Just made an AMAZING lum the mad machine discovery

sarevok57

So, I was just playing around and after I got all the stat ups, mace, magic res, portal open, I was wondering, is there anything else to benefit from this thing, and by golly there is, you can input any selection you like ( for example pressing the circle button 3 times in a row) and the effect is always random, now more often than not you will get a negative effect which are from the following;

level drained 15 levels
turned to stone
imprisoned
lose 1 dex or int
poisoned
dealt 100 fire damage
dealt 150 electric damage

but then here are the 2 good ones;

gain one potion of superior healing
selected character gains 100 000 XP

so, how do we make this awesome? well whatever character you want to gain 100 000 XP just give them protection from fire/ electricity an item that makes them immune to poison and if you can beserk/ items of immune to level drain or whatever other items make you immune to those nasty effects, and just keep putting in random combinations for xp or potions, (quick saving on good results and reloading on bad ones) doing this I gave my mage an extra 1 000 000 XP and procured 30 or so potions of superior healing

This can be a great boon for characters that are low on XP compared to everyone else ( like SoA imoen for example) or something great to give your slow leveling mages to help catch them up a bit, or to the those pesky multi-class characters who need gobs of XP for leveling

now I can finally boost my imoen and jaheira a bit to help them match everyone else when I play games with them

FinneousPJ

So you can get these multiple times?

Arunsun

@FinneousPJ Yes you can since it is a random effect but if you want to do so without reloading (which sounds the least cheesy exploit) you can only try with a Berzerker, your PC in slayer form or a spell immunity: abjuration since it can imprison you. And you would still suffer stat loss

Aramintai

Old news, full effects of the machine can be found here:
http://www.gamebanshee.com/baldursgateii/walkthrough/watchers4.php

And pretty sure it gives 100k exp per party member only once and for the whole party, not for single member.

xscott71x

If you're going to meta game and cheat in items and XP, save yourself the time and just use the console...it'll gave you the same hollow, unsatisfied feeling.

semiticgoddess

One more person telling us how we should play our game.

@xscott71x: I've used glitches, I've used Shadowkeeper, I've used the console, and I've used mods, and it's never given me a hollow, unsatisfied feeling.

Arunsun

@xscott71x Past some point when you know all the story and dungeon well enough, such an "exploit" may just be convenient. Not to mention an exploit actually requires some game knowledge. And as @semiticgod pointed, we all play the way we want.

Lord_Tansheron

Same as that other post about an essentially mechanical, repetitive XP leech. All up to personal preference, but really, be honest with yourself and just edit in the XP via Console or EEKeeper and save the 60 minutes of clicking buttons like a lab rat looking for a fix.

semiticgoddess

Lord_Tansheron said:

All up to personal preference

Lord_Tansheron said:

be honest with yourself

Lord_Tansheron said:

a lab rat looking for a fix.

You say we can play the way we want, but I still hear judgment going on.

Wowo

semiticgod said:

Lord_Tansheron said:

All up to personal preference

Lord_Tansheron said:

be honest with yourself

Lord_Tansheron said:

a lab rat looking for a fix.

You say we can play the way we want, but I still hear judgment going on.

I'd never tell anyone how to play the game BUT ...

Lord_Tansheron

Apparently being facetious doesn't work here, despite another thread I know you two have read where I went into paragraphs of detail on this very issue.

I'll just refrain from commenting.

semiticgoddess

@Lord_Tansheron: Unfortunately for us, there's no emoji for being facetious. There's room for misunderstanding in a medium with no body language.

I know I've heard from you before on this, but I don't remember where. Which threads?

Yannir

I'm getting tired of these conversations. It feels like I've already read this conversation 5 times during the last month.

Mathsorcerer

Facetious. The shortest word in the English language to contain all 5 vowels in alphabetical order.

BelgarathMTH

I don't judge anybody for playing the game how they want, but save-scumming the Machine of Lum the Mad just seems really inefficient, sort of like going from New York to California by way of Japan. As has been said, you can just open the console or use Keeper to do the same thing quickly and easily, especially if the reason for doing it is convenience.

On the other hand, if the reason for the exercise is discovering the possibilities of the machine, or just having some fun playing "slot machine" with it, I guess maybe I can see why it might be exciting the first time you do it, especially if you haven't read the posts by others who've done it before.

Dee

It's not really any different from reloading when you level up to maximize your HP gain; you're knowingly stepping outside the game's rules, but the result is a game that you can enjoy more.

Grum

Telling someone else that they shouldn't use a loophole because you wouldn't find that to be fun is like telling someone not to eat a doughnut because you are on a diet.

semiticgoddess

To be fair, though, this kind of trick won't have much impact on anything. It's only available at the bottom of Watcher's Keep, at which point your XP will already be through the roof. Frankly, the Machine of Lum the Mad needs to have cooler random bonuses than XP or Potions of Superior Healing.

A more efficient XP trick would be the Rejiek Hidesman one. Enter his house without accusing him, surround him with your party members, then attack him once. He'll give a one-page dialogue, you can click through it, and right afterward, you'll get an XP boost, about 29,500 or something. Talk to him again before he can go downstairs, and you can get the dialog and XP boost once again. Repeat as long as you like, just as long as you can pause and click him again before he goes downstairs. It's very fast, risk-free, pretty easy to execute, and is available very early in the game. I recall doing it once or twice during insane solo poverty runs, to save the trouble of running quests.