A Small Gripe of Mine

[Tyon]

So I just bought this game yesterday, and it was awesome. I played in the novice arena for about 5 hours straight (getting my ass handed to me by the overweight guy in pink with the mace half the time) and had lots of fun, I finally managed to take out that two handed sword dude by the end of my play session.

I wanted to keep playing, but it was far too late, so I exited the game and went to bed, excited to use my new two hander on the next opponent. But when I played the game today, I saw all my gear and my shiny new weapon were lost to my dismay. I expected to start from level 1 of the arena, but what I didn't expect was that all of my stuff would be wiped as well.

I'm wondering if this was intended to happen or was it a bug?

 

[Tony]

This is intentional. You only keep the gear in the arena mode until you restart the game.

However, worry not! The arena mode is going to change completely in the future. Soon you'll be able to earn money for fights, place bets, buy new weapons and gear, hire mercenaries, etc. And this gear won't disappear until you die.

 

[Tyon]

Ohhh, I see. Makes more sense now.

That's good to know, hiring mercenaries and fighting another group of mercenaries in the arena would be really fun and chaotic.

 

[Bullethead]

I'm wondering if this was intended to happen or was it a bug?

Welcome aboard .

As to what you keep and what you lose when you die AS OF NOW (will change in the future):

Arena:
Skills: You already have all the skills and can't do anything about that anyway, whether you live or die.

Gear: You keep all the weapons and armor you've picked up along the way even if you die, AS LONG AS THE GAME IS STILL RUNNING. So say you've got the chain shirt from the 4th guy in the novice, then the 5th guy kills you. If you immediately restart arena play, you'll still have the chain shirt.

Dungeon:

EDIT: (the following is wrong) Skills: AS LONG AS THE GAME IS RUNNING, you keep all the experience you've earned so far even if you die, so when you start over back with nothing but a torch, at least you still know how to fight. However, if you close the game when you die, the next game you start you have the default experience again. IOW, you start with about 3/4 of a skill point. After you kill several zombies, you finish the 1st skill point and get to pick a new skill to learn. If you then die and immediately start a new game, you'll keep that.

Gear: When you die, you always lose everything you've acquired and have to go back and get dressed again in the starter clothes.

 

[Tyon]

Thanks for clarifying! I wasn't even aware that there was a skill system in the game, thanks for the info.

Also, if I beat the Novice arena and unlock the Expert arena, will it still be unlocked if I close my game?

 

[Greenbrog]

yes, expert stays unlocked

 

[Tony]

Welcome aboard .

Dungeon:
Skills: AS LONG AS THE GAME IS RUNNING, you keep all the experience you've earned so far even if you die, so when you start over back with nothing but a torch, at least you still know how to fight. However, if you close the game when you die, the next game you start you have the default experience again. IOW, you start with about 3/4 of a skill point. After you kill several zombies, you finish the 1st skill point and get to pick a new skill to learn. If you then die and immediately start a new game, you'll keep that.

This part isn't quite accurate. In the dungeon 25% of the experience points earned remains as global XP (this is applied to all new characters created) regardless of whether or not you die or exit the game. This means the more you play the more global XP you'll acquire and the more techniques you will be able to unlock during character creation. Character XP and global XP are separate. If you die then you lose all of your character XP but global XP is permanent (25% of all XP gained). The only exception to this is if you have checkpoints enabled then you'll go back to the XP you had when the last checkpoint was activated (if you die).

 

[Bullethead]

This part isn't quite accurate. In the dungeon 25% of the experience points earned remains as global XP (this is applied to all new characters created) regardless of whether or not you die or exit the game. This means the more you play the more global XP you'll acquire and the more techniques you will be able to unlock during character creation. Character XP and global XP are separate. If you die then you lose all of your character XP but global XP is permanent (25% of all XP gained). The only exception to this is if you have checkpoints enabled then you'll go back to the XP you had when the last checkpoint was activated (if you die).

Hmm. I have finally gotten good enough (thanks to about 15 hours in the arenas and reading lots of tips) to make actual progress in the dungeon instead of getting ganked before I even find the machete. Last time I played, I had completed my 1st technique and was 1/2way through the 2nd. Then I died in a most inglorious fashion. Seriously, my ancestors were weeping in the afterlife and I was denied Valhalla. But upon restart, I had the exact same amount of experience as in my previous life. That is, 1 technique bought and paid for and 1/2way into the 2nd one.

 

[StrikerJG1]

I have checkpoints activated. I die sometimes. I created a new character and started with 3 known techniques + 25% on the 4th technique.
So what @Tony said makes sense.

 

[Tony]

But upon restart, I had the exact same amount of experience as in my previous life. That is, 1 technique bought and paid for and 1/2way into the 2nd one.

Experience takes a while to absorb (similar to a healing salve). If you did a bunch of things to gain XP and died shortly after then you didn't have enough time to absorb all of the XP. Now take 25% of what you actually did absorb, add it to your global XP and that is the difference you'll see next time you create a new character. Global XP maxes out at 5 techniques so if you play enough eventually you'll be able to select 5 techniques upon character creation.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the more techniques you know the longer it takes to train more. This means that your first technique will be quicker to learn than the next one. If you created a character, played a bit and then died shortly after, the amount of global XP gained will be negligible and appear nearly the same the next time you create a new character.

 

[Bullethead]

@Tony
Well, I dunno. I admit I was fairly far off in my statements above, but what I see doesn't quite match what you're saying, either. Observe:



Background:
Last time I sat down and played for any length of time, I started a new game. At that time, I had about 75% of the 1st bar filled. It seems to me that's always been the case---I know it was that way for countless tragically short games before, although I can't remember if it was ever at zero to start with.

Anyway, during the game in question, I killed several zombies in the 1st part of the 1st level, enough to finish the 1st bar and get to about the point shown here in the 2nd bar. So I picked a 2nd technique. Then I killed several more zombies and the 2nd bar was about 1/2 full. Then I died and closed the game. Now a few days later, I just started the game again to check the XP situation and found what's in the pic above. I lost about 1/3 of a bar, so that the 2nd bar is now barely started again, but it's still a lot more than any new guy has ever had.

This seems like I kept more than 25% of what I'd earned in the previous session. 1/4 of the 1st bar + 1/2 the 2nd bar is 3/4 of a bar, but I kept the 1/4 and some change as well.

So, questions:

1. If you only keep 25% of the session's XP, then I can think of 2 reasons for why I apparently kept more than 25% of the session's XP, both being methods of slowing your further progress as you gain XP. One way is, despite the bars being drawn the same length, it takes more XP to fill each bar than the one before. Thus, while you keep getting the same amount of XP for killing the same starter zombies each time, that XP fills less and less of each bar. The other way is, each bar is the same amount of XP but you get less and less XP for killing the same starter zombies over and over. I suppose there's a 3rd method that combines these approaches. Do you know which method Exanima uses?

2. There's a row of bars at the top of the Skills screen, then each skill has its own row of bars. Am I correct in thinking that once the other skills become available, it'll be the top bar that lets us know when we can learn a new technique? IOW, if we have 2 bars on the top row, we can have 1 bar each in 2 different skills?

 

[ZaratanCho]

Exploration+reading lore and such combined gives most xp. Killing zombies doesn't give very much.

 

[Madoc]

Exploration, reading lore, discovering hidden items, using certain objects and combat all give experience in typically small amounts. This experience is absborbed gradually over time and allocated to whatever skill technique you are training.

25% of all experience is also gradually absorbed as "global", whether you are training a skill or not. This experience can be allocated to any skill techniques when creating new characters.

Each additional skill technique your character learns, or bar of global experience, costs more to advance than the previous. The amount of experience you gain and the rate at which you absorb it is fixed.

In the upcoming update to version 0.6 multiple characters can be created. Any global experience earned since you last played a character can be retroactively assigned to them in the continue screen, which looks like this:

The quickstart guide needs to be updated with this information...

 

[Tony]

I was about to respond but it looks like Madoc beat me to it. Did his post help clarify things for you @Bullethead or still uncertain about how it works?

 

[Bullethead]

I was about to respond but it looks like Madoc beat me to it. Did his post help clarify things for you @Bullethead or still uncertain about how it works?

That's quite a lot of info and I'm not sure I understand it all yet. Let's see how close I am here.... It sounds to mne like this:

1. At character creation and thereafter each time you fill a bar of global experience, you get to pick a new technique for one of your skills. When you pick a technique, you are learing/training it and can't actually use it until you fill the skill bar above the technique icon.

2. From this point, your XP (mostly?) goes to filling the skill bar above the technique icon. Meanwhle, 25% goes into the next global bar at the top. I'm not sure if this is a 75-25 split or whether the global 25% is extra. Anyway, eventually the next global bar fills and you repeat step #1.

3. I get the impression that unused global XP earned by Character A can be applied instead to Character B when you switch characters. This migth be why it's called "global".

But this still doesn't answer the question how much you lose and how much you keep when you die.

 

[Greenbrog]

Global is basically base exp, as in global will be the amount of exp a new character has. It's already like this. Basically Bullethead you have it right, and the exp that goes global is "bonus". You're RETAINING 25% exp gain to global. I like that exp is a "over-time", makes it feel very organic.

 

[Anthony Obilor]

Actually it is more like this.
You have 2 experience pools; Character experience & Global experience.
We will be able to create multiple characters in the next build. Each character have their own experience which they gain towards learning a skill(the skill you select to train). Now 25% of the experience gained goes as global experience, but only once for whatever gives you experience. The global experience is intended for you to be able to create a new character with up to 5 skills learnt.

From what I understand it works like this. You start a brand new character with no global experience, you play through every inch of lvl 1 killing all undead. Hypothetically lets imagine in total we got 1000exp through lvl 1, our global exp bar would gain 250exp. The global bar isnt tied to the character, it is only useful for the new start( maybe in sui generis when we die we are dropped back to an initial stage with only 5 skills selectable....hmmmm... would make death scary even if we resurrect).

Edit for correction: You only gain experience once per playthrough, if you die it is treated as a different character and any experience gained adds to the global experience gained.

 

[Greenbrog]

No you get exp from killing the same mobs and visiting the same stuff per play through. I've definitively been able to get the first global bar filled by killing the same 3 zombies and restarting over and over, was testing it.

 

[Tony]

No you get exp from killing the same mobs and visiting the same stuff per play through. I've definitively been able to get the first global bar filled by killing the same 3 zombies and restarting over and over, was testing it.

Correct; all XP is gained once per character. If you die and start a new character then everything you do will once again grant XP. Or in the latest build you don't even have to die since it supports multiple characters. As long as you're on a different character then you'll gain XP once for everything. This means that using the first healing salve will always grant XP, using the second healing salve will not (if you've already used the first). 25% of all XP gained is also added to global XP and global XP is not limited to once per action. An example, if three different characters all use a healing salve then all three times this will boost global XP (if the player survives long enough to absorb the XP before dying).

In practice it works like this: the first time a player starts the game they have zero character XP and zero global XP. The player proceeds to create a new character and ends up fully training four techniques while progressing in the dungeon (filling four bars completely) before dying. The player decides to create a new character and try again. During character creation the player notices they now have enough global XP accumulated that they can immediately select a technique to be fully trained (25% of the XP retained from the previous run). Note: selecting techniques to be trained during character creation does not diminish global XP.

Global XP is separate from character XP; global XP can be used for every new character created henceforth and will never decline, only increase, until a maximum of five techniques can be fully trained during character creation. I tend to think of global XP as "starting XP" since it's how much XP you're going to be able to allocate for every new character created.

 

[Bullethead]

Well, that all sounds cool. It will be nice to start a new guy without having to completely start over from scratch. But suppose you blow all your global XP on a new character. Is that a 1-time thing or does it gradually re-accumulate again for some other golden child down the road?

But to get back to the original question of how death affects XP at present. Right now you only have 1 character.
Every time you die, it's the same guy there by default in the character creation screen: same name, same physique, differing only from last time in that all looted gear he had when he died is now gone. He has at least most of the XP earned in his previous incarnations. So what fraction is being kept? And because there's only 1 character, how does the global thing work? Or does it work at all for the current public version?