What a kill is worth

Every XP value in the game used to be a number somebody picked and wrote next to a thing. That is the root of several problems that kept reappearing in different forms, and it is gone. XP is now derived from work done, in every skill.

Combat pays per point of damage. A kill is worth the monster's health. Kill something with 94 health and you are paid for 94 damage, at level 14 or level 99.

Two things follow. Your XP per hour is now your damage per hour, so every level and every upgrade raises it directly, and being under-geared costs experience rather than just time. And farming things far below you stops paying — a goblin holds 16 health, so it is worth the same small amount whatever your level. You can still one-shot it. Nothing is slowed down and no penalty has been added; it is simply not worth much.

The other skills pay for the material they move. A gather is worth what the node yields. A craft is worth what the recipe consumes, and takes about four and a half seconds per unit of it. Breaking something down pays half of what making it paid.

That fixes some things that were plainly wrong. Crafting XP had been taken from an item's vendor value, so within one tier a sword paid nearly four times what boots paid while wanting six fewer levels — nobody would have made the boots. Disenchanting paid by the item's level, so everything in a tier paid the same and breaking the cheapest thing was always correct. Both are now flat across a tier and climb between tiers.

Fights above level 18 got much shorter. They had been built to a target that was far too long. Most are now eleven to thirteen exchanges instead of twenty to thirty, and although the XP per kill fell with the health, the fights fell further — so the rate went up.

The honest part

Most XP numbers went down, some of them hard. If you have been farming one spot, that is a real change and it is meant to be: some monsters were paying more than anything built for a character twice their level.

What you get back is a curve that climbs. Every point of it is bought with a level or a piece of gear. There is no target for that number any more, and that is deliberate — rates are supposed to rise, because that is what a level is for. Once there is content all the way to 99 there will be a single dial for how long the whole climb takes, set by playing it rather than guessing.

Potions, and a fifth trade

The one healing potion in the game healed 90, which is most of a new character's health and a fifth of a strong one's. There are five now, and each restores a little over half the health of a character at the level it is meant for, so a potion feels the same at every stage.

A vendor sells the first one, so nobody is ever stuck without a way to heal. The other four are brewed. Alchemy is a new trade, its station is the apothecary in Lastlight, and its herbs grow only in the corrupted zones — Bloodroot in the fen, Gravebloom at the far end of the road. They are gathered with Farming, which already grows things.

Potions are the only thing in the game you use up rather than keep, which is what makes them worth trading. Everything else you buy once.

Potions take up space now

A potion costs an inventory slot, the same as a sword. They used to stack, so any number of them rode along in a single slot, which meant deciding how many to bring was not really a decision. Bags are now 30 slots rather than 20 to take some of the sting out of it.

The bag also draws one row per slot now, so ten daggers are ten rows rather than one row claiming to be ten. It matches how the slot counter has always worked.

Lastlight has a bank door, and it opens onto the same shelves as the one in Lucerna — your storage has always belonged to you rather than to a building, so there is nothing to move and nothing to keep track of. It is a second door, not a second bank. The auction house stays where it is and always will: a market needs everyone in the same room, and storage does not.

If you were carrying more potions than now fit, they have been sorted out for you rather than lost: twenty stay in your bag, as many as fit went to your bank, and anything with nowhere left to go was sold at the vendor price and paid to you in coin.

Two trades have better names

Leatherworking is now Bowyery. Tailoring is now Artificing. Your levels and experience move with them; nothing else about either trade changes.

The old names described the material, which was only ever half the job. A leatherworker made the jerkin and the bow, and a tailor made the robe and the staff — so both names quietly ignored the weapon. Blacksmithing keeps its name, because metal genuinely covers both halves.

Silvenwood and Aldenfield read a little differently for it. There is stave-wood drying under the eaves in the wood now, and the artificers in the fields turn out to have come for the thread.