BradSTL
12-01-05, 23:15
I've got a droner/hacker with about 75 base DEX and INT, 20 PSI, and CON and STR up around 30. I've got a droner/constructor/researcher with about 75 DEX and INT, capped STR and PSI, about 30 CON. I've got a tech rifle spy with about 75 in DEX, about 70 in INT, capped STR and PSI, and about 30 CON. All in all, three spy characters at around 55/50 rank. And when I try to level any of them past that point, I'm bored beyond imagining.
If I want reliable solo leveling, I can go to the bunker, and race everybody else chasing the same three to five cyclops launchers that are always there. I can't be the only one who thinks this way; you wouldn't believe the number of rank */50 to */60 characters I see there. Do you know how disconcerting it is to see characters with level 2 power armor and rare weapons hunting level 50 mobs?
With all three characters, I can hunt warbots solo (although it's pointless for the constructor, since he can't hack). But I spend roughly half of my time just pointlessly driving my motorcycle around or running around the same terrain, either at the Military Base or at Battle Dome, hoping for one to spawn and for me to see it before it sees me. And even then, I have to pick times when the server's at 9% population or below, or else there are swarms of characters my level chasing the same six mobs per sector, and if I get max damage on a warbot and go to hack it, by the time I come out of the hack screen 15 seconds later someone's trying to blow up my bike.
If I want to hunt anything else, then I waste one third to half of my time trying to find a team roughly my level, then we spend at least half of our time running around or otherwise waiting for mobs to spawn. So at best, I can be gaining XP about half of the time at just above my level, or maybe a quarter of the time for stuff higher than that. Consequently, no matter how I slice it, trying to get any character's primary stats above 75 feels not only repetitive, but involves mind numbing amounts of sheer waiting for something to do and then goes grindingly slow once combat starts.
(Yes, even droning in the graves, where it takes me two or three flights of a capped MR-1000 or RG-1000 drone to bring down a single snake. Man, that's exciting. NOT.)
So I start thinking about deleting one of my characters and leveling up to the roughly 55/50 level again. Maybe a PE driver/gunner, I've been thinking lately; before that it was a street samurai/hacknet hacker. Whatever. In fact, this is how I ended up with a rifle spy, from before that. Nothing I really want to play, just something to do when the boredom of trying to level my primary characters beats me down too badly. But it'd be pointless, wouldn't it? I'd hit the same wall at roughly the same stats.
This has kept happening to me since Neocron 1, and I'd love some advice. The only way I got through this with one character in NC1 was via "worm farming" with the old Crimson Tide gang on Pluto server. It since then turns out that "worm farming" really was an exploit (who knew?) and has since been disabled. Without it, the sheer time spending running around or otherwise trying to find some productive way to level up is driving me batty.
Oh, sure, I could take my LE chips out and join a clan (after all, there are so many large and successful Tsunami clans on Terra server -- in somebody's better imagination than mine). Maybe that would give me more people to level up with, make it easier to hit some of the reliable group leveling spots. Except that then, I'd be spending half of my game waiting for synaptic impairment to wear off and replacing equipment I lost because we got ambushed by some clan six to eight times our size. No thanks, I enjoyed as much of that as I could stand back in NC1.
If anybody else has felt the same way at the same point in the game, how did you get past it? Is there really any way to do it, other than to join one of the two or three largest clans on the server?
If I want reliable solo leveling, I can go to the bunker, and race everybody else chasing the same three to five cyclops launchers that are always there. I can't be the only one who thinks this way; you wouldn't believe the number of rank */50 to */60 characters I see there. Do you know how disconcerting it is to see characters with level 2 power armor and rare weapons hunting level 50 mobs?
With all three characters, I can hunt warbots solo (although it's pointless for the constructor, since he can't hack). But I spend roughly half of my time just pointlessly driving my motorcycle around or running around the same terrain, either at the Military Base or at Battle Dome, hoping for one to spawn and for me to see it before it sees me. And even then, I have to pick times when the server's at 9% population or below, or else there are swarms of characters my level chasing the same six mobs per sector, and if I get max damage on a warbot and go to hack it, by the time I come out of the hack screen 15 seconds later someone's trying to blow up my bike.
If I want to hunt anything else, then I waste one third to half of my time trying to find a team roughly my level, then we spend at least half of our time running around or otherwise waiting for mobs to spawn. So at best, I can be gaining XP about half of the time at just above my level, or maybe a quarter of the time for stuff higher than that. Consequently, no matter how I slice it, trying to get any character's primary stats above 75 feels not only repetitive, but involves mind numbing amounts of sheer waiting for something to do and then goes grindingly slow once combat starts.
(Yes, even droning in the graves, where it takes me two or three flights of a capped MR-1000 or RG-1000 drone to bring down a single snake. Man, that's exciting. NOT.)
So I start thinking about deleting one of my characters and leveling up to the roughly 55/50 level again. Maybe a PE driver/gunner, I've been thinking lately; before that it was a street samurai/hacknet hacker. Whatever. In fact, this is how I ended up with a rifle spy, from before that. Nothing I really want to play, just something to do when the boredom of trying to level my primary characters beats me down too badly. But it'd be pointless, wouldn't it? I'd hit the same wall at roughly the same stats.
This has kept happening to me since Neocron 1, and I'd love some advice. The only way I got through this with one character in NC1 was via "worm farming" with the old Crimson Tide gang on Pluto server. It since then turns out that "worm farming" really was an exploit (who knew?) and has since been disabled. Without it, the sheer time spending running around or otherwise trying to find some productive way to level up is driving me batty.
Oh, sure, I could take my LE chips out and join a clan (after all, there are so many large and successful Tsunami clans on Terra server -- in somebody's better imagination than mine). Maybe that would give me more people to level up with, make it easier to hit some of the reliable group leveling spots. Except that then, I'd be spending half of my game waiting for synaptic impairment to wear off and replacing equipment I lost because we got ambushed by some clan six to eight times our size. No thanks, I enjoyed as much of that as I could stand back in NC1.
If anybody else has felt the same way at the same point in the game, how did you get past it? Is there really any way to do it, other than to join one of the two or three largest clans on the server?