User:DOORKEEPERSSON

Starlight Aura Cost Estimates

I've been trying to quantify SLA cost for spells. From my testing, the lowest SLA-consuming spell is min-cast CRD. I'm defining the SLA used by a minimum mana CRD as 1 "SLA bit."

With 700 Lunar Magic, my SLA pool is approximately 1,700 bits (meaning I could cast 1,700 2 mana CRDs without residue indoors before running out of SLA).

Most spells seem to ramp up their SLA costs pretty close to 1:1 with mana. So a 100 mana BLUR is roughly 20x SLA as a 5 mana BLUR. (The main exception seems to be Regalia, which is always 15 SLA bits regardless of mana. FLU and AVA also have more generous SLA costs than expected at higher mana levels.)

When regenerating SLA, pulses come every 90 seconds. With ~700 Lunar Magic and 83 Wisdom, under hindered conditions with a maximum mana NOU, it takes me roughly 2 hours to regenerate SLA from 0 to 100% (20 bits per pulse). With optimal conditions, it is roughly twice as fast (40 bits per pulse).

Elison's SLA is per attack avoided, not per cast. Elanthipedia also says that amount of SLA depends on how thoroughly you win the contest. And while the creature I tested on did cause SLA drain every time, they were a tier below my normal hunting. So more difficult enemies probably have higher SLA costs.

Remember that these are just rough estimates. Measurements were made with different Lunar Magic levels (680-720), which isn't ideal. There's probably some user error lurking in the measurements and calculations somewhere along the line too!

Starlight Aura Regeneration

There are a few different regen rates. PERC AURA will tell you if you have "optimal" or "hindered," but there are different levels of hindered even after maximum mana NOU, depending on time of day and weather. The most common hindered rates seem to be 75% (which I'm calling minimally hindered), 50% (middle hindered - the red line in the chart), and 33% (max hindered) of optimal.

The optimal SLA regen rate stops improving at 80 Wisdom, with a fully optimal 0-100% regen taking 60 minutes. But while the optimal regen rate maxes out at 80 Wis, your hindered regen rates continue improving, I believe until they also hit 60 minutes. (So past 80 Wisdom, that 50% middle hindered regen rate grows to 100% relative to your capped optimal rate, until it too eventually hits 60 minutes.)

I think there are a few breakpoints:

• 80 Wisdom: Optimal regen caps at 60 minutes
• 110 Wisdom: Minimally hindered regen caps at 60 minutes
• 180 Wisdom: Middle hindered regen caps at 60 minutes
• 240 Wisdom: Max hindered regen caps at 60 minutes

Each point of Wisdom increases your regen pulse size by the same absolute amount. With very little Wisdom that modest amount is really noticeable. But even at very high Wisdom, extra Wis ranks still have a decent impact. Assuming a 50/50 split of optimal and middle hindered conditions, going from 170 to 180 Wisdom should lower average regen time by 3% (62 minutes -> 60 minutes). Assuming worse weather would be an even bigger improvement.

Discipline has no effect.

SLA regen is improved by Wisdom buffs.

(Some caveats: It's really difficult to figure out which hindered state you're in - there are multiple variables, they change at the drop of a hat, and some are a bit rare. The focus of my testing was on optimal and middle-hindered regen rates. Also, even with a full respec, I couldn't test past base 138 Wis. So while the trends seemed pretty consistent, there is a lot of extrapolation being done here, and take it all with a grain of salt.)

Charisma and Caravan Trading

I don't think that Charisma has any effect on contract prices (and presumably also Trading EXP).

Here's average contract price for Ilithi trading routes, holding Trading ranks constant, with different extreme levels of Charisma. Number of contracts tested are in parentheses.

Trading Route	12 Charisma	138 Charisma	Price % Diff
Fayrin's Rest - Darkling Wood	25,145 (36)	26,015 (27)	+3%
Steelclaw Clan - Darkling Wood	22,198 (27)	22,921 (26)	+3%
Shard - Darkling Wood	21,041 (49)	22,808 (35)	+8%
Shard - Fayrin's Rest	9,426 (37)	9,276 (29)	-2%
Steelclaw Clan - Shard	5,821 (53)	5,375 (42)	-8%
Steelclaw Clan - Fayrin's Rest	4,627 (44)	4,672 (30)	+1%
		AVERAGE:	+1%

I wanted to test more to eliminate some of the noise, but a Test server resync threw a wrench in that (because Trading ranks definitely do matter). Regardless, I'm pretty sure that if Charisma had an effect, it would've been obvious with 12 vs 138 CHA even with this amount of testing.

It's theoretically possible that Charisma has some reasonable impact at lower Trading ranks (this testing done around 1,000 Trading).