Level
Level
In Ashes of Phoenix, your character levels up for doing a variety of stuffs. Killing enemies, looting containers, finishing Quests, even healing your own Teammates! Whenever your character levels up, you get a set amount of Skill Points, depending on your Intelligence, and some specific Traits or Perks you have taken.
There are no Level Boundaries, like many MMOs have, and you are free to go wherever you want, do whatever you want, even with just Level 1! However, that does not mean you might not get punished for it, as you will lack a lot of perks, some HP, and in case you are a new player, general experience with the game.
Experience
For every Level, you need experience. That means, getting from Level 1 to Level 2, you need 1000 Experience. Getting from Level 2 to Level 3, you need 2000 Experience. Level 12 to 13, would require 12000 Experience.
To Level a character to the Softcap of Level 24, you would require 276000 Experience. However, your journey just begins there!
Gaining Experience
A few small pointers at how to get Experience.
- Exploring the Map. Each section of the map unlocked gives you 1000 Experience. Unlocking the whole Map thus gives you 49000 Experience, which would bring a Level 1 character up to level 10!
- Killing Mobs. You get XP for damage, not the actual kill. (Though, in case the NPC has not been 'drained' of all Experience through damage, you will get all the rest of the NPC's XP, resulting in what one might call "Kill Experience")
- Crafting and Disassembling items.
- Participating in Zone Control and PvP in general.
- (Doing Quests.)
Skill Points
As you level up, you get more and more Skill Points. They are used to level up Skills. Pre Level 24, you can spend them in any way you wish! However, after Level 24, your highest primary skill, as well as two highest secondary skills are locked. And the other skills can only be increased up to their respective levels.
After level 24, the other 3 primary skills can only be increased up to the value of your highest primary skill, with the highest primary skill locked at its current value.
After level 24, the other 4 secondary skills can only be increased up to the value of your LOWEST of the two HIGHEST secondary skills, with both of them locked to their current values.
Example
Zmeja has tagged Small Guns as his primary skill, as well as First Aid and Doctor as his secondary skill. Let us first look into the primary skills. At Level 24, Zmeja's highest primary Skill is Small Guns with 240%. Thus, this skill becomes locked. Any level he gains after level 24, he can now invest those skill points only in Big Guns, Energy Weapons and Close Combat, until they all reach 240%. He can not invest any points into Small Guns, and he can not increase any of those 4 skills beyond 240%. He should have skilled Small Guns until 250%!
Zmeja has tagged First Aid and Doctor as his secondary skill. At Level 24, Zmeja's lowest secondary Skill out of the two highest is First Aid. Even though he tagged First Aid and Doctor, the game takes not the tagged skills as a baseline, but the two highest skills, even if one, or both are not tagged (This is advantageous for the player). With First Aid having 140%, and Sneak having 190%, Zmeja now can increase all other Skills up to 140%. He can not increase First Aid and Sneak, and not go over 140% with the other ones. He should have tagged Sneak, instead of Doctor!
Formula for amount of Skill Points you gain per Level:
Please note! The Educated Perk does not give Skill Points for level 1 and 2 of your character, though it does work retroactively. That means, taking Educated at level 18, will give all the Skill Points as if you would have taken it at Level 3.
The Skilled Trait does not give you Skill Points for level 1 of your character, it works after level 2.
Perks
Your character unlocks Perks every 3 levels, until level 24, for a total of 8 perks. Unless your character has the Skilled trait, in which case you will unlock perks every 4 levels, until level 24, for a total of 6 perks.
You do not have to pick a perk immediately. You can save them up until level 24 - however, it is not advised to save them up afterwards, as especially Level 27, with the introduction of Support Perks, your character might not be able to pick its perks anymore.
Saving up Perks will NOT allow you to take 8 Level 21 perks for example. You will still have to pick up 1 Level 3 perk, then 1 Level 3 or 6 perk, and so on. It DOES however allow you to pick a perk you could not have taken previously because you lacked a specific Skill like First Aid for Living Anatomy.
In case of having the Skilled Trait, you also do not have to go the same Level 3, 6, 9 requirements of perks, and instead, the requirements would be first perk(3), second perk(3 or 6), third perk(3 or 6 or 9 or 12), since you get your third Perkpoint at level 12, not 9, like those without Skilled.
Hit Points
Due to the nature of Hit Points, you only start out with 77% of your maximum Hit Points at Level 1, receiving 1% more each level, until you finally hit 100% of your maximum Hit Points at Level 24.
Post Level 24
After Level 24, you still get Skill Points as normal, though you can not increase your highest Skills anymore, as explained in Skill Points. You cease to get any normal perks, though your character will get a finite amount of support perks, that equal more to a Quality of Life Change, like unlimited carrying capacity in bases.
Every level after 24, will also increase your Carry Weight by 1.
