Experience and Absorbtion

The following information was taken from a post on the Wizards boards on America Online on June 29th, 1997 by one Shytok OfGhul

As most people know, when a monster is killed, an adventurer gains an amount of field experience that is stored in his or her brain and is absorbed over time. There is, however, a maximum amount of experience that a character may store at one time. The experience storage capacity of a character is a constant value:

Capacity = 800 + LO statistic + DI statistic

This maximum is simply a ceiling. What this means is that if you have a 75 Logic and a 95 Discipline, you will be able to store up to 970 field experience points at a time. If you currently have 935 experience points in your experience "bucket"and kill a creature that would have netted you 150 experience points, you will only gain 35 points and have refilled your bucket; 115 points will have been lost in the ether.

The experience you have stored is then absorbed in discrete packets once every minute (or so) at what have become known as experience pulses. Although a person cannot discern the exact amount of experience yet unabsorbed in his or her mind, by taking an experience reading, one can get a general, non-quantitative description of one's state of mind.

Classification % of total Capacity Must Rest  90-100 Numb  75-90 Becoming Numb  62-75 Muddled  50-62 Clear 25-50 Fresh and Clear  0-25 Clear as a bell  0

(Note: These numbers are Sylvendale's and I have not checked them. If they are off, which is unlikely, yell at him).

Although one can still absorb field experience in the Must Rest state of mind, the amount absorbed, barring intervention from the gods, cannot exceed your maximum.

Now comes the complicated part. The rate at which your experience will be converted from stored field experience to earned "true" experience is based upon a number of things. The most significant distinction for most people is whether she or he is on an area where experience absorption is accelerated, also know as an experience node. On a node, the amount of experience a person will absorb per pulse is.

INT(Amount in Bucket/(50-INT(Level/6))+12

where the function "INT" means to round down to the nearest integer.

To determine your own rate, begin by finding your divisor, which is 50-INT(Level/6). This means that your divisor will be 50 for levels 0-5, 49 for levels 6-11, 48 for levels 12-17, etc. You then divide this number into the current amount in your bucket and chop off the decimal.

For example, a 26th level Human Wizard with a Logic of 71, an Intelligence of 65, and a Discipline of 100 will have a storage capacity of 971. His divisor will be 46, so if he is "super-fried" on a node, he will absorb INT(971/46) + 12 = 33 experience points on his first pulse. His next pulse will be INT(931/46) + 12 = 32 experience points.

Off of a node, the amount of experience that a person will absorb is.

INT(Noded value * (50 + Intelligence Bonus + Logic Bonus) / 100)

You find your own rate by first determining your modifier, which is (50 + Intelligence Bonus + Logic Bonus) / 100. This modifier cannot be greater than one, meaning that even a Halfling Wizard with a 100 in both the Intelligence and Logic statistic will not absorb more off of a node than on. You then multiply this modifier by the amount you would have absorbed if you were on a node (see the above formula) and round down to the nearest decimal.

Taking our HumanWizard from above, if he were to move from the node to a non-node still with a full capacity mind.(if, say, he were pushed off the ledge in Shadow Valley by a Dark Elf Sorcerer), he would need to compute his modifier, which is: (50 + IN bonus + LO bonus) / 100 = (50 + 12 + 15) / 100 = .77. Now, he would compute the amount he would have absorbed if he were still safely on a node (and not at the bottom of the abyss, being eaten by night hounds), which is INT(971/46) + 12 = 33. Multiply this 33 by the .77 factor and round down to get 25, the amount he will absorb.

This discovery has a great number of implications for stat placement in the future. For example, despite a recent statement in the Wizard folder that Logic is a largely useless statistic, Logic is actually very important. It is the biggest statistical factor in determining experience absorption since it helps determine both the maximum amount of field experience one can store and the rate at which that experience can be absorbed. Future generations may choose to give more attention to the Logic statistic than we have in the past.

Due to recent changes, Age or level is no longer such an important factor when calculating absorbtion rates.  This was due to an inherent bug in the formula.  Once a character reached 300th level (now is impossible, but was do-able in the past) there would be a divide by 0 error and throw the entire learning calculator into chaos.  The GM's fixed this problem with the most significant effect being reducing the influence of age in the calculations.

This is all presuming that this can be taken to its logical conclusion, and that remains to be seen. The equations you see above have been tested rigorously for characters in the 0-35 range and have held true without exception. It may be, however, that these equations do not hold true for higher levels.