Ascension FAQ & Eager Players Hit a Wall!
After years of watching players race through content and levels within hours of expansions launching, the EQ2 devs clearly wanted something different this time around. With Kunark Ascending, a new Ascension subclass system was put in place. Most important, gaining Levels in the new Ascension system strictly time-limited. The design ensures that no player will hit Ascension Level 5 until December 13th, one month after the expansion launched. It was designed so that even if a player somehow did find a way around the rules, a failsafe was put in place to prevent progression before the aforementioned date.
After complaints about fairness and glitches in filling Ascension XP scrolls, a new hybrid Ascension XP system was rolled out on December 6th. With the updated system, half of your daily Ascension XP pool comes from Ascension scrolls, while the other half just comes from waiting patiently, sort of how Vitality works. Also, in a “make right” for the glitches people experienced, players were mailed four Ascension XP scrolls. The new system is sufficiently complex that an Ascension Frequently Asked Questions seems essential to navigate all the details.
The New System
Players who complete the Kunark Ascending Signature quest line become able to speak with the four Ascension trainers. Each Ascension class grants new abilities (up to Ascension Level 10), and players can eventually learn all four Ascension classes. Epic 2.0 Weapon quests cannot be started until Level 5 is reached in one of the four Ascension classes:
| Ascension Class | Trainer Location | All Damage Converted to |
|---|---|---|
| Elementalist | Najena at 785, 230, 1000 | Cold |
| Etherealist | Miragul at -381, 19, -558 | Magic |
| Geomancer | Aranolth Tol’Ren at -227, 92, -234 | Crushing |
| Thaumaturgist | Chosooth at 669, 253, 1418 | Disease |
For the first three weeks of the expansion, these trainers would sell an Ascension Scroll to the player once every 24 hours. Similar to XP vials, Ascension Scrolls can hold up to 1 million Ascension XP. These scrolls can be stockpiled and filled all at once in an extended gameplay session. Players who watch the clock and login at the exact time every day have been able to earn 1 million Ascension XP daily. However there were some glitches with the Ascension XP gain buff dropping during zone crashes, plus the requirement of waiting exactly 24 hours has not been popular with players.
On Tuesday, December 6th, the Ascension system was patched to include a fairer two-pronged approach. Ascension scrolls can still be picked up every day, but now they’re on a 22 hour timer. And instead of 1 million XP, the new Ascension XP scrolls have varying capacities based on subscriber level and your guild’s level:
| Ascension XP Scroll | |
|---|---|
| Free-to-Play | 500,000 |
| All Access | 600,000 |
| All Access & Guild Level 200 | 650,000 |
What makes the new system better than the old one is the second prong. The first time you login to EQ2 after the December 6th patch, a clock starts. Every hour, whether you login to the game or not, your Ascension XP capacity grows by 20,000. Even if you do nothing, your Ascension XP capacity grows by 480,000 per day. There is a limit though — You may only bank 7 million Ascension XP in this manner. After that, you must go out and adventure and consume your banked Ascension before you can bank any more Ascension XP capacity.
No Soup For You!
According to the original plan, players could not reach Ascension Level 5 until December 13th. However with the new hybrid plan, 14 players (at last count according to Census) hit the failsafe last night or today, unable to gain any more Ascension XP beyond 29.2 million, the amount needed to ding Ascension Level 5. Here’s how the numbers broke down…
| Date | Ascension XP gain | Total |
|---|---|---|
| November 15 | Assuming you completed the Kunark Ascending signature quest, picked an Ascension class, picked up your first Ascension XP scroll and then filled it. | 1 million |
| November 16 | 1 million Ascension XP per day. | 2 million |
| … | ||
| December 5 | 1 million Ascension XP per day. | 22 million |
| December 6 | 600k Ascension scroll, 4 x 1 million Ascension XP scrolls. | 26.6 million |
| December 7 | 600k Ascension scroll, 480k Ascension vitality. | 27.68 million |
| December 8 | 600k Ascension scroll, 480k Ascension vitality. | 28.76 million |
| December 9 | 600k Ascension scroll, 480k Ascension vitality. | 29.84 million (capped at 29.2m) |
Apparently, there was also a brief window of time when Ascension XP scrolls were tradeable, so some players logged in alts and traded them over to try to get to Ascension Level 5 sooner than scheduled. They were temporarily stopped by the hard limit, and they may be stopped on a more permanent basis by an account ban for exploiting.
For now, players will just have to find something else to amuse themselves until the hard lock on gaining Ascension XP is removed on December 13th.
Double Stuck
Those players who find themselves in the predicament of having over 29 million Ascension XP are not able to hail their Ascension trainer to switch Ascension classes and start earning Ascension in another class while this problem persists. These players will lose out on scrolls for Today, Sunday and Monday and possibly Tuesday depending when their 22 hours fall. If your next Ascension XP scroll will put you over 29.2 million XP, then don’t pick it up. Instead switch classes and start working on another Ascension class.
If you want to go into further detail about Ascension in the Kunark Ascending expansion, the benefits of each Ascension class, the abilities you gain, etc., check out EQ2Library’s article about it.
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Comments (25)
Malleria
| #
Just have to say… excellent image choice 🙂
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Feldon
| #
Thank you Daniel Jackson. 😛
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Jrox
| #
Indeed!
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Mecah
| #
Nothing important to add, just the most awesome show ever!
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ziplock
| #
Waaaayy behind Star Trek.
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Anaogi
| #
SG-1 >> All Trek but Original, kthxbai
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eq2vet
| #
great article with a lot of answers to many FAQ’s
dont think they will, or should for that matter, hand out any bans. since a fix was put in, there was literally zero effect on the game meanwhile botters run rampant.
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Anaogi
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Word. They never did get all that economy-inflating plat out of the servers after that one exploit; they can leave this be.
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Caam
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Thank you for putting this all together. I was not aware of the hard-cap in place until 12/12. Haven’t gotten that far yet.
Oh yea…Polly wants a cracker. NOW!
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Pheidra
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Hey Feldon –
Couldn’t they technically just change Ascension classes to pick up scrolls and hold them for their primary one?
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Mermut
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Scrolls are completely interchangeable between acension ‘classes’, yes.
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Feldon
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As long as you are not stuck with a half-filled scroll.
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Carnifex
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So those that cheated the scrolls got penalized? Bout time =)
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Feldon
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You could legitimately have hit 29.2 million as of Friday night.
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Demlic
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I want to come back! I want to believe in the end this will be a good thing for EQ2. Altar was the last expansion i enjoyed. Waiting for this to all clear up before i entertain raiding again. Miss you all.
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Fred
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Would be nice sometimes that through the NPC you could get more knowledge about this in game. Sometimes it is frustrating to be in the dark… Information is crucial, for the scrolls being tradable, I transfered once between my toons yes, exploit!?!? I don’t know, I thought it was a bug that they fixed after the launch. Sometimes nowadays it is hard to know what is a bug or a feature, seriously!!
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Feldon
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The joke is, you find out what an exploit in EQ2 is when you get the banned notice.
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Fred
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Look with the procs now…. they corrected a bug!! so everyone that was using the items was basically knowingly exploiting the game with their high dps ahaha
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Chris
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This all seams complicated for the sake of complication. Whats wrong will regular XP. Looks to me like the Ascension classes where not ready gor launch, so DG put in a road block so they could play catch up.
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Mortam
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Still confused. do we “fill” the scroll , then use it, or does the scroll “enable” xp gain…wtf is going on?!
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Anaogi
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This is a bit complicated, but not much more than several existing systems.
The idea is that xp gain can be converted to Ascension XP. However, the capacity to do so is limited to a certain amount of XP at a time…however, this amount can be replenished or extended by two means. First, the scrolls, which add a certain amount to your current capacity depending on old or new scrolls and account type. Second, 20k capacity is added every hour, whether you’re logged in or not. It’s sort of like vitality, except the “extra” is diverted to Ascension XP.
Finally, there is an absolute cap to capacity at 7 million. That is to say, you can convert no more than 7 million XP without needing replenishment of some sort.
Example: Let’s say you have 1 million capacity. You run a dungeon and earn 250k XP; this is converted to Ascension XP and you have 750k remaining. Let’s say you run three more and earn about 780k; 750k are converted (your remaining capacity) and the other 30k wasted…except, of course, NOBODY is running four dungeons in an hour on one toon right now! So let’s say that takes four hours. In that time 80k was automatically added to what you could convert, and you actually have 50k remaining, which you can add to with a scroll or just by logging off and getting that sleep thing I hear so much about…
Hope that helps a little.
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GB
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Or, you could just go to a contested zone from a few expansion ago and earn that experience in a few minutes or less.
#MakeExperienceGainGreatAgain
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Anaogi
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How good is the old zone XP right now, anyway? It’s tempting. (And I actually do most of my grinding in AS/Solo zones anyway, so yeah, but I needed an example, so…)
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Feldon
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I don’t know why they didn’t stick with the terminology of last year, which was XP Vials. The image of a glass vial imparts the idea of something you need to fill without having to say a word.
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Alawi
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The Ascension Scrolls were badly thought up system. It’s not so much complicated but obtuse ro regular players. I don’t pay attention to it anymore – it ruins the game for me.
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