Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks Kill Everyone?

ok first let me say that i love this game. what a long time to wait for it but well worth the wait. second, thanks for anyone willing to share thoughts I appreciate in advance your time.

Here is my problem, i crave XP. I want to constantly level my party so that i can handle the upcoming battles as they get harder and harder. But the game sort of feels like I am constantly being asked to "pick a side" in a battle. If I pick side A, I fight side B and vice versa. This means which one I choose affects how much XP i can farm. Due to this, I find myself choosing branches of the story that get me in fights with everyone. I did that to a fault at one point around moonrise I had nowhere to use a vendor until finally getting to the BG city proper. It also seems like I may be limiting my later storyline branches by killing too many things off earlier in the hunt for leveling.

Maybe I'm looking at it wrong and it shoudlnt be about XP and leveling and more about playing out the build/story, idk.

You already glimpse the truth. The next step is to embrace it.

You don't always have to flat fight every encounter either - even if you don't avoid it by clever talking, ambush etc, you can still use the terrain and features to your advantage: oil barrels, elevation, etc which means you don't necessarily need as much XP as you might think.

Killing earns you XP, but you also don't want to kill potential quest givers. Talk to them first, see if they need things done. Do their things first, earn XP from them, THEN you choose to kill them or not. The goblin camp is a good example. If you sneak into the temple undetected, you'll find NPCs inside that have side activities. But if you turn everyone hostile, you don't get to talk to them to get the side stuff. I did all their stuff first, then ended up killing everybody there. Crèche Y'llek later in the game is the same way. Talk first, shoot later, unless they are outright hostile. When you see NPCs, hover your mouse over them; if you see the dialog or pickpocket icon, they are not hostile. If you see only the combat icon, they are outright hostile and can't be talked to, and likely have no quest to give you. You need to talk to animals too, because sometimes they have quests, or activities that give XP. Dead people may have quests, but not as likely. You can only ask a dead person 5 questions and they only give monosyllabic answers, so it is unlikely to get meaningful quests from them. Exploration gives XP too. When you go to a newly discovered area, you may or may not get XP (check your combat log). Sometimes you get a lot, like 95 XP. Your companions' inspirations also give XP to that companion, which is about 100 XP, not too bad. I'm in the middle of Act 2, and every companion has had about 5-10 inspirations. That's thousands of XP right there. Inspirations often come from seemingly random stuff, so you need to explore and do all kinds of stuff -- but often that's just playing the game as you normally do.

The main quests give lots of XP and sometimes they are the main difference maker. I saw someone who played in a very different style and pace than I did, and she and I leveled up at the exact moment to the same level -- when we killed Nere in Grymforge.

Can also press the key to the left of the 1(its different on my keyboard and I forget what's on it on an English keyboard) to highlight characters. Yellow outline is neutral, green friendly, blue your party, red hostile.

Good question, colleague. Why do they not give experience for breaking locks, for a successful hidden theft of something? Why don't they give you experience for solving some issue peacefully?
I imagine it like this. There is a group of warrior, barbarian and warlock, meets a group of goblins. Kill goblins, get 500 experience points. There is a group of a priest, a necromancer and a bard, sees the corpses of goblins. The necromancer raises the corpses, the priest blesses them, the bard inspires... As a result, the goblins are alive again. The second group gets 1500 experience points - they have done a much more difficult job.
If you are a warrior, then you gain experience for battles. If you are a thief, you get experience for opening locks and pickpocketing. If you are a druid, then you get experience when you drink birch sap. If you're a barbarian, then you just have the experience in advance, because you're scary. If you are a bard, then you get experience for attracting attention in the city square.

Until and unless they fix this, you can get XP for completing an encounter via dialogue, quick save and reload, then kill everyone who was in the dialogue and get XP again. Note that the save/reload is required or you won't get XP for the kills.

It used to be you could KO them for XP, reload, and kill them for a third round of XP, but that was fixed in today's patch. Saving and reloading with KO'd opponents and killing them apparently no longer awards XP again.

But as Gaming Phreak says, if you want max XP, go around and talk to everyone first and do all of their quests. THEN kill them.

Note you'll get to max level LONG before the end-game if you do this. At which point the desire to kill literally everyone may fade. Mobs are only worth as much as their loot at that point, and you may have already have so much loot as to make the killing just not worth it anymore. :P (This is what happened to my husband and I.)

thanks kya (and thanks others too) as you make a point i had not considered, i assumed the later battles would be too hard if i had not max-XP'd the whole time. If I max level prior to the end of the game then maybe the XP grind is not as important as I thought. I do enjoy being slightly ahead (equal or a level above typical foes) because it makes for more fun in the battles for me. you are also right that loot in my 1st play through was so plentiful that i stopped picking up every single thing after awhile, in my 2nd party i have been less focused on loot/gold. such a fun game and i appreciate everyone's response to my question to help me get the most out of my gaming experience. thanks all!

In my experience, if you explore the environment and do not skip side quests, you will be ahead of your challengers without unnecessary killing. In acts 2 and 3, fights can easily become too easy on Tactician level, if you are serious about adventuring and if you mind what you are doing. Even as a pacifist.

Full agreement.
Exploring the environment and talking to everyone will give you more than enough exp (and money), even if you avoid combat when you can.

I strongly advise to stay peaceful if you enter a new area, even if you want to attack this area later.
- There are quests and shops to be found there.
- You can make your later attack easier. Often you can kill NPC (when they are away from others) without turning the area hostile. Just hide their corpses so other NPC do not accuse you of murder.

You are almost there ;-) Lots of people are complaining, that they had to play a 100 hours with a fully maxed out character because of the low level cap. Relax, all your power fantasies will come true without going murder hobo.

thanks for all the feedback, i didnt realize lvl12 as max and im already lvl11 and in the lower city so i assume nearing the end of the game.