Good cheese infinite XP farm location?

Smoothgoal

Hi guys,

I've recently got the EE editions and sill haven't reached BG2.

But I'm trying to theory craft my character. My goal is strong solo-able wild mage(maybe even with SCS). I'm already soloing BG1 on insanity(durlag cleared). So i want to have a plan for fast infinite xp as soon as i hit BG2, in case "sh*t gets real, i need more levels".

I've found in bg1 that such location is the light house and its Sirines after resting - lay skull traps in a circle, wait rapidly to get a spawn of 20-30 sirines, they die instantly from the skull traps, repeat. And that method is extremely fast for bg1(level 1-9 in around 30 minutes, counting that level 5 is required for skull traps).

Is there such equivaent in SoA? Especialy at early levels?

Lord_Tansheron

You can spam rest in dungeons to get random spawns, and kill those for XP. Windspear Hills comes to mind, for example, or deArnise Keep.

Alternatively you can farm Athkatla city guards, which also drop decent armor to sell for gold. However this may be quite the reputation hit (not that you cannot donate your way back into good graces).

Generally, though, if you just want to theorycraft I would recommend simple editing in the XP (via debug console or EEKeeper). Same result, but much less work. Also BG2 has a lot more exp around in the first place, so reaching high levels solo is almost trivial. If you are ambitious, you'll reach the ToB exp cap well before finishing SoA.

Smoothgoal

Yea that's what i do with the EE keeper for theory craft, but i need a real XP source when i actually play the game with my character. I dislike cheating(cheese yes, cheat no). Anyway thanks, i'll check these few locations.

BallpointMan

Smoothgoal said:

Yea that's what i do with the EE keeper for theory craft, but i need a real XP source when i actually play the game with my character. I dislike cheating(cheese yes, cheat no). Anyway thanks, i'll check these few locations.

Well. I'm not exactly sure there's a difference between the two. You're exploiting the game either way.

In any case - the resting trick still works, essentially. I'm not sure there's really a "best" place to do it. I probably would have argued for Windspear Hills myself.

In TOB, you can hit Fire Giants off screen at one point. That way doesnt even require resting, IIRC.

Lord_Tansheron

Just be honest with yourself. There is no fair-play police watching if you really surely totally didn't use a cheat program. This is a single-player-only game. Nothing you do in your game matters to anyone but you yourself. And at some point you just have to look at yourself setting up traps and spamming rest until a blob of mobs implodes without resistance and ask yourself - is this really an efficient use of my time. Far be it for me to dictate to anyone how they should play, but I'm really just trying to liberate people from this mom-over-the-shoulder syndrome. You are all adults (well, mostly). You can police yourself.

semiticgoddess

Try out the exploit. Then, if it's not much fun, use EEKeeper or the console to replicate the exploit. I found that's an efficient way to deal with this kind of thing.

sarevok57

well if yer a wizard scribe lots of scrolls, every single one you get scribe it ( even erase it and relearn it) its 1000 x level in XP so you can grow up some levels with a decent pile of scrolls

dunbar

If you can do Watcher's Keep in SoA then you can exploit the Machine of Lum the Mad like crazy (I did it once, just because I could, but haven't done it again because I found that it fell into my personal definition of cheating) but honestly, if you're soloing there's more than enough XP in SoA alone to reach silly levels (edit: without cheese).

2nd edit: My solo assassin/mage has just entered the Underdark at level 2/23.

Smoothgoal

Lord_Tansheron said:

Just be honest with yourself. There is no fair-play police watching if you really surely totally didn't use a cheat program. This is a single-player-only game. Nothing you do in your game matters to anyone but you yourself. And at some point you just have to look at yourself setting up traps and spamming rest until a blob of mobs implodes without resistance and ask yourself - is this really an efficient use of my time. Far be it for me to dictate to anyone how they should play, but I'm really just trying to liberate people from this mom-over-the-shoulder syndrome. You are all adults (well, mostly). You can police yourself.

Well exactly. If i want to cheat i can add all spells, wizard and cleric alike, give myself all warrior/thief HLA, level 40 and basically, ruin my experience.

1) From roleplay perspective. Farming XP is, even tho a form of exploit in SP games, also a way of role play.

I mean, if you're a making a magical trap master and there is this valley that has 100'000 demons(which in the game there cant be more than 20 or the game will crash, so they simply respawn). Woudn't you go there and train your trap skills? Discovering projected image to place more traps at different locations, learn contingency to handle an ambush from the demons. When you become a master and can't learn anything more from killing demons(max lv) just go around the world. Thats just one example.

2) From gameplay perspective. Usually if XP farming is allowed, that means that there is a difficulty spike accessible somewhere in the game. In Bg 1, at lv 1 you can farm XP, but also go to Durlag's Tower - which is considered one of the hardest parts of the game to solo. I'm new to BG series, but Durlag was one of my first stops(before chapter 2). XP farm keept the challenge in control.

In short, yes its an efficient to know if such place exists if i want to use it. And i said it in my original comment, i only use such places in case i need them, just to ease the "cutting my veins" pain of killing 35xp goblins of the main story for the next 4 hours until i get to the good XP-gaining chapters.

Still this contributes to nothing for this discussion. I just wanted some places that good XP farm was possible.

dunbar

I think the point is that you're not meant to do Durlag's at level 1. Generally speaking, if you follow the narrative flow then the difficulties you face increase roughly in proportion to the XP reward so ideally each quest or encounter is really tough, but 'do-able'. In the case of somewhere like Durlag's Tower, which is not part of the main storyline, the opening encounter is meant to be tough enough to give you an unsubtle hint to go back to the main plotline and gain more XP if you want to explore further into the tower. If you farm enough XP to solo Durlag's in chapter one most of the rest of the game will be meaningless as you will be far too strong.

DJKajuru

It is not as simple as in BG1 because SoA itself provides a lot of XP. However, here are some cases where you can get lots of xp with little effort(unless youve got some sort of difficult enhancing mod) :

-The hendak/slavers quest in the Copper coronet provides you with plenty of xp.
- the thief stronghold quest
- trademeet /druid stronghold quests
- kanghaxx and his two lich friends / the city gates lich
- all aran linvail's quests except bodhi.

The quests above are ridiculously easy for a solo character and you'll be able to reach levels 16+ before fighting tougher enemies such as beholders and dragons.

Ardanis

There's infinite shadow spawn at the entrance to Shadow Temple.

GreenWarlock

It is not often you see Kangaxx called a "ridiculously easy way to boost xp at low levels" . Maybe not the best advice for the not-yet-veteran either

DJKajuru

GreenWarlock said:

It is not often you see Kangaxx called a "ridiculously easy way to boost xp at low levels" . Maybe not the best advice for the not-yet-veteran either

The OP says "I've recently got the EE editions" , which suggests that he had played the original ones. In that case these fights are indeed easy with simple tactics, specially if soloing a mage because you'll have access to level 6-7 spells way earlier . Unless he's got SCS, that is.

Borek

There's so much XP available in BG2, i usually solo, but pick up the NPC's just to do their quests, if they have any, then dump them after, hehe. if you have the XP cap removed then even a Fighter dual classed at level 39 to a Mage will still cap the Mage well before ToB is finished.

That said if you REALLY want to get some levels via killing Spawned mobs then the easiest place i found, that is accessible fairly early on, is the Southern Crypts under the Graveyard district. You'll probably want immunity to level drain to clear them out as the 1st room has a couple of Wights and a Fledgling Vampire, and the corridor leading out of it has a pack of Shadows, Wraiths and Shadow Fiends. Once you have cleared the traps and mobs from the area if you rest there's a high chance you will get a couple of Mummies or Ghasts appearing, pretty easy to kill and with some save-scumming you can kill a lot of them.

You can get some free/easy extra XP from doing Edwin and Korgan's quests since they both involve that area. If you have no immunity to level drain then you may want to drag Korgan in for his quest and abuse his Rage to tank the Vamp, wights and wraiths, can then finish off his quest, dismiss him and go back in to rest-abuse the heck out of it.