this exactly. The only thing the quest does is make people bald and call AO a bandit beater because they think it’s the best way to level up. Making it non-repeatable and maybe increasing the other values like exp and bandits required would solve the issue by forcing people to run out of quests and explore the actual sea.
maybe also add in a tip saying that you should go explore after beating iris to gain the needed levels?
It wouldn’t be “exploration” it would be annoying. Easily an extra 2-3 hours of trying to level, which would then make it the biggest level gap in the game.
I agree with this, I think there should also be more quests around 81-93, I’ve progressed about 10 slots, and this is still the worst. the only quests I can think of are angler fish, the starving girl, munera trees, and cernyx. (might also be able to do camps and bananas at shells but that’s so far out of the way most new players won’t know about it until awakening.)
the only other current methods of exp for these levels I know of are cargo, sealed chests, and fishing. all of these repeatable methods are anti-causal and anti new player in my opinion. sealed chests are never really explicitly explained properly to the player, cargo is insanely boring, and fishing isn’t that much better.
what id like to see is perhaps a single repeatable gathering quest (someone wants prickly pears?), and a couple of regular quests on the islands surrounding sailors lodge. most likely on cernunno, sandfall, and munera garden, as these islands have barely any content currently.
I would like to also note that 27-40 isn’t horrible, as the quest to deliver cargo to Palo introduces you to the repeatable banana quest. boxing and enizor are also not that hard to discover on a first playthrough