How Hunting Skill Gains work

Below is everything I know about how often you get a skill gain when hunting and how large each skill gain is. This content is probably not perfectly accurate but I hope it should point us all in the right direction.

I have broken down skill gains into two concepts - frequency and size - and then researched the source of each.

All of my tests have been done solely under my own avatar. Clearly this is not ideal for some of the tests as I think some of the relationships below may be dependent on an avatar’s skills.

This is a long post, but hopefully one that will benefit the community. I can see that some of the graphs aren’t great as some of my samples have been small, and the internet tools to calculate the TT value of skill gains aren't very accurate. However at least the graphs should give other testers a decent basis from which to start their own tests.

Introduction

There are four main types of skill gains you can get from hunting. These are as follows.

1. Attack-related skill gains you get during a kill, i.e. pre-kill skill gains.
2. Attack-related skill gains you get immediately after a kill, i.e. post-kill skill gains. These gains are sometimes referred to as kill bonuses. The source, frequency and size of these post-kill skill gains is different to pre-kill skill gains.
3. Defense skills that you get from being attacked yourself. I have only tested evader and dodger skill gains, not space or jamming skills.
4. Skills you get from healing yourself with a FAP or a Regeneration chip.

Anyway, let’s look at the four areas, breaking them down into frequency and size.

1. Pre-kill skill gains

The frequency of pre-kill attack-related skill gains (in terms of green lines per hit) is related to the average damage per shot of the weapon/amp combo you are using.

Here is the graph. Some of the weapons used were mindforce attack chips, some were melee and some were guns – they seem to work in exactly the same way. Amplifiers seem to add to the average damage of a weapon, and therefore the frequency of skill gains. Unmaxed weapons seem to reduce the average damage of a weapon, and therefore the frequency of skill gains. I presume damage enhancers work the same way but I have not confirmed this.

So this means that you’ll always have more chance of getting a green line – during a kill - from a weapon/amp doing an average of N damage than when using a weapon/amp doing an average of N-1 damage.

The size of pre-kill attack-related skill gains (in terms of TT value per skill gain) is fairly constant.

Here is the graph. I presume the relationship is non-linear. I have no idea what happens with higher levels of mob, or how much the graph is dependent on my own skills.

2. Post-kill skill gains

The frequency of post-kill attack-related skill gains (in terms of green lines per kill) is related to the level of the mob.

Here is the graph. There appears to be a lot of variation here but I believe this is because a lot of kills are necessary before a good pattern emerges, and maybe I haven’t done this for all points on the graph.

So you should get more green lines immediately after a kill from a level N mob than from a level N-1 mob every time. I have a hunch that this is not true in every single case, as I believe there are small overlaps for reasons as yet unknown.

The size of post-kill attack-related skill gains (in terms of TT value per skill gain) is related to the level of the mob.

Here is the graph. Sample size may account for the first two groups not appearing to go very well together on this graph.

The size of each post-kill skill gain is therefore mob-specific. I have no idea if the relationship is linear or not.

3. Defense skill gains

In this section, I will use the term defense to mean both evader and dodger. I have done no testing with space mobs or jamming.

You can get defense skills when a mob misses you - but you get defense skills far more often when it actually damages you.

The frequency of defense skill gains is beyond the scope of this thread. However, it appears to be derived from three variables:

The info for (a) can be calculated by how many times the mob attempts to hit you. You can count this yourself simply from looking at the mob’s movements, or looking at Entropedia.

The background to (b) is too complicated for this thread. In summary, all mobs miss you less as your related defense profession increases, and some mobs will only start missing you when this defense professions reaches a certain level. These two excellent threads, one from Doer and one from Ace Flyster, are good starting points for further reading:
As for (c), to prevent avatars from standing next to a mob and getting defense skills for days on end, all mobs stop giving defense skills after a short time. The code behind this has changed recently, meaning it is not currently possible to ‘reset’ the mob so that it starts to give defensive skills again – for your avatar or any other avatar. I couldn't manage this myself anyway; I tried both running off the radar and dying.

I tested how long it took five different mobs to get bored with me, and the graph is below. All I have done is shoot the mob once and then stand next to it with a stopwatch for three minutes, starting the timer at the time it first tried to hit me. Each line on the graph below represents between 6 and 25 individual mobs of exactly the same type and maturity, and so the times of the individual skill gains from these 6-25 mobs have been overlaid onto one horizontal line. Al mobs have been tested individually, i.e. with only one hitting me at once. I hope that makes sense as I have had some trouble wording it!

So… in the graph below I am showing that after two minutes skill gains slow down considerably and possibly stop altogether for some lower end mobs. So 67 mobs hit me a total of 99 times. 94 of those hits were within the first two minutes, 4 of those hits were between 2:05 and 2:28, and none of those hits was between 2:29 and 3:00.

My testing was done without dying, or involving any other avatars. I wore armor only for the top two mobs. The samples were small because these tests were both boring and costly!

My conclusion here is simply “don’t expect to get defense skill gains after you’ve interacted with a mob for two minutes”.

Clearly there is a fair amount for us to learn about this relationship. The best threads to read more about this are possibly these from Serica and Neil:
The size of defense skill gains is constant up until a point and then rises.

This is an interesting relationship I think. I don’t believe the graph is a flat line, but that it is a flat line up until a point – and then it moves upwards. Someone else will need to produce a similar graph to compare with mine I think. My evader professional level is 41 which I think could be quite significant to the shape of the graph.

4. Healing skill gains

The frequency of skill gains when healing is related to the average heal of the healing tool in use. The relationship is not linear.

As you can see from the graph below, there is a definite curve. So it looks like a Mod Fap will give no more green lines per heal than a FAP healing for 40 HP – but as you’ll see in the next section, the skill gains themselves should be larger.

There appears to be no difference between UL and L medical kits, and no difference between standard FAPs and Regeneration chips, and no difference between FAPs that heal within a range and those that give the same heal every time. I think all that is looked at is the average heal that you personally can do with the FAP you’re using.

I have not tested with any medical enhancers or uber FAPs.

The size of skill gains when healing is related to the average heal of the healing tool in use.

This, I would suspect, is a fairly linear relationship:

So in the case of healing, we can quite easily merge the two graphs above to end up with something like this:

So my conclusion is that bigger FAPs and Regen chips give more skills - but once the average heals over about 40 there is a slight drop-off. My paramedic profession is level 36 which may or may not be relevant to the shape of the graphs in this section.

General Info

Here are some basic facts that apply to all hunting-related skill gains; just stuff I have noticed as I have been testing all this stuff.This Project

I started out with an intention to show how the level of a mob is related to the amount of skills you get while killing it. I’ve had an interest in the levels of mobs ever since I was told about this relationship by Hijacker on 31st July 2012. I proved the relationship to myself on 1st August 2012 and moved to the planet of Caraboks that same day.

I started heavily testing this in January 2013, just before VU 14.

During my testing, I’ve noticed that some mobs with the same level and the same attributes are slightly different to skill on. You can compare the frequency and size of skill gains of L2 Thief (White Shirt) and L2 Thief (Grey Shirt) - or L1 Tripudion Puny and L1 Caudatergus Puny – or any 10HP Calypso Puny and the Arkadian Yarrijak if you want to see this yourself.

I am now convinced that mobs have at least one hidden stat in addition to those stats that are visible (e.g. level or psyche) and those stats that can be easily calculated (e.g. max hit or hits per min). Either that, or the level of a mob is not an integer value - it just displays as an integer value. This would explain lots of things that you will see if you contain all of your testing to L1 mobs with 10HP.

I certainly don’t believe that the level of a mob is anything other than an arbitrary number that has been dished out to vaguely resemble the toughness of a mob. A lot of people seem to think that somehow the stats of a mob translate to the level of the mob, but if you compare the visible stats of something like the L1 Berycled Puny (total attributes 13), the L2 Forum Troll (total stats 134) and the L5 Thug (total attributes 126) you will see that it can’t work like this.

Cut the crap Forrest, what mobs are best to get skills economically?

Well... in essence, any mob with a higher level than its stamina is good for cheap skills - stamina is simply a tenth of the HP of a mob, rounded down to the nearest integer, and can be seen when you scan a mob. However this doesn't apply to any mobs other than the very small ones.

I believe the best mob in the game, in terms of skill-gains per ped spent, is the L4 Bank Robber on Rocktropia. It has 2HP (yes, 2HP). The percentage overkill required in killing these mobs is outrageous, although the total PED you'll spend on overkill is miniscule.

Post VU14, I have scanned all the Arkadia mobs. Caraboks on Arkadia are level 4 and have 10HP, so they are still the best mobs for cheap skilling on Arkadia. Ostelok, Oro and Feran are also worth a mention. I have no clue about specific Calypso mobs I'm afraid.

With higher level of mob, I really have no idea which mobs are best to hunt for skills. I am hoping that someone very clever might be able to work that out somehow...

Have fun! Over and out,

Forrest

Very nice . I can confirm most (all) of it .

Also there is something that i still need to test. And that my soc friend is sure about: wearing armor increases your evade/dodge realted skillgains (TT wise more not just more greenlines).

Atm i am 80% sure it is true but i need more tests to 100% confirm this (and i already have good test in my mind but can't start doing it yet).

Also: thank you for this information - had no idea about it and thought best one is still carabok :

I believe the best mob in the game, in terms of skill-gains per ped spent, is the L4 Bank Robber on Rocktropia. It has 2HP (yes, 2HP).

Click to expand...

Any certain location where they spawn? Or is ths a secret?

Falagor

Great stuff, + rep

corvette said:

Great stuff, + rep

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Same vote from me +Rep.

Great, ty - +rep.

blah blah blah, killing lots of low level mobs skills better than killing big ones Nice work laying it out though. There are only 4-5 bank robbers and they are only in one small area and part of the RT noob missions. They respawn quick but if more than one person is trying to skill on them it wouldn't really work, there are plenty of other 10 health and lower mobs all around it, nothing like skilling on tant plateau was though.

So my conclusion is that bigger FAPs and Regen chips give more skills - but once the average heals over about 40 there is a slight drop-off. My paramedic profession is level 36 which may or may not be relevant to the shape of the graphs in this section.

So what you're saying here is the eff/heal of a tool shouldn't surpass 40 otherwise there is "some" drop off. Ok this information is indeed valuable. Does this infact mean that mod faps give the best paramedic gains ingame then, since it has the highest eff/heal, I thought this was the opposite though?

Hunting skill gains generally arise more often after a big hit (or a big heal) than after a small hit (or a small heal) – when using the same weapon (or medical kit) I mean. This sounds really useful to know – but it isn’t useful because you can’t control when you do a big hit or big heal!

Again, this would indicate that using a tool such as mod fap would also as you describe enable you to gain skills more often after a big heal as its heal interval is fixed. Is this corret or maybe the non sib faps instead?

The TT size of some individual skill gains occasionally appears to be outside the norm range. I don’t know why this is & it could even be a bug, but I don’t think it’s amazingly significant in the overall scheme of things.

This might off been incured by armor decay, if it so happened at the time if you were using some sort of protection, the TT size may have been abnormal because of it.

Click to expand...

Now this is what I wanted to pick out. This part was really interesting for myself.

Thanks for the kind words, guys.

For Falagor:

I wasn't aware there was any link between armor and skills but if you or anyone else can prove then it would certainly be interesting to read about. I certainly haven't disproved it indirectly through any of my testing.

As Karmic says, the spawn of Bank Robbers is very low and they won't support two people at once at the location we are talking about. They are somewhere in New Harlem, I forget where, but they are next to three thieves at a bend in the road if that helps.

For Rufen:

1. I haven't tested adj, imp or mod faps so I can't say anything for certain. But if they fit the graph, these faps will give higher individual skill gains than a fap healing for 40, but won't give skill gains noticeably more often. If someone with an imp or mod fap wants to test this with a mere-mortal fap that would be nice.

2. I didn't write this very clearly. What I meant was that if you are using a FAP that heals for, say, 30-40 HP, you will receive more skill gains after you do a heal between 35-40 than after you do a heal for 30-35. Similarly if you are hunting with a weapon that does 10-20 damage, you'll see more green lines after a hit of say 17 than after a hit of say 13 - over the long term. Clearly this knowledge is largely academic! I only mentioned it because it was something I noticed by accident while I was testing other things.

3. I didn't write this very clearly either! What I meant was that if you record the size of every individual skill gain of, e.g. First Aid, say in terms of skill points, you might see something like this: 0.16, 0.16, 0.17, 0.20, 0.17, 0.10, 0.18, 0.16, 0.17, 0.48, 0.16, 0.17. Clearly there is a pattern there except for the two odd ones out. The first time you see the odd ones out you assume you've made a mistake or had one drink too many. But after you've seen the odd ones out a few times you know you haven't gone mad. Whether they appear because MA have coded it like that, or it's an MA bug, or whether even the Skill Scanner tool from Jdegre has a bug, I wouldn't like to say.

Forrest

Ok thanks for clearing that up. When your hitting at the higher end of any interval you should see higher gains than on the lower side. Ok makes sense, but what makes you say that 40 health is the optimum for heals? I'd also like Falagor to prove whether or not that armour decay has any relation to skill gains .

M Rufen Power said:

... what makes you say that 40 health is the optimum for heals?

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Well... I'm not advising anyone to steer clear of big FAPs, or saying there is any optimum heal necessarily.

But it's clear that something happens - for my avatar - around the point where heals reach about 20 to 50. Here is the graph again:


From the graph below, it appears to me that the TT value of skills gained per PEC spent (not including the super cheap FAPs like Adj, Imp or Mod) seems to take a bit of a dive around the 20-50 heal point - for my avatar.


I don't think this is amazingly significant in the grand scheme of things. I shouldn't think anyone will change their playing habits based on these two graphs.

But I think other players may see a different curve in the first graph. It would be very interesting if a player with, e.g. level 60+ paramedic, were to do some tests in attempt to reproduce my graph, to see if the bend is still in the same place. Or perhaps two vastly different avatars who share, for example an Imp Fap, could each use it say 300 times and see if either of them got significantly more than 30 green lines from those 300 heals.

Forrest

hi!

not sure if it will help but

i did fap service for a long time with adj fap and the skill gain was not higher than with the fap from tt

decay is the factor of skill gain with fap

azuma said:

hi!

not sure if it will help but

i did fap service for a long time with adj fap and the skill gain was not higher than with the fap from tt

decay is the factor of skill gain with fap

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Someone once told me that this isnt the case. More decay doesn't mean more skills.

azuma said:

hi!

not sure if it will help but

i did fap service for a long time with adj fap and the skill gain was not higher than with the fap from tt

decay is the factor of skill gain with fap

Click to expand...

M Rufen Power said:

Someone once told me that this isnt the case. More decay = more skills.

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Didn't you guys just say the same thing?

Norm said:

Didn't you guys just say the same thing?

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I said someone told me once that more decay does not mean more skills.

For the sake of the healing chart, could you do a test using 2 different faps that have the same average heal but different eco? Plot them on 1 chart with different colors.

This will eliminate the chance that the pec/hp of the fap has an effect on the skill gain

Very informative. +rep!

With regard to Post 10, and subsequent comments:

Previous tests on stuff like faps and scanners have tended to suggest there are two components to skill gain on tools, (i) a base gain per click, and (ii) a gain relative to the decay. The second graph is consistent with this; higher decay tools give slightly less efficient skill gains because whilst the relative gain, (ii), increases with decay the base gain, (i), does not.

The first graph just suggests to me there's a cap at skill gains on 10% of clicks. After which presumably the skill gains must get bigger (otherwise the differences in the second graph would be way bigger).

Caveat: The fit for the second graph is far from obvious given the amount of data. I kinda want to put a line roughly through (0,2) and (80,1). But heck, even something like y = 1.55 for all x is a plausible fit.

Good work but it's 2:00 am....anyone can summary that in few words ?

shoti said:

Good work but it's 2:00 am....anyone can summary that in few words ?

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Do stuff, get skills, pay bills

Did you try to establish a link between the average size of a pre-kill skill gain (or post-kill for that matter) with the weapon? I know the size of a gain is much larger using an RK-20 compared to an RK-5; it seems that it should work the same with hunting skills.

TheOneOmega said:

Did you try to establish a link between the average size of a pre-kill skill gain (or post-kill for that matter) with the weapon? I know the size of a gain is much larger using an RK-20 compared to an RK-5; it seems that it should work the same with hunting skills.

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Well... good question.

The sizes of pre-kill skill gains could in fact be related to almost anything, and that includes: a constant, the level of the mob, the average damage of the weapon used, or the weather in Delhi. This is because the skill gains were of very similar sizes throughout. Someone else may want to produce their own graph with a wider range of mob level or average damage to see if they can solve this one.

The sizes of post-kill gains are definitely due to mob level rather than the average damage of the weapon used. I did a graph to confirm this and it just showed a lot of nonsense. Carabok hunters, pre VU14, would say their nice skill gains came from the fact that the Carabok was level 10 and this made post-kill skill gains both frequent and large. In most cases the weapon used to kill them would have been something very small like an S.I. Scorpion which does 2-4 damage.

addz said:

For the sake of the healing chart, could you do a test using 2 different faps that have the same average heal but different eco? Plot them on 1 chart with different colors.

This will eliminate the chance that the pec/hp of the fap has an effect on the skill gain

Click to expand...

Sorry mate, my testing days are over for the time being. I'm enjoying being a brainless shoot-em-up player again at the moment!

M Rufen Power said:

I said someone told me once that more decay does not mean more skills.

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Agreed, the theory that says "more decay always equals proportionately more skills" is frankly a load of rubbish. I don't believe there is any hunting-related formula that is based entirely on this concept.

However, I wouldn't blame mentors if they were to summarize the game's mechanics in this way to their disciples. It's certainly useful as a basic tenet for new players who are struggling with the concepts of an RCE and how to play economically. It's also a general concept that MA attempt to adhere to in a very approximate sense. But nothing more.

azuma said:

i did fap service for a long time with adj fap and the skill gain was not higher than with the fap from tt

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I've certainly noticed this myself too but I've not tested it since VU 14 so I can't really comment further. If someone with a nice FAP wants to test it then great...

Have fun!

Forrest

ForrestPark said:

The TT size of some individual skill gains occasionally appears to be outside the normal range. I don’t know why this is, and it could even be a bug, but I don’t think it’s amazingly significant in the overall scheme of things.

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Knowing that you now have a lot of data, could you check something in it please, which could be related to the statement above : Is there relation between the size of a skill gain and the time period between this gain and the previous gain of the same skill ?

Why do I ask ? When I am crafting, I sometimes check what the size of each skillgain is and I tend to believe that if you get a skill gain in 1 specific skill on 2 consecutive clicks, it is significantly smaller than when there are let's say 50 clicks in between.

If that would be true, it would seem to tell us that skill gains "stack up" in the background and only get transferred to your ava when the skill gain gets triggered somehow. Would it help us ? Not really, but I'm just curious

Thanks in advance and +rep for all the data you have provided already !

Quint said:

Knowing that you now have a lot of data, could you check something in it please, which could be related to the statement above : Is there relation between the size of a skill gain and the time period between this gain and the previous gain of the same skill ?

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Well, I wasn't recording the times when skill gains occurred, other than in my tests to see when evader skill gains trailed off, and even then I wasn't actively recording the specific skill. So I can't comment on this I'm afraid.

By the way, after reading your's and Karmic's comments at https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forums/showthread.php?240510, I understand better now that the sizes of my recorded skill gains are probably not quite as accurate as I originally thought, which is possibly why some of the dots on the 'skill size' graphs look a bit random in places. (To calculate my skill gain sizes, I took an average using both jdegre's tool at http://jdegre.net/pe/unlocker.php and Entropedia's tool at http://www.entropiawiki.com/SkillCalc.aspx, but they almost never matched up 100%.)

Forrest

Prototype Drone and Daikiba Cub at Thule both have L3 and stamina 2. Good luck finding enough of those to get yourself busy though

skill gain from alian planets

I heared you get 8 times more skill from punnys on alian planets for example if your from ark and hunt punnys on cally you get 8 times more skill any idea if this is this true?

The Blu Man said:

I heared you get 8 times more skill from punnys on alian planets for example if your from ark and hunt punnys on cally you get 8 times more skill any idea if this is this true?

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The myth probably comes from the fact that Ark's puny, Carabok, used to give more skills than any other low levels mobs of all planets, and people from everywhere were coming there to skill on it. But Carabok was recently nerfed to "normal" level.

Formula

Using the graphs in the first post, I thought I would attempt to predict the TT value of attack-related skill gains per mob, knowing only the HP and level.

This could help us to rank mobs according to the expected long-term skill gains from hunting them. It would also help us get an insight into what missions give the most skill gains from the kills AND from the eventual rewards combined, and give hardcore eco-skillers an opportunity to get the most skills per PEC spent. It could also help us predict the total skill gains from an instance.

Defensive skills and healing skills are not covered below. Also, the info below says nothing about overkill, and mob stats such as regeneration, hit-rate, damage dealt, and aggro range etc.

Anyway, if I try to create some very approximate formulas from the first four graphs in the first post above (and a very few more recent tests on higher level mobs), I get the following.
Also I need to say that I am not stating these formulas as fact. They are simple guesses based on data gathered using only my avatar - and on top of that I’ve assumed each relationship is linear, which is almost certainly incorrect.

However... if we combine the four statements above in bold (and then edit it slightly to fit my testing below) we get this statement:

For a mob with L mob level and H health, the total TT value in PEC of attack-related skills I get from killing it would be:


Does the formula work in practice?

Well, I’ve conducted 15 tests and the worst error was 29%. The average error was 13%.

The tests are outlined below (with the sample size in the second column).


I'm convinced that a third variable – a hidden stat, or perhaps something related to maturity and/or armor used - is in play, as I don’t think tweaking the above formula will cause the above errors to be reduced. [For example, when I hunted Araneatrox Young and then Steel Bird Gen 02 – with the same weapon and amp – I got 50% more pre-kill green lines from the Steel Birds when I would have expected to get the same number from both. I will have to retest this one day.]

Anyhow, using the predicted TT value of attack-related skills per kill, we can now work out the predicted TT value of attack-related skills per 1000 damage dealt – and we can use that to compare mobs.

Finding the best mobs to skill on

Since the mob-level nerf of VU 14 I‘ve scanned most mission mobs and have listed those in the post below. The stats relate to the first maturity of each mob, e.g. Carabok Puny, Ostelok Young, Drone Generation 01, Aakas Defender, Harbinger Alpha. This may not provide a perfectly true picture for each mob but it’s saved me scanning every maturity of every mob.

A summary of the information is given below.

In general, the best mobs for skills gained per unit ammo spent are low HP mobs. This is because you’ll get a post-kill skill gain (aka a kill bonus) more often.

So if we take every planet individually – according to the formula - this is what we see…

Calypso

• Best five: Calypso Punies, Chirpy, Sabakuma, Snablesnot Male, Fugabarba
• Best five (HP>300): Araneatrox, Trooper, Letomie, Legionaire, Kreltin
• Best five mission mobs: Calypso Punies, Merp, Rippersnapper, Daikiba, Shinkiba
• Worst five mission mobs: Steel Bird, Leviathan, Argonaut, Rextelum, Atrox
• Worst five: Steel Bird, Big Bulk, Leviathan, Attacker, Oculus

Arkadia

• Best five: Carabok, Rakta, Yarrijak, Ostelok, Jori
• Best five (HP>300): Korwil, Oweko, Kiana, Madana, Otorugi
• Best five mission mobs: Rakta, Yarrijak, Jori, Halix, Oro
• Worst five mission mobs: Dehera, Magurg Female, Nusul, Huon, Magurg Male
• Worst five: Dehera, Magurg Female, Aakas, Nusul, Huon

Cyrene

• Best five: Pleak, Old Flesh Ripper, Living Vortex, Scout Bot, Old Jack
• Best five (HP>300): Old Flesh Ripper, Living Vortex, Old Jack, Golem, Wiles
• Best five mission mobs: Crystal Pede, Paneleon, Empis Wasp, Zyn’Dos, Mung Chang
• Worst five mission mobs: Dire Plant, Imperium, Swamp Lurker, Dire Weed, Tide Claw
• Worst five: Tree Dragon, Dire Plant, Imperium, Swamp Lurker, Zeladoth

Next Island

• Best six: Brown Papoo, Buccaneer Skeleton, Petit Yellow Papoo, Village Boar, Petit Brown Papoo, Petit Red Papoo
• Best five (HP>300): Shark, Death Drake, Snarg, Asterion, Chimera
• Best four 'mission' mobs: Brown Papoo, Yellow Papoo, Red Papoo, Grey Papoo
• Worst three mission mobs: Brontes Cyclops, Steropes Cyclops, Arges Cyclops
• Worst five: Brontes Cyclops, Island Shark, Steropes Cyclops, Arges Cyclops, Storm Drake

Rocktropia

• Best five*: Bank Robber, Wolves (on The Thing), ROCKtropian Male, Decomposing Zombie, Rippersnapper
• Best five (HP>300): Joplin Dragon, Neverdie Dragon, Malcruentor, Hendrix Dragon, Morrision Dragon
• Best five mission mobs: Decomposing Zombie, Rippersnapper, Daikiba, Lone Wolf, Hiryuu
• Worst five mission mobs: Crunk Shark, Panther, Tiger, Infected Wolf, Zombie Biker Nomad
• Worst five: Crunk Shark, Motorhead Mega-Mouth, Panther, Glamour Girl Drone, Tiger

* I’ve not scanned most of the humanoids in New Harlem. This is very important to say as a lot of them are good skillers. I’ve not studied Hell too much either – but I think those mobs aren’t great for skilling.

Summary

I believe the Bank Robber (L4, 2HP) on Rocktropia is the best skilling mob in the entire game, but the single spawn holds only about 10 mobs, some of which appear behind buildings. Technically speaking, this is a better mob for skilling than the pre-nerf L10/10HP Carabok Puny.

As for mobs with decent spawns, I believe the Carabok Puny (L4, 10HP) on Arkadia is still the best skilling mob in the game. They can be swunted too, which can guarantee a working profit. [Very approximately, each mob costs 4 pec to kill, and you can get back 3 pec in loot, 2 pec in sweat and maybe 0.2 pec in skills].

Cyrene hosts a series of high end mobs that appear to be better for skilling than similar mobs on any other planet. These include the single maturity mobs Old Flesh Ripper (L65, 1200HP), Old Jack (L59, 1300HP) and Living Vortex (L60, 1200HP). These mobs may hit quite hard and often, so I’m not sure how good they are as grinding mobs.

Next Island has almost no noob mobs that are bad skillers, so it’s possibly the best planet for general noob skilling. It’s also the worst planet for mid or high end skilling. Also, as you progress up the maturities, the stats of mobs can get quite messy, e.g. the Yellow Papoo. There is the Young (L5, 30HP), the Leader (L4, 20HP), the Dominant (L8, 60HP) and the Alpha (L9, 50HP).

I have pasted below the stats from all current mission mobs apart from a few I had trouble finding. You can obviously cut and paste them into your own spreadsheet.

Well there you go. Have fun!

Forrest

Following on from the last post, this is a table outlining predicted attack-related skill gains from current mission mobs, as calculated from the formula in the previous post. The list is best used to compare similar mobs, such as Aurli and Kreltin, and not vastly different mobs.

The second last column is the calculated TT value of attack-related skill gains, in PEC, per kill.

The final column is the calculated TT value of attack-related skill gains, in PEC, per 1000 damage dealt by you.
Those maturities that are asterisked are known to not be the lowest maturities.

If you spot any trivial errors in any of the above text please PM me rather than divert this thread.

fred5283 said:

I had a thought...I think the problem with your equation is in the health portion. Instead of base health it should be total health....like the total HP = base HP + regen HP

Click to expand...

Of course, yes. The equation is not 100% accurate in that sense, but neither is it intended to be.

The beauty of the equation is that is only has two inputs: HP and mob level. These remain static for all players and all weapon combinations.

You could replace HP with the actual damage you do and this should give you a more accurate formula. A tool such as Entropia Armory (to calculate your theoretical damage) or the JIIIS AutoScreen and Personal Tracker (to calculate your actual damage) can help you with that.

Have fun!

Forrest