WK level scaling

kaffekoppen

Does anyone know how much this place actually scales to your level? This isn't really a "when should I do WK" topic. What I'm really wondering is: will I miss out on significant XP or items by doing it by say mid-SoA?

Also, if I understand it correctly, only levels you have entered scale to your level. So if I do one level of WK and return 10 levels later (even across SoA/ToB), the rest is scaled to my new level.

nano

I think all the major items are there at all times. You do miss out on exp - for example, if you go really early the first level mostly contains mephits and there are fewer statues (I think). I love doing an early raid though. It's definitely worth the tradeoff in my mind.

PawnSlayer

I remember sometime a year or two ago asking when WK level scales - all the answers I got, IIRC, were "Don't know, don't care, it doesn't matter anyway". I am still curious as to when it happens though for exactly this reason; some quests obviously don't level scale significantly/at all, like Maevar's quest line and the druid grove, whereas WK has very obvious scaling. The jellies in one room of level 1, for example, I've seen as being Green Slimes at the start of SOA and Mustard Jellies much later on.

Theoretically of course it all balances out; you do one area at a low level, and the experience you get causes enemies in other areas to be more powerful and thus get you more, whatever order you do them in.

Durlag_Thunderaxe

I've only done it twice, once in Chapter 6 of SoA, once at the beginning of ToB. I don't remember significant differences. Also, the most difficult encounters are unchanged regardless of when you try to do it. I'm thinking of the three groups just before the vault. Also the big man himself if u try to kill him.

kaffekoppen

I definitely intend to be done with the first level before Chapter 3. Just having those containers is reason enough. I just don't want to miss out on a gazillion XP and fight through easy monsters because the game decides my level is too low. I'd honestly prefer getting my ass handed to me and come back later if I can't deal with it.

ryuken87

kaffekoppen said:

What I'm really wondering is: will I miss out on significant XP or items by doing it by say mid-SoA?

You will miss out on a bit, but by the same token subsequent areas you visit will scale up, so I doubt there is much difference in net exp.

nano

Well, the conditions for the weak spawn on level 1 are:

	Global("SetDifficulty","AR3001",0)	// just a flag to check if we've already setup the encounter
	Global("StartMP","GLOBAL",0) 		// not multiplayer??
	OR(3)						// at least one of the following:
		NumInPartyLT(5) 			// 4 characters or fewer
		GlobalGT("XPGiven","GLOBAL",500000)	// ???
		LevelPartyLT(14)			// average party level 13 or lower

So if you arrive as a party of 5 or more and at level 14 or higher you should get the tougher encounter. There's a similar cutoff for weak spawns on the second level and by the third level you're getting balors and things no matter what. I didn't look very carefully though, so there might be some level dependent stuff.

Also if someone could confirm my comments that would be nice, I'm not very good at reading scripts yet.

kaffekoppen

I've never really cracked open the game and looked at the scripts myself, but it looks like it does what you're saying. I'm not sure what a multiclassed character's "combined" level is.

I think I'm just going to do it anyway. I just had a non-cheesy kill of Firkraag and Conster without breaking a sweat. I'm probably ready for WK then.

I did take a look inside already and it looks like I'm getting the proper version of level 1 (I'm a level 11/14 F/T).

nano

A non-cheesy Firkraag kill... was it a straight up buff-up-and-attack or did you use a particular strategy? I'm always on the lookout for interesting tactics, cheesy or not.

stygga

What is the scaling like for solo? Im playing a maxed out (tob cap) wild mage, still in soa, and I'm not getting the super tough spawns like adamantine golems and the like..

Flow

stygga said:

What is the scaling like for solo? Im playing a maxed out (tob cap) wild mage, still in soa, and I'm not getting the super tough spawns like adamantine golems and the like..

@stygga If you look at the table nano posted then you hit the less than 5 chars check.

Lets look into it in detail:
1. The game checks if you were in the area before and takes this set difficulty level.
2. If you play multiplayer
3. If neither of the first two checks are valid we have a logical OR statement. Meaning if one of the statements is true the complete statement returns true.

So lets look at the three checks for your wild mage:
NumInPartyLT(5) => You do a solo run => true
GlobalGT("XPGiven","GLOBAL",500000) => More than 500000 xp given to ???? (cannot answer this one)
LevelPartyLT(14) => Your mage is maxed out. => false

The equation would be:
true OR ??? OR false
returns: true

This means until you recruit additional chars while accessing new areas you will always get the lower difficulty setting if the game has a "NumInParty" check for each area.

kryptix

Well I just did level 2 with a party averaging 4-4.5 million exp and did not get the hardest spawns for at least a few packs... I did blast my way through some sections with hlas though, 2x dragons breath took care of the chromatic dragon

moody_mage

f you change the difficulty Global variable once you entered from;

Global("SetDifficulty","AR3001",0)

To

Global("SetDifficulty","AR3001",1)

Would that work?

kaffekoppen

kryptix said:

Well I just did level 2 with a party averaging 4-4.5 million exp and did not get the hardest spawns for at least a few packs... I did blast my way through some sections with hlas though, 2x dragons breath took care of the chromatic dragon

If you don't get the fully scaled up version at 4-4.5 million XP, that's pretty ridiculous. Maybe your party size was < 5?

nano said:

A non-cheesy Firkraag kill... was it a straight up buff-up-and-attack or did you use a particular strategy? I'm always on the lookout for interesting tactics, cheesy or not.

It's not very interesting really, I just have strong melee so with Improved Haste Firkraag's HP don't last long. It was a simple buff-up-and-attack, but spiced up with Edwin and Haer'Dalis taking down Firkraag's and Conster's defenses first, and I also did some tank swapping and got him to attack a few skeleton warriors I had summoned. I did get a bit lucky though; after taking down Consters defenses, Firkraag accidentally killed him with his dragon breath.

kryptix

kaffekoppen said:

kryptix said:

Well I just did level 2 with a party averaging 4-4.5 million exp and did not get the hardest spawns for at least a few packs... I did blast my way through some sections with hlas though, 2x dragons breath took care of the chromatic dragon

If you don't get the fully scaled up version at 4-4.5 million XP, that's pretty ridiculous. Maybe your party size was < 5?

nano said:

A non-cheesy Firkraag kill... was it a straight up buff-up-and-attack or did you use a particular strategy? I'm always on the lookout for interesting tactics, cheesy or not.

It's not very interesting really, I just have strong melee so with Improved Haste Firkraag's HP don't last long. It was a simple buff-up-and-attack, but spiced up with Edwin and Haer'Dalis taking down Firkraag's and Conster's defenses first, and I also did some tank swapping and got him to attack a few skeleton warriors I had summoned. I did get a bit lucky though; after taking down Consters defenses, Firkraag accidentally killed him with his dragon breath.

Sounds similar to what I do but I just hit Conster with two spell sequencers of 3x skull trap and he goes down while he's still blue, so then I just have to fight Firkraag alone.

Well the only thing I think that wasn't fully scaled up was that I got clay and stone golems and 1 iron golem rather than iron golems and sand golems in the room to the upper right. Not sure why that was considering all of my characters had multiple HLAs... 6 man group. (Does it make a difference that I am doing it in SOA rather than TOB?).