Shattered Kingdoms

That's something I've been told as well.

Dulrik's point is that in SK, you get experience for damage, and not for kills. His position is that aiming upper, while it might allow you to kill 10% more NPCs, will not actually mean that you do more -damage-: You're just focusing the damage that you do on vital areas, as opposed to arms, for example. In fact, if his position were true, then it's very possible that on account of aiming upper, your decreased accuracy and resultant lowered damage would mean that you got -less- experience both per NPC and over time.

I've always aimed upper myself: More gawlds.

Now I start thinking that stunning NPCs might give more xp hmm

You kill NPCs faster with aim upper. It's noticeable. XP NPCs don't dodge/parry/block with AC the same way that players do, so aim mid is not useful for them.

Killing 10% more NPCs does mean that you do more damage. It means you do 10% more damage. It isn't that complex.

I believe I know what he is saying. Truly hypothetical here. Lets say you get the same xp for killing 10 of the same NPC (aim upper) that would normally only take killing 8 if aimed mid. He is saying that there will be a time where you will have to wait for respawning at some point in time, so to maximize your xp, you always want to be fighting because the waiting for NPCs to respawn time + 10 kills (aim upper) takes longer than killing of 8 kills (aim mid).

If that is the case, it totally depends on the number of NPCs available to kill and how quickly they respawn.

[edit] Gilgon you do know that attacking a NPC in mode aim upper, the NPC has less hp's than if you attacked in aim mid.

Yeah I understand that I was wrong here, so it seems. There is benefit to be made from aiming upper, but it isn't in overall xp. It's in improves, gold, overall safety, etc. It isn't in xp.

Taking the arms off with aim mid would stop the exp you get from that NPC. I always used aim upper for that reason.

I was only partially correct. I maintain that aiming upper is not the most efficient for gaining XP, but it does matter. You should aim lower, just to make sure you don't cut off their arms prematurely. You might even start by aiming lower and then aim upper after you cut off a leg.

If you want to optimize for treasure, that's completely different.

PS. Yeah, stunning would also work, but leaving a bunch of half-dead NPCs around behind you might make it more confusing to gain XP on subsequent passes.

Killing after the stun of course

Eh, that's a lot of micro for each individual NPC. Aim upper ftw.