many by Frayday, but that's the only solution I can think of, and I'm not sure if you're requesting that or not.

I'm not really sure of a perfect solution but it just seems to me that we are able to amass quite a number of turns.

Your solution to set a lower cap on turns that could be banked at rollover is good. I like this one.

Another solution would be what you mentioned above, that is, make it take longer to level up, thereby reducing the number of +60 min boosts you get. This could be achieved by reducing the amount of exp. you gain from the lowest level areas of the game. All of the Sommerset area could use a exp. nerf to slow the game up a little. If that doesn't slow things up then start lowering the exp. gains in the next hardest areas until things begin to balance out.

A third solution would be to make the quests repeatable, with possible alternate rewards for completing them again. Just something small. This would give people something else to do during those lower levels besides rush through them. They will be spending more time in lower level areas, therefore accumulating less exp. than other higher level areas, and therefore level up slower.

Right now in the game it seems that after people hit fifty, and have all the quests done, the only thing left is to try for leaderboards, and see how high you can get in a day transmogrifying. I know we just have to do wait until more content is added for higher level players and that will come at a later point. The game is still pretty new in its development and I realize that. I really enjoy the game and thank you for all the work that's been put into it.

If I can think of anything else I'll add it in here.

p.s. part of can't believe I am advocating slowing up the speed game and making it so we can actually play less per day, but here I am.

Ratatosk:

The trick to that I think is that the higher level you get, you tend to spend more time per turn in battle. The goal of that is you spend the same amount of time playing I am guessing. Unlike KoL, higher level fights tend to take more than just 1-2 rounds. In the pit you can spend many rounds in a single battle, especially at level 50. Even at level 15, you need to spend a few rounds per combat fighting some of the baddies out there.

I think this is only a problem because of the unfinished state of the game. Besides, if people really wanted to abuse Fraydays, they could just banks levels as well as time.

I don't much like the concept of limiting Fraydays, as having a ton of hours can be seen as a reward for holding off on your adventuring. I know both Icy and I are looking forward to that first Frayday after the cap is lifted...

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The churches are empty / The priest has gone home / And we are left standing / Together alone
--October Project: "Dark Time"

Neither can I....

It takes alot of hard work to build up that many adventures, not to mention the cost and you want to reduce the amount we can get

Well, you're really only "losing" a few turns if it takes longer to level -- you still get them eventually, you just don't get quite as many adrenaline boosts on Day 1 -- after that the daily average probably doesn't change much. As for the option where you don't bank as many, you don't lose any turns if you log in regularly, you only lose them if you don't play for a week or more.

Actually, part of what I was trying to get across is that it does not take that much effort to get that many adventures. And there is actually very little cost in getting more adventures also as even the most expensive drinks (not counting AH brays anad whatnot) only run you 500 chips which easily are earned back adventuring.

At 500 chips you get 105 minutes of playtime. 105 mins / 5 mins per adv = 25 chips needed to earn per adv. to break even. Pretty easy to do.

Well if this occurs there wont be much point for me to contiune Transmogrifing, I only really do it for the extra turns...

and



When doing the 1 day Transmogrifier runs, leveling is the main cost.. I loose 7k a day on brays, leveling and healing.. limiting the amount of turns I can save until the friday and even worse... lowering the adrenalin rushes will give me no incentive to continue. If I can get nearly as many turns by not doing it, and save 7k...

I quit seeing how far I can get in a single day and generally stop going up any higher than level 8 as my total time gets to be past 7AM. I don't use brays as they are not needed to get that far and I generally am making 5-10k per day farming my way to level 8. That's not even selling any items I get. I'm not sure why you are losing so much except you are using brays.

I try to get the maximum adventures per day, so I can get the maximum SUIT and ASX points... so I go for high level zones with greater xp but more attack power, so I require quite alot of healing, which I do at the space station, that is quite expencive after many heals.

I'm not sure why we're all aiming to nerf levelling when this game isn't even out of public beta yet. Ryme is YET to implement quests, and they will certainly be much more complex than they are (I hope) right now. Let's give it some time, k?

I seriously see no problem with going as fast as people are right now, even with newer quests implemented. It's impossible to get a one dayer as the game stands, and that is one huge fundamental problem out of the way.

I can't believe we're starting another "Jickies" (sorry Jick; nothing against you, just everyone who "tries" to be with you) vs. speedsters war here. For Christ's sake.

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Tis better to piss off a fraction of twelve thousand players than a fraction of a million, right?

Seriously, I'm not talking about serious nerfage here, just a minor adjustment, possibly. And it's just a discussion, I'm not even doing anything. Ooops! My finger slipped! There went some of your hours. But we're talking about the rest--oops, slipped again! There go the rest of them! Ah, well, at least chat's still fun, right?

IMO the easiest way to nerf leveling is to cut the adrenaline rush in half. From 60 to 30 minutes. Narrative justification is unneeded.

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I honestly don't get why we need to nerf leveling at all.

The only way leveling is a problem, to me, is if new people are shooting through the content fairly quickly. This will be less and less of a factor as new content gets added.

Besides, if it's your first time playing the game, and you need to grind a lot, there's less likely to be a second time.

I don't get why banking turns is an issue. You're not getting more turns, you're just getting to play your week's worth in a day. I like Fraydays. They're something different, and neat, and makes sense narratively.

Slicing the rush would probably work. I still think it should be kept in mind that we're talking about what people on the bleeding edge (or, as close as we have now) of speed. Cut things too much, and you'll hurt new players. Also, transmog speed probably has little to do how fast people will be able to level post-retcon.

But, still, if this is seriously a problem, adjust the transmogrification itself. We found an effective infinite turns bug with it and you didn't adjust leveling costs, you limited it to once per day. Want to slow down transmogrify runs? Make it take two hours to change the talisman, or make the experience of doing so cause such trauma to the body that you can't manage any more artificial stimulants (ie: the process requires 12 caffeine). Or something else along those lines. Neither of those changes would have any effect on the newbie.

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The churches are empty / The priest has gone home / And we are left standing / Together alone
--October Project: "Dark Time"

How about a maximum of 50 adrenaline rushes, regardless of transmogrification?

Then no one transmogrifies. Ever. What fun is that?
Why are powerlevellers trying to ruin my game?

It's not only yours, Mad.

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Didn't say it was, Magi, but transmogrifying is how I play, and this thread seems to be filled with a lot of calling for the death of the transmogrification game. For what purpose? So they don't have to feel obligated to transmogrify to keep up? So that all the leaderboards will remain the same? A rebalancing clearly needs to be done sometime in between now and any retcon implementation, but slapping the transmogrifiers in the face isn't the way to do it.
Reducing the effectiveness and availability of buffs at low levels might be a good start. A fully buffed character can pretty much handle any battle the game offers right now, at any level, with ease.
I'd be all for a reduction in the adrenaline rush time, as I don't really want to play 3 and a half days worth of turns every Frayday. With half the adrenaline rushes, I could still play until 7am every day. But still, transmogrifiers are going to have an advantage in turns. It's the payoff for giving up all the nice abilities. The other payoff is that I get to be involved in my combats again. For a month, while I powerlevelled as an Elemental to 50, it was just click-click-click-click-click-click-"oh hey, down a few hundred hp, Lifeblood"-click-click-click-click. With the greasemonkey script giving me stationary combat buttons I didn't even need to look at the screen more than once every few minutes. I didn't really care much about the game, and only spent about twenty minutes each day with it. And it hurt my wrist with the repetitive motion. Transmogrifying changed that, and I started having fun again with the game for the first time since about level 15 on my first run. A lot of fun. The game stopped being about watching my chip and xp count going up, and was about figuring out how to do better each day. And it was great. But then you reach a maximum. There's just not anything harder to fight. There's no better experience. There's pretty much the cube, and that's it. And since it's been found that you can start the cube at level one with the right gear, even the transmogrifying game is repetitive. But the solution isn't to take out the fun, the solution is to put more fun in. I voluntarily did a run without any combat buffs, managed to almost make it to level 9, certainly could have if I tried. It was a drain on the chips, but it was also more fun than anything else I had tried recently. Because I had to make decisions again, and I had to face mystery again. "Am I tough enough for the outskirts? Let's find out." "What can I do to get into the cube now? Let's try this." It's those creative decisions and the element of uncertainty that give me the most fun in this game. If you take away a choice and return the game's diamondy play to chip/xp farming only, it's not gonna be an improvement.

So take away half the adrenaline rushes. As I said, that's a good thing. Fraydays hurt with 40 hours of play. But that's not going to let the non-transmogrifiers keep up, still. Which is probably a positive, because otherwise the competitive game is only for old folks. And if Cris didn't have the crazy VR stats and the head start, it'd just be a matter of time until all the boards were Psions. And that's boring.
You want to "fix" transmogrification? Put obstacles in my way. Scale silver star benefits to your level. Reduce defensive damage. Make the pandimensional scepter less ridiculously awesome. Implement more minimum levels to enter zones, but with ways around it, like the ol' 68 mainstat for the gallery. (Minimum levels without ways to speed things up is lame. If I'm too powerful for the toughest baddies, forcing me to fight weaker ones just to slow my progress is lame. Then I don't have any challenges. I'd rather gain less experience, and still have the opportunity to enter a battle that I'm not sure I'll win.) But whatever is done, I want to see this game get better, not worse.

Thats how it should be done...

I with you all the way Mad....

That is one of the most well-thought-out posts I have ever read. Much applause for mad hamish, please.

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I managed to level up to level 12 last Frayday.
Pushing the levels you can get in one day is the only thing keeping interest in the transmogging for me. I dont think much more than level 10 is possible without some major buffing and equipment

Cool discussion. I transmog everyday. I get to lvl 8 everyday without trying very hard. 9 still is very possible, but 10 requires some effort.

I personally really like things the way things are. It enables different kinds of gameplay. For example; yes you can just not play a day and have more turns on frayday. But in the long run you will still play less turns even though you might get an insane amount of them on fraydays, people who do this do not have an unfair advantage because they miss the daily energy boosts.
Thanks to the energy boosts it is very possible to reach 7am with turns to spare which you can carry on into faydays. These surplus turns really aren't anything to be very excited about, just about 16-24 extra turns or so for lvl 7-8. That is if you just lvl casually, it would be a little more if you really try hard and don't for example farm for specific stuff like UR's.
Now if you would get less energy boosts the extra turns on fraydays will be almost zero for these casual transmoggers this a big reason why I think the current system should stay the same.
Ofcourse there is a way around this. You can ofcourse just quit adventuring when you have reached a certain lvl, carry the extra turns to the next day, repeat the process and you also end up with an inane amount of turns on frayday, which will result in some extra lvls = energy boosts = turns. What I'm saying is the unlimited fraydays just give a really interesting possibilities I think. Hope this makes some sence.

I like all your ideas you stated in there hamish. adrenalin should not be halved in my opinion though. Because of the casual transmog/farmers. 3 quarters maybe?

-Mish