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TOB xp cap

24jel24jel Member Posts: 71
in Archive (General Discussion)
Simple question: has anyone reached it? I feel like I'm nearing the end and I'm at about 5,700,000. Please no spoilers - I'm in the middle of this game.
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  • MrSextonMrSexton Member Posts: 396
    I've played it several time to the end and I reached approx 6,3 million each time (and yes, I finished all the quests and I gathered my party asap and didn't change it). I have no idea how to reach 8 million unless you do a serious bit of farming. On the other hand, BG1 with TotSC and BG2 had XP-caps which both were way to low. Bit of a fail...
  • 24jel24jel Member Posts: 71
    edited September 2013
    In an old interview the developers stated that they effectively removed the xp cap - which seems true then.

    Btw: do the battles scale depending on your xp?
  • Lord_TansheronLord_Tansheron Member Posts: 4,212
    Battles don't scale per se, but there are a few places where you will get different enemies depending on your level. The most prominent one I can recall is Watcher's Keep level 1, where you will not only get different types of enemies in the rooms, but also potentially less "bosses" at the end when the statues activate if your level is very low.
  • 24jel24jel Member Posts: 71
    Thanks, luckily I've been there already. Though if you go to Watcher's Keep at a low level that's probably not the fight you want to be worrying about :P
  • Awong124Awong124 Member Posts: 2,642
    I usually reach 8 million about midway through ToB, playing with a full party most of the game. If you do all the quests it shouldn't be difficult.
  • GallowglassGallowglass Member Posts: 3,356
    Agreed, @Awong124.

    I'm surprised, @MrSexton. Are you [i]sure[/i] you're doing all the quests? If so, then your final total seems surprisingly low to me.
  • JarrakulJarrakul Member Posts: 2,029
    I'm also in the "usually gets a bit above 6 mill" camp. I can't say 100% for sure that I'm doing every last quest, but I'm definitely doing upwards of 90% of them, including all of the major ones, and I would be very surprised if the few I'm missing make up 25% of the total xp in the game. @Awong124, @Gallowglass, are you guys running smaller parties for a portion of the game, or running Watcher's Keep twice, or something like that? Because if not, I am very confused.
  • GallowglassGallowglass Member Posts: 3,356
    No, full party all the way, and Watcher's Keep just the once. (Heck, it hadn't even occurred to me that you could do it twice! ... er, can you actually do that?) But I do every quest available, and usually cap out late in ToB.
  • MERLANCEMERLANCE Member Posts: 421
    Well, don't figure a couple of the optional (mandatory?) slaughters on the way. You gotta kill all the Talos temple people if youre good, you just gotta. And I always make sure to kill all the waves of Cowled Wizards for the loot and xp. If you're lucky, can get your 15,000 gold before leaving the promenade.

    Conversely, some people consider obliterating the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart a mandatory fight too. I worked on a mod to make it a tougher fight waaaay back for those very same insanely murderous people.
  • elminsterelminster Member, Developer Posts: 16,317
    If I don't do watcher's keep my total is normally around 6.5 million I think. At least thats what I recall from the last time I played ToB (which was awhile ago).
  • JarrakulJarrakul Member Posts: 2,029
    @MERLANCE, the thing is, while I usually don't kill anyone who won't go hostile normally, I usually kill basically everyone who will. Very much including he Cowled Wizards. Is the key just slaughtering everyone you can get away with killing? I suppose I can see how that'd make up 12 million xp.

    @Gallowglass, it is very much possible to do Watcher's Keep twice. Once in BG2 proper and once in TOB. I don't know off hand how much extra xp that gives, but it's quite a lot.

    Well, in any case, I am very much confused. Not that it really makes a ton of difference, I manage just fine (although Aerie getting 9th level spells before the last few hours of TOB would be nice), but I'm wondering how I could possibly be coming up almost 2 million xp short per character.
  • OYMEOYME Member Posts: 36
    edited September 2013
    I believe the XP cap is 8 million. If you hit it, then any XP obtained after that is wasted. It won't be divided among your party, it just gets discarded. But unless you did all SoA quests, then killed everything & everyone afterwords, it's doubtful you'll reach it.
    24jel said:

    In an old interview the developers stated that they effectively removed the xp cap - which seems true then.

    Interesting, but what did they mean by "effectively"? Did they mean they would just raise the cap to 1 billion?
  • Awong124Awong124 Member Posts: 2,642
    I don't do any xp exploits and I run with a full party most of the time. But whether or not you run with a full party shouldn't matter that much, because a huge amount of xp comes from Quest xp which gives the same amount to all party members, doesn't matter how many members.
  • 24jel24jel Member Posts: 71
    edited September 2013
    OYME said:


    Interesting, but what did they mean by "effectively"? Did they mean they would just raise the cap to 1 billion?

    Here is the quote:

    Q: What will be the highest level my character can reach?
    A: We have raised the Experience Cap to 8 Million XP, effectively removing it. The average player should reach about 5 million XP and gain approximately 10 levels during the course of Throne of Bhaal. At the cap, a character can reach as high as 40th level depending on his/her class.

    (taken from http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/BG2/tob_faq.php - the wording of the whole faq suggests its actually the official faq of the expansion)

    I gather from all the comments that while having slightly less xp than 6 million, I can still beat Melissan? I'm there now and having some hard times though I only tried it three times now (remember, it's my first playthrough).


  • pixie359pixie359 Member Posts: 251
    @Awong124 I'm sure Quest xp is a pretty small proportion of your total xp. Sure, it's a big single hit, but compared to the value of all the enemies, traps and spells in the dungeon you fought through to get there? And even then, it's only the bit's where you see the names listed that the xp share per character is unaffected by party size.

    If you run a 3 man party, you will level a lot quicker than a 6 man one.
  • pixie359pixie359 Member Posts: 251
    I don't know if this is all correct but this is a table of the xp gained from the Umar Hills http://www.angelfire.com/games2/drak113spage/bg/umar.html

    Only the purple ones are given per character.

    I make it that for Umar Hills you get a total of 440250 xp shared between your characters, and 91000 per character. So a party of five gets about the same in per-character xp as shared quest xp.

    This doesn't include any of the xp for fighting - the shade lord, shadow dragon etc.

    So I probably understated the value of per character xp originally, but it's still clear that easily the majority of your experience will come from shared xp, whether quest or combat.
  • OYMEOYME Member Posts: 36
    In the official game with no mods, it is possible to beat the entire game without leveling up as someone tried that here on the forums and succeeded. So, if your struggling, just ask in the new players forum area for help.
  • 24jel24jel Member Posts: 71
    @OYME: Thanks - thats a relief :P

  • karnor00karnor00 Member Posts: 680
    I normally get around 6m xp from a playthrough with a 6 man party. And that's completing every quest in the game. I think the only way to hit the 8m cap is to farm a lot of respawning encounters
  • GallowglassGallowglass Member Posts: 3,356
    I don't deliberately farm respawns, or at least neither much nor significantly. However, hmmm, thinking back (I've been focusing on BGee rather BG2 lately), I reckon a significant part of the difference may be how you use the Machine of Lum the Mad ... you can (ab)use the Machine to farm unlimited amounts of XP if you have the patience, and I do tend to grab some of that.
  • Lord_TansheronLord_Tansheron Member Posts: 4,212
    I think there's better places than the Machine, if you're really intent on "farming". Saradush, for example, has spots where you can reach infinitely spawning giants; or you could repeatedly rest in areas with high-XP random ambushes (such as Watcher's Keep).

    Keep in mind though that the very high levels in ToB do not add as much of a benefit as you'd think. You mostly gain a little HP and an extra HLA use, but little else. Most progression paths stop in the mid to late 20s; even casters only gain minute amounts of extra spells past 30 (27 to 35 for example only gives a mage 1 extra 8th level spell and 1 extra 9th level). In practice, the difference between lvl30 and lvl40 is quite small, which is also part of why multiclass combinations tend to catch up in power to duals towards the end of the saga.
  • DreadKhanDreadKhan Member Posts: 3,857
    For people silly enough to solo a ftm, the xp cap felt low. Also, don't do this unless you are seriously bored. Soloing bg2 is missing the fun.
  • 24jel24jel Member Posts: 71
    I have Aerie in my party so a level 9 spell for her would be awesome! Actually, I have no pure mages or clerics in my party (Jaheira, Imoen and Aerie). And 3 tanks basically. Maybe a bit too much on the muscle power but so far it has generally been not that hard so I guess it works well enough.
  • JarrakulJarrakul Member Posts: 2,029
    Personally, I like muscle-heavy builds. If I don't have 2-3 front-line fighters, I feel naked. Given that I've beaten BG2 many, many times that way, I can assure you that you haven't screwed yourself over. That said, the TOB endboss is pretty hard by vanilla game standards, so I get why you're having trouble. Lord knows I did the first couple times. Keep at it, keep trying different things, and eventually you'll get it.
  • Lord_TansheronLord_Tansheron Member Posts: 4,212
    There's nothing wrong with beefing up. In fact, it's arguably the optimal way to play as HP is a universal survival stat - especially against the plethora of magic damage thrown at you left and right in BG2/ToB. I regularly make parties that are almost exclusively fighter based; I maintain the opinion that there is no better caster than a Kensai->Mage. HP is a big part of that.
  • RemenissionsRemenissions Member Posts: 102
    I think one of the TOB patches might have removed the xp cap and set level cap to 40 (since classes are different on their required xp to level. I know with my vanilla, bought-day-of-release copy of TOB the xp cap is 9mil.
  • 24jel24jel Member Posts: 71
    @Jarrakul: I have a few hours to spare this afternoon so I'll get it eventually. Funny how with every difficult battle I think, well it can't get that much more tougher and then the game hits me with the next fight :P

    @Remenissions: According to the manual of the game the cap is 8mil, but I don't know about a patch.
  • 24jel24jel Member Posts: 71
    I made it. I thought you couldn't quicksave between phases but luckily you can! The final stage was really easy cause I had saved up literally all my spells :P
  • JarrakulJarrakul Member Posts: 2,029
    Wooo! Congrats. :)

    Yeah, I always found the third stage to be the hardest, partially because of her tactics, and partially because when the fourth stage rolls around you're like "well, time to pull out literally all of the stops."
  • kiaikiai Member Posts: 18
    Jarrakul said:

    @Gallowglass, it is very much possible to do Watcher's Keep twice. Once in BG2 proper and once in TOB. I don't know off hand how much extra xp that gives, but it's quite a lot.

    It's new to me that you could do watcher's Keep twice. Isn't it so that if you do it once in SOA you can't do it in TOB again?
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