I completed my first run in a massive 235 hours over summer break clocking in an extra 96k xp. I think I hit level 12 at about 120 hours?
Now I do a lot of fluffing around, I can spend an hour trading and working out 2 kits for each character. Not even minmaxing class levels, just outfitting.
Oh yeah, sometimes I enjoy the vistas or pause for a song and make a cuppa.
I did all the main questlines for initial companions but didn't do much with Jaheira and Minsc. (Zip with Minthara obviously.) Didn't bother with the illithid subsystem, game was already complicated enough.
Sometime after hitting level 12, I realized I didn't care so much about levels than completing stories. The continual accumulation of gear meant the party got more and more optimized.
One thing Larian could do is give us a feat every 30k xp. I'd use it to backfill secondary and tertiary stats to 20.
