Flesh Golem XP exploit

KeithS

Flesh golems will frequently spawn in Black Alaric's Cave, allowing players to progress in level more quickly than originally intended.

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Changed Rest Spawn to Carrion Crawler in AR3601

(Originally found and fixed in DudlyFix)

Balquo

Works. Carrion Crawlers spawned when resting.

Bhryaen

Are we sure they won't just XP farm the carrion crawlers though? Flesh golems may be 2000XP, but carrion crawlers are 420... i.e., about 1/5. I suppose it's an improvement...

HeroicSpur

@Bhryaen: If people are going to Xp farm, they're going to find somewhere and somehow to do it. I think the problem with the flesh golem ca...I mean Black Alaric's Cave, is/was that it's far too enticing in the XP reward. You rest and you basically get 4000xp (normally two pop up).

Bhryaen

@HeroicSpur
Yes, and carrion crawlers are a lot faster and a lot nastier, not to mention only 21% of the XP. It is preferable after all... so I'm not opposed... I was going to suggest no rest spawns, but I think I'll just step out of the way of this particular progress...

Cadros

Anhkegs it is then

kangaxx

I remember my friend who wasted his holidays by playing the game multiple times with his char only to get all the stat point books. I laughed so hard at him and said it was cheating ^^ lol, good old times.

Edit: He became a master in avoiding the sirens and flesh golems...

AceofWands

Don't wyverns respawn in their cave too? I seem to remember them doing so ( 1400 XP?) plus you can sell their heads so this is a sort of double exploit.

Tanthalas

Well, wyverns are probably a bigger menace than the Flesh Golems, so its not that bad. You can get wyverns to spawn easily by fast travelling the Cloakwood areas and getting ambushed anyway.

DougPiranha

But IIRC, in wyvern cave you can position your party so that critters can't reach you, and pelt them with ranged weapons without any risk to your party.

Winthal

The reason why flesh golems are so easy to farm is you only need 1-2 archers in your party equipped with arrows of biting, a single shot neutralizes and often kills a golem within a few seconds and you can easily do this at early levels since their AC does not seem to be very high. The flesh golem cave is especially inviting because you get arrows of biting from all the sirens on the way there... wyverns on the other hand would easily kill a low level group, and is probably immune to the poison from arrows of biting.

Medillen

Like @Winthal said, I did several times solo sirens+blood golem until level 4-5. Even siren are pretty easy to kill with ranged weapons, as long as you don't aggro two of them. Wyverns, on the other hand, are much more harder to solo (and so are carrion crawler, if they hold you you are dead meat at low levels).

AceofWands

Depends on your party composition I suppose. I never had any trouble killing the wyverns. You can make a lot of money in that cave in a short space of time. A single arrow of biting will not kill a flesh golem either - 2 if you are lucky and that's assuming that you hit and they fail a save. In the meantime you have to keep moving your party around so they don't get hit so it's a bit of a pain.

Medillen

@AceofWands I was speaking of solo. Soloing golem is actually really easy, simpler then fighting with an actual team where mages get screwed up by the other golem from behind. Just take an archer, and most of the times 2 biting arrows make the shot. If he's a ranger/thief, he can even hide, there are some sweet spots in the cavern.

On the other hand, wyverns are harder to solo in normal situations (I consider the wyvern cave to be a glitch myself), and it takes longer to reach that part of the game. You'll usually be around level 4-5 already when in wyverns cavern, so it's impact is less important. One the other hand, the golem cavern can be accessible even before beregost. So... level 2 usually. Might even be level 1 if you are a tad bit reckless.

All that fairly easy. So yes, I think the carrion crawler are best suited here. Nothing more to add, it's a good fix.

Balquo

I also don't believe Flash Golems have any of their immunities in BG1 except for non magical weapons. Adding the rest of their immunities would help in making the initial encounter more difficult.

Lunever

Since on contrary to 3E you can backstab golems in BG, you just have to repeatedly enter the cave with a thief, thus the golem XP lophole is easy to abuse.

AceofWands

@Medillen I agree that it's a good fix, I just think that something similar should be done for the wyvern cave.

@ Lunever Fighter/Thief with the dagger of venom used to be a particular favourite of mine. In fact, that dagger could use a bit of nerfing.

bigdogchris

The Carrion Crawler's still give enough XP that it's worth it to rest and continue to farm them. I did that all the time in the original BG release. It should be removed.

Cheesebelly

There are several locations where one could potentially farm still I suppose. The most rewarding (but possibly hardest) being the Balduran's shipwreck map. An ambush by wolfweres grants around 7000+ XP. Then again, one can easily be killed in those situation so it's kinda risky anyway.

Another location would probably be Durlag's Tower first underground level (not the 4 warder ones, the cellar one). Sometimes, resting there will spawn some Ghasts, if I am not mistaken?

There probably are many more, but these two come to my mind currently.

Majoca

I remember farming when in candlekeep dungeon passageway, when resting wraith spiders will attack you, I only used it to level up my mage once because I was so close to the level up.

Schneidend

Is it really an "exploit" if you still have to kill the enemies by normal means? I mean, if there was a way to cause the enemies to instantly die as soon as the party woke up due to a glitch, THEN I could see using the word "exploit."

The flesh golems hit ungodly hard, if I remember right. Also, can't they just spawn right next to you if you rest or get a random encounter?

Heinrich

bigdogchris said:

The Carrion Crawler's still give enough XP that it's worth it to rest and continue to farm them. I did that all the time in the original BG release. It should be removed.

But it's not as lucrative to do so. Just compare 2000 XP to 420 XP, Many may find that it's not as worth the time and effort to farm experience points as it once was. There's no saying that no one will keep farming but it won't be as tempting as with the flesh golems.

Bhryaen

The other aspect is that flesh golems shouldn't feel like they grow on trees... or cave walls, as it were... or arise from cave ponds... They're magically created beings, so it should feel like the cave is special that way with its few golems left there to guard it. If it's just the infinite flesh golem spawn cave, it's less unique and more just an exploit area. So it's also an aesthetic fix as well.

Boaster

An aesthetic fix would be making Kensais (the Sword Saint) only wield swords as weapons :P

Avenger_teambg

Well, flesh golems spawning in a wilderness area would make no sense, even if their granted xp isn't high.
Flesh golems are constructs, there is no golem factory to keep up the pace of a determined grinder.
Crawlers at least occur "naturally", especially with the lot of unclaimed flesh from the golems.

ajwz

What about the respawning ankeghs on rest in the ankegh caverns? Doesn't that also count as an exploit? Nearly 1000xp each and they are really easy to kill, especially 1 at a time

Synergetic

The fact of the matter is people are going to find a way to farm for XP - Nobody is forcing you as the player to sit in a cave for a few months to level up. Just my 2 cents.

Kithrixx

Like Heinrich said, it's less lucrative this way. If I really, really wanted to, I could, but the bottom line is that it's much more of a pain in the ass to grind this way.

Dragonfolk2000

I do remember this in my recent evil playthrough. I attempted to rest in the cave (since it made more sense to rest in a cave than on a beach) and golems kept spawning. I leveled each of my characters once before leaving. I hate grinding.

NymMoondown

Travelling around the area you can fall in sirine rondom encounters which give you more experience and goods. Is this fixing so opportune?

Ashiel

Personally I think it should be left alone. It might sound a bit "gamist", but for some people it is fun to go to locations that are "good XP" or "good treasure". From Baldur's Gate I & II and certain spawn points, to Final Fantasy games with good leveling spots (heck, there's an island in FF6 in the first world that seems specifically for leveling your skills), it's just a part of the RPG experience.

Oddly, I've never personally bothered to level around the flesh golem cave. In fact, I had forgotten about it until a recent play through in the past few days with a solo fighter/mage/thief. It's nice, but I have my own locations for farming XP and treasure, and now I wonder "If I mentioned my favorite leveling spots, would there suddenly be people claiming that it's too convenient, time to nerf it?". For example, pre-cloakwood you can buy anything you want from the shops south of Baldur's Gate with maybe an hour of hunting a certain respawning creature. When you get to cloakwood and wyverns, then you can load up on delay poisons and some ammo and hunt wyverns for huge XP and sweet cash.

I've never once heard anyone complain that you level up too fast in BG I & II. Quite the opposite in fact. In several guides I've seen, they suggest using smaller parties because XP is a trickle (especially in BG I where quests provide party XP instead of individual XP). As someone who loves the NPC Banter (in BG II, and I have the Gibberlings 3 NPC pack for BG I) and variety, I love having 6 person parties; but honestly going hours and hours without any levels can be a bit extreme.

IMHO, things like this actually improve a game. They open up opportunities and paths for different ways to play the game. For example, all-class challenges, single character challenges, low-level challenges, speed runs, perfect games, etc. In a low-level challenge, people would probably avoid the golem cave, while in a perfect game challenge (where you hit the level-cap with each character in the game) it might see much more use.

In the meantime, the best location for just milking the heck out of random spawns is -- to me -- actually on the path to the bandit camp (Pevdale I believe it's called). Bandits spawn there apparently based on your party size, and each bandit has a restock of arrows, bandit scalps, and some random loot. If memory serves, I think the bandits spawn 2 per party member (I know they only spawn about 2 in my solo run, but in hordes in my 6 man game). Since they wear leather armor, their AC sucks against archers, all are vulnerable to sleep and/or CC spells, and casting Animate Dead pre-resting means having meat-shields ready to run defense when they ambush you.

Each wave of bandits gives as much XP as a carrion crawler, and you can quickly collect entire inventories full of bandit scalps. Even with Sword Coast Stratagems installed (making the bandits target your party more intelligently), I've found it's a hugely effective place to build up your coin to deck out your party with all the nicest gear at Thunderhammer's.

But oh, please don't remove the bandit spawns. :P