Still the whole area of Arx is like that. Running around to scrap XP. I haven't had this feeling before this part.
And it is very annoying, because honestly, I had to reload a save just to induce a fight with the doctor (basically, not talk to him, but just straight shoot at him) to be level 20.
I have now no more quest except the final boss, and I don't feel like I rushed things, I went to every detour to do all the quest (did all of the nameless isle), still I barely made it to the end. Missing a chunk is ok, but again the chunk we're talking about is hundreds of thousands of XP... I don't see how you can do without...
So yeah, Arx was not a fun moment for me.