Announcements - 2005/07 - Throne of Destiny (expansion)

July 2005 - Patch Page

Teaser Images
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Fiction

 * A Primer on Halaetan Geography
 * Assassination
 * Discovery
 * Sanamar Under Siege
 * The Armor of the Viamontian Invaders
 * The Execution
 * The Fall of the Fiun
 * The Invasion of Ispar
 * The Malika and the Individual
 * The Origins and Current Disposition of Viamont
 * The Ruschk
 * The Tournament Part I
 * The Tournament Part II
 * The Tournament Part III
 * The Viamontian Knight

FAQ - AC:TD Level Cap and Augmentations
{{Turbine 2005 | Link = http://ac.turbinegames.com/index.php?page_id=281 | Title = AC:TD Level Cap and Augmentations | Text =

What is the new level cap going to be?
What is the new level cap going to be?

Throne of Destiny will increase the level cap from 126 to 275.

What will my new level be?
Treestats says that I'm level 210 already. Will I be level 210 after I install Throne of Destiny? Either 210 or a level very close to it. Your new level will be calculated based on your total available and invested experience, which is generally how most third-party applications calculate it.

Will the caps on maximum skill level be increased?
Will the caps on maximum skill level be increased? Not in Throne of Destiny, no.

What about the extra experience?
So... if I can't spend it on capped skills, what do I do with the experience I earn at the highest levels? You use it to buy Augmentation Gems! Augmentations will grant one of a range of interesting abilities, stay tuned for examples.

What about fellowships?
Will the level limits on XP-sharing fellowships be changed?

We don't anticipate that this will be a huge issue immediately at the launch of the expansion, so we're not planning on changing the system as part of Throne of Destiny. We are, however, considering redesigning parts of the fellowship system through the monthly updates in order to make it generally more social and inclusive, and we will doubtless address this issue at that time.

What about monarchs?
What will you do about the fact that my level 126 character used to be able to have anyone swear to him, but now won't be able to take the same characters as vassals if they're over 126? We are considering several different options here, including:
 * Leave the system intact, with the understanding that players have the next five months to arrange their allegiances in whatever fashion they wish;
 * Allow any character over level 100 to swear to any other character over level 100;
 * Allow any character to swear to any other character with some safeguards related to experience pass-up, i.e. no experience pass-up from vassals who swore to you when they were lower level than you.

Our goal is to facilitate the management of allegiances without leaving so many loopholes for fast experience gain that the social purpose of allegiances is occluded. We will be paying close attention to feedback from the community before we make any decision on this question.

What about creatures?
If I get up to level 275, won't the experience that I get for creatures that are listed as level 150 decrease because they're now well below my level? The expansion will include a number of new higher level creatures, and we're considering other possible fixes, including:
 * Revisiting the display levels (but not the difficulties) of creatures that are targeted at level 126+ characters to take into account the fact that these characters are now 150 or 200 instead of 126;
 * Providing Augmentation Gems that ameliorate the effect of the scaling;
 * Revising the underlying system of experience scaling.

What's the curve?
What is the exact XP curve from 126 to 275? The exact chart is rather too large to be posted here, the best way to describe it is that the well-known extrapolations of this table that currently exist in the player community are close enough for basic planning.

What about skill credits?
Will we get more skill credits? Our current plan for skill credits is to award these at the following levels, although please understand that this is subject to change: The cap on the number of credits you can spend on specialized skills will not be changed.
 * 130
 * 140
 * 150
 * 160
 * 180
 * 200
 * 225
 * 250
 * 275

What about rate of advancement?
Will there be any change to the rate of advancement for uber-level characters, or is this high level just for folks who macroed and used XP chains in the past? We recognize that there's a real need for more content for uber-level characters and up, and we are definitely committed to creating it.

What about death items?
Will the number of items I drop on death go up? Yes. At level 126 you can drop up to 14 items, at level 275 you could drop up to 29 items. That's a lot of items, and a large burden on very high level players in terms of pack space. We're considering several methods to ameliorate this burden: possibly an Augmentation that allows you to drop fewer items on death, or a revision of the vitae system to focus the penalty of death more on vitae and less on item loss. We will be discussing this question more in the near future, especially as it concerns changes to the PK dynamic, and of course listening carefully to your feedback. For additional technical details on the level cap increase, please read this article. }}

Raising the Level Cap
{{Turbine 2005 | Link = http://ac.turbinegames.com/index.php?page_id=285 | Title = Raising the Level Cap | Text = posted on 11-Oct-2004 At Turbine Nation we announced that the upcoming Throne of Destiny expansion will raise the Asheron's Call level cap. We also announced that players who purchase the expansion will be able to use Augmentation Gems to develop their characters in new and unexpected ways. But what does all of that mean? How will it affect you? Since Turbine Nation, you've been asking for answers to these questions, for more details about exactly what we are doing and exactly what it means to you. This article means to provide those answers in exhausting detail. Some of this gets a bit technical, however, so if you're looking for quick answers to basic questions you may want to start with the FAQ.

Some Definitions
Before we start discussing the changes in store, it is necessary to have a thorough understanding of the current advancement system in Asheron's Call. It is especially important to understand some of the odd side effects of the current system. First, some definitions. Characters earn experience (XP) in a variety of ways, including by killing monsters, by completing quests, and by using skills. When a character earns XP, the amount they earn is added to a counter of total experience. Total XP is used only to determine that character's level – it cannot be spent to develop the character; and it can only go up, never down. Depending on the source of the earned XP, the amount earned is also added either directly to a skill or attribute, or to a counter of available XP. Available XP can then be spent to raise skills and attribute. This gives us three generic types of XP we can talk about: The following diagram provides an example of these definitions:
 * Total XP: The absolute total of experience the character has ever earned. This XP cannot be transformed into other types of XP.
 * Invested XP: The sum of the experience that is invested into all skills and attributes (including secondary attributes). This XP can be turned into available XP through skill sellback.
 * Available XP: The XP that the character has available to spend on skills and attributes. This XP can be turned into invested XP by spending it.



The Level Cap Today
It's easy to see that total XP should equal the sum of available XP and invested XP. In AC as it stands today, however, that isn't always true. There are some minor ways that these numbers can become out of synch – for instance, when you break from your patron and then swear to another patron, the swearing costs a small amount of available XP without increasing your invested XP, so the sum of available and invested is now less than the total. More common, however, is the situation in which invested XP far outpaces total XP – this happens whenever a character hits the current level cap. See, in our current system, all the XP values of a character – including the counters for total XP, available XP, and the XP invested into each skill and attribute – are stored in 32-bit integers. This means that there is an implicit cap on these values. You cannot store a number larger than about 4.2 billion in a 32-bit integer. So total experience is capped at approximately 4.2 billion – or, using our handy XP-to-level table, level 126. So a player character can never exceed level 126. Invested XP, however, can continue to increase even after total XP has run out of room. Because invested XP is the sum of the XP invested into each skill and attribute, and each skill and attribute can hold up to about 4.2 billion XP, the maximum possible invested experience is almost 150 billion. That's 26 skills with capped XP – the most you can afford with every skill credit in the game – plus 6 attributes, and 3 secondary attributes all capped at 4.2 billion. Note that different character templates have different numbers of skills available to invest into, and therefore different maximum possible invested experience. It is important to understand that invested XP is the only XP that actually increases the power of a character. Because AC is primarily skill-based and not level-based, a character's total XP does not actually confer any direct benefits to the character (except the ability to enter certain level-restricted dungeons or use certain level-restricted items). Total XP – and thus character level – is merely a measure of how much XP a character could have invested into skills and attributes if they invested everything they earned. In a sense, then, character level is a rough measure of the maximum potential power level of a character. But after level 126 the character level no longer reflects the relative power of the character in any way at all. And this is not a small discrepancy: 4.2 billion vs. 147 billion is a pretty big difference. To counter this, some players with characters above level 126 have extrapolated the AC XP-to-level table all the way up to 150 billion and now use their calculated invested XP to figure out their effective level. So, to sum up: There are currently two level caps in AC. The true level cap occurs at level 126, when total XP can no longer be increased. The effective level cap occurs somewhere between the extrapolated levels of 233 and 261 (depending on character template) when invested XP can no longer be increased. In the Throne of Destiny expansion, we are fixing this entire mess and raising both of these level caps. Read on to discover how!

The Level Cap Tomorrow
Level is just a reflection of your total XP, so in order to raise the level cap we must increase the highest possible total XP. And indeed that's just what we are doing. By switching the internal storage of total XP to a 64-bit integer, instead of a 32-bit integer, we can store numbers as large as 18 quintillion. That gives us plenty of room for new levels! We're not initially going to use all of that space, though. We've decided that the new cap will be level 275, which can be reached with about 191 billion XP. But if we just allow total XP to increase without fixing the current mess – in which total XP and invested XP are terribly out of synch over level 126 – then we've merely added more confusion to the system. So in addition to increasing the storage for total XP, we are also going to recalculate total XP based on the sum of available and invested XP. We'll do this once for each character, the very first time they log in after upgrading to the expansion pack. During that recalculation, characters will also be awarded any new skill credits for the levels they pass. For example: Let's say that your character is level currently 126, and in fact you've been level 126 for almost a year now. You have 4.2 billion total XP, 1 billion available XP, and 8 billion XP invested into your skills and attributes. The first time you log in after upgrading to the expansion, your total XP will be set to 9 billion, you will advance to level 146, and you will receive 2 skill credits. Or, another example: Let's say you're one of those driven players who has trained as many skills as possible in order to drive your invested XP as high as possible. You have maximized every skill possible, plus all your attributes, and you've even capped your available XP. It is not physically possible for you to earn XP anymore – there's nowhere for it to go! The first time you log in after upgrading to the expansion, your total XP will be set to about 150 billion, you will advance to level 261, and you will receive 8 skill credits. Note that you will not be at the new level cap of 275 – you will still have about 41 billion XP left to go to get there. Okay, so that gets everyone on the same page again as far as total XP is concerned. But what about going forward? What happens when the first character reaches the new cap? Currently, you stop earning total XP at level 126, but you continue earning available XP until you eventually maximize all of your skills and attributes and your available XP, at that point you stop earning experience all together. With the Throne of Destiny expansion, things will work fairly similarly: you will continue earning total XP and available XP all the way up to the level 275 cap, and then you will stop earning both total and available XP. This means that the next time we want to raise the level cap, we can do it quickly and easily without all of this fuss. A technical note: Yes, this means that the storage for available XP is also increasing to a 64-bit value. One side effect of that change is that it will no longer be possible to lose experience during skill sellback. Skill and attribute XP will remain in 32-bit values, with a maximum of about 4.2 billion. We're not prepared at this time to deal with raising the maximum possible skill levels, although we are seriously considering it for the future.

Augmentation Gems
Now, if you've been paying close attention, you may have noticed a small issue with all of this. It's great that you'll be able to get to higher levels than ever before, but what use are those extra levels? In AC, experience is only useful if you can spend it on something. Since we're not increasing the amount of total XP that can be invested into skills and attributes, then in what way does the higher level cap actually benefit players? Is the only purpose to give your character a slightly higher number to sport around? The answer to this question is twofold. Firstly, a higher level means more skill credits, which mean more skills trained and therefore more XP invested into skills. Note that you can still only spend a total of 64 skill credits on specialized skills, so those extra skill credits will probably be more useful in broadening your character than in deepening it. Secondly, we're introducing new ways to spend XP called Augmentation Gems. These are special gems, somewhat akin to skill sellback gems, that you obtain via a quest. Each Augmentation Gem has a unique effect and an associated cost in experience. When you use the gem, the experience cost is subtracted from your available experience (only if you have enough, of course!), your character receives the benefit, and the gem is destroyed. All Augmentation effects are permanent, some can be repeated and some cannot, but they cannot be undone – there is no Augmentation sellback! On the other hand, with enough time and experience, it is theoretically possible for any character to collect all the Augmentations. It will take some time, however – we currently plan on a one-month timer for completing the Augmentation Gem quest. With more than 30 Augmentations planned, that's over two years of character development. It's important to note that Augmentation Gems can be used by anyone who can obtain the gem and who has enough available XP to purchase the Augmentation. In other words, you don't have to wait until you are level 260 to use Augmentations. Note that the quest to obtain the gem is targeted at characters of level 100+ and is restricted to those players who have purchased the expansion. Let's look at a simple example: One potential Augmentation that we announced at Turbine Nation was the ability to carry an extra backpack. Let's say that the cost of this Augmentation is 4 billion XP. (This cost is subject to change, but it is interesting to note that this Augmentation is planned to be one of the most expensive available.) So you do the quest, obtain the gem, and use it. 4 billion XP is drained from your available XP and invested into this Augmentation, and now you have an extra backpack slot on your UI. This slot is yours for the rest of eternity, and you can place any backpack you like in that slot. We are in the process of finalizing the list of Augmentations and their associate XP costs, but you can anticipate more information on these effects in the coming weeks.

Other Considerations
So that's the basic plan for raising the level cap and providing alternative character development through Augmentation Gems. There are a number of additional issues related to the level cap – these are addressed in the FAQ. }}

Video
The movie introduction to Throne of Destiny that comes on the game CD. It explains the story behind how the Viamontians came to Dereth.

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