Experience and Difficulty Settings

derfasciti

Hey guys!

New to the forums, frequent lurker though! I am a returning BG 1 player; I got the Enhanced Edition off of Steam a couple days ago and am loving it. Of course, it was difficult for me years ago and it is now (albeit somewhat less so). Nonetheless, as I remember, I often played the game on the lowest difficulty in order to survive but when I hit close to the end of the game I could not finish the final areas because I was too weak. I vaguely remember "figuring out" that if you play on easy, you get less exp. I have since read that on a couple of other web sources. However, on other web sources concerning difficulty settings they do not make mention of a lowered exp reward for a lowered difficulty setting.

Running a small test just now I found I got 65 party exp running on either Novice or Normal settings from killing skeletons.

Still, I really would like some confirmation. Does it or does it not matter what difficulty setting you are on in regards to your party exp rewards? Should I continue to play on normal no matter what or will it be ok if I dip down to Novice during particularly hard fights and receive no penalty?

Thanks for any feedback!

Edit: In addition, does the difficulty setting affect exp from quest completions or any other thing other than monster difficulty?

Wisp

65 XP is the amount you should get from most skeletons.
I'm fairly sure difficulty does not affect XP (unlike in certain crappier games), but I always play on Core so I'm a bit light on personal experience on the subject.

FinneousPJ

No, I don't think it should affect XP.

elminster

Difficulty does not impact XP earned from killing monsters or completing quests.

bbear

I vaguely remember that in the original unpatch SoA, when you lower the difficulty, you get less exp. Is this true?

DJKajuru

Since BG/BG2 are games where you can try countless tactics , I don't think that getting more powerful faster would make a higher difficulty worth it.

It happens in IWD because your available weapons and spells are fewer .

elminster

bbear said:

I vaguely remember that in the original unpatch SoA, when you lower the difficulty, you get less exp. Is this true?

That might have been one of those things that it says on the difficulty slider but that wasn't actually implemented. Kind of like how in BG1 the difficulty slider does nothing. I know it certainly said that you get less experience in BG1 if you go to the left on the slider and that was a load of bologna.

lunar

In bg1 if you kill a neutral creature before it turns hostile, via a surprise sttack, you get only %10 of the xp award. Nothing like this in bg2 rules which bg:ee uses, difficulty slider does not affect xp gain, it affects the damage you take from any source and the dice rolls made by you and enemies though,

Drayen

Difficulty doesn't affect xp neither should it, part of the challenge of the game is to beat fights with your limited character experience

DreadKhan

Iwd had HoF mode, which boosted Xp and difficulty. Wasn't aware that it lowered Xp. Iwd difficulty was important, since replays had basically identical stories. Bg has the same plot each play through, small variances aside, but has lots of story differences. Iwd could be considered an interactive novel. But it had lots of cool battles, and was aesthetically gorgeous.

elminster

elminster said:

bbear said:

I vaguely remember that in the original unpatch SoA, when you lower the difficulty, you get less exp. Is this true?

That might have been one of those things that it says on the difficulty slider but that wasn't actually implemented. Kind of like how in BG1 the difficulty slider does nothing. I know it certainly said that you get less experience in BG1 if you go to the left on the slider and that was a load of bologna.

Hmm...apparently I'm wrong. Just tested it in BG1 Totsc and you do indeed get 50% of the xp if you go to the easiest setting. That said you were talking about SoA, which I am certain never had that.

SionIV

Core has a couple of new things added to it. But Core -> Insane is purely based on health and damage of the enemy. It's the reason that for difficult enhancing mods we use SCS which improves the AI.