Is Leveling a Forced Mechanic Here?

[Megiddo]

Good day! I'm looking for a new realm to explore, but I'm hoping that overleveling/godmode are things that might be avoidable here. Is leveling a forced mechanic here or is a simple matter to opt not to?

[Karna5]

You should level to at least 61 because that opens most if not all of BDO to you (though you need gear progression to go with it which is a super slow process).

Beyond that, if you don't use XP scrolls to boost your combat XP, you could easily play thousands of hours without even hitting level 62 and thousands more hours without hitting level 63.

I have a character I've played well over 10,000 hours, and because I almost never use XP scrolls, i'm only half way through level 62.

You also never reach a state in which you're over powered or god like unless you deliberately hunt in areas designed for weaker characters than you. There are always zones strong and deadly enough to kill you.

p.s. Also I still don't have end game gear, so there are many (many) zones in BDO for which I'm still not strong enough to hunt.

[Megiddo]

Originally posted by Karna5:

You should level to at least 61 because that opens most if not all of BDO to you (though you need gear progression to go with it which is a super slow process).

Beyond that, if you don't use XP scrolls to boost your combat XP, you could easily play thousands of hours without even hitting level 62 and thousands more hours without hitting level 63.

I have a character I've played well over 10,000 hours, and because I almost never use XP scrolls, i'm only half way through level 62.

You also never reach a state in which you're over powered or god like unless you deliberately hunt in areas designed for weaker characters than you. There are always zones strong and deadly enough to kill you.

I had heard that it's a bit slower paced here, but is actual leveling mechanic going to be forced upon my characters or will I be able to level completely at my own pace here? Could I do all of the 1-10th level content here at appropriate levels, for instance, before leveling up beyond that? Or would I have to skip over a ton of content to avoid overleveling here?

[Karna5]

Originally posted by Megiddo:

I had heard that it's a bit slower paced here, but is actual leveling mechanic going to be forced upon my characters or will I be able to level completely at my own pace here? Could I do all of the 1-10th level content here at appropriate levels, for instance, before leveling up beyond that? Or would I have to skip over a ton of content to avoid overleveling here?

In BDO level mostly affects your chance to hit but not the damage you do and the damage you resist. The first fifty or so levels skyrocket pretty fast, but that does not make you strong. In BDO without strong gear you still get annihilated by almost anything, and you can't hurt things designed for stronger gear than you.

Level is not going to make you over powered, so no, you can't stay level 10 for a week or probably even a day, but that won't make you powerful even if you hit level 62.

For instance, I was fighting with a level 62 character in a tough zone and didn't realize her gear had worn out. Suddenly she could't harm the creatures anymore, and she kept gettiing slaughtered over and over no matter what I did. So even though she was 62nd level which had been fine for the previous hour, when her gear wore out she was suddenly effectively a newbie weak character.

[Daggoth]

There are very no quests directly tied to level. There's a couple with level minimums, but that's mainly because they're tied into systems which are locked behind those levels, not because monster X demands level Y.
Combat viability is highly tied to gear, but level (during the levelling process) does matter as to whether you can effectively deal damage to monsters. IE: it's set so a level 1 guy can't equip end game gear and one-shot everything, monsters past a certain point will just refuse to be damaged.
The questlines are set up so, assuming you follow it straight forward, you should be at the level where monsters are considered normal targets when you reach them and not be far higher or lower than your character.
Levelling swings from "mainly EXP from quests" to "mainly EXP from non-mainquest killing" somewhere around the mid 50s. Quests become less about killing 35,000 dudes and more about taking a widget from mcguffin to walnutville and hitting R 400 times.

You can't lock levels and you'll be level 10 before getting to the first town. Hell I think level 1 to 2 is 1 exp point so you get your dings straight away. You can quickly over level monsters along the quest path but not necessarily over gear them. Neglect enhancements and you'll be flopping wet noodles around.
The main quest will shoot you straight past HUNDREDS of sidequests, but most of them aren't relevant to levels, being lifeskill quests, knowledge quests, repeatable quests, item quests, etc, etc.

Don't worry about trying to "Finish" an area, you keep going back and forth throughout the world forever, it's not a "Rush through the lowbie areas and sit at Endgame Plaza" sort of game. Do all the other stuff at your own time in your own pace.

[Megiddo]

Thank you again for the replies. I certainly won't be in a rush to get to the end! What I'm hoping might be possible here is that my character(s) will be able to do all of the content within lower level areas before they'd completely outlevel and make these areas become very trivial. A lot of older MMORPGs do offer options so that I've been able to characters at my own place there. I'm hoping to find a newer realm, though. If the post entailing that a 62nd level character wouldn't be completely overpowered for 1-10th level content here, I might give it a go. Is that accurate, though?

[Daggoth]

A level 62 character will likely 0-shot level 10 monsters (IE kill them by getting too close), but there's very few killing sidequests for low level stuff. At most you might find a "kill 5 wolves" sort of thing which you'll complete by looking menacingly at them.
Most of the sidequests will be like "Collect 100 grapes" "Take my husband his lunch" "Use a rifle to shoot down beehives" "Gain knowledge on the great leaders of calpheon" "Turn into a cute papu and fight an endless war with cute otters for 1/50th of the stuff needed to get a minor upgrade for donkey gear", stuff which doesn't worry about level.

Once you've cleared out the few once-off kill quests, you're left with repeatables which will vary wildly from "[Daily] Take out those two beetles who keep me up at night" to "[Weekly] Kill 458,000 HyperGods because screw those guys". And while you'll burn through to low stuff there's still enough high stuff to grind against.
Of course there's also "[Daily] Collect 100 herbs" "[Weekly] Obtain 50 alchemy byproducts" "[Monthy] Go bartering because that's a good lark" "[Yearly] Maybe there's swimsuits at this years Terminan Beach Contest", etc, etc.
Pick what you want. There's FAR FAR FAR FAR too much content throughout the world to worry about overlevelling combat in early areas.

While the monsters vary in strength between regions, the reason for being in regions often isn't the monsters.
The starting town Velia is very popular because it's on the sea and has a lot of basic stuff nearby, the next town Heidel is also popular because everything's packed together nicely. Later game stuff like Dreighan is relatively less popular because it's so far out of the way and trying to do basic stuff can be annoying with powerful monsters around.
People are grinding monsters the later areas, but the early areas are still full of life.

[Hosenbund]

Originally posted by Megiddo:

Thank you again for the replies. I certainly won't be in a rush to get to the end! What I'm hoping might be possible here is that my character(s) will be able to do all of the content within lower level areas before they'd completely outlevel and make these areas become very trivial. A lot of older MMORPGs do offer options so that I've been able to characters at my own place there. I'm hoping to find a newer realm, though. If the post entailing that a 62nd level character wouldn't be completely overpowered for 1-10th level content here, I might give it a go. Is that accurate, though?

im trying to understand what exactly you want, but i dont really get it?
do you mean you want a game where there is few powercreep and you dont one shot low level content when u played for a long time?

then im sorry to say, but this game is the exact opposite of that

dont know why that matters when u wont ever go back to those lower level areas though

also you can play at your own pace.. like in most games
and like others said.. your level doesnt mean much in BDO, gear does.. and when u only stick to lower level zones and questing ur gear wont really upgrade much from that, so you are fine in that regard

but there are not many of those useless sidequests like in other mmorpgs..so there is not much reason to stick to lower zones for too long

[Megiddo]

Originally posted by Hosenbund:

Originally posted by Megiddo:

Thank you again for the replies. I certainly won't be in a rush to get to the end! What I'm hoping might be possible here is that my character(s) will be able to do all of the content within lower level areas before they'd completely outlevel and make these areas become very trivial. A lot of older MMORPGs do offer options so that I've been able to characters at my own place there. I'm hoping to find a newer realm, though. If the post entailing that a 62nd level character wouldn't be completely overpowered for 1-10th level content here, I might give it a go. Is that accurate, though?

im trying to understand what exactly you want, but i dont really get it?
do you mean you want a game where there is few powercreep and you dont one shot low level content when u played for a long time?

then im sorry to say, but this game is the exact opposite of that

dont know why that matters when u wont ever go back to those lower level areas though

also you can play at your own pace.. like in most games
and like others said.. your level doesnt mean much in BDO, gear does.. and when u only stick to lower level zones and questing ur gear wont really upgrade much from that, so you are fine in that regard

but there are not many of those useless sidequests like in other mmorpgs..so there is not much reason to stick to lower zones for too long

I'm hoping to find a newer realm to explore and adventure within that I can level completely at my own pace. I'd be coming over from a background of playing within much older titles. Like from one or two full decades ago, so the player/developer mentality has quite likely changed a good bit. A number of much older MMORPGs had optional ways of toggling the leveling experience. I'd be able to *all* of the 1-10th level content within them at those appropriate levels if I wanted to. Leveling wasn't necessarily forced upon players. That's just not an option that I'm finding available for any titles that have been created in recent years. I was hoping that it might be an option here.

[Hosenbund]

Originally posted by Megiddo:

Originally posted by Hosenbund:

im trying to understand what exactly you want, but i dont really get it?
do you mean you want a game where there is few powercreep and you dont one shot low level content when u played for a long time?

then im sorry to say, but this game is the exact opposite of that

dont know why that matters when u wont ever go back to those lower level areas though

also you can play at your own pace.. like in most games
and like others said.. your level doesnt mean much in BDO, gear does.. and when u only stick to lower level zones and questing ur gear wont really upgrade much from that, so you are fine in that regard

but there are not many of those useless sidequests like in other mmorpgs..so there is not much reason to stick to lower zones for too long

I'm hoping to find a newer realm to explore and adventure within that I can level completely at my own pace. I'd be coming over from a background of playing within much older titles. Like from one or two full decades ago, so the player/developer mentality has quite likely changed a good bit. A number of much older MMORPGs had optional ways of toggling the leveling experience. I'd be able to *all* of the 1-10th level content within them at those appropriate levels if I wanted to. Leveling wasn't necessarily forced upon players. That's just not an option that I'm finding available for any titles that have been created in recent years. I was hoping that it might be an option here.

Do you mean server when u say realm? in bdo u dont really have servers like in most other games.. its basically a megaserver and u can hop between many channels..so its all connected.. even the season servers are connected to the normal ones more or less

And yes i also was gaming 20 years ago already.. so im familiar with old mechanics of mmorpgs.. even played Ultima online.. which games did u play which u are refering to?

but i think you dont understand that this game works completely different..your actual level doesnt mean much in BDO
This game is only oldschool in a sense that its all a huge open world with almost no instanced content and its focused on grinding only

i now understand better what you want, but let me tell you that this stuff doesnt really matter in bdo

BUT.. if you really want the basic experience of how it used to be on low level.. then play on normal servers and DONT create a season character

Every normal person would regret doing this because they boost ur early game progression and u skip all of it and they shower you in free cash shop items on season servers.
but it sounds like it is exactly what u dont want. so maybe you should create a normal character and experience it at your own pace as you call it

and then maybe in future when u did that you can still get the rewards from the season servers. not a good choice imo, and nobody will recommend it, but its an option

[Kheryo]

Originally posted by Megiddo:

Originally posted by Hosenbund:

im trying to understand what exactly you want, but i dont really get it?
do you mean you want a game where there is few powercreep and you dont one shot low level content when u played for a long time?

then im sorry to say, but this game is the exact opposite of that

dont know why that matters when u wont ever go back to those lower level areas though

also you can play at your own pace.. like in most games
and like others said.. your level doesnt mean much in BDO, gear does.. and when u only stick to lower level zones and questing ur gear wont really upgrade much from that, so you are fine in that regard

but there are not many of those useless sidequests like in other mmorpgs..so there is not much reason to stick to lower zones for too long

I'm hoping to find a newer realm to explore and adventure within that I can level completely at my own pace. I'd be coming over from a background of playing within much older titles. Like from one or two full decades ago, so the player/developer mentality has quite likely changed a good bit. A number of much older MMORPGs had optional ways of toggling the leveling experience. I'd be able to *all* of the 1-10th level content within them at those appropriate levels if I wanted to. Leveling wasn't necessarily forced upon players. That's just not an option that I'm finding available for any titles that have been created in recent years. I was hoping that it might be an option here.

The main story quest has appropriate pacing throughout.
What mostly matters in terms of what you can kill and what can kill you is your gear. Level mostly serves to unlock skills and skill upgrades.
If you follow it and pick up sidequests along the way, you should be levelled and geared appropriately for the content you're doing, and you can take your time exploring the story content with appropriately sized challenge.

If you want to powerlevel you can go 0->60 in 2 hours.
If you focus on MSQ and combat secondary quests you should get to "free to explore the world" status (end of mediah) in some 50 hours. You can pick any direction from there (kamasylvia, duvencrune, loml, etc) and there's another 20h+ of questing waiting for you there.
If you do absolutely every quest (MSQ + combat + lifeskills [gathering fishing crafting etc]) you'll likely get there in 200+ hours, and have 50h+ of questing content waiting in every elective destination past Mediah.

[Megiddo]

Originally posted by Kheryo:

If you do absolutely every quest (MSQ + combat + lifeskills [gathering fishing crafting etc]) you'll likely get there in 200+ hours, and have 50h+ of questing content waiting in every elective destination past Mediah.

This nails exactly what I'm hoping might be possible to do here, but I don't want to completely overlevel the content as I'm working through it. I'm sure that there are any number of things that I can do that might continue to challenge me, but I'm hoping that silliness, such as stripping naked or repeatedly lying down, might not be necessary here. I've yet to see scaling work where it doesn't completely trivialize the lower level content. I'm also still unsure how much overleveling will affect a character here. Some have said that 1-10th level content can still be challenging at 62nd level. Where others have said that I'll end up steamrolling content that I've outleveled. If I were to purchase this and wanted to do all of the 1-10th level content that I possibly could, could I be remain at the appropriate levels for the content very long? Or would it be something that I'd quickly outpace? I think that my hopes here just may not be realistic for any titles that have been created in the last decade, at least.

[Hosenbund]

Originally posted by Megiddo:

Originally posted by Kheryo:

If you do absolutely every quest (MSQ + combat + lifeskills [gathering fishing crafting etc]) you'll likely get there in 200+ hours, and have 50h+ of questing content waiting in every elective destination past Mediah.

This nails exactly what I'm hoping might be possible to do here, but I don't want to completely overlevel the content as I'm working through it. I'm sure that there are any number of things that I can do that might continue to challenge me, but I'm hoping that silliness, such as stripping naked or repeatedly lying down, might not be necessary here. I've yet to see scaling work where it doesn't completely trivialize the lower level content. I'm also still unsure how much overleveling will affect a character here. Some have said that 1-10th level content can still be challenging at 62nd level. Where others have said that I'll end up steamrolling content that I've outleveled. If I were to purchase this and wanted to do all of the 1-10th level content that I possibly could, could I be remain at the appropriate levels for the content very long? Or would it be something that I'd quickly outpace? I think that my hopes here just may not be realistic for any titles that have been created in the last decade, at least.

what the person which said that low level content can still be hard on level 62 meant is that ur level doesnt mean almost anything in this game.. its the gear you are wearing

and yes i think ur hopes are not realistic because u compare this game to other games u played in the past.. when in reality this game is not similar at all..bdo is unlike any other popular mmorpg on the market right now..which might not necessarily be a good thing for you either though

Sometimes its better to just boot a game up and play it..BDO is basically f2p anyways.. its 1 euro if you buy it through a key site

[Daggoth]

Originally posted by Megiddo:

. Some have said that 1-10th level content can still be challenging at 62nd level. Where others have said that I'll end up steamrolling content that I've outleveled. If I were to purchase this and wanted to do all of the 1-10th level content that I possibly could, could I be remain at the appropriate levels for the content very long?

I think we're talking at cross purposes here.
There is no level 10 content, or level 20 content, or any content that's specific to levels.
There's combat and there's non combat.

Combat will level you and you'll end up overlevelling low level stuff very quick, but overlevelling by itself just means you get less exp. To overPOWER them you increase your gear, which is what you do because it's a progression game and you progress to fight bigger badder things with bigger badder gear. The end game for combat is to get the biggest baddest gear to fight the biggest baddest guys in the most time-efficient way possible because that gives the most money to work towards even more biggerer badderer gear.
There's almost no story content directly related to combat. Along the main quest sure it'll say "go kill 50 guys" but assuming you've been keeping up, you'll roll over it pretty quick because it's not supposed to be a challenge but rather a gear check to make sure you're keeping up with the expected progression path as well as a diversion from fetch quests.

Non combat activities don't tie to level. There's at LEAST half the game that's not about levels. It still has gear to grind (which aren't tied to level), and there's still some benefit for having levels/combat gear (so you can do your activities in higher danger areas), but it's not about overlevelling or overpowering anything because to do these activities effectively you practically ignore monsters. You're expected to one-shot any creature you're harvesting because it's about the efficiency of gathering at max speed and not fighting a weasel to the death.
Many non-combat activities barely have you leave town. You can grind cooking and alchemy forever on a starter character without ever seeing a monster. Farming might have you run into a monster occasionally if you put your patch in the wrong spot but that's an annoyance and not a challenge. Bartering is on the ocean so you fight sea creatures which care about your boats stats and not your levels. It's only meat/blood/hide gathering that has you fight anything and again it's about the time spent collecting stuff and not about a tough fight. Hunting has it's own system which isn't about combat levels.

You talk about overlevelling the content. The content isn't about levels. The current sea palace event doesn't care about levels, the recent Land Of Morning Light storyline is set to be enjoyed regardless of level, the main quest takes you throughout the world and rarely cares what level you're at, just that you're keeping up gearwise. Mountain of Eternal Winter story barely has any combat at all.
The stuff that does care about combat ability (Atraxxion) is for late/end game where you're expected to be max everything, so there's no overlevelling it.

[Mad]

@Megiddo I think that @Daggoth has sum it up perfectly in the wholesome post above.
BDO isn't about levels, it is about the gear. Simple as that.

You can refer to the Map, and it will give you a recommended AP (Attack Points) and DP (Defense Points) levels for fighting in given area. The efficiency of your drops will depend on the fact if you are below, on point or above those requirements.

You can still be high level (61+) and do the stuff in starting areas; and as mentioned before - you will be going back there to do some quests at some point - I know I do that.

I think that I understand your concerns, as I also do come from an over decade old MMORPGs (Last Chaos, Lineage, Rappelz, etc.); but those have no ground in BDO - here you literally can play however you want for as long as you want.

[Carne Padre]

I would say if you start, Start now while season servers are up (They help you progress and get items for you to be up to par with mid-end game players).

Like everyone else has said, BDO is about Gear Progression, AND I don't think anyone mentioned it the most important part AFK FISHING IN VELIA! (Joke of Course, but if you play you will see why, everyone afks fishes there lol).

But yea Gear progression is the stuff that matters the most, You can be level 1 running around with end game gear if you want and you will 100% out damage anyone whose 61 without similar gear. But if your starting out make sure you finish the main questline at least once. This will open much more of the game and explain a lot to you that you might have trouble with. After you can make new characters and just move your gears around. It is however very grindy, so expect that play at your own pace and don't rush to finish anything just play at your own pace an experience it slowly. Also they have Trial characters now where you can practice any of the classes with all their skills and awakenings, so its much easier to choose. Additionally don't focus a lot on Tier List for BDO every class is viable, sure some exceed more than others but play what you find fun. You will spend a lot of time on your character so make sure its someone you find fun.

P.S: There is also a youtuber you can watch called EvilDoUsHarm. He is really good at giving information related to BDO this includes leveling, events, seasons, questlines, life skills and even the most important how to progress from regular gear to boss gears as a new player. And if you need help you could always add me ill help you, I could always use someone to play with or talk to while i am afk fishing haha.