We just got a patch to fix the Master and Disciple system so I thought I would do a little testing. All of my usual characters have the Master status and my nuker had by far the most points. He already had the quest to become a level 3 Master, so I did that first. It's mostly just a lot of running around Shi Zhang, and then a quick trip to CoF. You don't even have to finish that CoF run, just pick up an item from a chest in the second room. You take the quest item back to Hefei, and you're done.

The next step is a LightFoot quest around Datong. I hate Lightfoot quests, and I swear the next time courier passes are 50% off at the coin mall I'm going to by a big bag full. After Datong you get to lightfoot around Hangzhou too. And then finally you get sent back to the Conqueror's Cave to do a similar quest to what you had for the level 4 Master's quest. You talk to an NPC by the name of Ge Ziyu, then kill a mob. It's all quite quick, but it is CC, so you're best to do this one at a quiet time of day on the server.

My nuker can now have 4 disciples, but I'm not looking for any disciples for that character at the moment. Low level players, you want to find a Master who is willing to be online pretty much all the time, and I don't play my nuker often enough to be a good Master.

I've also been wanting to test the Disciple side of the system, but I don't really have any low level characters except for stand characters. I've been using one of those to pick up low level items for the collection quests. He's LS12 and waiting to chi breathe. He's going to wait a long time too because I have 3 active characters and that's enough for me. My LS12 character would be good for some testing, but where to find a Master who would put up with a bit of screwing around?

I still have a small network of computers here from my daytrading times, so I turned one of those on and downloaded the game again. I logged into my SpearDriver character on that computer, and then, onto my LS12 stand character on my main gaming box. The characters met up, and SpearDriver had a disciple. I put a set of uebernoob clothes on the stand character and sent him out to kill things.

By the way, this is pretty much, completely against the terms of service as put out by Acclaim. Dual-logging is not allowed because a player can gain an advantage over others by using it. I'm sure I'll get away with this because I'm not leveling up any character, I'm just doing a bit of testing. I don't recommend you do this.

So, what did I find out?

A character who can't possibly be killed (uebernoob clothes, FTW!) by white/yellow mobs can generate 1000 contribution points in about 90 minutes. Obviously it would take a little longer if you had to worry about running to meditate once in a while. Most low level players do have that problem.

White/Yellow mobs give you 2 contribution points per kill, and orange mobs give 3 contribution points per kill. Experience event multipliers also affect contribution points. During a 3x event, orange mobs will give 9 points per kill. It would be worth it for a master who wants points fast to provide good clothes and regular buffs to his disciples, so that they can grind on higher mobs. That might actually be more fun than grinding on the ice map.

That Disciple buff is HUGE! Never mind my ubernoob clothes, with that buff leveling fast during an XP event the effect became so great that I would be able to grind a warrior type lowby, without having to meditate. I would level up the character so fast, that I wouldn't need to meditate. Of course, I'm a very experienced warrior player. A new player to the game might not be able to do that. If you grind with active only skills it doesn't matter if you've run out of Vital Energy.

RedCross put together the exact details of that disciple buff in a previous post.

I tested that up to 35k points, and Red's spreadsheet is completely accurate.

When a character leaves a Master before he reaches SM1 the master will lose half of the points generated by the Disciples. So keep them happy. After reaching SM1 the master will lose no points when the disciple leavees. The disciple doesn't get the great buff after SM1, and can only contribute a total 0f 40k points anyway, and so it really is time to go.

Because the master will lose half of the points generated by a student, there is no reason to dual-log and run your own student like I did. You would have to grind that student to SM1 to get the full effect, and then what? Delete the character and start over? You're better off to find good students and treat them well.

A disciple who leaves his master doesn't lose much, but that beautiful buff goes back to the start when you sign up with a new master. I was suprised by that, but it makes sense.

And the last thing I found out is that Blood Essence drops reasonably well when you're grinding on orange mobs. I got a couple of them every event last weekend, while I was doing this testing.

In the end I'm really starting to like this Master and Disciple system, and I hope the bugs have been removed from the rest of it. Any new player to the game who wants to level fast should look for a Master, and be picky about it. You want your Master to be online pretty much all the time. You only get that disciple buff if your Master is online too.

If you are a Master? Be prepared to be online all the time. You only get those contribution points if you are online while your Disciples are killing things. Treat those Disciples well. Get them the items they need so that they can spend their time grinding. Teach them to pick up their drops, how to set up the hotbars, where to grind at each level, and what mobs drop the valuable items.

In the end, you'll both benefit from this system.

- SpearDriver