Question: SOD XP Farming Locations

GrimjackMV

Can anyone can suggest good places to farm XP in SOD?

Miridor

At the Coast Way Crossing, go to level 2 of the dwarven dig site. In the room with the pillars you can keep on summoning the mephits. Drink a potion of absorption to gain 100% electrical resistance and chuck away at the lightning mephits with no risk involved. They are 420 xp each and five or six, I believe, are summoned at a time.

GrimjackMV

Miridor said:

At the Coast Way Crossing, go to level 2 of the dwarven dig site. In the room with the pillars you can keep on summoning the mephits. Drink a potion of absorption to gain 100% electrical resistance and chuck away at the lightning mephits with no risk involved. They are 420 xp each and five or six, I believe, are summoned at a time.

Thanks for the tip @Miridor!

billbisco

Any other good farming locations?

sarevok57

im not sure if its completely necessary to farm XP in SoD, unless you are on purposely missing out on a lot of the content i was able to hit the XP cap before the end of the game, in fact i believe i still had several hours of gameplay left before i hit the XP cap

billbisco

Sometimes I just feel like grinding especially for new multiplayer or Dual Class party members who need a reliable way to boost xp to enjoy the rest of the game before its over.

Excess XP transfers over to bg2ee as well so nothing is lost.

Hempz

Miridor wrote: »

... chuck away at the lightning mephits with no risk involved. They are 420 xp each and five or six, I believe, are summoned at a time.

They are not summoned at a time but when you click the wrong pillar.
Why chuck this mephits when you can just endlessly spawn them into Cloudkill to see them instantly die?

Ocelot

In the underground river area towards the end of the game you can rest in the south near that evil druids lair and it will spawn 4000 do Dark Treants.

Ahotnik

In Chapter 9, there is a random enocunter (one of the four while travelling) , where two hill giants are attacking a child dragon. If you rest there, 80% chance that 4-6 hill giants will attack. Each one is 3000 XP. So, usually it is 15000 XP per fight, much more than doppelgangers in Durlag's tower. But yes, you can not come back there once you leave. And on low levels you could have some trouble. And resting is also troublesome. You need at least -8 AC to tank them more or less. better -12. But it is more that possible to grind there up to 3 million (with xp remover) if you really want to.

Jumbotron

Hi,

Ahotnik wrote: »

In Chapter 9, there is a random enocunter (one of the four while travelling) , where two hill giants are attacking a child dragon. If you rest there, 80% chance that 4-6 hill giants will attack. Each one is 3000 XP. So, usually it is 15000 XP per fight, much more than doppelgangers in Durlag's tower. But yes, you can not come back there once you leave. And on low levels you could have some trouble. And resting is also troublesome. You need at least -8 AC to tank them more or less. better -12. But it is more that possible to grind there up to 3 million (with xp remover) if you really want to.

I can't reproduce that in v2.6.6.0 of the game with a solo run. It is the version from GOG, with few of the most popular mods installed, and from those only the Tweaks Anthology can change the game's mechanics. Resting in the area with my solo protagonist triggers a high probability of one, and only one hill giant spawning. I suppose that the configuration of my party is what is effecting that behavior.

jmerry

Jumbotron wrote: »

Resting in the area with my solo protagonist triggers a high probability of one, and only one hill giant spawning. I suppose that the configuration of my party is what is effecting that behavior.

Rest spawns, like conventional spawn points, scale with the size and level of the party. So they're pretty wimpy when you only have a single character.
That encounter: Creature BDGIANHI, difficulty = 2, maximum spawned creatures = 3.
To determine how many creatures spawn, sum up the levels of all party members (About 10 for your solo character) and multiply by the difficulty to get a target power level (~20). Now add in instances of the creature until either the target number is reached or the spawn cap is. A hill giant has power level 45 (that's the field in the creature file that player characters use for XP), so one giant will be enough for your solo character. A full party will likely reach the cap of three giants. Four or more is not possible in the current (2.6) version of the game.

Jumbotron

jmerry wrote: »

Jumbotron wrote: »

Resting in the area with my solo protagonist triggers a high probability of one, and only one hill giant spawning. I suppose that the configuration of my party is what is effecting that behavior.

Rest spawns, like conventional spawn points, scale with the size and level of the party. So they're pretty wimpy when you only have a single character.
That encounter: Creature BDGIANHI, difficulty = 2, maximum spawned creatures = 3.
To determine how many creatures spawn, sum up the levels of all party members (About 10 for your solo character) and multiply by the difficulty to get a target power level (~20). Now add in instances of the creature until either the target number is reached or the spawn cap is. A hill giant has power level 45 (that's the field in the creature file that player characters use for XP), so one giant will be enough for your solo character. A full party will likely reach the cap of three giants. Four or more is not possible in the current (2.6) version of the game.

I see. Thanks for the explanation.

Blackheart112

I'm a bit late here but.....I have to share my cheesy exploit. It really is unethical but if you're not above severely exploiting the game you can level up extraordinarily fast(I went from lvl 14-15 with my solo character in like 20 minutes).

So, the premise involves resting in a place with known high xp monsters that will interrupt your sleep. I choose the vampire cave where the two vampire hunters are early on in the campaign. When resting you have a chance to have a vampiric wolf(or more depending on difficulty, I'm doing LOB right now and four spawn for me) spawn and interrupt your sleep. They are worth 2k XP per.

So here's the gimmick: if you spam the R key and the spacebar, alternating between the two as rapid fire as you can, your game will not have a chance for the monster to appear on the screen when it interrupts your sleep, and you keep spamming these two keys and when you're done multiple of the monster will have interrupted your sleep(like if you do it 20 or so times you'll get 15-20 wolves in this case). So, the trick with this is how do you kill them all now that they're there?

My sorcerer sets the stage with a ton of skull traps where I know they'll spawn. So, setup like 12 of them, rapidfire sleep, kill all of them and voila! Massive amounts of XP in an instant.

jmerry

Blackheart112 wrote: »

When resting you have a chance to have a vampiric wolf(or more depending on difficulty, I'm doing LOB right now and four spawn for me) spawn and interrupt your sleep.

Not difficulty. It's based on the number of characters in your party and their levels. So filling out your party is good if you're grinding XP from rest spawns.

Viconias_UmberHulk

jmerry wrote: »

Jumbotron wrote: »

Resting in the area with my solo protagonist triggers a high probability of one, and only one hill giant spawning. I suppose that the configuration of my party is what is effecting that behavior.

Rest spawns, like conventional spawn points, scale with the size and level of the party. So they're pretty wimpy when you only have a single character.
That encounter: Creature BDGIANHI, difficulty = 2, maximum spawned creatures = 3.
To determine how many creatures spawn, sum up the levels of all party members (About 10 for your solo character) and multiply by the difficulty to get a target power level (~20). Now add in instances of the creature until either the target number is reached or the spawn cap is. A hill giant has power level 45 (that's the field in the creature file that player characters use for XP), so one giant will be enough for your solo character. A full party will likely reach the cap of three giants. Four or more is not possible in the current (2.6) version of the game.

I remembered his comment and found this spot, it works fine BUT after I rest the giants give exactly ZERO XP, The cause: started with full party, kicked party after one rest and had everyone stay in place (not return to camp). The effect is you have the benefits of a full party (chant, bard song, heals, etc) but only CHARNAME is supposed to get any XP. That’s how it works in, for example, farming the mephits as another commenter shared (Dwarves of Dumathoin, before fighting the boss): kick all party but instruct them to wait there. Easy way to get my dual class berserker from level 8>9 so I could dual class after grand mastery was reached.

But in this spot, with the giants, my party consisted of 5 NPCs ranging from level 8/10 Jaheira to level 11 Voghiln, then my freshly dualed Berserker 9/Mage 5. So I could only farm two giants at a time (because my 5th level mage); and if I kick all out as I said: they help fight but I gain ZERO XP.

Loaded up and tried again: kept all party and could gain 6k/fight (not too bad, but not 15k, and definitely not ZERO). That’s 1000 XP per character per fight. Fine for the dual, but not the best.

Best: kicked all and sent to camp: that net a cool single fire giant but 3000 XP just for CHARNAME. So it’s not “15k/fight” if you can get all 3 giants for a full party, because it’s roughly 2,500 XP per character (though XP distribution is uneven and depends on the order of the party members: I’m not 100% sure the math but I know those closer to top position gain most XP).

TL;DR: Getting 3 hill giants is not as efficient for farming XP for CHARNAME, if you are focused on Gorion’s Ward regaining levels after dual classing for example - you want to kick all party and have them wait at camp. Posting because I didn’t know keeping party members nearby would cause ZERO XP to be rewarded.