No XP in Shadow Cave? Lame...

**McBain** · 09-26-2011, 11:43 PM

Had never played the Shadow Cave campaign, but bought it cause it was on sale. I'm level 52, and it's advertised as a level 50 map, so I said to myself "self, this might be a nice change of scenery to do some leveling/quests rather than running the same AO and Sewers maps constantly." So I started playing it awhile, until surprisingly I noticed the exclamation point symbol at the bottom of the screen, meaning the map is too low a level to gain XP. Furthermore, there are no quests. Wassup with that?

I guess I never noticed that the "recommended level" for Shadow Cave is 50-50. Apparently that literally means it's only useful for 1 level? Even then, it's still confusing, because AO is recommended for 35-40, yet I can still gain XP there. That makes no sense to me. Maybe this is common knowledge to most people, but I never knew (like I said, first time playing it), and I'm quite disappointed that I decided on spending plat for this map and it's pretty much useless. I know the pink drops are supposed to be good, but if the only real point to this map is farming, they should advertise it as such. Even with that in mind, seems like you should at least to be able to earn XP for a while playing it. Every other map is playable for a level range extending beyond what is "recommended" (more than 10 levels in the case of AO), so why is this one different?

Extremely disappointing for a plat campaign. Not being a big spender and buyer of plat to begin with, I found it a bit irritating to discover this after spending money. Maybe somewhat my fault for not reading more on the forums about it before purchasing, but the lack of info on this campaign in-game is misleading as well. So, the feedback portion of the post is that I don't "get" Shadow Cave. What's the point?

Now for the suggestion portion: Maybe there should be a "preview" option for plat campaigns, where you can play them for a short time (say, 5 minutes) just to see what you're getting. You can make it so that you can't get item drops, xp, gold, do quests, buy stuff, etc until you purchase the map. That way there's no way to take advantage of it. People might be more inclined to buy campaigns overall if they can preview them first. In the case of Shadow Cave, though, I'm not sure exactly why anyone would buy it.

**Ellyidol** · 09-26-2011, 11:48 PM

I think it's right though, AO3 only gives you XP up to 52, I think?

It's the + and -2 level rule, if I'm not mistaken.

You can be two levels below minimum required level for a campaign to enter, and earn only 2 levels above it's maximum recommended level.

52 or 53, was it? I think it's 52.

**WhoIsThis** · 09-27-2011, 02:40 AM

53 and above gives no experience.

You can complete 52 in AO3, but once you reach 53, you gotta go to a higher level.

On that note, there are quite a few people going straight to the Hallows, because they think Sewers is too slow and just elixir-levelling their way up from there.

**Ellyidol** · 09-27-2011, 02:41 AM

Originally Posted by WhoIsThis

53 and above gives no experience.

You can complete 52 in AO3, but once you reach 53, you gotta go to a higher level.

On that note, there are quite a few people going straight to the Hallows, because they think Sewers is too slow and just elixir-levelling their way up from there.

Thanks for the confirmation

**WhoIsThis** · 09-27-2011, 02:43 AM

I should mention that I don't think that you gain xp or kills for Shadow Caves above 53 either.

Edit:

If memory serves correctly, you can enter the Shadow Caves and AO3 at level 43. However, if you enter the Shadow Caves at 43, even with the best pinks money can buy at that level, be ready for your K/D ratio to fall unless you plan on burning elixirs like people are doing in Nuri.

**Barrington** · 09-27-2011, 04:26 AM

its an elite dungeon just like frozen nightmares
elite dungeons are harder and the loot is better
shadow cave was originally hidden - you had to go through all of victory lap to get to it