XP Bonuses: Party, Training Trait, & Experience Scrolls/Potions Bugged? (Math Provided)

Organic

TLDR: According to my testing, the party, Training trait, and Crown Experience Scroll XP buffs all fail to award the XP bonus they should, usually falling 10%-20% short of their respective bonuses. @ZOS_GinaBruno

*******************************************

I spent several hours yesterday grinding mobs in a group delve with a guild member. We noticed XP per kill fluctuated wildly while we were grinding mobs. In fact, oddly, we would both suddenly earn far less experience per kill after we both used a +50% bonus XP consumable (e.g. mob XP was 700+ per kill; used consumable; mob XP was 500+ per kill). We experienced this each time we consumed an XP boost item on our characters. Gear was at 100% durability, it was only the two of us in the party, we relogged and reloaded UI, etc. XP gains were measured using multiple addons.

I didn't have my spreadsheet handy at the time, but did go back with another guild member and was unable to replicate that specific issue. However, in attempting to figure out what happened earlier in the day, I noticed that bonus XP is not working as intended. Period. I did my best with Google-fu to figure out if anyone had been complaining that XP bonuses were bugged/broken. I found nothing other than some posts that the Cake didn't work as intended, but was hotfixed. Perhaps this is related and occurred in the Homestead patch?

According to this post, xp gains were capped at +85%. I couldn't find a more recent ZOS post about XP boost caps, but there are now +100%/+150% consumables in the game and the Training trait has been reworked to provide bonus character XP for mob kills. Thus, the +85% cap is no longer applicable. I did see plenty of folks (here, here, and here) saying they have earned +140% XP and beyond by stacking at least a few of the bonus XP mechanics together, and I assume the ZOS post about the types of XP bonuses and the percentages given is still relevant(from here):

• Alliance War Keep buff – 5% XP buff (applies only to monster and player-character kills)
• Crown Experience Scroll – 50% XP buff (does not stack with Psijic Ambrosia)
• ESO Plus – 10% XP buff
• Grouping buff – 10% XP buff
• Psijic Ambrosia – 50% XP buff (does not stack with Crown Experience Scroll)
• Rings of Mara buff – 10% XP buff
• Exploration Trait XP buff [Training trait is now added to provide bonus xp for mob kills.]

NOTE 1: I was CP 200 and my original grind partner was CP 120 yesterday afternoon. For last night's testing, evaluated in the spreadsheet below, I was CP 229 and my guild member was level 32. That should not impact the XP results as everyone is supposed to earn XP based on their own character's level and I included solo testing. However, I will attempt to redo the testing later this weekend with another guild member who's also earning higher CP, so we can eliminate that as an issue.

Here are the +XP items we used while we were grinding:

• +72% XP via training trait on 8 blue items (8 items * 9% each).
• +10% XP from being in a party together.
• +10% XP from being ESO-Plus members.
• +50% XP from potion and/or xp scroll (both had same +%).

What we had expected was to earn +92% XP without the potions/scrolls and +142% XP with the potions/scrolls. For a baseline, if a mob would have given us 100 XP, a 92% bonus would equate to earning 192 XP per kill. Is that assumption incorrect?

Here's what I found comparing XP gains.



NOTE 2: Multiplier determined by taking the XP gained and dividing that by the naked XP.
NOTE 3: Tested simple, advanced, and master chests. The XP award did not change (chest difficulty only impacts how much XP is gained in the Legerdemain skill line).
NOTE 4: Not that it should matter, but the Saber Cats and Giants in The Rift zone were the normal/elite mobs respectively.
NOTE 5: I realize that Training trait does not apply to lockpicking. However, I see no posts indicating that the group XP bonus is for kills only.
NOTE 6: I did not have enough time to test how XP bonuses apply to quest rewards, but that could be helpful.

As you can see, at no point am I actually earning the expected bonus XP. Even the Crown Experience Scroll didn't give a 50% bonus at any time, let alone to something like lockpicking which wasn't impacted by my being naked, in a party, etc. and should have been a clear +50% XP gain.

I'd appreciate it if someone else could do some of the same tests I did and verify what they are seeing. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the XP bonuses and/or my math is assuming something it shouldn't. It should be very straightforward though given XP bonuses are additive and not multiplicative. If there's a different place I should have put this thread, please let me know. I don't really post on the forums and since I can't confirm this is really a bug or not, I though the General section may get more eyeballs and folks willing to kill a few mobs for science.

Thanks.

Alanar

Not sure if this explains all of the discrepancies, but the +10% from ESO plus is additive with the other bonuses. So, your baseline xp is 10% higher than it should be, which appears to account for the other differences.

smacx250

Per the last post in this thread:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/309789/warning-new-life-bonus-exp-scroll-does-not-stack

The baseline XP for mobs is: 455 (normal), 869 (elite). If you have ESO+ you won't see the base values since you always get the +10%. However, that +10% isn't the base that all the other XP boosts work off of.

Organic

Alanar wrote: »

Not sure if this explains all of the discrepancies, but the +10% from ESO plus is additive with the other bonuses. So, your baseline xp is 10% higher than it should be, which appears to account for the other differences.

Thanks for this. It at least points me in the direction of 10% not being applied correctly.

Unfortunately, 10% change in the expected values does not explain the 17% difference for Naked, Crown Experience Scroll on a normal mob kill, nor does it account for the Blue Training + Party + 50% XP scroll on normal mobs rewarding 30% less XP than expected.

Naked, In Party awarded no XP bonus at all on normal mobs, but almost gave it's "10%" for elite mobs.

smacx250

Scratch what I referenced before - I went and tested myself, and kill XP looks like a base of 414 and 827 (backing out ESO+ 10%). Plugging in those with your numbers looks much more reasonable, with the exception of one of your numbers highlighted in red - might want to check that case again.

IcyDeadPeople

And were you in Cyrodiil? The Alliance war buff only applies when you are in the specific campaign and it can go up and down from 3% to 13% as your faction captures or loses keeps.

Also was any other player tagging any mobs you killed? Were you and your grinding partner always very close together, or moving around far away from each other?

If so this could explain the fluctuation, as the bonus only applies if you are within a certain range.

Organic

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

And were you in Cyrodiil? The Alliance war buff only applies when you are in the specific campaign.

Also was any other player tagging any mobs you killed? Were you and your grinding partner always very close together, or moving around far away from each other?

If so this could explain the fluctuation, as the bonus only applies if you are within a certain range.

1. For the testing and the numbers posted, that was just clearing mobs in The Rift - above ground (mobs were near a wayshrine). No Alliance bonus in this case.
2. No one else was anywhere near us or participating in the kills.
3. We were standing directly on each other with the mobs tested (melee range).

The big fluctuations we saw earlier in the day that I did not see when we did "real testing", we were in a delve, in melee range, standing next to each other.

Organic

smacx250 wrote: »

Scratch what I referenced before - I went and tested myself, and kill XP looks like a base of 414 and 827 (backing out ESO+ 10%). Plugging in those with your numbers looks much more reasonable, with the exception of one of your numbers highlighted in red - might want to check that case again.

Thanks for doing this work. The Naked and Naked, Party numbers were identical in my testing. I was even reading them out over Discord and my partner was commenting that it should have gone up to something more than the base.

You were using a full set of just blue Training gear, right?

My original grind partner should be back online tomorrow and I want to take another look at what was happening with us. It was an extremely odd loss of about 20% of the XP per kill when we used our +50% XP bonus items.

smacx250

Organic wrote: »

smacx250 wrote: »

Scratch what I referenced before - I went and tested myself, and kill XP looks like a base of 414 and 827 (backing out ESO+ 10%). Plugging in those with your numbers looks much more reasonable, with the exception of one of your numbers highlighted in red - might want to check that case again.

Thanks for doing this work. The Naked and Naked, Party numbers were identical in my testing. I was even reading them out over Discord and my partner was commenting that it should have gone up to something more than the base.

You were using a full set of just blue Training gear, right?

My original grind partner should be back online tomorrow and I want to take another look at what was happening with us. It was an extremely odd loss of about 20% of the XP per kill when we used our +50% XP bonus items.

All the XP numbers there are yours, except for the "Base" row - those I determined by recording mob kill XP with only the ESO+ 10% bonus, and then dividing by 1.1 to back out the +10%. I then calculated the the "% of Base" values for the XP that you reported (your XP/Base XP). So within a couple % (possibly rounding error), it looks right, and is the same between "normal" and "elite" mobs, except for the "Naked" "Normal Mob XP" case (which I did actually test - I got 455). You might want to re-check that one case.