02/04/2026 Patch Notes - Effortlevel and EXP curve changes
Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2026 3:10 pm
A bug was found in the calculations of not-at-level content and sparked an investigation into experience rewards, and ultimately a rewrite.
Effort Level: (settings effortlevel)
Effort Level replaces Effort Percent and lets you fight at a lower level on purpose. This change intentionally makes it simpler to level-match content instead of guessing at the percent ratio you need.
You choose an Effort Level from 1 up to your effective max level.
When set below max:
Combat EXP now accounts for level difference in a clean, tunable way, and is now logged for evidence:
What the new EXP multiplier curve looks like:
What changed in monster EXP awarding:
Monster EXP awarding was simplified so it doesn’t try to do its own complex over/under-hunt math anymore—it now just:
These changes will be live upon the next reboot - I will reply to this thread when that happens.
Effort Level: (settings effortlevel)
Effort Level replaces Effort Percent and lets you fight at a lower level on purpose. This change intentionally makes it simpler to level-match content instead of guessing at the percent ratio you need.
You choose an Effort Level from 1 up to your effective max level.
When set below max:
- Your effective skill output is scaled down to match the effort you’re putting in. Be aware, this could affect mechanics such as armor usage!
- EXP rewards are calculated using your effective level, not your true level.
- hunting with lower-level friends without trivializing content,
- intentionally slowing progression during sparse content periods (aka monster gaps),
- keeping hunts fun without pushing your character’s “real” power curve too hard.
Combat EXP now accounts for level difference in a clean, tunable way, and is now logged for evidence:
- Fighting something near your effective level gives “normal” rewards, including mobs from -3 to +3 character level (instead of only 0).
- Fighting something above your effective level increases rewards (up to a cap of 2.0x).
- Fighting something far below your effective level heavily reduces rewards (down to a floor of 0.05x instead of 0).
- The -10/+10 Mob cap was removed in favor of this system, however it still affects EXP gained by attacks.
What the new EXP multiplier curve looks like:
Code: Select all
lvl mult ...to 0.05
-20: 0.110 |██
-19: 0.123 |██
-18: 0.138 |███
-17: 0.156 |███
-16: 0.179 |████
-15: 0.205 |████
-14: 0.236 |█████
-13: 0.272 |█████
-12: 0.315 |██████
-11: 0.364 |███████
-10: 0.420 |████████
-9: 0.484 |██████████
-8: 0.555 |███████████
-7: 0.633 |█████████████
-6: 0.718 |██████████████
-5: 0.809 |████████████████
-4: 0.903 |██████████████████
-3: 1.000 |████████████████████
-2: 1.000 |████████████████████
-1: 1.000 |████████████████████
0: 1.000 |████████████████████
1: 1.000 |████████████████████
2: 1.000 |████████████████████
3: 1.000 |████████████████████
4: 1.097 |██████████████████████
5: 1.193 |████████████████████████
6: 1.286 |██████████████████████████
7: 1.374 |███████████████████████████
8: 1.456 |█████████████████████████████
9: 1.531 |██████████████████████████████
10: 1.598 |████████████████████████████████
11: 1.658 |█████████████████████████████████
12: 1.711 |██████████████████████████████████
13: 1.757 |███████████████████████████████████
14: 1.796 |████████████████████████████████████
15: 1.830 |█████████████████████████████████████
16: 1.859 |██████████████████████████████████████
17: 1.883 |███████████████████████████████████████
18: 1.903 |███████████████████████████████████████
19: 1.920 |████████████████████████████████████████
20: 1.934 |████████████████████████████████████████
...to 2.000Monster EXP awarding was simplified so it doesn’t try to do its own complex over/under-hunt math anymore—it now just:
- awards buffer EXP using the monster’s level as the “target level” input,
- relies on the new experience calculations to apply the correct scaling.
These changes will be live upon the next reboot - I will reply to this thread when that happens.