Some thoughts on experience/levels
Velociraptor
Member Posts: 12
This message is not meant to be negative or overly critical. I'm talking about an aspect that I'm not sure I like too much, but please do not take from the tone of this that I dislike the Infinity Engine or BG games.
I've noticed that you level rapidly in BG2. Faster even than BG1.
A lot of quest experience, as well as seemingly generous xp for killing, plus all the assorted disarm/unlock/scribe experience is abound.
The result of this, for me at least, is that when I've started new games of BG2 I've felt a very temporary feeling or transient feeling about my character, NPCs etc. I know that they'll fairly quickly race up the levels.
Also the way the game is structured you do a lot of running around getting things set up - companion gathering etc - before you really get stuck into it. And that means you race through the earlier levels.
Finally with Dragonspear (and Black Pits if we do it) you get an even bigger head start on BG2.
BG1 didn't go quite as fast as this. And it's actually good that it rushes you fairly quickly to level 3 because level 1 and 2 you're very subject to luck rather than skill.
BG1 takes us to level 7. Sword coast to around 9. Dragonspear to around 10 or 11.
BG2 is supposed to start at level 7 but because of the extra stuff inserted now starts higher if you import. But even then the game quickly piles on the XP and by the time you've got your team assembled you're over 500K XP, and if you do a good aligned run and do the areas etc to get them you can be easily at 1mil xp by the time you've got the team together.
That means level 12 or 13 by the time you get to the meat of it.
For progression with spells etc in the ruleset level 7 sees you just gain haste and stoneskin, that's the end of main BG1. By the time we're done gathering in BG2 we've unlocked 6th level arcane spells.
It means we miss out on exploring what the game is like at those levels.
Now there's a few points that I should make about what I've said, as some kind of rebuttal.
* You're not supposed to go gathering your team with a view to how things will be once you've done that. You're supposed to take whoever you can get your hands on and over time replace them. It's my (and a lot of others) style of play to view the complete team as a target and work towards it
* We're probably higher performing than perhaps is expected so we're gathering more experience
* The game is designed for these levels, and once you get to level 12 or so then you stop rapidly levelling up
All that said though... I wonder what kind of game it would be if levelling was much slower, and we had to very much get used to being level 7, 8 or 9 for a long period of time.
I think my gameplay would be better, I would find things that work better for my team and as levels did appear I would slowly adjust my strategies.
Instead I kind of feel that we scrape through on "that'll do for now" stuff until we get the team together and miss out on a lot.
I hope that I've explained this clearly, and I hope I've not come across too negatively. I hope you can at least understand where I'm coming from.
And now that I've said that I wonder if there has ever been a mod, or some kind of guidance to help play the game and enjoy the lower levels rather than rush through everything.
I've noticed that you level rapidly in BG2. Faster even than BG1.
A lot of quest experience, as well as seemingly generous xp for killing, plus all the assorted disarm/unlock/scribe experience is abound.
The result of this, for me at least, is that when I've started new games of BG2 I've felt a very temporary feeling or transient feeling about my character, NPCs etc. I know that they'll fairly quickly race up the levels.
Also the way the game is structured you do a lot of running around getting things set up - companion gathering etc - before you really get stuck into it. And that means you race through the earlier levels.
Finally with Dragonspear (and Black Pits if we do it) you get an even bigger head start on BG2.
BG1 didn't go quite as fast as this. And it's actually good that it rushes you fairly quickly to level 3 because level 1 and 2 you're very subject to luck rather than skill.
BG1 takes us to level 7. Sword coast to around 9. Dragonspear to around 10 or 11.
BG2 is supposed to start at level 7 but because of the extra stuff inserted now starts higher if you import. But even then the game quickly piles on the XP and by the time you've got your team assembled you're over 500K XP, and if you do a good aligned run and do the areas etc to get them you can be easily at 1mil xp by the time you've got the team together.
That means level 12 or 13 by the time you get to the meat of it.
For progression with spells etc in the ruleset level 7 sees you just gain haste and stoneskin, that's the end of main BG1. By the time we're done gathering in BG2 we've unlocked 6th level arcane spells.
It means we miss out on exploring what the game is like at those levels.
Now there's a few points that I should make about what I've said, as some kind of rebuttal.
* You're not supposed to go gathering your team with a view to how things will be once you've done that. You're supposed to take whoever you can get your hands on and over time replace them. It's my (and a lot of others) style of play to view the complete team as a target and work towards it
* We're probably higher performing than perhaps is expected so we're gathering more experience
* The game is designed for these levels, and once you get to level 12 or so then you stop rapidly levelling up
All that said though... I wonder what kind of game it would be if levelling was much slower, and we had to very much get used to being level 7, 8 or 9 for a long period of time.
I think my gameplay would be better, I would find things that work better for my team and as levels did appear I would slowly adjust my strategies.
Instead I kind of feel that we scrape through on "that'll do for now" stuff until we get the team together and miss out on a lot.
I hope that I've explained this clearly, and I hope I've not come across too negatively. I hope you can at least understand where I'm coming from.
And now that I've said that I wonder if there has ever been a mod, or some kind of guidance to help play the game and enjoy the lower levels rather than rush through everything.
0
Comments
I will say perhaps your starting level isn’t the issue but more the xp rewards. You’re showered with so much xp you level rapidly regardless of your starting level.
I agree with @kaisch006 in that the game (even without SCS or any other mods) does a good job in scaling some select few encounters. Some examples:
Similar thing in Spellhold: in some place there, my party of six encountered a bunch of undead, Greater Mummies and stuff. A little tough, but doable. But when my party of four got there, these guys were accompanied by a freaking Lich! Now that was just awesome. And quite terrifying. But mostly just awesome
But I also kind of agree with @Velociraptor when it comes to spellcasters. If you're new to the game (or especially if you maybe even start the series in BG2 instead of BG1) the enormously HUGE array of tools that these guys collect on every occasion can be quite overwhelming at times. I think that in Irenicus' dungeon alone you can collect something like 20-30 different spell scrolls and if one of your divine folk gets a new spell level, that's again easily another dozen of options. So unless you stop by every once in while and spend a bunch of time reading through your spellbook(s), it might really be tempting to just quickly browse through these things and pick a bunch of "that'll do for now stuff". Hell, I haven't even tried out probably something like 60-70% of the spells because there's just so darn many of them^^
But apart from some of those annoyances I wasn't really planning to complain about the magic system, on the contrary, I love this immense variety it brings!
1. It brings lots and lots of replayability: even after going through the game once (or... well... two and a half times^^) there's still a bunch of motivating mystery in all these spellbooks.
2. It also encourages experimenting around, for example all the summons: in my first playthrough I mostly just stuck to these summoning items like the spider or the efreeti bottle in order to save some precious spell slots. Finding out that some of them (golem and berserker) could even get upgrades later was pretty sweet. Then I read somewhere about the awesomeness that is high level skeleton warriors against mind flayers. And then again I stopped sticking just to those ones I already knew that were strong but basically tried them all out one after the other to see how they go. Nice, these invisible stalkers don't just stick around very long, but they can also take a hit or two and aren't as super slow as the skeletons... wyverns are kinda cool, but just too large for narrow corridors and doors... and hey, that Djinni is awesome too and unlike that stupid Efreeti he doesn't throw fireballs at my crew, so Djinni is in, Efreeti is out... and so on and so forth^^
3. And last but not least there's huge potential for roleplaying: starting to pick spells more befitting to the caster's specialization instead of my own "powergamer's finest" all the time really was a revelation for me. Okay, maybe Xzar (or should I say Xzara
And yeah, all those Devas and Planetars and Elemental Princes and whatnot are incredibly strong, but if for flavor's sake you prefer your treehugging druid friends surrounded by a small army of forest animals, just go for it^^
But even coming across such seemingly impenetrable barriers can at times be fun, trying out new spells, new tactics yourself and here or there I even found some solutions myself^^ but then again there's some encounters where even after 3-5 tries it's still a complete and utter "fail, no chance in hell" scenario, so I resort to powerword: google. Best example: Draconis. I just couldn't for the life of me get past that beast. Did a bunch of research about that fight (mostly from this very forum here) that helped greatly to find some tactic for it. And while doing that I also found out something super important that was entirely new to me: "remove fear/resist fear" both are spells that not only remove that status effect, but also buffs which make you immune to it?! Till that very fight which is basically endgame I had no idea about that, because in the german version of the game both these spells have identical names, "Furcht bannen" which just translates to "remove fear", so yeah, I just didn't know that. I can tell you, dragon fights in general became a lot less frightening after stumbling across that "tiny" bit of information^^
- After transforming, Draconis was literally on top of my protagonist, making it impossible for her to move.
- The spell defenses Draconis put up as a human persisted into dragon form, and became impossible to remove with the likes of Spell Pierce and Ruby Ray of Reversal (cast with items; this party had a rule against spellcasting). This protected his abjuration immunity, making it impossible for me to land an Inquisitor dispel on him.
And I still won.
Also, fun fact: dragons are vulnerable to fear. They're immune to a lot of other disabling effects, but not that one.
Yes that whole no-spellcasters-party concept sounds really nice, thought about something like that too. But then again, I like the divine stuff very much, arcane not so much, can't really explain why, maybe it's just a little "too much"... and cast-only-with-items to me sounds like a nightmare because most of the time I completely forget that my characters are carrying all those extra abilities around
Nice tip with scaring the giant lizard away, might be well worth a shot. I was quite surprised the other day that powerword: blind worked there, too. Had tried that spell a little earlier before, wasn't really amused finding out that there's friendly fire involved, blinding not just the enemies, but all my frontliners as well. When encountering the next dragon I still had a few of those spells memorized. Wasn't really planned, but then I thought: "wait a minute... yeah that thing has some nasty AoE, but the radius isn't too large... and that dragon over there? Well, that dragon is pretty pretty large... hmm... probably won't work, but what the hell, let's try it". Worked like a charm, dragon was blind, no friendly fire involved, really easy fight.
And well, I guess that is what I'm getting at (with probably WAY more words than would be necessary): your current total amount of xp or your characters' levels aren't necessarily always the most important factor and often it can make a huge difference just holding on for a minute, checking through all those numerous options the game gives you and chances are you might come across one or two things you maybe didn't even think about right now, but which can help you overcome the obstacle in front of you. Like for example Hexxat's little helper summons: not that they're too very useful for dealing damage or anything, but at the right time and at the right place they can pose as some excellent decoys to get your badly wounded buttocks out of the danger zone...
This can also happen with Abazigal.
For the no-spellcasting party, I went with a halfling fighter/thief as protagonist. Party members Ajantis, Garrick, Kagain, Kivan, Shar-Teel (F6-T9 dual) in BG1, then Haer'Dalis, Keldorn, Korgan, Mazzy, Rasaad in BG2. The bards never memorized spells; they were there to sing and use wands.
As for casting only with items ... don't worry, it's not like I used those items much. Most of the time, the first option of just hitting things works. Or, if they put up tough combat defenses, hitting them with a dispel (Dispelling arrows in BG1, Keldorn's innate in BG2).
For that Draconis fight I mentioned, he had PfMW together with spell defenses that prevented me from dispelling it. And backing off to wait out some of the buffs was impossible. OK, then - get out the nonmagical weapons and beat him up that way.
My best success with scaring a dragon was Firkraag in my current run. I went after him pre-Spellhold so I could have the fire resistance armor for my fire-specialized party - which also meant that all the damage spells I had used on the dungeon were useless. OK, then. Hit him with some Pierce Magic/Lower Resistance effects, Insect Plague, Doom, Greater Malison. Then when that scares him for a round, add an Acid Arrow/Horror minor sequencer for a more lasting effect.
Of course, that was the second try. On the first try, he displayed his dominance by killing a fire elemental one of my druids summoned with fire. Now why can't my Dragon Disciple learn "Lower Fire Resistance" like red dragons have?
Funny you mention your little band of firestarters, I think just 2 minutes ago I stumbled across a screenshot of these guys at work: burning up dem vampires real good, eh?^^ but yeah, I guess taking down dragons with such a party might prove quite the challenge.
I just love such theme-based party concept ideas, now "in-between playthroughs" I'm fooling around a lot in my head: team divine perhaps or maybe some happy hippie horde: charname shaman, a bunch of druids and a big, fuzzy bear^^ (I guess some long-haired musician guy with a bunch of instruments might fit nicely into that last one too).
The "evil canon" crew in BG2 was pretty funny and put quite the unique mood for the entire trip, but I'm at least halfway set now that the next time will explore the complete opposite side of the alignment, so heroic (lawful) good it is, just planning out some more details.
Guess that means for BG1: Ajantis, Dynaheir, Yeslick, Rasaad + thief (never tried one of those, but might switch Yeslick for someone like Minsc or Jaheira or I'm not sure yet. Would be a bit redundant if I go for dwarven Fighter/Cleric myself)
Now BG2 looks just wonderfully awesome: Mazzy, Rasaad, Keldorn, Aerie + thief, probably Jan (never ever tried Mazzy yet but sure sounds like I have to change that; played with Rasaad for maybe 20 minutes, would like to see more of him and finish his quests; Keldorn's obviously great plus the perfect voice of conscience kinda guy; love both Aerie and Jan, great personalities and between these two they can pull some funny spell combo stuff off). Too bad absolutely none of the vanilla characters are up for some dwarvin lovin'... might going female and seducing the bald guy be a viable option, something interesting there?
But to at least get slightly back to the original topic: I'm very glad that the xp cap for SoA/ToB is designed in such a way that it doesn't really seem to be supposed to be actually reachable, well at least of course not through "normal" means. Always kind of bums me out when in late BG1 (or in KotoR 1 vs KotoR 2 to name a similar example) you suddenly lose that feeling of character progression which is pretty important for me in an RPG. But in BG2 even my party of "just" 4 was still somewhere around 7.7-7.8 million in the end, that was really neat. Okay, that game was started right in BG2, so neither extra xp from BG1 nor SoD, which then would certainly have hit the cap. But a full party of six probably wouldn't have... unless of course you maybe go for some wonky all-arcane crew or some such and get a few extra millions for scribing a few hundred more scrolls than usual
i remember when i first played bg2 back in '99 when i FINALLY hit the sahuagin city, that was the first time that i ever reached the 1 million XP mark, and i thought my character was so badass for finally hitting that mark
and then the first time that i ever finished BG2, again 20 years ago i remember my team was around the 2 630 000 mark because i remember my mage just barely hitting level 17 when my team was in hell
personally sometimes i think how the game was supposed to be played to give it even more replay value was;
you finish chateau irenicus, do some copper coronet stuff, perhaps do jaheira's quest and then do the quest that is tied to your class, and once you finish all of that you should have enough money to continue on with the game and then when you come back in chapter 6, its more of a; finish the game as apposed to going back and doing side quest type stuff
now with that being said, there is nothing stopping you from doing all the side quests in chapter 2, but it definitely did make you much more powerful
then when ToB come out, there was now no "experience cap" in SoA and if you did absolutely everything you would be way over leveled, which didn't affect ToB much, but it sure as hell affected SoA ( that is no doubt the reason why they removed the imprisonment spell from the elven city in chapter 7 knowing that players could memorize that spell by that time )
i'm also still puzzled as to why they made watcher's keep accessible in SoA as well, to make your characters even more over leveled? to me that was a very strange thing to do
And yes, on the one hand the main questline gives you some rather strong incentives where you should go. But then again on the other hand, ironically enough, the game itself gives you at least two completely different options of how it might (maybe) be "supposed to be played" (or not) right from the start, in that nice little dialogue right after leaving Irenicus' Dungeon: Minsc advises you to just charge right ahead in whichever direction you might have to go for Imoen/Irenicus, kicking some butts on the way (oh, and don't forget Boo, *squeak*), whereas Jaheira advises caution first, catching a breath, checking your options, gaining some strength, equipment, maybe some allies instead of just rushing right after that obviously super-dangerous mage. And honestly? When it comes to taking advice, personally I'd go with Jaheira over Minsc any day of the week, no doubt about it. Sorry fellas, but that dude's just WHACK
And concerning becoming too powerful by doing all the chapter 2/3 stuff early, well, that's kind of weird any way you do it: yes, if you do it this way places like Spellhold and Underdark aren't necessarily too hard anymore. But then again, if you go to Spellhold and Underdark earlier, some of the tougher chapter 2 stuff like Firkraag or Kangaxx will probably be a lot easier...
You're right, the game does try to lead you to the stronghold quests. If you come close to the shadow thieves HQ you'll get your invitation and there's also that friendly commoner guy who advises you to check the place out (only at daytime?). But still, it's not necessarily easy for a new player to always identify the "correct" quest. Best example Copper Coronet: yes, Nalia is the only person there who actively walks up to your party so you can hardly miss her. But if you check the place out a little more you can easily get another 3 quests (Korgan's, Firkraag's, slavers questline) and the opportunity to recruit 2 more companions (Korgan, Anomen), so you still don't necessarily know that "Nalia's quest = fighter stronghold quest" (I know I didn't). Your hero's radar might easily spot the whole slaver affair as a more pressing matter, Korgan's treasure hunt sounds like a good opportunity to get your hands on some better equipment and Firkraag's offer might easily seem like a more effective way to fulfil Gaelan's 20k deal, that guy offers you a whopping 10k for your favor whereas Nalia (iirc?) doesn't really give you an exact amount.
And then there's other classes where you'll be in for a very tough ride if you choose (or just happen) to tackle your stronghold quest asap. Still planning out my next run with a charname who's half cleric and just the thought of going after the cult of the unseeing eye as early as possible scares the holy cra* out of me I tells ye
So long story short: yes, the game does try to lead you to your "own personal questline(s)", but you as a player are by no means obliged (or maybe not even willing) to follow that one single path (to your stronghold) in favor of all these dozens of other options you get...