Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta very weird exp system

This game has a very weird exp. system. The best example is the 1st battle with young orcs, where you have 3 friendly legionaires. The 1st thing that is strange is that you get exp for killing the legionaires. The reason why I tried to kill those guys in the first place is that if they finish off the orcs, you don't get experience, even if you did all the damage, if they get 1 lasthit on the orcs, you don't get the exp. You also don't get exp if you cast a spell and the orc dies from burning dmg after, or dies from explosive barrels etc. etc. Usually i keep on reloading those fights until I got maximum exp from it, which feels very weird. It would be nice if you didn't get experience from killing monsters, but just get (a load of) experience from won battles.

The same problem is, sometimes monsters seems not to give exp if an own ice or firedaemon killed them. So you never get Points, if you only kill with daemons?

Maybe only the screen didn't shown the points. I had to look in the stats next time. I never reload a fight, because I don't like figthing, so I can't see, if the exp change.

Yep, if it's not shown you don't get exp!

They can do 2 things, if someone or something dies (within enough range so this never bugs out) you should get exp. OR don't reward exp for killing, but just for winning battles.

You recieve experience from killing things. Killing legionnaires grants experience just as much as any other creature of the same level. Supposedly, though, you should get reputation penalties from killing them, which is already in game but doesn't seem to apply correctly. You should eventually be able to get a lot of experience from killing town guards and sentinels but at the expense of your reputation.

Also, you do not get experience if the monsters are killed by soldiers or creatures that are not part of the group, which is not that weird actually. Besides, when you fight the first group of orcs, the legionnaires are doing more work to push them back than we are. Not recieving exp. from kills performed by summoned creature will probably fixed later on.

Not getting experience from DoT caused deaths should be fixed at some point or another. Bear in mind, this is still a work in progress and as stated many times, it is still subject to change. What that means is there is little chance we will see major core mechanics changes, but a lot of adjustments, tweaks, balancing, feature implementation, and bug fixes.

Reloading every fight to get the maximum experience from them is a choice you make. It is an understandable approach of the game but it is yours. My co-op partner and I never reloaded a fight we didn't get full experience for, and never felt cheated on our character progression. It is a bit strange to blame the game for our own choices.

Some years back, when Half Life came out, I watched a friend play it through. He would save before every fight, and reload if he thought he had spent too much bullets on the fight. That was his way of playing Half Life. He ended up fighting the last boss with every weapon loaded to the max. He didn't need to use half of it though. I'm not sure it made Half Life's combat system wierd. Getting the most of everything was just his way of enjoying the game.

Yeah, guess I'm just like that halflife player in a sense, I don't play shooter games though, I play also PvP games where losing on a bit exp and gold means losing the game. For single player experience i'm too used to piranha bytes games, where you seriously need every bit of experience, otherwise there will be a point later in the game where you just can't beat past. Also the first time I played I just met lvl 4-5-6 monsters everywhere I went, while still being lvl 1 because I missed all the exp from the fights. (sidenote: I'm always unlucky as fuck, when I don't force luck upon me.) That's why I was thinking it would be a similar experience. I might still have won those battles if I grouped up with the 2 lvl 3 partymembers in town, but that would be a bit painful experience. Btw I really didn't need the help of the legionnaire's to push the orcs back. I can just kite with my wizard's flare. I was heavily fighting the legionaire's in this battle and killed 1 in the end. Those legionaire's where also way to strong compared to the orcs, which is also not cool in that fight. Btw I gave my wizard the pyromaniac skill, for me there are quite a lot of monsters dying from burning dmg. So if I know the fight is easy enough I just don't use offensive spells.

To cut things short, it's just annoying to miss out on experience where you should've gotten it.

Think thats a kind of bug:
the system checks if the killer of an enemy belongs to your group and legionaires and fires arent.
thats the problem with xp-to-killer(and his group)- system.

I would like a bit more complex system.
like (thoughts):

a fight against:
1 orc (100hp) - max 200xp
1 mage (60hp) - max 250xp

all winners get 50% of xp by winning.
rest is divided by:
- damage done to enemy unit (50% of the second 50%)
- support spells/screams etc. (50% of the second 50%)

fight procedure:

• Scarlett buffs Rodrick
• Rodrick attacks orc with melee - 30 dmg
• Scarlett attacks mage with fireball - 25dmg
• Rodrick attacks orc with melee - 30 dmg
• Scarlett heals Rodrick - heals (20 hp)
• Rodrick knockdown orc
• Scarlett attacks mage with melee - 10 dmg
• Rodrick attacks orc with melee- 35 dmg
• Scarlett attacks orc with icebolt - 25 dmg -> mage dead
• Rodrick attaks mage with melee - 20 dmg -> orc dead

Rodrick -> orc:
did
30+25+35 = 90 dmg
1x using knockdown

Scarlett -> orc
buffs Rodrick
heals Rodrick - (20hp)
25 dmg (only 10 counts (Rodrick did 90 dmg - hitpoints of orc are 100hp)

calculating:

orc:
200xp -> 50% ground bonus for all -> 100xp left.

Rodrick:
damage xp: 90dmg -> 90% (90dmg on 100hp) of 50xp = 45 xp
support:1 knockdown
support xp: 1/3 (knockdown / 2 scralett support) -> 1/3 of 50xp = 16.7xp

Scralett:
damge xp: 10dmg(10hp left(did 25dmg)) 10% of 50xp = 5xp
support: buffing rodrick, healing rodrick.
support xp: 2/3 -> 2/3 of 50xp = 33.3xp

SUM:
Rodrick gets :100+45+16.7 = 161.7xp
Scarlett gets: 100+10+33.3 = 143.3xp


xp for mage:
250xp -> 125 xp for grund xp and 125 for support and damage xp

Rodrick->mage
did
20 dmg
damage xp: (20dmg/60hp = 1/3) = 1/3*62.5 = 20.8xp
support xp: 0

Scralett->mage
did
30+10=40 dmg
damage xp: (40dmg/60hp = 2/3) = 2/3*62.5 = 41.7xp
attacks with fireball - 30dmg
attacks with melee - 10dmg
support xp: 0

SUM:
Rodrick:
125+20.8 = 145.8xp

Scarlett:
125+41.7 = 166.7


TOTAL battle xp:
Rodrick:161.7 + 145.8 = 307.5xp of max 450xp
Scarlett:143.3 + 166.7 = 310xp of max 450xp



Sorry its becames a bit complected

Nah, it's nice when everyone is the same level, when I found the 2nd mercinary I also saw he adopted the same exp as I had. (I was lvl 3 + some exp) I reaaaaally like that!!! I don't like to have 1 lvl 15 overpowered hero and 1 lvl 3 useless one. I know this is a bit exagerated, but for example cleric's are for healing and supporting the party and not doing dmg in particular. It's best to just gain exp after won battles. The second option is that if an enemy dies in range: get exp.

I also think that it would be nice if you get some xp if a friendly NPC kills someone in a fight you are in. But this should be if you also did some damage to that enemy, so perhaps a percentage xp according to how much damage you made before the kill?

Nah, that would be stupid, because damage dealing is not always the only help, let's say you cc'd the enemy or gave buffs to allies.

correct. that i tried to fix in my ideas with splitting xp into parts:
50% for all winner
25% for damage done
25% for support (healing, buffs etc.)

Some kind of system for getting some xp would be nice, but not critical.
It's just irritating some times when you almost kill one of the orcs in the first fight, and then one of the legionaries makes the killing blow

I agree that this is an issue. It's not a bug, unless Larian intended it to work in a different way, but a design choice I believe needs to be re-evaluated.

My reasons are:

1. It encourages meta-gaming and spoils immersion (i.e. playing to beat the rules, instead of just playing).

2. It's unfair. You can do 90% of the damage on a target, but if something kill-steals it you get nothing.

3. It can put people off the game. I've completed the Orc fight while getting zero XP a couple of times now, it's disheartening and discouraging. All that effort for no reward.

4. It can unbalance the classes and class combinations. Two PCs with high attack speed will be better suited to getting the last shot in (e.g. kill stealing from NPCs or Summons).

5. It can discourage the use of summons. Summons' kills also don't give XP, so why bother summoning them, or using their abilities.

6. How does this equate to gaining experience? I fall a sleep under a tree then wake as the target is 99% dead from the NPCs whacking it for the last hour, then quickly shoot my weakest arrow/spell at it and get all the XP. Why do I get most of the experience when I spent the entire fight (except for that one shot) asleep under a tree?

Ok... enough I think you'll agree that I think it needs review.

Thanks Xzanron,

You can put it in words way better then me.

btw I found a some more, if a boar is poisoned, you'll also get no exp from it, even if you kill it with a blow. If enemies explode themselves you get no exp. Btw the exp I miss from afterburn effects become so annoying that it's just not comminent to play as fire wizard when reaching higher level spells. Btw the knight with 2h weapon and phoenix strike is insanely powerful (my henchman can strike 3x with >50 dmg/strike, 100 when crit), you actually need high single target burst not to miss exp, the knight fits best.

The last hit XP system is just not a good one. I think ideally your party gets experience equal to the percentage of damage done to the creature. So if you're party takes off 60% of the Orc's HP you split 60% of its EXP value.

Alternatively you could split it so that it's evenly distributed among all members on your side of the fight. However, that seems potentially exploitable (drag enemies to guards, make them do work for you).

It's not a problem that's cropped up a lot for me, but I can imagine if you wanted to run a dual summoner army style game that it could get annoying.

I don't see why NPCs should be allowed to kill steal, or why kill stealing takes exp away from you.

How many scenarios are there when you can sit by and let NPCs farm while you leech their exp? As opposed to scenarios in which NPCs/Summons KS and take your exp?

I can't remember where Swen said it, but I'm sure he said that this is going to be fixed.