Sword Art Online

In MMO's I've played before with that system it generally caps out at 1XP. So theoretically you could still level.

But SAO is based on older MM Os, so I'd say you'd want to look at the games which inspired the author for what would probably be the case.

Sorta related. Did the LN ever go into what other, more cautious people, did for leveling and grinding?

In my mind I see a lot of people who survived the first floor leveling up only though proven methods (I.e areas that definitely won't spawn a superboss if you camp them too long, or trap you in a teleblocked trap room) and even then making sure they were well and truly over-leveled for any encounter.

Ah, didn't see the floor one part. That's actually a good question. In Rondo of a Fragile Blade, which is on the 2nd floor, Kirito is at level 13 and is 14 by the end of the story. That happens on December 8, 2022 and December 9, 2022 respectively. In The First Day by 21:00 on November 6, 2022, the day SAO launched he manages to reach level 4. So prior to the battle with Illfang the Kobold Lord, he would anywhere from level 4 to below level 13. I would estimate that during the fight Illfang he was at least level 10-12.

Now from floors 3 to 5 he goes from 15 to 19 with Asuna usually about 2 levels behind. During this time most of the quest they are participating in are related to the Elf War Campaign quest or floor and mid bosses, and they remain at the head of the pack. The likely didn't do every single quest available and the other frontliners likely didn't either, instead prioritizing getting strong enough while not sacrificing clear speed. I'd have to check and reread the volumes involving Aincrad but from memory EXP is divided among party members. So the more people, the less EXP. Now if were to make a guess I'd guess about maybe in the higher teens to twenty perhaps. I might have to reread and think more about the question cause I might be missing something.

Given that their lives are on the line, you'd think that they'd do every single quest possible and maybe even grind out every single rare item they knew of on that floor to ensure that they're as overleveled as possible before moving on.

Of course, given the Cardinal System, it'd probably just raise the level of everything because, yeah, that's good game design.

Not doing all side quests actually bites them in the ass in Progressive, because they would have found out about a floor boss by doing the quest. Argo, thankfully, catches on and gets the info...

Which is why the first floor took a month to clear- between building up a safety margin, overcrowding in the field, and the mass casualties suffered before a safety margin could be built, it took a month to prepare a boss raid.

As for experience, based on Hollow Realization (which is stated in-universe to have the same engine as SAO, and therefore the same rules as the beta test), battle EXP decreases hyperbolically as your level increases relative to the enemy's level, bottoming out at 1 EXP for each mook, and 3 EXP for Named Monsters. Quest EXP, however, is not subject to diminishing returns, though the EXP required to level up increases approximately quadratically.

I'll probably arbitrarily say that Level 14 is the absolute cap for the first floor, and they hit it only by grinding away at monster hunting...

That's seems fair as in conversation I observed on the Discord server for the SAO Subreddit mention Diavel was level 12 just like Kirito. So that seems like a fair assumption.

It's also worth noting that the catastrophic casualties suffered in the first month make it important for the clearers to press forward. Time is not on their side; every day they delay clearing the floor means more fatalities, and given that the beta testers actually had a higher mortality rate than the newbies, it becomes clear that seeking to max out your level is actually counterproductive. The goal is to build up enough safety margin to challenge the first floor boss without danger, but the first floor is crowded; only by clearing it do you gain enough space to level grind without getting in each other's way, which was already causing tensions to boil over between the beta testers and everybody else.

I also had someone point out that medically they can't stay in VR forever. Their physical bodies will start to go...

The new season of the anime starts off with a major philosophical discussion. I addressed two years ago when the Volume 9 came out in English, but it bears repeating: Rath is messing with things they don't remotely understand, and their experiments to discern the human soul are far more dangerous than Kayaba or Sugou ever were. Their little experiments may well have immortal souls, and Rath is deliberately deceiving them about the nature of their existence. And because a society without Original Sin has no military value to them, they actively attempt to cultivate sin by stressing the environment, and when that failed, employed an unsuspecting boy to be the Serpent in their Eden. I daresay, the real Satanic Archetype in this series isn't Kayaba, or Sugou, or even Quinella, Po H or Subtilizer, it's Kikuoka. He and his minions are the ones who trespassed on God's domain by attempting to create souls. They are ones who taught them to worship false gods because it suited their purposes. They are the ones who tried every means to corrupt the utopia they managed to build because they wanted killers, not saints. They are the ones who lied to Kirito about the nature of the experiment, letting him spend ten years in the Underworld and told him it was ten days, all for the purpose of trying to get him to teach the denizens to sin. And finally, they are the ones plotting the destruction of the Underworld if it proves impossible to use in service of their agenda.

Edited by mythbuster on Oct 16th 2018 at 6:39:41 AM

Something else is bothering me about the beginning of the Alicization Arc: How is it that Eugeo doesn't remember Kirito? I mean, sure, somebody disappearing and then reappearing six years later with amnesia is definitely weird, but from Eugeo's perspective, it's completely plausible.

I think when Kirito went in and out of Raith during the testing stage, the world was 'reset' so they don't remember him.

Just their memories, probably.

Some people on reddit made a good point: it's better to just wipe their memories since they have to pull him out at some point. It would be very strange for the villagers to have this one kid living in the village for about a decade suddenly vanishing, then reappearing six years later for no apparent reason. Makes it less troublesome.

Then what is the purpose of the "Lost Child of Vecta" story except to explain just such a scenario?

A failsafe in case the memory modification is imperfect, I suppose.

It's better to have multiple safety nets.

Alright, the fact that Kayaba actually experienced sex renders the colossal errors in SAO sex utterly ridiculous.

Edited by mythbuster on Nov 12th 2018 at 1:35:30 AM

Does anybody know what Kawahara's religious beliefs are? As mentioned before, major philosophical questions were always part of the series, but now the author's worldview plays heavily into the portrayal of the characters. For example, it's the difference between portraying Kikuoka as a Well-Intentioned Extremist and portraying him as a Satanic Archetype.

I don't believe he's ever talked about having any religious beliefs. Never come up in any of his afterwords.

Finally finished Progessive 5. I was surprised to see the backstory of Nicholas the Renegade released so early.

The latest Alicization episode sure is....something.

Probably gonna piss people off, though it is the turning point of the whole alicization arc, and the whole franchise as well.

Edited by Demongodofchaos2 on Dec 8th 2018 at 2:37:54 PM

...I keep forgetting that this series is still alive. Is Alicization dubbed? Is it the "end" of SAO or is the light novel still being written.

I'm honestly "ehhhh" about watching it. If I didn't make my dislike of everything past the first 3 episodes of the Aincrad arc clear. Then I'm told that the movie and Alicization are much better than ALO or GGO were.

I've found it interesting how far they took the premise - a killer app game that can kill you IRL, a game that's actually a sex dungeon prison crafted by a jealous corporate rival, vritual technology used for terminal patients, private militaries using the tech in Alicization apparently? It certainly beats Yugioh's recurring "a different generation of high school children get wrapped up in saving the world via children's card game" plot.

Alicization is not dubbed. It is currently airing in Japanese. It will wrapped up its first cour in two weeks, and will have continue through the winter anime season for a total of about 48 episodes or so. Volume 21 of the light novels released recently in Japan starting a new arc: Unital Ring.

And apparently Unital Ring is supposed to reveal what Kayaba's real plans were. The video game continuity made him into an Immortality Seeker, but it's pretty obvious even in the canon series that he was lying about not remembering his motive for SAO.

I certainly hope they don't plan to bring his consciousness back and reveal it all right there. I'm quite content with Kayaba, a great inventor who could've revolutionized the world, simply losing his mind to a childish fantasy world, killing obscene amounts of people in pursuit of a goal he no longer remembers. It leaves behind a bitter irony and, combined with Kayaba being a Noble Demon in contrast with Sugou, gives him nuance.

I didn't really need to know what Kayaba's real plans were. Less is more. The less we know about Kayaba's master plan the better. All we needed to know is that he had certain human characteristics - a job, a goal, a relationship, a hobby, a basic understanding of game mechanics ^arguably  the point being that he wasn't some kind of ghostly monster that spawned from the void solely to wreak death and destruction - and your mind can wander from there.

Most people don't wake up plotting to murder thousands of people. How existentially depressed must Kayaba have been to go through with his master stroke? What would make you go that far? Finding out what the whole plan was kind of ruins that.

To put it another way:

• I'd be quite sad to hear that some brilliant scientist slaughtered his friends and family after Going Mad From The Revelation or something like that. I'd be wondering what sort of horrible, unknowable thing might have driven him that far. I'd be quite unnerved and disappointed to hear that he did it solely because he was an evil bastard all along who wanted money. I mean, so he was evil. That's it? Wow. Humans suck.

Edited by Soble on Dec 8th 2018 at 5:10:38 AM

For what it's worth, the canon makes it clear that the real Kayaba is dead; that Virtual Ghost is a copy, regardless of whatever transhumanist fantasy Kayaba may have had. I still don't know what Kawahara's religious beliefs are, but what he's writing is compatible with a Christian or Jewish worldview, and firmly against transhumanism.

Edited by mythbuster on Jan 4th 2019 at 11:11:33 AM