Leveling to 40 & pacing

◆Pace: at least 7 days even online 24/7

Design target: 175 effective hours to level 40 (one effective hour = one hour of solo manual play in your level band). A player who is online around the clock still needs at least a week (ADR-010).

Efficiencies: solo manual 1.0, party 1.15, online Auto-Hunt 0.6, offline Auto-Hunt 0.35 (max 4 h/day, level 30+). Daily contracts add 3 × 5% of the current level (from 12); the rested pool doubles kill XP for players who log off. Daily soft cap: past 18 effective hours inside a rolling 24 h, kill XP is halved. Only machine-like schedules (shared accounts, bots) ever hit it, and it is what keeps the 7-day floor true. All of this is simulated in scripts/gen-progression.mjs and enforced by the tests.

Why a week as the floor? The MVP has a single region. Below a week the fastest players clear everything before the economy (stalls, crafting, refinement) forms and before the first monthly Lantern Convoy. A typical month to 40 matches the classic Silkroad rhythm while Auto-Hunt keeps progress moving on busy days.

Alpha: the alpha ruleset multiplies XP (quests ×120, kills ×60) so testers reach 40 in about 2 hours (Alpha test). Beta runs at ×2. Changing phase is one config value.

◆The curve

• Minutes to the next level grow from 10 min (L1) to 730 min (L39): 4 h for 1–10, 16 h for 10–20, 50 h for 20–30, 105 h for 30–40.
• xpToNext(L) = minutesToNext(L) × 7 kills/min × monsterXp(L), with monsterXp(L) = round(18 × 1.115^(L−1)).
• XP sources shift from story-heavy to hunt-heavy: 60% main quest at 1–10, down to 30% at 30–40, where contracts, bounties, the dungeon and events fill in.
• progression.json is the contract. A bot test ("fresh character reaches L10 with Auto-Quest only in ≤ 5 h") guards it.

◆Main story: 5 chapters, 47 quests

Each quest has Auto-Quest steps (travel, talk, hunt, collect, interact, escort, tutorial, choose, dungeon, boss). Auto-Quest pauses at choose steps (starter weapon, movement gem, pet, facets) and at boss/dungeon entry. The story also teaches each system the moment it unlocks:

◆Daily loop (from level 12)

1. Claim offline Auto-Hunt results (if used).
2. Do 3 Caravan Contracts (5% of a level each).
3. Push the main story with Auto-Quest, or hunt manually in your band.
4. From 20: one Kiln Depths reward chest per 8 h. From 25: one elite bounty. From 30: a Kharuun window every 4 h.

◆Catch-up and fairness

• Caravan Rest: a logged-out player builds a rested-XP pool (+100% kill XP, up to 1.5 levels), which lifts casual pace without punishing dedicated players.
• Party XP bonus of +10% per extra member (max 4), shared by contribution.
• No XP from players or idling in town. The offline actor only gains from real kills in its leased area.