Just out of curiousity..

[Cloudrat]

If a band of 5 friends start at the beginning, in the same area and group together all the time doing just non epic quests and location disco getting to 90 how many AA will they have? No faction grinding, no loot whoring. no crafting, no raiding, etc etc. 

Just having fun running through Norrath, seeing the world, working together and doing quests for the npcs. What is the final AA count?

[Mermut]

Just about anything they want it to be.. since we have total control of how fast we level and how much AA we get with the AA slider. Additionally it would depend which/how many zones people did, as well as veteran bonuses.

[Cloudrat]

Mermut wrote:

Just about anything they want it to be.. since we have total control of how fast we level and how much AA we get with the AA slider. Additionally it would depend which/how many zones people did, as well as veteran bonuses.

nitpicker  LOL   no slider manipulation  just plain having fun  dont need a bunch of legalese and caveats  New people no bonuses

[EternallyConfuzzled]

Cloudrat wrote:

If a band of 5 friends start at the beginning, in the same area and group together all the time doing just non epic quests and location disco getting to 90 how many AA will they have? No faction grinding, no loot whoring. no crafting, no raiding, etc etc. 

Just having fun running through Norrath, seeing the world, working together and doing quests for the npcs. What is the final AA count?

I soloed a wizard from 1-90 under a Silver account (AA slider locked at 50). Barring initially going through all of the starting areas for an AA boost, I hit level 90 with 220 AAs and no unusual activity to squeeze out extra AAs except from quests, named as convenient, and discovery. I think that path fits your question perfectly except for the 5 friends part.

I'm having difficulty recalling whether 220 was the actual stop point or if I did some grinding before getting frustrated with the AA gate and rolling an alt, but I was sitting at 220 when I started my grind to 280 last weekend.

[Cloudrat]

Nice reply and good information thanks)  I am sure we can extrapolate from that baseline most of what we are wondering)

Thanks again

[EternallyConfuzzled]

Cloudrat wrote:

Nice reply and good information thanks)  I am sure we can extrapolate from that baseline most of what we are wondering)

Thanks again

No problem. I imagine that a freebie player who's new to the game and doing the "golden path" may top out at closer to 190 when hitting the gate. That's speculation, of course, but I'm confident my path had more of an eye toward AAs than someone who hasn't been around the block a few times.

A subscription player who's new to the game may get screwed, because I was annoyed recently to discover that the AA slider was at dead 0 by default. I'm not sure if that's universal or something weird happened on that alt, but I was definitely at 0 when I first looked at it around level 15. That might be something to confirm as well.

All in all, I'm 100% sure that just "playing the game" won't leave you with 280 AA upon dinging level 90. Not only would one need to be aware of AA experience, but there also needs to be a concerted effort to get the ~3 points per level that doesn't just fall out of questing normally.

[CoLD MeTaL]

Cloudrat wrote:

If a band of 5 friends start at the beginning, in the same area and group together all the time doing just non epic quests and location disco getting to 90 how many AA will they have? No faction grinding, no loot whoring. no crafting, no raiding, etc etc. 

Just having fun running through Norrath, seeing the world, working together and doing quests for the npcs. What is the final AA count?

Leaving the slider at 0, you get to 90 with about 120AA.

[Regolas]

My bruiser is now on 75/75. I was originally getting him AAs at L15-20 (got about 50), then I heard about the AA bauble coming so switched to 0% AA xp. Grinded (ok, PLd myself) through Stormhold, Kaladim, Cazic Thule, Clefts, SoS, PoA, Mistmoore and now Sebilis and so far gained about 25AA from named and discovery AA xp.

[gourdon]

Just to add a couple more data points, I have 2 powerleveled characters on a silver account.  They have done very few quests, but have quite a few discos and named kills.  One is level 85 with 214AA and the other is level 82 with 155AA.  Most of the difference is probably because I did a lot of city tasks for guild status with the level 82.  We also have a guildmate that grouped in a lot of dungeons with a level appropriate group that had maybe 180-190AA when he hit level 90.

[kdmorse]

Cloudrat wrote:

nitpicker  LOL   no slider manipulation  just plain having fun  dont need a bunch of legalese and caveats  New people no bonuses

No slider manipulation takes some of the fun out of just questing along, as you start outleveling zones and quests far before you're done with them.

If you truely keep the aa slider at 0, you're going to land somewhere between 120 and 150.  If when you get close to  outleveling things you move the slider so you can complete them before you outlevel them, somewhere between 200 and 250. (Taking into acount the change in the AA curve)

Obviously your mileage will vary dramatically, depending on the path taken...  (ie, Do you do just Lavaastorm quests until you outlevel the zone, or play through all of Lavastorm and Everfrost.  Zek and EL, etc...)

[Vlahkmaak]

I think it would be well worth your while to dramatically scalle your xp level by using the slider not to squeeze out additional AA 9becuase it will) but becuase if your new to the game the newer areas ahve some nice decent quest lines at low levels - Gorwyn, DLW, Halas etc you might want to run all those quests then level as normal.  you can get several runs through dungeons such as Blackburrow in antonica and Wailing Caves in CL at those levels too for named kills/disco.  At 18ish you can hit up Fallen Gate in comonlands and then the Storm Hold dungeon in antonica too.

Each tier will have a dunggeon you will want to run several times.  The quests from the mid tiers kinda blow imo but once you get to ROK content questing becomes interesting again from there till end game.   

If your doing it first time do as much of the Prismatics line and Claymore as you can becuase once you pass those tiers you can go back and do those riads with your 5 man team no problems.  You will even find people willing to let you tag along in VP for you myth updates occassionally too for a free raid as a 5 man.

Best of luck.

[SteelPiston]

Hachi@Nektulos wrote:

Cloudrat wrote:

If a band of 5 friends start at the beginning, in the same area and group together all the time doing just non epic quests and location disco getting to 90 how many AA will they have? No faction grinding, no loot whoring. no crafting, no raiding, etc etc. 

Just having fun running through Norrath, seeing the world, working together and doing quests for the npcs. What is the final AA count?

I soloed a wizard from 1-90 under a Silver account (AA slider locked at 50). Barring initially going through all of the starting areas for an AA boost, I hit level 90 with 220 AAs and no unusual activity to squeeze out extra AAs except from quests, named as convenient, and discovery. I think that path fits your question perfectly except for the 5 friends part.

I'm having difficulty recalling whether 220 was the actual stop point or if I did some grinding before getting frustrated with the AA gate and rolling an alt, but I was sitting at 220 when I started my grind to 280 last weekend.

I can confirm the 220AA number as being in the ball park. I am a Gold sub with seven 92/92/320 characters. As an experiment, I leveled my BL with minimal questing and mostly xp grinding with the XP/AA slider on 50/50. I had 220AA at level 90. I deduced for future toons that I need to set the slider around 70% AA to get around 280AA at level 90.

[Deago]

I remember getting to 90 with literally 10ish aa.   Easily done via sitting in cov on double exp weekends. 

[LordPazuzu]

120-ish

[ZachSpastic]

Ynnek@Kithicor wrote:

Cloudrat wrote:

nitpicker  LOL   no slider manipulation  just plain having fun  dont need a bunch of legalese and caveats  New people no bonuses

No slider manipulation takes some of the fun out of just questing along, as you start outleveling zones and quests far before you're done with them.

If you truely keep the aa slider at 0, you're going to land somewhere between 120 and 150.  If when you get close to  outleveling things you move the slider so you can complete them before you outlevel them, somewhere between 200 and 250. (Taking into acount the change in the AA curve)

Obviously your mileage will vary dramatically, depending on the path taken...  (ie, Do you do just Lavaastorm quests until you outlevel the zone, or play through all of Lavastorm and Everfrost.  Zek and EL, etc...)

That depends on whether or not you consider it fun to do every single quest while it cons green or higher as you level. Not all players are interested in micromanaging the quest journal. Personally I would prefer to simply play through without thinking about whether or not I have done every possible quest.

Now, I'm an experienced player and I've leveled-up umpteen characters so I don't have any remaining interest in playing every single quest in Enchanted Lands, for example. A truly new player, depending on their interests and play-style, may want to play every quest before the zones/mobs turn gray, or may prefer to head straight to the end-game where everyone else is playing. What is important for EQ2 is that both options be supported.

[Koleg]

Cloudrat wrote:

Nice reply and good information thanks)  I am sure we can extrapolate from that baseline most of what we are wondering)

Thanks again

I can say that if you PL a toon from 1 to 90 doing the very minimum in the ways of Disco and Boss Mob XP the very minimum you'd have would be 120AA - 140AA.  If someone was going to "PLAY" thier way to 90 they would certainly have much more AA than that and be closer to 200 +/- 10.

The 280 AA bauble is only going to grant max AA of around 150... Now those AA are much harder Slower to get due to the scaling curve associated with AA, but it is NOT the 280 bonus AA like they are selling it as.

[Regolas]

I'm testing your theory Koleg, Currently have an 80 bruiser on 85AA. Can't be totally accurate because I farmed 40AA at L15. But since switching to 0% AA I've gained about 45AA in 40 levels. I could stay in Sebilis now until 90 and not gain any new named AA or area AA, but I'll probably end up going to Chelsith and maybe a few other dungeons too, which will give me AA.

[Ulrichvon]

This whole thread reminds me of my arguement of why the 280 aa barrier was a bad idea.  Cause if you just start playing the game, there is nothing as you level up that stears you to that magic number, instead you hit a brick wall at level 90.

And as nearly every case in this thread demonstrates, you have to go out of your way to have 280aa when you hit 90, something a new player isn't going to get the feedback from the game to do.