This post is part of our AMA series to explain the upcoming changes in 3.0. It will explain the changes to XP-production and in the comment section questions on this topic will be answered.

Questions on other topics won't be answered at this point and off topic discussion will be removed

This is the last big new thing for 3.0, which has been kept secret up to this point.

For XP production in 3.0 we will be introducing a completely new mechanic, all xp production will require a new ingredient, which will be called Aether.

Aether will be produced by factories called pylons. Those extract Aether from the world they are in, but certain limits are put onto this production. Players wont be able to just build as many pylons as they want, as this would lower the individuals pylons output.

Each pylon will have a weight, which is added to a global weight in that shard. Once that global weight goes above a certain limit, Aether production for everyone on the map will drop, the higher the global weight is, the less everyone produces. This limits global XP production and also adds an interesting mechanic for competing XP-businesses. This mechanic is limited to a single shard, so it also encourages settling in currently less populated shards.

With other pylons on the map reducing a players Aether production also an interesting power play is created. Destroying other pylons on the map will indirectly increase your own production, but of course other cities wont just let you destroy their factories.

Given those circumstances players would of course just want to hide their pylon somewhere underground to never be found, but a mechanic will be added to prevent that. As part of a new plugin, we will add a special compass, which can be made in a factory and will always point to the nearest pylon, this will allow players to detect and find pylon locations of other players.

Pylons themselves will basically just be normal factories with a special recipe. This recipe will run for 1-2 hours depending on the pylon type and then output Aether dependent on the current pylons in the map. Of course charcoal cost for this will be intensively reduced compared to other recipes, but it still wont allow leaving your pylon completely unattended for more than 24 hours.

The numbers for this aren't finalized yet, but here are the initial ones, with which this mechanic will be put on CivTemp to test it. There will be 3 different tiers of pylons, where each tier is upgraded from the one below it and the initial pylon is an upgrade from the laboratory.

First tier:

• 2h duration
  
• Produces 10 Aether
  
• Weight of 40
  
• Setupcost is 8 Gold Blocks, 8 Redstone Blocks, 8 Iron Blocks, 256 Glass
• Requires 500 XP to fully repair

Second tier:

• 1h duration
  
• Produces 14 Aether
  
• Weight of 26
  
• Upgradecost is 2 Diamond Blocks, 24 gold blocks, 24 Redstone Blocks, 24 Iron Blocks, 1024 Glass, 32 Gunpowder, 512 Logs
  
• Requires 1400 XP to fully repair

Third tier:

• 1h duration
  
• Produces 20 Aether
  
• Weight of 20
  
• Upgrade cost is 8 Diamond Blocks, 64 gold blocks, 64 Redstone Blocks, 64 Iron Blocks, 2048 Glass, , 64 Gunpowder, 1024 Logs
• Requires 2000 XP to fully repair

Another interesting point here is that XP will be required to repair pylons instead of essences. This means you can't just setup a ton of pylons in your basement to stockpile Aether, you will need the actual XP production to back your pylons or they will die (or you will just barely get profit out of it).

The initial global limit for pylon weight will be 100 in each shard. As long as the sum of each pylons weight is below that, each pylon will produce the amount of Aether list above. Once the global weight goes across this limit, the output for each pylon will be calculated by the formula (globalLimit / currentGlobalWeight) * normalOutput. This means if for example 5 tier one pylons exist in a single shard, each of them would only produce half of its original amount, ergo 5 Aether per run.

To actually produce XP, the Aether gotten from pylons will be combined with farmables in a xp factory, which will also be an upgrade from the laboratory.

Initially there will be 3 recipes, which can all be run by this xp factory, those are:

Potash Enrichment:

• 128 Aether, 1 Essence, 256 Baked Potatoes, 256 Sugar, 32 Melons, 8 Red Flowers, 64 Brown Mushrooms, 4 Oak Saplings and 32 spruce logs

• Produces 128 XP

Vitamin Enrichment:

• 128 Aether, 1 Essence, 256 Carrots, 92 Cocoa, 8 Red Flowers, 64 Brown Mushrooms, 4 Oak Saplings and 32 jungle logs

• Produces 128 XP

Nether Enrichment:

• 128 Aether, 1 Essence, 128 Vines, 64 Netherwarts, 256 Cactus, 8 Yellow Flowers, 64 Red Mushrooms, 4 Birch Saplings, 32 Dark Oak Logs

• Produces 128 XP

Enchanting is not done yet and will be added/announced at a future point.