Spending Tips

Tips for QPs, Trains and TPs

DISCLAIMER: First and foremost, this is your character, do whatever you want. Secondly there are no "best" method for doing things. Your goals might differ from other people. These are just suggestions and a compilation of conversations I've seen over the last several months on the q/a channel. If anyone has suggestions or any feedback please share.

Quest Points

Uses for quest points

  • Buying Aardwolf items from Questor help newbie-aard
  • Buying wishes help wishes
  • Buying Mastery points help mastery
  • Buying Potential help potential
  • Add a stat to an item [500 QP] -- better spent elsewhere
  • Lower the level of an item [500 QP] -- better spent elsewhere

Aardwolf gear

There's already several resources for suggested spending plans both from help newbie-aard and from various guides on clan sites.

Wishes

Very contested topic. Everyone gives their own answers here with respect to priority wishes. One thing I can say is I would only consider a few wishes until after you've finished the level 1-200 stuff suggested in help newbie-aard weapons included. Someone once said in q/a -- "When I think to myself. UGH! **This** is so annoying." That's about the time I check to see if there is a wish for **This**.

Some suggestions:

  • exprate -- Benefits you the sooner it's taken, +10% to all XP gained means ~18 levels per remort for free
  • spellup -- less time spelling up means more time killing
  • portal -- extra slot for stats and convenience
  • fasthunt -- useful for doing campaigns/gqs help hunt trick and quests faster
  • passdoor -- useful for low level campaigns before you have passdoor spell from either Thief (48) or Psi (50)
  • pockets -- useful when you start purchasing enchanted equipment sets and obtaining area portals
  • duration -- as you gain tiers you get access to a lot more spellups early so your mana can be drained spelling up this helps delay that
  • wishstat -- wouldn't take until later on when you plan to pup a lot or in later tiers
  • scholar -- many people say this is completely useless, but I disagree. For leveling process this increases your damage right away when you gain a skill -- how? Consider bash skills for warrior allspells warrior bash, when your remort you start using you skills/spells when you get them, so at level 39 you start using Trip, without scholar by the time you hit 50 and get Sap your trip probably isn't maxed yet because it needed to climb 15% instead of 5% with scholar. And if Trip is maxed at 100% if you start using Sap it'll probably be less damage. Scholar wish helps prevent that potential drop in damage because it closes the gap on maxing the skill/spell at 100%. If you plan to just sit at SH forever and never tier/redo, then ya scholar is useless for you.

Don't ignore the Adjustment cost either. If you are buying a lot of wishes in one sequence or even over time, consider buying them starting for the lowest adjustment costs first. Say you plan to buy 10 wishes in your lifetime, Buy uncurse first means everytime you buy a wish after uncurse it'll cost you 500 extra, this means after buying your 10th wish uncurse really cost you 7000 initial price + 9 * 500 (4500) = 11,500. If you bought it last you'd have paid only 7000 for uncurse (of course you'd pay 500 per wish after).

Consider this example, you have a massive amount of QP's and want to purchase, spellup, novorpal, weaponsmaster, passdor, wishstat, exprate, duration, pockets, portal, fasthunt, scholar.

All these combined have Base costs of 64,500 QPs.
If you purchase them with lowest adjustment cost first you need an additional 10,700 QP's for adjustment costs.
If you purchase them with the highest adjustment cost first you need an additional 14,000 QP's for adjustment costs.
So planning ahead save you 3,300 QP's.

Here is a popularity wish list taken in May 2018 via gamestat 8 (Note: popularity doesn't indicate priority!): 

	Pockets		178	6.5%
	Exprate		174	6.3%
	Spellup		173	6.3%
	Portal		173	6.3%
	Statcost	143	5.2%
	Duration	139	5.1%
	Pockets2	139	5.1%
	Novorpal	131	4.8%
	Fasthunt	131	4.8%
	Passdoor	127	4.6%
	Weapons		120	4.4%
	Noweb		99	3.6%
	Noteleport	92	3.3%
	Scholar		90	3.3%
	Uncurse		83	3.0%
	Showscry	82	3.0%
	Bravery		79	2.9%
	Nohunger	76	2.8%
	Pockets3	73	2.7%
	Nightvisio	72	2.6%
	Nomarbu		66	2.4%
	Identify	53	1.9%
	Nodirt		52	1.9%
	Spellup2	51	1.9%
	Privacy		39	1.4%
	Pockets4	32	1.2%
	Gills		25	0.9%
	Popularity	24	0.9%
	Auctioneer	17	0.6%
	Pockets5	10	0.4%
	Pockets6	5	0.2%

Mastery

From what I've seen discussed on q/a channel. You want to eventually aim for 100 Mastery in the damage type of your primary attack skill that you use at Superhero. Suggestions for each class are listed below:

  • Mage: Sorcerer - Lightning (Spear of Odin), others Fire (Immolate)
  • Warrior: Bash (Hammering blow)
  • Thief: Spiral uses whatever damage type is on your weapon, so they can use any, I've seen Light suggested a lot
  • Ranger: Earth (Eruption) ?? Never been a pran
  • Psi: Mental (Desolation)
  • Paladin: Light (Heavenly Balance) or Shadow (Apocalypse) ?? Never been a ppal
  • Cleric: Sonic (Voice of God) ?? Never been a pcle

You should also change most of your weapon's damage type to whatever you have mastery in, this costs 2 TP per weapon.

As to when to get into Mastery, you want to have your Aardwolf gear filled out and probably several wishes first. According to help mastery you get following damage increases:

  • 5% for for 17 mastery (4,420 QP / 68Mill gold)
  • 10% for for 38 mastery (17,860 QP / 251.75Mill gold)
  • 20% for 104 mastery (117,520 QP / 1.546Bill gold)

The 5% and 10% aren't unreasonable starting out and technically amount to leveling faster because you kill quicker. You get 1 free rebuild on Mastery over the lifetime of your character. After that re-mastery costs on mastery check apply.

Potential

I don't see much talk on potential on q/a and haven't gotten any myself yet as of tier5 -- except those gained from daily blessings. This leads me to assume that potential is something to worry about almost last and certainly not until you're tier9 and pup'ing perhaps. As far as I know, Potential doesn't help at all during the leveling process.

At end-game, Potential helps enable certain builds/subclasses. One example Paladins, who need need a spread of all the stats. without Potential you would only be able to max 2-3 stats while keeping the others high.

Obtaining Quest Points

  • Quests -- available every 30 minutes, averages about 20 qp/quest at tier0
  • Campaigns -- available every level from 1-199 and then every 2 hours are 200/201, averages about 31-33 QP/per campaign
  • Global Quests -- Even if you can't win, you still get 3 QP per mob killed
  • Goals -- Some goals give QP, but very few, small amounts (10-20) and can not be repeated
  • Selling aard items on rauction or market
  • Selling aard items back to questor (not all items can be sold back)
  • Selling epic items to other players via QP transfer
  • From daily blessings
  • From donations to the game, 100 QP per $1.00 donated
  • Turning in AardWords pieces help aardwords
  • Turning in poker pieces help card games

In terms of speed, the most agreed upon way to obtain quest points is currently to complete as many campaigns as you can while leveling up. Particular through the early levels 1-125ish. Later areas can be frustrating to do campaigns in and slow the process down. At first campaigns will be slow, but as you map and explore the areas they become much quicker. Some people even like to turn off XP gain via noexp in order to make sure they get as many campaigns in as they can.

Quest sitting at level 1 which was popular for a very long time has come out of favor. Although it is still done and still perfectly valid, especially if you are close having enough to purchase some level 1 aard items. But if your goal is to gather Quest Points fast, then campaign leveling is better. Another reason for it falling out of favor is because you are now limited to 3 Global Quest wins and 100 Global quest kills per level.

Trains

Uses for trains

  • Training stats help maxstats help sh-stats
  • Instincts help instincts
  • Converting to practices train practices train reconvertall

Explanation of types of trains

You can get several types of trains through your character's lifetime, each one has different uses.

  • Normal trains: Gained whenever you level up from levels 2-200 or whenever you powerup while at Hero/Superhero. Also gained as bonsues for completing quests/campaigns/global quests. These may be used on raising stats or to purchase instincts.
  • Practice Converted trains: Trains gained via the in-game command train convert / train convertall. These trains can only be used for stats, they may not be used for instincts. These trains are also lost when you Superhero.
  • Instinct-available trains: Trains gained since your last rebuild. Basically Normal trains minus Converted trains. These show on the trains command.
  • Instinct deposited train: If you purchase a donation and your level is under 200 you will get instinct deposit trains. Also you could use the command "instinct deposit X" to save trains at any time. To my knowledge, this command is no longer necessary because of the way Superhero stats are saved and restored.
  • Rebuild trains, when you do a rebuild you are given any trains you used and any practices back with a "tax" unless you just reached Level 200 (Hero) in which case you get a free rebuild. These may not be used on instincts. They can only be re-used for stats. Typically you should not be rebuilding outside level 201. When you rebuild you only get back trains spent on str/int/wis/dex/con/luck, not any spent on hp/mana/moves.

Use the trains command to get a report of your total trains and instinct-available trains.

Advice for using trains

Levels 1-200

During the leveling process from 1-200, it is advised to train all stats until they cost you more than 1 to train. Training cost is shown on the train command (Your cost) column. From there you generally want to train your primary classes primary stats up to either 171 or 131. For example on a Warrior, you may want to do 171 str and 131 dex/luck. Special note: Getting your Combined Wisdom stat to 100 (by combined we mean character stat + equipment + spellups) to at least 100. At this break point you get at minimum 10 practices per level which can be converted into 1 extra train per level. Never spend trains during the leveling process on hp/mana/moves, these are all lost when you reach Superhero, unless it's your first time to level 201 -- in which case still don't do it (explained below in Superhero stats section)

How much you train is up to you of course. Generally speaking the more you train your primary stats the quicker you will level. Higher primary stats means more damage, translating to faster kills in most cases. However, some people like to train stats very low during the leveling process to save them for using on their Superhero stats (explained below in Superhero stats section). I've seen this idea countered suggesting that the amount of trains you "save" in this fashion can be gained quicker by powering up at SH.

For first characters going from 1-200 for the first time (referred to as T0R1 -- tier 0, remort 1) and sometimes T0R2 or even T0R3 there are some special circumstances to consider. Generally speaking if you are T0R1, it's recommended to only practice crucial skills and use all practices to convert to trains and use all available trains on stats. This results in high first time superhero stats and more benefits from "saving trains" while leveling.

Superhero stats

When you superhero which means you go from level 200 to level 201 via the superhero command your previous stats you had before at level 201 will be restored. If this is your first time reaching 201 then your current stats become you first saved superhero stats. You may view your saved stats while leveling via two commands: train totals and stats saved. This restoration can be canceled, but unless the game suggests you do it, it's no advisable to use. Also any unused trains from your previous superhero (that are non-practice converted) will be restored from your last Superhero and combined with your current instinct-available trains. You will also lose any unused practices.

Once at superhero, the following order is what is typically advised:

1. Max out your primary classes primary stats 2. Max out luck 3. Get 15k hitpoints 4. Max our other stats with weight towards wisdom (better protection from sanc, more healing from pots, less damage from spells) and con (take less damage in combat) 5. Get to 30k hitpoints (this is the minimum recommended to join many of the epics) 6. Time to start considering instincts

Why not instincts sooner? There's two reason in my mind:

  • Gold: Instincts don't just cost trains, they cost gold and A LOT of it.
  • Powerup speed: Powering up is the quickest way to gain trains, you get 5 trains on average per 1000 exp. The benefit you get from buying stat points is generally much higher than from anything you could purchase with instincts. So better bang for your buck, especially on primary stats and luck.

An exception could be that if you NEVER plan to stay at Superhero, spending trains on instincts might make sense, but again you have the whole Gold cost consideration.

Using practices

  • Practice any dodge skills you have skill dodge, spellups spells spellup you plan to use, relevant primary class skills/spells skills combat spells combat, useful utility skills from non-primary class (heals, door, pet creation)
  • If this is the first time superhero'ing, you should probably convert all those practices to trains and use them on stats (usually primary stats).
  • If this is your 2nd or 3rd time around and the game is suggesting you use the "norestore" option, this means your current stats are more than your Superhero stats, in which case you want to convert practices to trains and use them all.
  • In all other cases, just practice any remaining skills you don't have practiced, because you're going to lose these practices anyway. And putting them in stats would be a waste because your saved stats (which are higher) will be restored.

Superhero Questions

Superhero loud or quiet?

Always go loud. Why? For the 200 extra quest points:

  • You get 200 trains straight away (from the questor trains usually cost 32.5 QP's per train -- NEVER buy trains from questor, here they cost 1 QP per train)
  • You and the entire mud get 15 minutes of double experience. In those 15 minutes you may be able to earn an additional 50-150 trains. Maybe more if you're still being dragged or if you are in your higher tiers.

When should I sit at Superhero and powerup?

This one is personal and depends on your goals. In general when power'ing up to want to be able to kill quickly and not have to quaff potions much. So in most cases doing a serious series of powering up should be done when you have completed your last remort for the tier you're on, so TxR7. This means you have all the spellups but it also means you have 8 dodge skills (Generic Dodge + 1 class specific dodge skill). These two combined means more damage from higher stats + less damage taken.

To me, if I can't consistently get power ups every 100-120 seconds, 40-60 seconds when double is running it means I should not be pup'ing. This number varies on your own tolerance of course.

Some powerup suggestions I've seen:

  • Powerup a few times (~50-100) per remort until tier 9 -- this means you have maybe 150 trains from leveling + 200 superhero loud + 250-500 trains from powers ups = 600-850 trains per remort * 7 * 9 = 37,800 - 53,500 trains by tier9 which is enough for max stats + 30k hp + a few instincts
  • Pick a few tiers to do a lot of pups at, maybe tier 3 and tier 6
  • Wait to power up until tier 9, just use trains gained from the leveling process at superhero each time, same as first point, but you have about 22,050 trains which would not be enough to max stats and 30k hp.

Another factor is sitting at Superhero is that it's a good time to explore areas. This helps you fill out your map and maybe do goals help goals quickly. Many goals do not have level limits. In general, for newer players Level 201 is a hard place to sit and do quests. A lot of the areas can be challenging which means quest failures or lots of frustration. Campaigns can be taken every 2 hours, but again they send you to some challenging areas. If you want to sit and learn the SH areas, having all 7 classes is recommended.

Explanation of the Superhero norestore option

Ideally, you want to the game to only suggest that you use the norestore option when superhero'ing once or never. Never is better. This option is only suggested by the game if your current stats/spent trains at level 200 are higher than your saved stats/spent trains the previous time your were at Level 201.

How am I able to get higher stats on my 2nd/3rd/4th/etc remorts? Let's say during your first 1-200 experience you did it very fast and didn't do many quests or campaigns. Also consider that maybe you didn't convert any practices to trains. And maybe you didn't know how to train stats or how high to go so you saved them. You ended up with 71 trained in every stat, so you have total stats points of 426 and as a human warrior would have cost you 343 trains.

Then when you remorted for the first time you started spending trains and you started earning more bonus trains from quests and did a lot more campaigns and got trains there. Maybe you read this guide. So when you're at level 200 the second time, you now have 171 str, 131 dex/luck, 91 con/wis and 71 int. This gives you 595 total stats, which cost you 743 trains. Now if you were to Superhero it would restore the 71 in every stat, which means you just lost 400 trains (not the end of the world don't worry if this has happened). In this case the game should have suggested you use the "norestore" option when superhero'ing.

Trivia Points

Uses for Trivia Points

  • Most uses are on: help trivia points and help tpspend
  • Convert to trivia token (costs 100,000 Gold runto ravi, tpspend token) and sell to other players usually for 4.5Mill - 5 Mill gold
  • Can be used to buy epic gear from other players

Suggested first purchases

  • Aura of Trivia (6 TP) -- Has it's own wear slot, provides stats/hitroll/damroll
  • Sleeping Bag (15 TP) -- wearable sleeping bag that is automatically used, highest regen rate of any furniture, auto used when you sleep
  • tpenchant Aura of Trivia 10 times (10 TP)
  • Trivia portal to Sendhia (15 TP) help triviaportal -- Sendhia portal puts you on Vidblain, so you don't have to runto Vidblain and do the whole coordinate thing for several areas

I don't recommend Vaults or Manors to newer players. I don't feel the cost for either is worth the benefit.

Regarding the use of tpenchant on weapons. First and foremost if you're planning on tpenchanting a weapon do NOT toggle flags/resonate/illuminate/solidify until AFTER finishing using tpenchant. In terms of when to do this? Most common advice I've seen is to not bother with it outside tier purchased weapons and even then maybe not until 291 (116 TP per weapon). If it is done before that do it on weapons you know you'll be wielding in offhand at later levels.

Obtaining Trivia Points

  • Random mobs in the world will give Trivia Points when killed. No way to identify or track, it's just random. Personally gotten about 0.02% trivia mob rate.
  • Quests can give 1 TP as a bonus about 1% of the time
  • Campaigns can give 1 TP as reward at a slightly higher percentage than Quests, maybe ~3-4% (daily blessing impacts)
  • Global Quests can give 1 TP as a reward ~15% of the time
  • Buy Trivia Tokens from other players, usually about 4.5Mill - 5Mill each (as of May 2018)
  • Trivia games run infrequently by Imms and other players
  • From daily blessings via tokens and also via "Your next campaign will award a bonus Trivia Point"
  • From donations to the game, 1 TP per $1.00 donated
  • Some Aarchaeology items have TP rewards help Aarchaeology

One good suggestion is even if you don't plan to do campaigns every level, to at least request a campaign, see if it has a Trivia Point as a reward. If it does do it, if it doesn't cp quit until next level.

For the percentages above: I used my personal stats from T0R4 to T5R3 (tracked via Bast's statmon plugin). I have been given 36 Trivia points over 3514 quest completions. Earned 162 Trivia points over 1944 campaigns (that's 8% but I said 3-4% above because of daily blessings). Earned 26 Trivia points from 113,328 mob kills. Earned 61 Trivia Points from Global quests wins (not sure how many wins I had prior to stat tracking).

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