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3) HOW SP FARMING WORKS
If you ever taken the chance to look over the skills located within the mastery trees you might start salivating at the endless possibilities to which to build a character. However most don't realize the amount of skill points needed to polish up a character. Each tree is a bit different and how you go about picking skills and trees will ultimately determine how many skill points you will need. Most people do not think about this when initially playing a new character, but instead jump headlong into making a new character then proceed to level away while spending points willy-nilly. This is great for learning the game, it's not so great for making a good character in the long run. Most people reach level 20 or 30 and realize too late then are running out of skill points. They realize they can't afford to purchase anything they want and find their lack of ability compared to others of equivilant level depressing. Hopefully this won't happen to the readers of my guide as I will turn you into the ANT! For those that don't know the reference then please refer to the old Chinese story about the Grasshopper and the Ant. Spending a little bit of extra time in the low levels can pay out huge dividends at higher levels, especially in PVP.
To gain a single skill point in the game you need to earn 400 skill experience. Skill experience is shown by the little yellow bar above your normal green experience bar. You can also view your total skill points next to the yellow bar or in the Skill Window which can be accessed by pressing "S" on your keyboard. Skill experience is awarded by completing most quests, and by killing monsters. This is the same for normal experience as well. The problem is the fact that most people raise their mastery trees of choice as far as it can go when they level. Most people without realizing the ramifications will max out a mastery tree to be equal level to their character level. If their character is level 20, then their mastery tree of choice is level 20.
There is a flaw to this. One, after a certain level, the amount of skill points needed to raise even a single mastery jumps exponentially. It is very difficult to keep even a single mastery tree maxed out to your current level for 80 levels. Even doing so you will be limited to what skills within a single mastery you can pick. No one wants to be a one-trick pony.
However, within the game itself are the mechanics to diversify and build a powerful character a tad more slowly. This is done by NOT raising your mastery trees to the max.
You see, when you kill a monster within the game there is a TOTAL amount of experience that is generated by that monster based off your level versus the level of the monster and it's hitpoints. A monster of the same level as another but with more hitpoints, like champions and giants, will give more total experience. This total experience is then sorted out by a ratio into skill experience and normal experience. The ratio is determined by the level difference of your highest mastery and your character level. If your highest mastery tree equals your current character level, then the ratio is going to be higher for normal experience. This means when you kill a monster, most of the experience will be normal experience and not skill experience.
As the level gap increases between your highest mastery tree and your current character level the ratio skews more in favor of skill experience up to a level 9 level difference. Beaware, skill experience is more costly then normal experience. Take this for example, with no level difference at level 16 and killing a level 16 monster you shoudl recieve about 100 skill experience and 400 normal experience. This makes a total of 500 experience. If you have a 6 level gap, then you will receive 185 skill experience and 230 normal experience roughly. This is a total experience of a 6 level gap is now 415. If you have the max level gap of 9 between your highest mastery tree and your current level then you would receive roughly 30 normal experience and 220 skill experience which is a total of 250 experience for that monster. Going beyond a 9 level gap no longer changes the ratio.
As you can see, the value of skill experience versus normal is experience is not equal. Skill experience is worth more. In the furture, I might try to build a table with the ratios and experience values based off the level gap from 1 to 9. If someone doesn't beat me to it. It will be an update later when I get a day off and time to roll a new character.
SP Farming works by deliberately keeping a gap between your highest mastery tree and your current character level. You gain less normal experience per kill, and as a result level slower, but gain much more skill experience per kill. The net result is that when you finally decide to spend your skill points to start maxing out your mastery trees, you'll have plenty to use at your disposal.
Why do SP farming? While it seems to make leveling at lower levels almost tediously slow... it is in no way a comparison to how slow you will level at higher character levels. When you reach level 60 and complain how slow it is to level because you can't solo kill anything near your level due to lack of skill points, you'll wish you spent a little extra time at the low levels building skill points. I can easily say that an extra hour spent SP farming at a low level is well worth 5 or more hours of time at higher levels. You spend more time now to save time later. Hence, you become the ANT.
Also, as pointed out below, another reason to do SP farming a bit earlier is that as your character progresses, the level gap needed to increase the ratio in favor of skill experience earned versus normal experience earned changes. To the point where a 5 level gap when your character is level 10 is similar in ratio to a 9 level gap when your character is 50+
Taken from an AWESOME TOTALLY FREAKIN ORGASMIC guide from the guides section...
Give it a visit from time to time, you won't regret it.
