NPC Experience Scaling?

EnterHaerDalis

Just wondering how the NPC experience scaling actually works in BG2.

My Charname has 450k experience and I just recently picked Keldorn up and he only has 250k. I thought Beamdog tweaked the scaling to be closer to your main characters experience number.

Any information on the mechanics of the scaling would be great. Thanks!

UnderstandMouseMagic

Did you interact at all with Keldorn before picking him up?

Durenas

What class/level are you? What party members are in your group, and their levels?

EnterHaerDalis

UnderstandMouseMagic said:

Did you interact at all with Keldorn before picking him up?

Nope, I know that if you do that it sets his experience level at that time.

Durenas said:

What class/level are you? What party members are in your group, and their levels?

At the time my Charname had around 550-600k experience I think. (Been playing all day :P)

Grond0

I virtually never use NPCs so have no experience of them in the EE. However, I think the system for allocating XP has changed. Have a look at https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/49007/npc-starting-xp-adjustments/p3 for some details. In particular:

1. NPCs aren't scaled down to level 1. You always get the lowest version of the NPC that was available in the original games, but we don't reduce their levels below that
   
2. The proficiencies, skills, spells and stats that the NPCs had at the lowest levels are unchanged
   
3. If your protagonist's XP is higher than what the lowest version of an NPC had, then that NPC gets extra XP to match yours (at certain pre-defined thresholds)
   
4. Any special bonuses that NPCs had are retained i.e. Coran still has 3 proficiency points in Long Bow and Baeloth still knows more spells than a normal Sorcerer
   

NPC XP scales up to a certain threshold which is different for each campaign. The values are as follows:
BG:EE - 32,000
SoD - 250,000
BGII:EE - 1,250,000
ToB - 2,500,000 (unchanged)

Not stated in that thread, but elsewhere is that the XP steps in BG2EE are 250k, i.e. if your PC has up to 499k then an NPC will have 250. If you have 500-749k an NPC will have 500k etc. I think that's why you found Keldorn with 250 (if you'd waited a bit longer you could have got him with 500).

sarevok57

exactly as Grond0 said, in BG2EE all npc characters will scale for every 250 000 XP that your main character has ( I've seen it in their script files ) unless you are less than 250 000 XP then they will scale down to 125 000 ( which I think is kind of silly, why not 161 000 like in the original?)

so anyways, when you pick up companions, always try and be just over that 250 000 XP group mark, or else you will get the result that you got with Keldorn

also to note, this XP jump only happens once, so say you picked up keldorn when you were at 450 000 and he was at 250 000 and then you had him leave your team and came back at 500 000 he will still only be at 250 000

anytime you pick up a team mate and then reform them from your party, they will be stuck at the XP they were at when they left

EnterHaerDalis

Grond0 said:

I virtually never use NPCs so have no experience of them in the EE. However, I think the system for allocating XP has changed. Have a look at https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/49007/npc-starting-xp-adjustments/p3 for some details. In particular:

1. NPCs aren't scaled down to level 1. You always get the lowest version of the NPC that was available in the original games, but we don't reduce their levels below that
   
2. The proficiencies, skills, spells and stats that the NPCs had at the lowest levels are unchanged
   
3. If your protagonist's XP is higher than what the lowest version of an NPC had, then that NPC gets extra XP to match yours (at certain pre-defined thresholds)
   
4. Any special bonuses that NPCs had are retained i.e. Coran still has 3 proficiency points in Long Bow and Baeloth still knows more spells than a normal Sorcerer
   

NPC XP scales up to a certain threshold which is different for each campaign. The values are as follows:
BG:EE - 32,000
SoD - 250,000
BGII:EE - 1,250,000
ToB - 2,500,000 (unchanged)

Not stated in that thread, but elsewhere is that the XP steps in BG2EE are 250k, i.e. if your PC has up to 499k then an NPC will have 250. If you have 500-749k an NPC will have 500k etc. I think that's why you found Keldorn with 250 (if you'd waited a bit longer you could have got him with 500).

Just picked up Valygar and he has a whopping 161k experience. My Charname has 830k. Never seen Valygar before in the game. Something is wrong with that.....

sarevok57

indeed there is

EnterHaerDalis

sarevok57 said:

indeed there is

Think I understand the problem. I just experimented with Mazzy. When I first picked her up, she had 161k experience and nothing happened. I ran around for a bit, nothing triggered.

I reloaded the game, picked Mazzy up and immediately she had a level up and jumped to a proper experience level in relation to charname.

There is something wrong with the level up trigger. It seems inconsistent - sometimes it triggers the level up and sometimes it does not.

sarevok57

do you have any mods installed?

EnterHaerDalis

sarevok57 said:

do you have any mods installed?

No. Vanilla install through steam.

sarevok57

hmm most interesting, from what I see of the scripting it should just activate right away, it has no interrupt in the code, although sometimes I do see that scripts need to take a second or two to activate the odd time so mayhaps that could be it?