I'm griding in pre-sear right now so that I can be the toughest kid in newbietown. FOR KICKS.
So anyway, I found out something interesting. I was in the middle of a field when Emily called and wanted me to drive 40 minutes in the rain in rush hour traffic. I left Guild Wars on. When I come back, I find that I'm at a respawn point and an Ice Elemental is camping me every time I respawn. But here's the kicker - Ice Elementals are level 3, and this guy was level 6, meaning that he was getting XP from killing me and levelling up. When I finally met hammer to his face, I got 96xp from him, and I usually only get 16xp from these guys.
SO, THOSE OF YOU WHO WANT TO EXPERIMENT.
I recommend doing this with ice elementals because they're already level 3 and they appear close to the respawn zone. From Foible's Fair, go piss off the Stone Elementals on your left, and bring them up to the Academy monk. Then, run back down the path to the left to lure the Academy Monk away from the respawn zone (Othewise he'll just kill your Ice Elementals later. You'll have to waste a few stone elementals to get the Monk out of aggro range of the respawner). Now go down the path to the right, piss off an Ice Elemental, and slowly run back to the respawn. Let it kill you, then minimize the game and do something else. Wait a few hours (This time will be far less if you have someone high-ish level that can get killed, because the monster will get more XP for killing someone higher level. To make this completely efficient, get a class without a lot of hitpoints.). Then, kill the elemental and get your XP.
This is only really valuable if you're trying to maximize level in pre-sear - I've only done one quest, and that was to get my skills. After I stop getting XP from monstars, I can do all the quests to finish up my XP.
But theoretically, you could get to level 20 in pre-sear using this trick. Given a year or so.
Who here cares? Show of hands.
Code:
EXPERIMENT 1:
11:45 am - Level 3
12:00 pm - Level 4
12:15 pm - Level 5
12:32 pm - Level 5
1:55 pm - Level 8
2:20 pm - Level 8
2:54 pm - Level 9
3:48 pm - Level 10
Killing it at Level 10 netted me 136 XP (I'm level 8 with this character). Unfortunately, it dropped a collector's item instead of a weapon, so I don't know if levelling monsters improves their drops yet. Interestingly enough, the monster did no more damage at level 10 than 3, although its hitpoints did increase.
*ALSO: This may affect the quality of dropped items, which is exponentially more valuable. (Getting a max damage hammer in pre-sear would be jawsome.)