Larian Studios Forums Divinity II The Dragon Knight Saga / Flames of Vengeance (English) Help/Tips/Tricks exp imbalance for monsters killed - patch please?

I spent skill points, this time, on 'wisdom', maxing @5 before dragon castle, & 10 thereafter, now, I've only cleared 1 of damian's fortresses, and already, the monsters are down in the 100-300 exp/kill range, and I wonder if I'll make any higher level having maxed wisdom on this play through than before.

It seems you (game designers) have made the wisdom option pointless, since if you use it, then you make all the monsters worth then inverse%, less, on the average, so you still finish at the same
level. That shouldn't be, or is that the point -- to get people to be 'fools' by spending points in wisdom, since all it will do is move them to a point when the monsters' exp values are reduced to that of a level 3 goblin? What's the point? It's not like I can actually move through the dungeon any faster -- since the monsters are just as lethal -- usually by numbers.

As a lower level character, when I played through the fortresses, it was a balance of reward and risk, but now, it's just hard-labor grunt work, the treasures aren't there. The treasures don't scale with the character, or if they do, they max out at about level 10-15. But going through hordes of characters that can still reduce your character to zilch in under a minute, yet NOT getting experience for it is depressing. It really makes me want to just skip to the end and not finish quests or clean out enemies -- but just get it over ASAP, because now, the reward-risk ratio has dropped too much.

Since you have the standard requirement of more exp/level, that's 1 thing, but you've added huge reductions, on the scale of 30:1 (or more) in experience reductions for the same monsters -- and that's abnormal in DND systems. The effect is an extra 1-2 exponential reduction in progress.

When I was level 21 and monsters were level 21-22, I would get 2-3K/monster. Felt rewarding.
now I'm level 32, and the monsters are level ~level 29 -- they seem to have maxed out and I get
20-30x less exp for the level 29 monsters than I got for the level 21-22 monsters. But the difference in difficulty isn't 20-30x easier -- I can't take on 20-30 monsters @ 1 time and expect to live. Max is about 7-12, depending on companion and monster type and those are pushing it (dying about 30% of the time).

Main point - apply the same forumla's to their damage dealt out as you do to their exp dealt out.
It's not like I have 10x hit point (even w/double-triple the armor class) -- but theoretically, the monsters would have equivalent equipment so that's a wash. Basically, your formula for reduction of exp is overly harsh in reductions -- especially, if you meant for 'wisdom' to be a useful skill (since right now, it's "auto-diminished" via lower monster-exp to zilch for a benefit -- and that's just a poor design).

I thought you were going to add some scaling of the monster levels, 'up' to match characters so this wouldn't happen? Is it possible for this to get fixed in a mini patch? Cuz this is just
getting boring to get so little exp and treasure for what is ending up being pretty much the same amount of work (especially the dragon stuff -- since your dragon doesn't gain in HT/mana or any benefits as your characters grows -- that's wrong too -- they should grow together).

It seems like the exp has been adjusted down more severely in the 2nd patch, but maybe it's purely the 'benefit' of spending points in wisdom...

Fixable?
would be appreciated.
thanks,
Astara

The XP you get depends on the level difference, so if you are level 32 and you attack level 29 mobs, you don't get much XP.

So I would dare say "don't you ever put points in Wisdom boy, use items to boost it, will you !"

Really, Wisdom is quite useless.

Don't you dare say Wisdom is useless! Level 15 Wisdom and proud of it! But then, I'm not a boy... so, what do I know?

Wisdom = Extra Levels = Extra Skill Points = More Killing Power

With the following build at L-46, Ygerna lasts 5.79 seconds in Normal:

Like Shaver, I maxed out wisdom beacuse I wanted to maximise my level - but I agree mathematically it doesn't seem worth it.

To make back the skill points you spend on Widsom, you need enough wisdom to gain an extra level for each point spent. With each point only worth 2% XP, you need to achieve 50 levels AFTER spending the point to get that point back. I have never heard of anyone making it over level 50 in total across the game.

Of course extra levels also give you ability points, but there are generally skill points that give you much better bonuses than ability points. For example, destruction increases damage much faster than intelligence, regeneration is better than strength, mana efficiency is better than willpower etc.

I started by keeping Wisdom as high as possible until I got to 5/5, then I gave up as the bonuses weren't up-to-scratch and I was really short on skill points at that stage of the game. It wasn't until I was up to FoV that Wisdon became attractive again - by that point I had maxed out most of the useful skills (so ability points were the only way to improve my effectiveness) and had skill points to burn.

Anyway, have a great Christmas!

I found wisdom useful but boring. I maxed it once, and it made the game easier. As you know not only you get less EXP for lower level mobs, but they also do less damage, up to the point to 0 damage. It was pretty funny, I thought it was a bug at first, but a crowd of mobs in fiords shooting magic, simply wasted their effort - it was 0 damage, 0 damage, 0 damage... Eventually I found it boring to be too high level.

The monsters on the flying fortresses do plenty of damage, -- black guard elite. Still can't take on some of the end-bosses with all their minions which is why I wanted to play through the fortresses to level up the EXP -- but it's not going anywhere with all of the monsters now giving out max 299 HP's. If I make another level or so, I will probably finished out the game killing Bosses like Y'gerna and getting 30 exp. That's just lame/broken.

Note -- I *think* the recent patch changed this behavior and made it 'worse' (IMO), so if you found it easy before, you might try it again.

OTOH, my stats are fairly evenly distributed, so I'm not really a particular class, though I lean most on fighting (abnormal for me, usually magic user of some sort, dominant, as I'm generally lazy (which is why I don't like this Wisdom *bug*!), and I like area-effect weapons. But another thing I don't like in this game is the long cool-down times on spells and absurd mana costs. Really dampens my spell play.

So I'm sticking mostly with magic-missle, and a rush-attack. Also went with regen and reflect on 1st charcter. This one, I tried to make use of necromancer char, but it's worthless, the more you want/need to use magic (like for healing), losing half your mana when it regens so slowly.

As a few others have mentioned, some not so nicely, it seems the game devs are relative RPG-DND novices in designing game balance (though, good in graphics & other areas), but the lack of a well developed game system feels like another re-invention of the wheel -- something I'd associate with a less experienced team.

Maybe it will be grown and future titles will grow based on that, but given the short life span of genre-games, I'm bummed when it's not gotten 'real good' early on. I don't want to wait 7-10 years & hope larian is still around to produce an obvlivian equiv. I wish devs would look at it's fantastic success & following and emulate and build upon. I was VERY sad that bethesda went with a post-nuke world for their follow-on. What a downer!

But here, simple things I miss, like a more open-world, (example would be being able to launch from dragon castle & fly to mainland); For that matter, what's with a dragon being forced to launch out of their 'dragon tower' through ground level? Ouch! how demeaning. IT was possible to allow the dragon form in more places -- Lord Orobos's castle proves that. Can launch from under the cliff surrounded by stuff -- no "I can't take my dragon form here" nonsense. Why that was limited everyplace else.

And a personal gripe (not that it would be something I'd expect addressed, but i'd have loved to tell some of those folks in the fords/training area to address me as Dragon, not Slayer.... agree with the Patriarch's Sentiments of the Slayers -- their attitude overflows with with the ignorance and bigotry of the religion it is -- that the dragons are evil is an article of faith, and no investigation into the facts was ever done in 1000 years nor would it be accepted now! Geez. How stupid can you get? I admit the option to slay all the slayers was perversely satisfying, though unrewarding as it really was -- at least a line to Rhode that she was the last Slayer as the dragons arose again would have been nice (though I, ironically, still wanted reconciliation by my playthrough of Part2(Fov)), but recently hearing her venom when she was carted off to jail in Part1 again rekindled my irritation @ their religion.

(Me, off topic...very sad!....

Please fix the EXP issue. It's lame having played it both ways and making no more progress due to the implementation of an effective 'level-ceiling', to reduce exp as you approach it.

@Astra - totally agree with more open world - it would have been great to fly from your dragon tower to the fords, given that you could clearly see it out there. I noticed the plume of energy coming off the tower looked like the one protecting the city in FoV, so maybe it was also an impenetrable shield? That would be a possible explanation/excuse.

I think the issues of being referred to as a "slayer" was that you were incognito in certain areas of the fords - e.g. the slayer camp would attack you if you revealed the truth. I assumed that this was also the resaon for those permanent anti-dragon shields around the docks and the slayer camp - to prevent you from revealing your identity by transofrming in front of them. Also, the salyer has obvious visual clues (the silver eyes) whereas there's no obvious way to tell you're a dragon, so it's natural for strangers to assume you're a slayer. At least by the time you reach FoV everyone knows you're a dragon.

@Vivaxards - I didn't realise there was an actual combat advantage for higher levels, I thought it was just XP, but it makes sense now I think of it - there were plenty of monsters that couldn't hurt me faster than I could regenerate. So I guess Wisdom is more useful than I thought.

Agree. Bad exp balance. Mind reading one person = minimum 7500 points, kill bad demon (40 lvl, I am 36 lvl) = 4500 points. VERY bad balance.

i mostly agree with what has been said, i found the game much more fun prior to the latest patch, i'm in the mid 30s right now and i'm still using the sword i found when i was lvl 13, i dual weild and have just switched off my offhand throughout the game, what lvl do they expect you to finish the game at? it's kind of ridiculous, but i will say the first 20 hrs of the game were great, i was just hoping it would keep getting better, oh well i noticed steam had it on sale last week for $20, definitely worth it.....i'm still more pumped for 11-11-11

well about the XP for monsters etc

the amount of XP by killing monsters lowers every time you rank so use wisdom to get more XP from monsters doesn't pay you well in fact the reverse is true meaning that if you kill and monster and get 50 XP + 5 from wisdom means 50 -5 so you get 45 instead of 50 and because the XP lowers with every level you gain it will be even lower so. I don't know if they gonna fix that but there are some way's to counter this

1) as the game surgests exploring is GOOD so first kill all monsters.
2) when you kill the monsters you have accumalating alot of quests , now is wise to spend points in wisdom because quests XP are fixed and allways the same amount of XP add wisdom there and you can maxamize your amount of XP