Lich:Experience Guide

Experience Guide

Having returned after many years to find that all my friends were capped, I explored many different options for maximizing my experience (XP) gain so I could catch up. I've assembled what I learned in this guide with the hope of helping others do the same. 
-Tatterclaws

Experience Sources

1. Bounties: The bounty system is the mainstay of my leveling process. The ideal time to turn in a bounty is when your mind is at "You must rest!", so if you have one finished, you usually want to hunt until you're in this state before turning it in. This is because half of the XP reward will be placed into your unabsorbed pool and push you to Saturated, and the other half will be absorbed instantly. The goal is to maximize your instant absorption. The short-term goal of doing bounties for XP is to attain the following state:
   1. When you check EXP, your mind is "Saturated."
   2. You have completed the next bounty and are prepared to turn it in to the taskmaster.
   3. You have already used an Adventurer's Guild voucher to expedite your task.
   4. Now, just wait until you're at "You must rest!", turn in your bounty, and repeat. Additionally, you can mix in the below for further XP gain.
2. Long-term Experience: Long-term experience, or LTE, is a separate pool of experience which is absorbed more slowly than your main pool, field experience. LTE is gained at a flat rate of 250 XP per day, absorbed at midnight, as well as at a rate of 1 point per 10 points of field experience. While it may not sound like much, it adds up. Sources of LTE are:
   1. BOOST INFO to see if you have any BOOST LONGTERM to use. Paid accounts get 2 per day beginning at level 20, and they can also be gained as a daily login reward.
   2. Getting your boxes opened at the locksmith pool. If you have multiple characters, you could compile the boxes on one character to maximize this.
   3. Getting healed by players, rather than using herbs or the NPC.
   4. For the sake of completeness, getting raised grants a good chunk of LTE, but I don't recommend dying for this purpose.
3. Spirit Beasts: Please see my separate guide, Introduction to Spirit Beasts. In short, you can do 10 training battles daily to gain up to 1,500 Saturated XP, 7 Challenge battles weekly, and Listed battles weekly, each of which give additional Saturated experience. Once you're set up, it's quite possible to spend about an hour battling and walk away with about 4,000 unabsorbed Saturated XP in your mind.
4. Honorable Mention: Healing and Raising: Performing rescues, where you heal or raise other adventurers, can be a good source of experience, particularly at busy times of day. However, it will never match the efficiency of bounties as you cannot attain a Saturated mind.
5. Honorable Mention: Hunting: The classic cycle of hunting until "fried" ("You must rest!"), resting until Muddled or Clear, and repeating is still tried and true, but as with healing and raising, the efficiency is significantly reduced compared to running bounties.

Experience Multipliers

1. Supernodes: Whenever possible, unless you're running a bounty, battling Spirit Beasts, or performing some other XP-gaining task to stack Saturated XP, your goal is to be sitting on a supernode with a Saturated mind. You can find a list of supernodes under the node page.
2. Gift: You should always hunt off your weekly Gift of Lumnis. This is by far the best way to level. You can also use a Lumnis schedule every 6 months, which essentially allows you to use two Gifts during that week. Put it on your calendar!
3. Other Boosts: In addition to LTE boosts, you can also use:
   1. BOOST EXP (doubled experience booster), doubles your experience gain for 15 minutes. This is additive with other multipliers, so if you have 3x per pulse with Gift of Lumnis and use this, you'll have 4x.
   2. BOOST ABSORB (instant mind clear), which absorbs 1000 field XP instantly. This is not modified by anything else, e.g. BOOST EXP or Gift of Lumnis.
   3. BOOST FAST, this one is for F2P only. It increases your XP absorption up to the normal amount for 15 minutes. This does not stack with Gift of Lumnis.
4. Enhancives (and spells): You want 140 Logic for as much uptime as possible, as this increases the amount of XP you absorb per pulse. After this, having 140 Discipline is also useful, as it increases your EXP pool, but it's a distant second to Logic. Spells like 650 (Assume Aspect -> porcupine) can also help increase your Logic. Rather than building a full set of Logic enhancive items, which can be expensive, you might look around for someone selling a runestaff with a good Logic bonus. Be mindful of the level requirement. A bonus in the +12-14 range can be obtained at the time of this article for around 500k-2m, and has a level requirement in the 30s to 40s.
5. Crafting: The first artisan craft you learn grants significant experience, and the second grants half of that. Fletching is the easiest, but doesn't grant Saturated experience, so you're usually better off overall doing bounties. Cobbling is more expensive and slower than Fletching, but does grant Saturated experience, so you can use it during your downtime when you can't turn in another bounty. Forging also grants experience, but is the least efficient for our purposes of maximizing XP.
6. Orbs: RPA orbs, or XP orbs, are sometimes given as rewards for events, and some can be purchased. This is an efficient but very expensive way to level. As a reference point, aside from the early levels when XP requirements are low, the cost is very roughly about $50 per level.
7. OSA: Open Sea Adventures are sea bounties that give experience similar to their terrestrial counterpart. However, in their current state, the experience is less efficient, and you either need to get and manage a boat or find someone who has one. Overall, while they can be very fun, they're less efficient.
8. Foreign Pages: In certain Giftbox events (which are now CLAIM events), you may be granted "a page written in a foreign language" which will grant increased XP gain for a certain period of time. These will typically expire after a certain date, so be mindful of starting them soon enough so that you have time to take advantage of the full length. These typically stack with Gift of Lumnis and RPA orbs.
9. Collectibles: The collectible system allows you to find items in the treasure system which can be exchanged for rewards, many of which are BOOST ABSORBs. You can check your progress with the COLLECT verb. Under COLLECT ALL, your completed sets waiting to be redeemed are marked with an asterisk.

Special Cases

1. Brooch of Lumnis: If you have a Brooch of Lumnis, use the rubs daily. This is an account-bound item that appears to no longer be scheduled for future releases, so if you don't have one, skip this part.
2. Honorable Mention: Professions: Wizards, Bards, and Sorcerers can also gain experience using some of their profession-specific skills, which you can read about on the main experience page. However, these methods are not reliable sources of efficient experience.

Script Hunting

While some find automating your hunting and other tasks to be less fun, others find that it reduces hand strain and allows simultaneous focus on other tasks. Others use a happy compromise of macros and/or short scripts to ease the process. Please never script without watching your character, as this:

• Can land you on the wrong side of game policy, potentially putting a permanent black mark on your account or worse
• Fosters frustration in active players, who can often recognize when you're not present, particularly if your script goes awry
• Creates a bad name for GemStone, driving away potential new players

If you want to use Lich scripts, I recommend first setting up the following scripts: bigshot, eherbs, eloot, and spellup scripts (I use, in varying contexts: ewaggle, spellactive, symbolz, isign). Then, once you're comfortable with those, set up ebounty to run bounties for you.

Pitfalls

Fortunately, there are very few pitfalls in terms of missing out on potential experience, and most of them come with blaring in-game warnings. Here are the ones to watch out for:

• Do not turn in a bounty while Saturated
• Do not use a BOOST ABSORB when you have less than a full mind
• Do not use BOOST DOUBLE when your mind is empty
• Do not use the Brooch of Lumnis when you have less than enough XP in your mind to maximize its instant absorption (often 400 XP)
• Note: Since Gift of Lumnis and RPAs are active for specific amounts of experience, you do not miss any XP for being "Clear as a Bell" while they are active

Attributions

Special thanks to Duffield for his expertise and many good suggestions.