[BG1/BGT] Inconsistent XP rewards considering effort taken

ArtOfShred

This is not neccessarily what all would consider a direct bug persay, and you may or may not agree with me, but I think it would be a good idea to look over some of the XP rewards for some of the minor subquests in game and reconsider the reward.
I never reached the Baldur's Gate city area quests on this playthrough and I wrote most of these thoughts down like over a year ago.

* Beregost - Bjornin Quest to return his shield is only worth 400 XP?

* AR8300 - No XP is rewarded for Gerde's kill Ankheg "hunt" quest. Maybe doesn't need to be changed. Feels like it should have some reward though.

* AR8300 - Farmer Brun - You get a 500 XP reward for diving into a cave and finding his son, but 1000 XP for giving him 100 GP? That's silly.

* Gullykin - Completing the quest to clear the Firewine ruins is worth a glorious 250gp and 0 XP. (GP component makes sense considering its a poor Halfling village, but I was disappointed to see no XP gain)

* Ulgoth's Beard - Returning Shandalar's cloak from the Ice Island to him only gives 500 XP?

* Ulgoth's Beard - When Mendas turns into Selaad Gen, killing him is only worth 2200 XP but he needs +2 or greater weapons to hit. Just doesn't seem right to have such a low XP reward for a target that even later in the game you may have difficulty hitting with more than a few of the characters in your party.

* AR3900 - Hentold quest: Killing the Revenant is worth 3000 XP. Returning his dagger is only worth 900 XP, and the dagger disappears.

* AR9799 - Giving Ulcaster the mats for Vampire's Revenge is disappointing, you get no XP reward or
journal entry or anything. There is also no hint whatsoever to this being acquired in Dialogue or
anywhere in the game. Of course as I understand it's basically an easter egg but either way, you are accomplishing something, even if it is just creating another awful cursed item to plague the Realms.

I'm sure there are other quests rewards that are rather inconsistent in effort vs. reward throughout the game but I feel its worth mentioning at least these ones that I jotted down in my previous playthrough. I'm also not sure if changing XP reward balance would also infringe on what you guys are allowed to do with the original content.

Dalis918

I approve of this suggestion.

bigdogchris

I agree, those specific examples seem a little unbalanced. But if the goal is to balance risk/reward for experience gain, while overall raising XP given across the board, I disagree with making changes.

Some times the original developers rewarded a larger than normal chunk of XP just to help the player progress through a tough spot.

ArtOfShred

Yeah I think with some good organization you'd be able to buff some XP gains here and there and lower some, like the 1000 XP reward for giving Farmer Brun 100gp. I might get the chance to scope out the majority of all XP rewards in the game if anyone is interested in a complete list.

bob_veng

bigdogchris said:

I agree, those specific examples seem a little unbalanced.

they seem hugely unbalanced and inconsistent.
but the problem with increasing their experience reward would significantly increase experience gain in the game which is probably too high already.

so all quest experience should be rescaled, some should net less some more.

500xp should be a minimum for zero challenge quests, but, for example, the firewine ruins quest should at least have a 1000xp reward

also, this
"* AR8300 - Farmer Brun - You get a 500 XP reward for diving into a cave and finding his son, but 1000 XP for giving him 100 GP? That's silly."

could (and should) just be inverted so that giving him 100gp nets 500xp and getting his son - 1000xp; you could almost treat this one as a bug

Loremaster

Yeah, some XP-rewards needs attention. Some more than other though. It is probably easy to adress stupid unbalances like Farmes Brun, Gullykin and Hentold, but I agree with bigdogchris, there must be a balance between risk and reward. Such changes shouldn't be to great.

AndreaColombo

Moved to Feature Requests.

Darkcloud

bob_veng said:

bigdogchris said:

I agree, those specific examples seem a little unbalanced.

they seem hugely unbalanced and inconsistent.
but the problem with increasing their experience reward would significantly increase experience gain in the game which is probably too high already.

so all quest experience should be rescaled, some should net less some more.

500xp should be a minimum for zero challenge quests, but, for example, the firewine ruins quest should at least have a 1000xp reward

also, this
"* AR8300 - Farmer Brun - You get a 500 XP reward for diving into a cave and finding his son, but 1000 XP for giving him 100 GP? That's silly."

could (and should) just be inverted so that giving him 100gp nets 500xp and getting his son - 1000xp; you could almost treat this one as a bug

I had 190000 xp at the end of my playthrough while doing most quests. I don't think the overall XP in the game is to high. This is just 30000 over the maximum. So not really to much.