The BEST way to Level off Challenge XP - Question for DDO Gurus

[Dorian]

What is the best way to get XP from challenges? I know 5 star'ing on the first time is great XP doing the eveningstar challenges.

My question is more about how to milk the most XP from challenges.

Is it best to do them increasing the star count each time? example: first run 1-star.... second run, 2-star, etc.

Should you start with the level 20 version.... go up to 5-stars at 20... then do the level 21 and 5-star that... then 22, etc?

Or is it best to just 5-star when entering the quest at level 30 and never going back?

Thanks in advanced for your replies!

[~NiborRis]

The short answer is - run it once, on the highest level you can complete 5*, and never look back.

You get a bonus amount of XP for each star. The first time you reach that star, your bonus XP is greatly increased - I believe it's 10x but I'm not 100% certain. This means that running 1*-2*-3*-4*-5* is the same XP as running 5*-4*-3*-2*-1*. But if you run the 5* first, that's 5/6th of the XP you'll get from the 5-4-3-2-1 run. It's pretty low level XP after the first time bonuses have kicked in.

The XP you get for the first time bonus is related to what level you're running it at. But once you get the first time bonus, you can't get it again, even running it at a different level. So you want to be running it as high as possible.

If you really want the most XP out of it, you could run lvl 30 earning as many stars as you can, then drop down to where you can get 5*. But the difference is not likely to be worth the time of running it twice, so really just run the challenge at the highest level that you can complete 5*. If you can complete 5* on lvl 30, do it - that gets you the 6* bonus. That's probably worth coming back to later.

Now, when is the right time in your leveling to take that challenge XP? That is a *much* more complicated question, one I'm not really qualified to answer.

[Dorian]

You get a bonus amount of XP for each star. The first time you reach that star, your bonus XP is greatly increased - I believe it's 10x but I'm not 100% certain. This means that running 1*-2*-3*-4*-5* is the same XP as running 5*-4*-3*-2*-1*.

You 100% sure?

What about running lvl 21 at 1-star... then running level 22 at 2-star. etc?

[~redspecter23-A]

You 100% sure?

What about running lvl 21 at 1-star... then running level 22 at 2-star. etc?
You will technically get more xp your way, but only because you are running it more than once. You should get the same Xp by running a 6 star run followed by another 6 star run as you would if you ran a 3 star run, followed by a six star run, give or take a small amount.

In the first example you get 6x first star bonus on the first run, then 6x repeat stars on run two. In the second example you get the same 6x first star bonus spread between 2 runs and 3 repeat stars on the second run, so slightly less than the first example, however if you scored a 6 star on the first attempt, you'll be losing Xp per minute just by steeping in the second time compared to doing pretty much anything else in the game for xp instead.

[~NiborRis]

You 100% sure?

What about running lvl 21 at 1-star... then running level 22 at 2-star. etc?

Compared to what?

Let's compare:

1* lvl 21 - 2* lvl 22 - 3* lvl 23 - 4* lvl 24 - 5* lvl 25

vs

5* lvl 25 - 4* lvl 24 - 3* lvl 23 - 2* lvl 22 - 1* lvl 21

Exact same lvl and completions, but different order. The second way will be more xp, but again you'll get over 80% of the total xp for all five runs in the first run, so really you'd just rather do the 5* lvl 25 and then go do something productive.