Quickest leveling (pre-roleplay).
yksimalt
Member Posts: 115
I leave the Keep, accept potion of quickness from, Imoen, remove her from party, travel to the farmstead north, drink potion, enter the caves, grab the loot in the cave avoiding interaction with enemies, travel to Durlag's tower, stun the Death Knights with the wand from the loot, slay them, and earn 4000 XP.
Quickest way I have found so far.
Any other takes?
1
Comments
The way that most no-reloaders (or, at the very least, I) tend to go to get risk-free exp is one south and then one west. Travel straight west from the entry point, find Shoal the Nereid. Kill her; she's worth 5k EXP, has no ranged abilities. You have to kill her from range though, since if she talks to you, she kills you.
Korax has already been mentioned, but there's 900 free EXP from that Marl in Beregost; the answer chain that lets you not fight is 1-1-3-3-1. Giving a book to Firebead grants another 300 EXP. At this point you're probably at level 3 or 4, depending on class, and shouldn't die to a stiff breeze; have fun!
http://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/41113/fast-safe-xp-in-early-bgee
There're also other similar threads:
http://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/18725/fast-relatively-easy-quest-xp-to-hog-before-expanding-your-party
http://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/19237/what-are-some-easy-ways-to-get-xp
http://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/15119/exp-gold-exploit
Personally, in order to get some quick XP without ambushes, I head to Shoal via the High Hedge (staying close to the north border, and then go West, to the North Coast area, where the Nereid can be taken down with ranged weaponry for 5000 XP. Then I go to Beregost and complete quests there.
After that, with the help of Corax the Ghoul I clear the basilisk area. I generally buy the Protection from Petrification scroll in the Nashkel Carnival as well.
As soon as I have enough gold to buy a wand of sleep in the High Hedge, I then go the Ankheg area and farm Ankhegs there.
This can bring about 30-40k XP in 1 hour without any risks.
I usually try to kill some high XP targets, like Gatewarden, Elminster (every encounter), Shoal, Mad Arcand, Thalantyr, Drizzt, Shandalar (later), etc.
At later stage I've found that farming wolfwere's on Baldurans island nets you 1400exp*5 or 6 per interrupted sleep. Good for when you have a full party. Though it's much later of course, but pretty much risk free with a couple of hold spells and perhaps a slow etc.
It's a nice helm off the ogre Mage captor.
1. kill the farmers, take the bowl to the Umberlee priestess
2. Do the zombie quest. 20 easy kills at 65xp a pop and then
This generally levels you up. A nice, easy, profitable lvl 1 quest. Then it is down south to Beregost and the easy xp down there.
Sometimes I'll follow a non-default route if I want a particular NPC on my team quickly. For example, if I want Shar-Teel in the "permanent team", then I'll probably go fetch her early so that I can pick the proficiencies I want her to develop, whereas I wouldn't otherwise go near her area until I'm several levels higher. Other than that reason, however, I'll usually follow the default routes (i.e. as suggested by the dialogues and journal entries), and let XP develop at a "natural" pace. It's not as if the "natural" pace is too slow: I always find that I level up enough to cope with the next location, without having to force it.
So sure, of course you can power-level by going off to farm basilisks and ankhegs at an early stage ... but I can't see the point of it.