I have started making a web based game using PHP, MySQL and of course the known client side scripting languages for setting up the page and receiving content without refreshing the page.
I've come across a situation where i don't know what should be used - retrieving data from MySQL or storing the data from MySQL in php sessions when the user logs in and then proceed using the sessions (saving them on log out).
I have a table in my database for quests where every quest is described by ID, name, energy cost, experience gain, % of mastery etc. And I have another table which has columns for user id, quest id and completion of the quest.
My question is: "What should have better performance - storing the tables in php session variables or connect to the database and alter it's contents every single time the user does a quest?" I ask this because I've heard and read that MySQL should be used as less as possible to achieve a higher performance, but I don't know whether such a great deal of information for every single user who logs in won't slow down the server.
Suggestions and thoughts about probable solutions or ways to optimize the database structure are welcome. I hope that somebody who has had the same problem in the early stages of his/hers web game creation could provide information about the problem as well.
