What is a good XP multiplier?

[Sestun]

My wife and I love the early and mid game on a new map, but it feels like the early levels are flying by way too fast.
We are missing out on early level dinos/items because on normal settings we are leveling up too quickly.
Would a 0.25 multiplier solve this? Or should it be lower?

[william_es]

I don't adjust exp. Yes, you're flying by the early levels, but you need that to get to the engrams that are level locked. You basically can't do much real stuff in the game until you reach level 25-30ish at a minimum. Wood buildings, bow, arrows, tranq arrows, narcotics, etc. You need all of that to start doing decent taming of early game dinos.

It slows down a TON later on.

I personally consider the entire engram system to be kind of ridiculous in ark. The fact you have to buy each pc of body armor one at a time. "I know how to make pants, but making shirts is an unfathomable mystery!". it's just a bit goofy. Engram pts will always be in short supply. You'll be faced with choices of being able to unlock the bow, but not how to make arrows. Have to wait till the next levelup for those. Facepalm.

Just playing with the normal engram point settings will be a big enough challenge later on. It's going to require you and your wife to cooperate and specialize, and share blueprints. There won't be enough points for you both to unlock everything. Even with 2 of you, it will be a challenge to get all the stuff you need. One will learn how to make armors, the other to make weapons, etc. One specialize as the builder, the other a saddle maker, etc.

[🦊 Hermit]

Me and my friends agreed with you entirely. Even when the game first came out levelling was pretty fast, and it's been doubled three or four times since then. We're now at the stage where, if you have experience with the game and know what you're doing with explorer notes etc, you can max out your pre-boss level in just a few hours, skipping the early and midgame entirely.

We tried drastically lowering the xp, and we have never looked back. Every server we have run since has had an xp multi of just 0.2, and in my single player games I've even gone as low as 0.1. It forces you to slow down and survive in the earlygame where there is much more challenge, to use strategies which you would never normally have to try just to stay alive, and tame dinos which you would usually overlook and ignore, gaining a much greater respect for them in the process.

Some of my best memories on Ark have been experiences in those early levels, pulling off some insane win against the odds or coming up against a crazy situation which a higher level character would just shrug off without a second thought. I wholeheartedly advocate lower xp values - they're so, so much more fun, and make the game a lot more exciting.

[Sestun]

Hermit, thanks, that's a very good advice and I agree 100%.
We will try it with 0.1. We finished several maps and the late game is just not as fun as the early one for us.
As we already know how the game works, we just go for the best dinos/gear, breed for the best stats, and that's it.
We want to enjoy the early levels as much as possible.

[JADO THE INTIMIDATOR]

Put the multiplier to default then move it up by one fourth of its original amount this will give balanced game play without it taking months