I think that leveling is unnecessarily slow and unnecessarily unenjoyable. It is easily akin to "work". It is not fun, and it is a colossal waste of time. It makes me rage a bit, if I'm honest. The players are also discouraged from finding clever ways to level, such as mob farms, caves, dark rooms, or any other "half legal" to full blown illegal type system. It makes the process a reeeal drag.
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When I was a noob, and I was a bit unfamiliar with certain rules, I did a few things that were easily considered illegal. There was a small cave beneath the Umbra Swamp, and it was actually a pretty advanced system. There were multiple entry and exit points, and it was all interconnected. Because very few mobs would spawn during the night, and obviously none during the day, I would often drop into the caves and kill mobs in there. There were..no torches. One might view what I was doing to be the same as "using a dark room".
Because I was doing it so often, I began to carve out that cave. I evened the floors, I shaved off corners, and placed cobblestone stairs in areas that dropped down a block or two (so that I could always backpedal while fighting creepers). However, it was still really annoying to fight in this cave, as it was pitch black. Since I was an Alchemist, I eventually started making night vision potions, and would level with my friend in there. It was...pretty fun, actually. Expensive, but fun.
That cave at this point became a dungeon of sorts, and we called it the Rape Cave. We placed signs at specific areas, giving them a name so we could reference it in TS. We developed our own routine of moving through the cave and coming up above ground. During our time leveling in there, we died a lot of times...I mean A LOT of times--there was a reason it was called the rape cave. I Easily died more in there than I would have leveling on the surface.
I didn't really feel that what I was doing was illegal. In my mind, I was just finding a more fun way to level. And as effective as that cave was, it was not a safe place, and I can assure you I lost well over a couple levels of XP just mastering a single class. However, after I had mastered once, my townmates learned of how I did it, and informed me that what I was doing was illegal. They told me that I should stop, but if I insisted on continuing, I needed to light up the cave. I didn't want to stop, so I lit it up. However, I lit it up in the least effective way possible, so that I could still retain a large amount of mob spawns while traversing the cave. I continued to level in that cave.
From the beginning, creepers were the bane of that fucking cave. Hour after hour, day after day, creepers would blow gigantic holes in every nook and cranny of the cave. In order to make sure it was a pleasant leveling experience, I maintained it. I would bring stacks of torches, stacks of cobblestone, and stacks of cobblestone stairs. Every time a creeper blew up, I repaired that fucking cave. I often even put my own life at stake to do so; it caused me a lot of deaths. Even still, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed that cave. Several of my friends and townmates used that cave, and they would do the same. It made leveling interesting, and it definitely took the snoozfest out of the standard "run around the forest until you find mobs".
Until eventually, the freepers (A group of players that go by the name of "Fire Creepers") decided that what we were doing should not be allowed, and they did not want us using it any more. They lured creepers to all of my torches, blew them up, and then /pe'd the cave. Shortly afterwards, the whole cave was world edited to stone, and it was gone forever. We tried to dig it up a couple times, but the same shit would happen, and eventually, we gave up trying.
I have stopped trying to level since this incident. Nay, I flat out refuse--because I'm not spending my free time to 'work' on something that is supposed to be fun. I believe that the above kind of behavior is complete bullshit, and I think it's a perfect example of how certain rules and players really hurt the enjoyment of the server.
I understand Kainzo wishes for mobs to be difficult, I understand he doesn't want people to exploit to be mastered, and I even understand him wanting it to take a long time to master. However, in the current state of the map, I find that the leveling is nothing more than a hindrance and a nuisance. It's tedious, boring, work that only serves as a means to mix up your PvP experience. I'd wager that many new players quit the server due to the lack of interesting PvE content, or due to the fact that they can't level up quick enough to stay on par with mastered PvPers.
Yes, the Adventure map is coming, and there are a lot of different people working towards getting that going (including myself), but right now, there is no PvE content, and any interesting, quick, or less painless method of leveling is stomped to the ground before you can even have a chance to benefit from it.
Now, I fully understand why Mob Spawners and Dark Rooms are illegal, and why they should stay illegal, but I'll be frank, I'm fucking sick of HC PvE, and I'd like to see it changed up a bit. Even if it's only a quick change that ties us over until the Adventure Map releases. Just give us something. Please.
