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Bonus XP Weekend - Actually (Slightly) Harder To Play The Game!

streakfury#2432 streakfury Member Posts: 63 Arc User
edited March 2014 in The Academy
While I'm glad that Cryptic is doing this Bonus XP Weekend (so I can finally get round to creating a Rommie character and leveling it) I've actually found that it's a little tougher to play the game than it normally would be.

I'm currently at the point in the game where, as a Rommie, I need to choose between joining the Feds or the Klingons. The thing is, I'm already level 20, and as soon as I complete the next mission, I'll jump to level 22 with all the XP I'll get.

Because I'm leveling so fast, I've not yet had the mission that gives you a new ship, and I'm rolling around in my original vessel! Three weapons slots, three ensign Boff powers... it's rather difficult to fight enemy ships that are "of a higher level" so to speak, when I've got an old banger of a ship myself!

I've also only just had a Doff pack, despite the Doff system being open to me for a number of levels now. But that's alright, it's just a minor thing.

So I guess my question is: is there any way to make sure I can get a new ship when I'm due one (such as skipping missions and going straight to a mission that gives a new ship, and then going back to the others afterwards) so that I can at least have a ship that's worthy of the current level of difficulty?

I've not rolled a new character since the first year of the game, so the whole leveling process is still actually kinda new to me, despite playing this game since the beta. Cheers!
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Post edited by streakfury#2432 on

Comments

  • mandoknight89mandoknight89 Member Posts: 1,687 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    You'll start getting ships after you pick your ally. Which means that you'll need to suffer through that one last mission.

    The new Klingon leveling path has the same issue: double XP means that you'll be stuck in the beginner B'rel until level 20 or so, when you finally roll around to Test of Mettle.
  • bejaymacbejaymac Member Posts: 448 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    TBH the bonus weekend isn't for leveling new alts, it's for those who are already at 50 and have run out of expertise for the rep grind.

    New Rom or KDF characters will find themselves seriously over leveled, long before they get the mission to unlock the lvl10 ship.

    So the best thing to do is not to create any new characters, or play non lvl50 toons until after the bonus event finishes.
  • edgecrysgeredgecrysger Member Posts: 2,740 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    bejaymac wrote: »
    TBH the bonus weekend isn't for leveling new alts, it's for those who are already at 50 and have run out of expertise for the rep grind.

    New Rom or KDF characters will find themselves seriously over leveled, long before they get the mission to unlock the lvl10 ship.

    So the best thing to do is not to create any new characters, or play non lvl50 toons until after the bonus event finishes.

    No. Bonus xp are for people leveling their toons. Thats the only purpose. The xp requirementes of the fleet projects are a joke.

    Everybody have more than enough exp once they are already introduced in the rep system. They should.

    I NEVER knew anyone who run out of exp for the rep projects loll, never. I mean, unless you doing something really terrible, its impossible to run out of exp for the rep projects. Yeah if the only thing you do in the game is to go to Dyson battlezon and grind there (apparently the only thing a lot of people do... xD), yea you will not have exp at all. Thats normal. But doing some exploration missions here and there, some dilithium farming here and there, some missions in defera, some foundry missions here and there, i mean, playing the game, you should not be worried about exp, seriously.

    But the bonus xp does nothing to do with leveling a toon. You receive the ship token once you reach level 20, thats al,l it doesnt matter if you have level 30 items or whatever.

    Its known that romulans players have a lot of isssues leveling their toons, sometimes they dont receive ship tokens and whatever. It was not my case, never had a problem levelng my romi, but some people had. Klingons get the ship token at level 21, happened to me (because klingons are a little different from the rest, and they need the "test of mettle" mission to complete the token procedure). And romies should get the token at level 20.
  • somebobsomebob Member Posts: 556 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    I remember when I leveled my first KDF during double exp:

    At level 19: Here's your brand new ship - go take her on a shakedown cruise! Mission finishes And now I'm 20 - time to take that brand new ship that shot at a single enemy and throw it out and get something newer and better.

    It really, really breaks things (double exp) for the KDF and Rommies.
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  • doffingcomradedoffingcomrade Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    No. Bonus xp are for people leveling their toons. Thats the only purpose. The xp requirementes of the fleet projects are a joke.
    Well, that's what *I* think, and that's what you think, and frankly, that's what anyone SENSIBLE thinks, especially since the moment you exit the tutorial under double XP, you're pretty much instantly done and ready to whoop TRIBBLE...
    I NEVER knew anyone who run out of exp for the rep projects loll, never. I mean, unless you doing something really terrible, its impossible to run out of exp for the rep projects.
    Oh, I agree. Yet strangely, some people DO run out of XP somehow. I don't know how this is even possible, but they do. Clearly they have no clue how to gain XP.

    I imagine this event does little to help with that, since there is still no Mirror event. Sure, you gain double XP, but those guys clearly weren't gaining any XP, so double nothing is still nothing.

    But eh, I'm used to the no-ship-tokens thing, too. I'm not a gold member at this time, and I'm not willing to shoot myself in the foot, so no ship token for me. Starter ship is fine, and I own all the C-Store giveaways...and I just doff, anyway.
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  • norobladnoroblad Member Posts: 2,624 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    Hah, yes this was a big problem. Several folks rolled new chars to power level ( I did one too, but it was rolled and leveled to 11 for DO farming some time ago) and at least 3 times I had to help someone come up with a strategy to beat a HY death torp DD in the little tliss warbird. (Its not that hard but not everyone knows what to do either).

    I hit 50 and all I did was:
    - the klingon war
    - wasteland
    - cherry picked from the romulan episode, skipping about 1/2
    - cherry picked the cardassian set, doing about 1/3 of those. Bam, 50.

    And I only had to do *that much* because I had already done most of the klingon war before the xp event started.

    Highly NOT recommended for new players, but it was very handy for an alt.
  • venkouvenkou Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    str34kfury wrote: »
    While I'm glad that Cryptic is doing this Bonus XP Weekend (so I can finally get round to creating a Rommie character and leveling it) I've actually found that it's a little tougher to play the game than it normally would be.
    If you hit level 50 prior to completing the level 50 missions (episodes), you will miss out on a mess of accolades. Each accolade gives you points towards a passive ability. I learned this the hard way. As a result of using the 'patrol missions' to level, I hit level 50 without obtaining certain accolades. I kept getting my but kicked. Once I worked through the missions, my character kept getting stronger and stronger. Gathering the mission accolades helps with character progression.

    I discovered the accolade issue about two months ago.
    Oh, I agree. Yet strangely, some people DO run out of XP somehow. I don't know how this is even possible, but they do. Clearly they have no clue how to gain XP.
    I hit level 50 about two months ago. Even though I just started the reputation system, my xp pool currently sits around 299,000. According to my NPC indicator, I obtained slightly over 1 million xp. I completed all of the mission episodes.

    My current rep system stats:
    Dyson - T3.8
    Nukara - T2
    Romulan - T2
    Omega - T3

    Since the Bonus XP weekend effectively works on mission replays, I decided to move onto something entirely different. I do not want to replay those missions again.

    I got bored.
  • orangeitisorangeitis Member Posts: 5,222 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    Really good thing my newbie alts were all over level 15, only going through 2 featured eps and the winter/anni events. Got everyone to 20/30/40 to get new ships. \o/
  • streakfury#2432 streakfury Member Posts: 63 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    Well thanks for the tips everyone. It looks like I used the bonus XP weekend for completely the wrong purpose. Even so, I only had time to get to level 24/25, so at least my poor Rommie will level up appropriately now.

    It was certainly good for level 50 chars with no Expertise (but I honestly don't know how people get in that situation!) so I'm glad Cryptic ran the event. But I'm looking forward to getting my ships in a timely fashion from now on!
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  • drogyn1701drogyn1701 Member Posts: 3,606 Media Corps
    edited March 2014
    Can't say what the devs intended, but to me it seems like the double XP weekend serves both to level toons and to build up expertise for existing level 50s. I certainly did both. I got a character from level 15 to 50 and kept my doff missions going on my 50s to earn expertise while I played the lower level guy. Why would both uses not be legitimate?

    Personally I found that existing level 50s do run out of expertise. It may be down to my playstyle. I have 15 characters (which thanks to the weekend are all 50). I don't play them all all the time, that would be impossible due to real life commitments. I'm perfectly fine with that. I play whatever character I feel like playing that particular day. During the winter event I went nuts and earned as many marks as I could for every one of those characters (59,000 in total!) so that they could all get T5 in at least one reputation track, whereas before I had not bothered. Many of them - particularly my Romulans cause they were the newest - ran out of expertise either during the climb up the ladder or after when I was working on gear. Even one of my characters that has been around since pre-launch early access ran out on her second rep track. This event has been great for me to fill in those expertise gaps and finish those out.
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  • edgecrysgeredgecrysger Member Posts: 2,740 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    Yup, of course, once you reach 50, you still need to acumulate more exp, but as i said, that comes by itself, if you just play the game doing exploration missions, farming missions, episodes or watever.

    I dont worry anymore about exp since months ago. Every time i look at my exp cap, it keeps getting higher, and i do nothing special to gather exp lol.
  • drogyn1701drogyn1701 Member Posts: 3,606 Media Corps
    edited March 2014
    But to say that no level 50 runs out is inaccurate, because I have. Several times.
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  • rickpaaarickpaaa Member Posts: 637 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    Expertise points are probably easier if you're not an alt-a-holic like me. Unless you only really play a couple of toons. I have to play them all!

    I used to run STFs, and anything that gave rep marks, and that means very very little expertise points. I used to fuel up during Mirror Invasion hours, but if you're working as many rep systems as you can, you will run out.

    On the KDF side, Pi Canis sorties are your best bet. On the Fed side, do all of the system patrols. Regular missions generally give a poor time to reward ratio for expertise, but you should run duty officers at every chance.
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  • norobladnoroblad Member Posts: 2,624 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    I ran out on my first alt, who was in that awkward place of no sponsorship for rep yet and not being played enough. If all you do is log in and start your rep cooldown projects (and maybe grind marks for those, but not much else) you will run out in the t4-t5 grind where it takes 40k a day for 10 or so days (forget exact # of days needed but its around 10).
  • edgecrysgeredgecrysger Member Posts: 2,740 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    rickpaaa wrote: »
    Expertise points are probably easier if you're not an alt-a-holic like me. Unless you only really play a couple of toons. I have to play them all!

    I used to run STFs, and anything that gave rep marks, and that means very very little expertise points. I used to fuel up during Mirror Invasion hours, but if you're working as many rep systems as you can, you will run out.

    On the KDF side, Pi Canis sorties are your best bet. On the Fed side, do all of the system patrols. Regular missions generally give a poor time to reward ratio for expertise, but you should run duty officers at every chance.

    Since i started playin STO i never focused only on rep projects or something else. I always did about everything, exploring missions, dilithium missions, rep zones, etc, and doing so, you will never run out of exp, on the opposite. The problem is, some people log-in to the game and they only do rep projects or something else. Thats not the way. And exp events are only directed to those people i guess. And of course, exp as everything else will run out of exp if you only do 1 thing of the thousands you can do in the game. But this is really straight forward.. and happens in ANY game.. lol.

    What i do from a long time ago (with some variants of course) are dilithium runs , eta - eridani - nimbus - defera. And my exp keeps growing.. its true that now i am not focused on rep projects but before i was, i used to do exploration missions (for the dilithium thing) and Defera most of the time. And my exp kept growing, no matter what.

    So , u guys really need to look after what u doing, its not normal that you have so many problems gathering the most easy resource of the game, that comes by itself.. seriously xd.
  • edgecrysgeredgecrysger Member Posts: 2,740 Arc User
    edited March 2014
    venkou wrote: »

    I hit level 50 about two months ago. Even though I just started the reputation system, my xp pool currently sits around 299,000. According to my NPC indicator, I obtained slightly over 1 million xp. I completed all of the mission episodes.

    When i first started playing STO, my first and only main character had almost 1 million real exp when i reached level 50. And by then i didnt even know what the hell i was doing, since i was completely stranger to the game. And still i gathered so many exp by then that i never bothered to worry about exp anymore... lol. But as i said, i did not only the episodes, i was as well plaing exploration missions, doing a lot of assignments, etc.
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