Altar Of Rites Causes Leveling Glitch

General Discussion
1

I’m not sure what the problem is, but the way the Altar removed the level requirement of gear screws with the amount of XP given.

So I have a level 1 character playing at T6 equipped with level 70 gear that’s had the level requirement removed by the Altar.

On entering a new area, the first couple of monsters I kill award the XP I would expect, based on past experience using level 70 gear with the requirement removed with the Gem of Ease.

But what happens is after the first couple of monsters, the game starts awarding XP as if I’m playing a level 70 game at T6.

On entering each new level of the Rift I’m playing, the game will do the same thing, award the expected XP for the first couple of monsters killed, and then go back to what it believes to be the correct XP.

The result is there’s no advantage whatsoever to using this level 1 gear, because it doesn’t provide any benefit. It’s obviously a bug in the way they removed the level requirement, which confuses the game as to how much XP it’s supposed to award at any given level of play.

2

The issue is mob level is locked when you enter an area. You enter at lvl 1 in T6, get huge XP and are lvl 20 in a moment. Then the remaining mobs are still lvl 1 and you hardly get any XP from them.
So rifts are very bad for this kind of leveling. Just hop from waypoint to waypoint in the open world once you slow down. Or do a vision if you find one, they are perfect with their small floors.

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3

No, it doesn’t work like that anymore Stu. With the introduction of D3, Blizzard went with the “monsters are always at your level” theory, which I never liked, because in Diablo II you could enter an area at Hell difficulty getting your butt kicked, and by the time you left the last level, you were one-shotting monsters.

In D3, when you gain a level, the monsters gain a level. And in any case, I’ve leveled up thousands of brand-new characters using really good reduced level requirement gear, and removed level requirement gear using the Gem of Ease, and I can usually get 1-70 in about 15 minutes.

Not in this case.

4

Another thing to speed up leveling is socket a Gem of Ease in your weapon. Even without the need for it the XP boost per kill can be pretty significant. Other things like gear (Leoric’s Signet, a flawless royal ruby in helm with the Leoric’s crown in the cube, etc.) all make it go much faster. I can easily do 1-70 just by running Temple of the Firstborn with that set up. Oh, and Custerian Guards… might as well turn the useless gold drops into XP.

5

I’ve never found the wrist guards, or Kymbo’s Gold amulet to be particularly useful. But normally, when I’m leveling up using Cain’s and Born’s, though usually use a rank 35 GOE in the weapon, along with a Hellfire amulet and ring, and Leora’s Signet. I usually swap out the level 21 and 23 armor at about level 55, because it seems the added kill speed for those last 15 levels outweighs the +70% XP bonus provided by the gear.

Anyway, the point is that the method that they used to remove the level requirement from gear screws up the amount of XP that the game awards when using that gear at less than level 70.

6

I never felt or noticed any of this with the Altar in both this season and season 28. Exp was abundant until it started waning off from 60 to 70.

The thing StuRedman may be thinking of is that if you explore a whole map before starting to kill anything, all the monsters in that map won’t increase in level (and difficulty) as you level up yourself.

7

(shrugs) Just try what I suggested and see.

Uh huh. Two “thousands”? (One wouldn’t be thousandS, right?)
With seven classes and 30 seasons that makes about 10 characters for each class per season, deleting some on your way to make room for more. Makes total sense.

3 Likes
8

I have 6 accounts, two of them original 2012 deluxe with 15 characters, the others from 2014, with 10 or 12, Season, Non-Season, and Hardcore on both, on NA and EU servers, so yeah, “thousands.” Currently I have over 26,000 hours into this game…sheesh…I need a life…

9

Occam’s Razor would suggest “user error” if there’s only one person who’s ever had this happen to them. Maybe a lack of awareness on how things operate under the hood, which happens even with things we think we know intimately - I only recently learned you’re supposed to treat / seal PT lumber and that this has been code for years, particularly end cuts. I guess literally every single person in the lumber industry has been breaking code for like a decade? /shrug

I’m inclined to think it’s working fine and you’re just experiencing some sort of “perception error” on how you THINK it went in seasons past.

10

Actually, he is right. I once thought like you do because that is what they say, but it is called “snap shotting”. I practiced this for about 3 days just before S30 start. If you want to see for yourself, try this experiment:

Make SC char level 1. Do not use any gear other than your follower’s weapon and what you find on the ground. Set to T1. Find game with “Kulle” bounty. Walk the other 4 bounties without killing anything. Now kill Kulle and do the rest of the bounties. You should curb stomp your way through all 5 bounties and be around level 15-18.

Repeat experiment without the walkthrough. You will be on your 3rd-4th bounty. You will be about level 8-10 and the monsters will be insanely difficult to kill.

One thing I have learned is the Dev’s say lots of things, but several times they are wrong.

Fun story. I like doing a random challenge every season. One season, I farmed enough T16 bounty bags to fill my entire stash (11 tabs) and my character’s inventory, so 415 bags. Made a level 1 wearing Custerians that had the level req removed. Opened all 415 bags like doing the “50 mil gold streak” conquest. Moved and instantly went from level 1 to level 69.5. It was a fun challenge, but took me 30 minutes to pick up/salvage all the gear and pick up/spend all the shards.

BTW, if anyone tries this, you need a great internet connection. I usually run about 40 ms latency, but with all the crap on the ground, it jumped to like 2000 ms.

2 Likes
11

Well, I never tried that with them…Funny story :smiley:

I also never knew about the difficulty snapshot as you explained it, but that would be most useful on starting a new Season going for the Cube. Playing hard-core, and being at around level 6–8 when I get to the Elder Sanctum, those Elite Rat Kings have sometimes cornered me and killed me. Being able to snapshot those to a lower level would be very useful.

About this leveling problem, I encountered it on Season 28, and now, and only using the all items set to level 1 function of the Altar. And I know it’s happening because I walk into a level, kill 4 monsters I’m at level 6. after that, each monster I kill provides less than 1% of the XP required for the next level. If I abandon that level and run to the next, I get the same thing entering it. Six monsters And I’m at level 14 and then every monster after that, a tiny fraction of the bar. It’s real, it’s happening, and it only happens with this gear.

I just ranked a Gem of Ease to 25, and I’m going to take off all that level 1 gear, put on the level 21 Born’s set, in the level 23 Cain’s set, put that GOE in my weapon and see what happens. I’m pretty sure it’ll be back to normal, but it’ll be difficult to make any comparison because the XP provided by the GOE makes a lot of difference.

I know I can use the level 70 versions of these sets, but I think that would bring along the same problem I’m already experiencing. I really get stitched up about all this, I’ll level up two new characters, one using the low-level sets, and one using the level removed 70 sets. All other things being equal, that might be an interesting experiment.

At the time of this writing, 8:02 PM, I’m at level 29.
8:05 Level 55.
8:08 Level 59.

Okay so now I put on the level 70 versions of Cain’s, Born’s, Capt. Crimson’s, Guardian’s, and I still have the Hellfire ring and amulet and Leoric’s Signet. I have the GOE in the weapon, and a Fragment of Destruction in the helm. Have rank 80 Banes of the Trapped and Stricken, and a rank15 the Bane of the Powerful.

8:31 PM, level 59.
Got a network disconnect…again…no death.
8:53, Level 66.
8:56 Level 70.

What does this show? Who knows, but it’s been interesting tracking it…

1 Like
12

Stu is correct, enemies in areas will snapshot their level based on your character’s level when you enter the area. Even if you leave the area and return they will stay the level that you first entered as. It’s very noticable if you go for the cube at the start of the season, in the first area all of the enemies will have 70 hp, deal no damage, and drop level 1 loot, but when you get to the second area they will have significantly more hp and drop level appropriate items again (any enemy that spawns based on a trigger such as rp spawning, event spawning, or Nemesis Bracers will also have significantly more hp than the enemies spawned when you first enter the area if you’ve gained multiple levels). It does not matter that the level of the game changes when you gain a level, the level of the area will remain at the level you enter it.

If you ever played Diablo 2 it’s similar to the /players system - if you spawn enemies at players 1 changing it to players 8 will not affect their hp, damage, or loot because you already spawned them in a weaker state.

The only way I know of to have enemies’ experience scale with your level without repeatedly changing zones is to have a level 70 create the game and leech experience off of them. The exp awarded per level 70 kill will scale with your current level (the game gives you the amount of experience that an enemy of your level would give), otherwise you will need to switch between areas every few levels to keep enemies at an appropriate level for experience.

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13

But monsters that spawn after you back will be scaled to your level. For example, cursed chest or any other object like zombie pits in Halls of Agony.

1 Like
14

I personally think it shows Stu is correct. You walk into an area at level X, and the mobs snapshot to level X. You kill them and get oodles of XP because you’re level X and the mobs are level X. But then, after like 3 kills you jump to level X+10, while the mobs are still just X.

So you get double-whacked with diminishing returns - you get like 1/10 the experience per kill (because you’re killing things min 10 levels below you) AND the experience you need to gain to X+11, is significantly higher than trying to gain to X+1.

I think the Gem of Ease helps cushion this effect because of flat experience gains per kill, and I think trying to tie these effects to some sort of “bugged interaction” with the altar is rather tin-foil-hattish.

But, I also think there’s little point in arguing over it if you don’t believe me or think like me.

1 Like
15

And based on the different inputs and explanations offered in this thread, the level 1 requirement isn’t the cause of Stoneold’s “problem”, it’s just how the game works?

Like one advice I saw for starting the season would be to briefly enter all the bounty maps in an act before actually starting to play through them in order to snapshot the monster levels and make it easier to get the bounty cache on a low level hero. This snapshotting would also diminish the exp gained.

16

I seen this same thing the other day. I happen be with grand daughter. She had started to lvl up a new character. I was standing there and kinda said what is going with the XP’s. It was like some times going in slow motion and then it speed up and slow down again.

She had all lvl 70 gear and no yellow rare item. She was doing this in HC. Plus she did it a 2nd time with a complete set of green items too. Plus she was at lvl like 530 in paragon. She had all the right stuff too.

I have lvl enough characters and never seen this. Normally with in the 1st minute you would be at lvl like at 40 or 50. Just to get to lvl 40 took 3 or 4 times longer then normal. I thought maybe the monsters she was getting. Then I seen this topic.

17

It’s your friggin thread dude, it’s really not a good when you start talking to yourself.

18

Best place to level to 70, is to use petrified screams.

19

Super easy in solo! Oh wait… :joy:

1 Like
20

Well…

If ur brain is comanding you to level solo using petrified screams…

In fact, that is something has no need to explain.
You will msg a friend high level to do It for you.
This generation is so dump so stupid…