Grinding (Concept)

Grinding

CONCEPT

Constantly performing an in-game action to progress a certain attribute.

Overview

Grinding is an activity normally found in RPGs, especially MMORPGs. In general it involves doing a tedious task repetitively for some benefit. Benefits of grinding can include (but are not limited) to:

Experience (XP) gathering to level up for improved character stats
Collecting a particular type of item available only by looting a certain type of monster
Collecting gold or in-game currency to buy items. In some advanced grinding-based games in-game currency can be exchanged for real money with an intermediary like eBay. The legal parameters of this kind of practice varies in every country where in some cases it is allowed or is even regulated via taxation and in other cases it has been used to commit fraud.

A typical session of grinding usually proceeds as follows:

Character proceeds to an area that have a (preferably) high number of monsters
Initiate an attack upon visual confirmation or get attacked by monsters in arandom encounter
Proceed to engage and kill monsters
Loot corpses for items
Repeat step 1 or to wait or leave the area momentarily to allow monsters to respawn and come back to repeat step 2

Grinding is highly valued in RPGs as it can extend play time into the hundreds of hours expected of an RPG.

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