Larian Banner: Baldur's Gate Patch 9
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Page 1 of 2 1 2
#350435 31/03/08 05:03 PM
Joined: Mar 2008
Smashy Offline OP
member
OP Offline
member
Joined: Mar 2008
I don't think this is a spoiler, if so I apologize. I discovered (on my 3rd time through) that with the right spells and some patience, I can take out monsters quite a few levels above my char (such as creatures in the Dark Forest) for big xp. Of course I realized if I kept doing that, then the creatures closer to my level would soon be worth little or no xp. Still something in the back of my mind thinks it could still be worth it somehow. Could one of the numbers wizzes tell me how this works out? Do you just make big gains fast, but miss out on XP in the long run? Or do you end up getting more xp because you're accessing xp that normally wouldn't be there (getting 10k xp for a creature now vs getting 2-3k xp later on)

smile

Last edited by Smashy; 31/03/08 05:04 PM.
Joined: Mar 2003
Location: Canada
Support
Offline
Support
Joined: Mar 2003
Location: Canada
AFAIK nobody has tried this throughout the game, and then reported their results. However, I think the extra experience from killing strong monsters early is greater than your losses due to leveling faster and getting less experience from weaker monsters.
You get greater experience from quests at higher character levels, so that should also help a bit if you are leveling faster.

I don't think it makes a huge difference, though, either way. It can certainly help at the start of the game (see spoiler below), but by the end I'm not sure you would be significantly ahead.
The game gets easier as it progresses, anyway, so you don't really need to wring out every last experience point you can get.

Without leaving Aleroth, you can use the higher-level-opponent experience bonus to reach level 4 before you enter the catacombs.
Explore / loot around Aleroth and kill any rats, chickens or cows that you want (50 exp on level 1), but you may want to delay completing any quests. At level 1, if you defeat the zombie Jake (the graveyard would be easiest), you will get enough experience points to bring you up to level 3. This requires a lot of hit and run with a bow, or a moderate amount using Meteorstrike. Defeat him a second time (in his cellar) and you get to level 4.


The experience points required to reach a particular level are described in the topic:
Wisdom - is it worth the skill points?

The experience vs character/opponent level difference relationship for Beyond Divinity is described in the topic below. I did not check this for DD, but I'd expect it to be the same.
Act 2 - not getting exp in BF


Welcome to the forum.

Joined: May 2003
Location: Seattle
veteran
Offline
veteran
Joined: May 2003
Location: Seattle
I did that, and then used the spell ressurect to bring them back so that they will continue to give me XP. I think that's the way to get the highest level in the game, and then do all the quests after words.

AFAIK I believe I finished around level 60? Maybe 59.

One of the highest, afaik.



Joined: Mar 2003
Location: Canada
Support
Offline
Support
Joined: Mar 2003
Location: Canada
Unless you did an insane amount of resurrecting, it seems killing high level monsters early has more of an effective than I thought.

I did a moderate amount of resurrecting my first game, and finished at level 53. I played a bit when I first tried it, and then used it to make sure I went up a level before getting a level bonus, to maximize the effect (one bonus is in an area where you can not leave to level up and come back to it).
I explored everywhere, did all quests and put off the level bonuses until late in the game, but did not pay particular attention to either the combat or quest character level dependencies for experience. Without spending a lot of time resurrecting creatures, I can not see finishing higher than the low fifties (most common is in the mid forties to low fifties).

Except for a relatively high number of Experience Bombs (or a glitch with one), a final level of 59 or 60 would seem to be attributable to re-killing high level opponents for the larger experience reward.

Joined: Feb 2008
Location: Indonesia
enthusiast
Offline
enthusiast
Joined: Feb 2008
Location: Indonesia
Originally Posted by LewsTherinKinslayer13
I did that, and then used the spell ressurect to bring them back so that they will continue to give me XP. I think that's the way to get the highest level in the game, and then do all the quests after words.

AFAIK I believe I finished around level 60? Maybe 59.

One of the highest, afaik.


WOW! THAT'S MAD! :o As for me, I never bothered with trying to finish at too high a level, my general goal is to do the council ceremony at level 40, if you do that you end the game at level 50, which I think is more than enough to win the game with little
or no frustration. smile


"Oh Lord, how long will the search go on?"
Joined: Mar 2008
Smashy Offline OP
member
OP Offline
member
Joined: Mar 2008
Thank you Raze, I was kind of hopeing you'd answer this one. I did read your post on Wisdom, and I figured the answer to this question was also a lot of math formulas I barely understood. I guess I'm sort of going for it this round, but I've held back a lot. I am curious now to start a new game and try to continually go for creatures quite a bit above my level.

I have to think, if there are roughly the same total number of monsters available in two different levels (ex. as around 100 total level 15 creatures and around 100 level 35 creatures) and at your char's level, you could go for the lvl 15's at 1500 xp each, or go for the lvl 35's at 8200 each, it's worth going after the 8500 xp ones even if it means losing out on the 1500 ones (850k vs 150k). But I'm sure it's more complex than that. That sounds about right though, better to get more now than less later. Heh now I really want to try it out, get a lvl 10 or so char working on the start of the Dark Forest. It would have to be done very carefully I'd imagine.

I know squeezing every bit isn't needed for the end of the game, this is just something I think about smile I did a little resurrecting at the end of my first time through, and found it really wasn't my thing. Thanks for your reply. If anyone has "done the math" please share. My suspiscion is that while it might give you a significant accelleration in leveling for a lot of the game, it probably levels off and evens out at the end.

Joined: May 2003
Location: Seattle
veteran
Offline
veteran
Joined: May 2003
Location: Seattle
I did an insane amount, lol. I ended with millions of gold, thousands of attributes and health / mana.

That was probably my longest played account.



Joined: Feb 2008
Location: Indonesia
enthusiast
Offline
enthusiast
Joined: Feb 2008
Location: Indonesia
Originally Posted by LewsTherinKinslayer13
I did an insane amount, lol. I ended with millions of gold, thousands of attributes and health / mana.

That was probably my longest played account.


Yeah, you must have spent more time on that one character than I have spent on DD! That means either you were spending 5-17 hours a day (which would have been a tremendous setback to doing anything potentially productive) or it took you months! (my guess would be a little of both grin)


"Oh Lord, how long will the search go on?"
Joined: Mar 2008
Smashy Offline OP
member
OP Offline
member
Joined: Mar 2008
Well I went ahead and did it heh. Took a few hours to get a lvl 10 character into the Dark Forest and ready to go, but that's what I did. At lvl 10, the beetles (lvl 35) are worth around 14,000 xp. Took about five beetles and two toads to go from lvl 10 to 11 heh. I'll have to see where it takes me. Things may not turn out so well once I run into some lizard men.

Joined: Feb 2008
Location: Indonesia
enthusiast
Offline
enthusiast
Joined: Feb 2008
Location: Indonesia
In my first game ever in DD, I was in the dark forest at level 16, never used the resurrection trick and ended the game at level 48 (in an earlier post I said I was level 49, my mistake. grin). In my second game, I cleaned out Rivertown (with the exception of the
elite orcs) and then went to the Dark Forest. No resurrection trick, and ended the game at level 50. So here's a comparison based on personal experience for you, I hope you find it helpful. wink


"Oh Lord, how long will the search go on?"
Joined: Mar 2008
Smashy Offline OP
member
OP Offline
member
Joined: Mar 2008
Hmm that's interesting, that would almost suggest that it hurts you in the long run to go for that big xp early. I guess with two levels difference there may be other factors involved, then again maybe not. That was helpful, thank you.

Joined: Mar 2003
Location: Canada
Support
Offline
Support
Joined: Mar 2003
Location: Canada
Quote
if there are roughly the same total number of monsters available in two different levels

You reasoning is sound, since (for example) you get twice the experience for opponents 6 levels above you. The problem is that there are more low level creatures than high level ones, so it is harder to judge if a few big bonuses killing strong opponents first make up for a lot of small experience drops killing weak opponents later.

Since Lews confirmed an 'insane' amount of resurrecting, I'm back to thinking that this will give you an early boost, but by the end of the game it will probably work out even (or perhaps leave you slightly ahead).
Even if Twoheadedragon's 2 level difference was just due to the order opponents were killed (ie no significant differences in quests done, or things being done more efficiently the second time around), if you are used to defeating much higher level opponents, a couple less levels in the wastelands is relatively insignificant.


In order to 'do the math' on this one, you would need a list of all the opponent types in the game, with their numbers, level and base experience values. The type, number and level info could probably be pulled from the data.000 file of a new game, but I'm not sure if the experience points are stored there as well.
Neglecting quests, you could then calculate what the effect would be of defeating the strongest opponents first, clearing particular areas first, etc.

Of course, when I say 'you' above, what I mean is 'not me'. laugh
I am a little curious about this now, but don't see having the time for it.

Joined: Feb 2008
Location: Indonesia
enthusiast
Offline
enthusiast
Joined: Feb 2008
Location: Indonesia
Originally Posted by Raze

In order to 'do the math' on this one, you would need a list of all the opponent types in the game, with their numbers, level and base experience values. The type, number and level info could probably be pulled from the data.000 file of a new game, but I'm not sure if the experience points are stored there as well.
Neglecting quests, you could then calculate what the effect would be of defeating the strongest opponents first, clearing particular areas first, etc.

Of course, when I say 'you' above, what I mean is 'not me'. laugh
I am a little curious about this now, but don't see having the time for it.


Best of luck to anyone who wants to attempt this! grin In the
meantime, (let's see, X x 1,400 + Y x 14,000...) :tired:


"Oh Lord, how long will the search go on?"
Joined: Mar 2008
Smashy Offline OP
member
OP Offline
member
Joined: Mar 2008
Originally Posted by Raze
[quote](snip) Of course, when I say 'you' above, what I mean is 'not me'. laugh
I am a little curious about this now, but don't see having the time for it.


Thanks again Raze. Yeah I'm starting to think this was not such a good idea (though I'm still not sure). The number of Dragon types and Insanes etc (lvl 30s to low 40's) seems relatively low compared to seeming tons of various lvl 12 to low teen boars, snakes, bees, etc. And then once you've cleared out most or all of the higher level creatures, where do you go from there? Then there seems little point in going after things that give you 2000 xp when killing 20 of them barely registers a sliver of green on the xp bar. Or maybe it's no big loss seeing as I did pump up to lvl 28 in (relatively) short order. Hmm well I'll keep going heh.

Joined: Mar 2003
Location: Canada
Support
Offline
Support
Joined: Mar 2003
Location: Canada
Leveling starts to slow down when you get into high twenties for character level, anyway, due to the experience requirements being proportional to the cube of the level. Part of the slowness could just be due to paying careful attention to your experience level (that whole 'watched pot' thing).

Joined: Mar 2008
Smashy Offline OP
member
OP Offline
member
Joined: Mar 2008
Good point. It's probably knowing that I've already burned through all the higher "common" monsters, and all thats left are things around my level and below. I'm fairly certain that by the time I reached the point of taking out most of the Dark Forest creatures my first two times through, I was at or near the 40's, as it stands I'm 39 and I kinda doubt killing common monsters will get me much further than that. Probably time to either complete some quests or just go for the gong and try to get into wastelands at around lvl 30. I probably should get my reputation above 12 heh.

I really am starting to think there's something to be said about sticking to creatures around your level and not too far above, (maybe 10 lvls) just working your way up, even though it seems like you're missing out that way. I imagine the distribution of the creatures is much like a bell curve, very few lvl 1's through 15's, very few 35's to 50's, but a whole mess in the 15-35 range. Now I wish I knew how to find out heh. Anyway, I'll let you know what happens.

Joined: Mar 2008
Smashy Offline OP
member
OP Offline
member
Joined: Mar 2008
Well I wanted to start Stormfist, but wanted to clear up a few quests first...ended up going from lvl 29 to 30 almost purely on quest solving. So that was pretty satisfying. I'm considering skipping the two level boosts so I can ring the gong at a lower level, but that just seems wasteful. Hmmm.

Joined: Mar 2008
Smashy Offline OP
member
OP Offline
member
Joined: Mar 2008
Hmm well duh, I just thought of something. It might be tedious, but I could just look at my previous character's trophies section and write the numbers down, that should give me some general idea of how many creatures there are at various levels. I'm sure it leaves some out (like bosses) but that should be ok.

Joined: Feb 2008
Location: Indonesia
enthusiast
Offline
enthusiast
Joined: Feb 2008
Location: Indonesia
Have fun! wink (lets see, X amount level 1 rabbits, 1 level 51 Ranger Captain...) wink


"Oh Lord, how long will the search go on?"
Joined: Mar 2008
Smashy Offline OP
member
OP Offline
member
Joined: Mar 2008
Yeah, exactly smile I scrolled up and down it today, that is a looong list. I could maybe skip the names and just write the raw numbers. I bet a lot of levels are skipped and a lot are repeated. It would work better if I could run DD in windowed mode. I wonder where the "trophy" info is kept, and if it can be extracted somehow. Though it still doesn't really answer the question of what the real net effect is of going one way or the other. I know it's dumb, but this is the kind of thing I wonder about as I'm playing DD heh.

Page 1 of 2 1 2

Moderated by  Larian_QA, Lar_q, Lynn, Macbeth 

Link Copied to Clipboard
Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5