Neera and Kalid Starting Experience

FredSRichardson

I decided to recruit Neera and Kalid just before going over the bridge in Boarskyr Bridge, but their starting experience is 250K XP while all my other characters have 322K XP. Is this normal? I'm thinking about consoling them each 72K XP just so they aren't so far behind...

Zaxares

If you recruited them into your party in BG1, they will have whatever XP they had when they left your party. (which in some cases, can mean that they're a paltry level 1! This can make keeping Khalid alive at the Siege extremely difficult... XD) If you didn't touch them at all in BG1, then they will spawn at certain XP thresholds depending on what is your level when you recruit them in SoD.

If you feel like using the console to bump up their XP to match the party, go ahead. It's a single player game, so however you choose to tweak or mod your game, either easier or harder, is always the "correct" path.

FredSRichardson

@Zaxares yeah, I thought about using the console, but I try to avoid that and I actually messed up something else and had to backtrack anyway from a prior save. This time through I decided to keep my party as is and not swap in Neera and Khalid (I'm running with Minsc, Dynaheir, Corwin, Safana and Viconia). I might change my mind on that...

I'm not a huge fan of Glint, though he does take care of the problem of taking up 2 slots for a thief and a cleric. But I don't know if it really works well in SoD to swap NPCs in just to fulfill their quests.

And yeah, that is crazy that Neera would be stuck at whatever XP she left the BG1 party with... Is that really true if she is in your final part at the end of BG1EE? Yoiks!!!

Ridcully

Doesn't sound quite right. I had Dynaheir in my party just to get her back from the stronghold and add to her spell book. So when I dropped her she was Lvl4 16216xp. When we met up in SoD she jumped to 161k (lvl 9) straight away

FredSRichardson

I did find an answer here which looks right: if I understand correctly, when the companions join in EE they will match your protagonists XP up to a maximum. That maximum is 250K in SoD, so the problem for me is that I was over that by the time I had access to Khalid (at the bridge).

Interestingly, I had to play through a second time due to some errors on my part, but this time around Khalid did no survive the big battle at the bridge... I figured that out by looking at the game file in NearInfinity and I'm sure that was my fault some how (I probably didn't get to him soon enough). I had already decided not to take Khalid and Neera the second time around and stuck with Minsc and Dynaheir instead who both as you pointed out got bumped to my XP level of 161K at the start of SoD (max experience for BGEE).

On a totally unrelated topic, BG1(EE) was fine without an arcane spell caster, but in SoD you really want one. For a generally good aligned party the option are limited in SoD: Dynaheir or Neera. As an Invoker Dynaheir misses out on Enchantment spells (Greater Malison is the only one I really miss) but her Invocation are more effective. Neera is a great party member IMO, but Wild Mages are a handful. The powerhouse mages in SoD are Edwin and Baeloth both evil of course...