Hey fisty,
Yeah soz i didnt explain the research to you in game. Noobas as usual is spot on. I'll just add a few points to help you out.
When you kill a mob and you get say 100,000 XP, now you can chose to put some of that into research. So 10% slider will put 10,000 into research and the other 90,000 goes towards your level. If you exceede the research cap (as explained below) the rest trickles into your normal XP going towards the level. Each new research level is level locked too.
Now for the tricky part.
The total amount of research you can get at any one time is Capped. So that you cant just whack a zillion XP into it at level one and complete it. The cap is 5% of the total XP needed to complete that line.
http://www.ao-universe.com/main.php?sit ... k=4&id=267 as outlined there. Dont worry about Global research as all our 220 buddies already completed them for us
The strategies vary as to when to do research and when not to. You can, as noobas said, put 10% into research at all time. Its a good idea and ensures that you will keep research ticking over. Some people put 100% when they will "cap" their research anyway. So if you are killin hecks you can put it on 100% for level 1&2 because you will definitely cap the level, you will hardly notice the loss in normal XP gains.
Some people look ahead at what extra stats they may get eg. smg so they push for that level then just lay back to 10% for other non-essential buffs.
The other thing is that normal XP gains are capped too so you can only get 10% of a level at any one time (minus SL mission rewards). In this case the extra XP that would be wasted can go into reseach. So if you are killing a reeeeeeaalllly red mob you might up research a bit to avoid wasting XP. Not really something that happens much these days though.
In general research is not OMGZ essential. If the research buffs an essential skill like SMG its handy to do because it means you can get on an extra few QLs of weap. But until about lvl 7+ most research lines are just handy. Dont spend 2 days trying to do 3 lines of research for that +10 SMG if you could just level twice and raise it with IP. If you are going to stop at a certain level and twink for PvP or dungeons then its a different story. You should also look to research when you are breed capped (ie cannot raise a skill anymore), or title capped (will happen at about lvl 130) and the extra stats from research can help alot, which is generally what noobas means by "evening out breeds". So an Opifex can benefit from extra stam/str to use higher QL items that req str/stam, where an atrox would not have had a problem.
At lvl 200 put research on 100% otherwise you WILL be grinding inf mishes to finish your last few research levels and it won't be pretty
Good luck Fisty and remember its not absolutely essential you have research done up to the max level, so dont be too worried if you fall behind with it a bit. When you get to Ado hecks you can easily make it up.
