Friday, May 28, 2010

The Grind

As you can probably tell from the fact that I only talk about questing here, I'm not much of a grind-player. Now that I've crossed the 30th level line with a couple of characters I've started to see that a little grinding is probably a good thing.

I currently have my Warden and Warrior in Coba Plateau, and I've noticed both are shaving the quest / level border very closely. I think I'm going to be altering my strategy a little bit with future characters and grind at least two bubbles of experience each level to give me a little more breathing room. Grinding, for those not familiar with MMO terminology, means gaining experience by killing monsters repeatedly. Some people really hate the somewhat mindless nature of grinding, others find it enjoyable. I don't mind the grind all that much, as long as it's somewhat effective. Here are a few tips on the grind to help speed it up and make it at least marginally profitable.
  • Targets - Choose the best level and type of monster for your class and attributes. It is often better to choose slightly easier targets for grinding as this reduces your downtime. If you can kill three level 25 monsters awarding 50 experience each in the same amount of time as one level 27 monster awarding 100 experience and come out with good mana and health levels, you're better off.
  • Treasure - Pick monsters that drop decent vendor trash. You may as well make some money while you grind. Be sure you clear your bags of extraneous junk before you start your grinding to reduce trips to the vendor. Travel time is non-killing time, and non-killing time awards zero experience.
  • Location - Realtors know the first rule: location, location, location! Don't camp where you're going to be PvP griefed by hostile forces or competing for monsters. Be sure you have plenty of monsters to kill. Know where the nearest vendor and resurrection site are in case the worst happens.
  • Downtime - The ultimate enemy of the grind is downtime. Drinking, eating, bandaging, and running from target to target are all earning you zero experience! Do everything in your power to avoid doing any of them.
That's all I have to say. Hope these tips are useful to anyone doing the grind!

2 comments:

monktbd said...

I agree that some grinding is quite useful.
If you have a good grind spot for you and if you are close with the purple bar to leveling it might even make sense to grind it out without resting your gained fatigue XP as the mobs will give you less XP once you leveled.
The additional money can come in handy for profession expenses for crafting professions, also gear is a bit tough in the low/mid 30ies so you might want to try out a few things and bank and bag slots are precious especially in Coba.

Bugsy said...

Good suggestions. I've altered my play by NOT avoiding creatures while on the way to a quest/ turn in. This based on our intra- guild email discussions

It seems for my character that being 1-2 levels over the mobs is best, so the idea to grind for a few levels is appealing.

Space grinding periods out and it shouldn't seem so arduous.