Funcom has announced their new Age of Conan offline leveling mechanic, introduced in the 1.07.2 patch that hit the live servers today. Senior Community Manager Oliver 'Tarib' Kunz details the system in a post on the game's official forums.

The new feature kicks off by giving each active account four levels which can distributed to any characters above level 30. Every four days, an additional level will be added to your offline leveling pool, again enabling you to bump up one of your post-30 avatars. The levels accrue regardless of whether you actually log into Age of Conan every four days provided you maintain an active subscription.

if you've got a gaggle of level 80 characters sitting on your select screen, the additional levels will be waiting for any new character that you create and advance to 30 or higher. Finally, Tarib notes that levels are permanent once assigned, so choose wisely. "Customer Support would not be able to take that level away from your character and add it back to your pool. So please be careful when assigning these levels," he says.