General Adventuring Guidelines

Terms You Need To Know

Adventurer Rating (AR)

Your adventure rating (or "Rating" in-game) is a number between 0 and 278 (the maximum currently possible). It is important because the amount of experience you earn is based on your Adventure Rating, so as you gain in levels (and presumably in power) you need to find more powerful creatures to defeat. This applies in particular to players who like to multi-class their biped characters.

Adventure rating is derived by the following formula:

The square root of the sum of your current adventurer level to the power of two plus every other of your adventure levels divided by two to the power of two. For example, a current level 10 Ranger has 20 Cleric and 30 Warrior levels. The rating is therefore: Square root of (10 ranger levels^2 + (20 cleric levels/2)^2 + (30 Warrior levels/2)^2) = 20.62.

How Can You Gain Adventurer Experience

There are four general methods of gaining experience when adventuring:

1. Hunting critters;
2. Group hunting bonus (though this is generally linked with 1);
3. Collecting trophies for the Trophy Hunters; and
4. Consuming Crystals.

Hunting Monsters

Hunting monsters in Istaria is the generally accepted method of leveling. Simply find a monster, defeat it, and you get experience. As a Dragon this is fairly straightforward, as it also is as a Biped with a single adventure school; monsters at a level at or near your level work best. If you're a biped with multiple schools, your experience reward will depend on both your current school level and your Adventure Rating; you may need to fight monsters substantially higher than your current school level to gain adequate experience.

Fighting Multiple Monsters At Once

Adventurers get an additional bonus if they fight and defeat more than one monster at a time. For example, if a Level 10 Warrior defeats two Sand Beetles at once, the Warrior will receive the standard experience reward, plus an additional experience reward based on the number of monsters defeated.

Group Hunting Bonus

As an additional bonus, if you join with other players in a group you receive additional experience when hunting together. Experience is calculated based on combined Adventurer ratings of the group, + x%. For example, a group of two with ratings of 40 and 45 are hunting and defeat a critter worth 1,000 experience. The rating 40 player would get the rating 40 divided by the total group rating of 85, plus their group bonus. The rating 45 player would get 45 divided by the group rating of 85. Note that this means it is more beneficial for a group of players with similar ratings to play together. A rating 1 player in a combined group rating of 100 would only get 1% of the experience!

Collecting Trophies

There are various NPCs in Istaria called "Trophy Hunters". They provide quests to adventurers that allow them to swap trophies gained from hunting creatures for experience. Monsters drop random amounts of trophies, any number between 0 and 2 being common. Trophy hunters accept 5 trophies at a time and give you a cash and experience reward. Note that after completing 10 of the same trophy quests (i.e. deliver 10 lots of 5 Small Sand Beetle Compound Eyes) the amount of experience you receive is halved.

In general, the best creature to hunt for trophies is any type of Beetle. There is a different rating beetle to hunt for each trophy tier, and they generally drop more trophies than any other monster in game. It is quite common to receive 2-4 trophies per monster.

Consuming Crystals

Magic crystals can be "consumed" to provide experience for players. This presents a choice, as the benefits gained from using crystals in equipment may outweigh their experience value. It is, however, an option. If you don't need the crystals, then you may as well use them, or put them on consignment!

How Is Experience Calculated?

The calculation behind the amount of experience you receive per monster is complex. It depends on:

• The level of the monster, and the base xp reward for that monster.
• Both your current school level and your Adventure Rating.
• Whether or not you are in a group.
• Whether or not you are fighting more than one monster.

When you fight monsters with a level above your current school level, your experience is sometimes capped by your school level (details below).

You will get reduced or no experience when you defeat a monster whose level is substantially below your Adventure Rating, even if it is above your school level (only occurs for multi-school bipeds, not an issue for Dragons or single-school bipeds).

Occasionally, there are periods where you receive double experience for monsters. Usually during special events set by Virtrium like the 10th and 12th Birthday.

The amount of experience your receive is calculated as follows. Important is the:

• Rating of the creature
• Rating of the player

The rewarded XP is optimal if the rating of both matches.

The rewarded XP is below if the rating of the creature is lower like the players one.

The rewarded XP is higher if the rating of the player is lower like the creatures one.

Players in a group getting additional bonus XP. The rating of players in a group shouldn't differ too much. The one with the highest rating will gain the highest XP.

Killing more then one creature at once gives a multiple enemy bonus. It is capped to a maximum of 10 creatures.

Maximum Experience Cap

Your current adventurer school level (as opposed to your adventurer rating) determines the maximum amount of experience you are able to gain per monster defeated when hunting creatures in Istaria. The maximum experience cap is calculated as follows:

1. Between levels 1-10, xp cap = (10% of xp required for next level) x 2
2. Between levels 11-100, xp cap = (10% of xp required for next level)

Note: Due to these calculations, the cap for level 11 is actually less than that for level 10.

Level	Max Xp
1	20
2	40
3	80
4	120
5	180
6	240
7	300
8	380
9	460
10	600
11	500
12	720
13	910
14	1120
...	...

Original material from istaria.wikia.com by StalePopcorn — licensed under the CC-BY-SA 3.0.