Enough with the zero or cheap XP

The game forces me to fight stupid crap like Stone elementals and carrion devourers on my way in a long quest, and then gives me zero or 5 XP for having to stop and fight these low level annoyances. Cough up some more XP for God's sake. I am sort of stuck at Level 12 now, have only the dreaded "Cities of Ascalon" on my quest list, and I haven't advanced at all even though I have slain mountains of crappy monsters. I know the Devs want to stop farming, but come on. Carrion devourers for example are just annoying; they pop up out of the ground without warning, one is forced to fight them even though they are way to weak to whup me, give me more XP for the repetitive annoyance.

Perhaps instead of giving exp for those enemies, maybe the higher lvl you are, the higher the rate of drops of salavage/dyes/ and other useful items. That might make cutting thru the weak enemies easier to bear.

I know personally, if they did that, I would farm all those weak things as much as I could before ANet decided that it was not the right decision

The OP's problem is that he's still hanging around doing stuff around Ascalon when he's supposed to have moved on towards Yaks Bend. He's in an area too low for his level because he's either meticulous or haven't done the missions.

The problem disappears as he starts doing missions and advances in the story.

Been there, done that.

I do think this game was really designed around people 'rushing' through the storyline. There's just too much content to NOT be a higher level than you're supposed to be (at least in ascalon/pre-searing anyway).

If you rush through the game by quickly doing the missions and ignoring the side quests, you'll never have a problem with low level mobs. But at least you're getting loot. .. :P

Or make it so mobs ignore players who are more than 5 levels higher than it.

Hm, that creates rushing issues. You could also place a proximity thing for zoning players out to new areas. If they aren't within the radar length of your character leaving to a new zone doesn't take everyone with them (make that a requirement for non-missions and leave missions as they are -- I know the first Northern Wall mission advises that you only need one player to reach Calhaan to complete the objective).

Something like that would work well, although it would have to take into consideration the number of mobbing creatures and the number of players as well.



Anyway.

The reason you get almost no XP from killing monsters, particularly low-level monsters, is because the game doesn't want you trying to level that way. What if you got, say, at least 100 XP from every enemy you killed. People would sit around Old Ascalon, kill everything, pop into Ascalon to renew the supply of monsters, and then do it again until they reached level 20, then burn through the missions (some of which they could probably solo). But they had to spend all that time grinding.

This way, it makes grinding away at low level monsters not only very difficult but, at some point, impossible. You arn't supposed to rack up the most kills of devourerers and charr; you're supposed to move on to Ice Golems and Stone Summit.

It makes sense, too. If you're level 12, how much experience do you think you'd gain from killing something for the umpteenth time? Why should you learn as much as you did when you were level 1? Why should you learn anything at all?

I'm not so sure that is his problem....i'm stuck exactly where he is. My beef is (along with the annoyance of having to fight a dozen 2nd lvlcarrion crawlers) is that these low level annoyances seem to have high level hit points and armour...ive hit monsters (low lvl types) with damage of 30, then 28, then finishing off with another 30 and they still have not been killed. and thats with help from henchies doing their own damage....only to receive 0 xp....what a gyp.

Go to Nolani Academy, and complete it. Or just run to Yak's Bend.

Problem solved

I've actually had this happen. I went back to Ascalon as a higher level character and some of the creatures, most notably Graal, ignored me, whereas they used to attack me on sight. Some even ran away from me. I thought that was pretty funny and ran after then shouting, "Come back here and get what's comin' to ya!"

But yeah, if that's your thing (and it's my thing as well), hang around and take in all the content you can. But after a while, you'll need to move on to more locations in the game or your character will progress very slowly.

I admit that - I get massivly annoyed when I want to travel from A to B and instead get gang attacked by half a dozen monsters that wont give any XP, wont give any nice treasure, yet will most certainly occupy a couple of minutes of my time - and possibly even kill me if I am bored with fighting trash and stop paying attention. And even more annoyed when it happens again and again and again.

Make these mobs either still give some XP, or make them suddenly start taking double and triple damage from me, while having their spells and stuff have 50% and 75% chance of simply fizzling when used against me.

Or have them not bother me.

Or have flaming meteors fall out of the sky and smash everything that doesnt give XP into rubble.

Or have an option that sets all mobs to have a minimum level of my level less 4.

Or - put in a circus or dancing girls or something to entertain me while I am having to wade through trash for no purpose other than the fact that they are in the way.

If you repetively do someting your quite experienced at you stay in practice so even a reward of 1 xp would be reasonable and not have game breaking issues, it also serves some purpose so people dont feel like their killing of low level mobs serves zero usefulness, close but not zero.

If you'd rather waste time killing 20,000 enemies to get 1 skill point then that's your perogative as well in this suggestion, just dont complain about the grind afterwards.

Where I was going with this was as Arandor states that if I am trying to go from point A to point B, and sometimes those are long walks indeed, and I constantly have to stop and deal with these mobs. Some pop out of the ground without warning, some detect me even though I am careful to keep outside the detection circle on the minimap, and most often my dumbazz henchmen don't follow behind me properly as I hug one side and try to get by without another pointless fight. I am just saying to boost the XP up a LITTLE so as not to encourage farming, or as suggested above have them ignore me. In Pre Searing this ignoring seemed to work better, as I got stronger low level monsters would let me cruise right by, but that doesn't seem to happen here in the Burnt Land.
I am still stuck on that "Cities of Ascalon", the only quest I have and hence the only way to get XP, and last night after an extremely long walk west, everyone in my party gets slaughtered except for Henchman Stephen. Dear Stephen must be all brawn no brains, because he was so confused by being alone that he ran endlessly between two points, in a loop. This meant I had to nuke the game, couldn't respawn close and pay the DP. It meant all the low level crap mobs I fought to get to that point would have to be fought again, for a gain of almost no XP. I turned the game off in disgust, I will try again today.
I wish one could set Hench stance to "Aviod all contact", "Protect healer", or "attack everything". They sure are dumb.

Try taking a different route to Ascalon Settlement and avoid some of the wimpy mobs. Ettins will still give you a small amount of XP

Robert, not to tell you to suck eggs if you've already done this, but you say this is the only way for you to get XP, have you actually done the missions?

As in Great Northern Wall------> Fort Ranik-----> Ruins of Surmia---->Nolani Academy etc etc etc eventually leading you to Yak's Bend and Lion's Arch?
I'm not talking about the quests that stay in your quest log, as the missions do not. If you haven't, go to the Great Northern Wall (up near Warmaster Tydus in Ascalon), get a team together or take henches and click on Enter Mission.

It does sound as if you've been just doing the quests which yes, would run out after a while leading to the situation you describe. In this game, you HAVE to do the co op missions to advance the storyline and open up new areas of the map (rather than endlessly grinding through the low level
monsters)

(Also, you won't be able to finish that Cities quest without doing the missions...Since the Surmia monument is actually in the middle of the Ruins of Surmia mission.)

The only thing I would like to see changed would be to give at least 1XP for every monster. So when I help some mate with my Lvl20 Character thru Ascalon I would at least get "some" reward. Just not Zero, Nada, Nix, Null.

Heh, i have this problem too. Very annoying indeed.

I'm somewhere at Sanctum Cay and only then realised i missed a few quests and BONUSses. So i went back to say Yak's Bend [and that is not very far back] and i had to kill hordes and hordes of golems and stone annoyances and i get ZILCH [Note i killed them all 3-4 times previously at lvl 12, now at lvl 18 it is seriously a pain]. And i'm not even talking about quests where you are forced to zone and respawn the entire place -again-.

Funny part is, go sit in the arena, see how you will get XP from every kill made there.... You can repeat this all day and probably even level purely on that! If they can allow that, heck even 1xp per kill on a lvl 8 plague devourer would be more meaningful.

Yes, one can argue i should be better and do all the quests and bonuses when i get there the first time...but that is just not how things happen. Espcially some of the bonusses are somewhat on the "i-am-suppose-to-know-that?" ....

Well, I suppose you get a reward in drops. I went into Old Ascalon to do some skill quests after changing 2ndary and got a couple of dyes from the Grawl, and salvageable bits and pieces, so you don't exactly get nothing at all.