SOD to BG2 extra XP - EEKeeper a solution?

holdstrong

Looking to do a full run using EET.

I love the idea of character and NPC continuity from game to game. But I kind of hate the idea of landing in BG2 with all the excess experience accumulated in SOD and having the first part of BG2 be unbalanced.

I'm wondering if it is possible to use EEKeeper to remove that experience as I start BG2. Put everyone back at the xp levels they would have if I were playing it from scratch. The stats and other continuity would remain, just the xp would be edited to remove the "SOD bonus," so to speak.

Anyone tried this? Is it possible? See any problems with that approach?

jastey

I see two things: EEKeeper is known to hickup the save game EDIT: easily, (probably not every time, but there is known problems with local variables missing etc.). I'd rather use Near Infinity to edit the save.
Second thing is that I think the reduced XP doesn't lead to a reduction in level directly, but only at the next level up. But that's just a guess, I have no idea how reducing the XP influences the creatures ingame.

atcDave

I think this is seriously not a thing to worry about. The difference between BG1 and SoD is what, 200K experience? Or about 1 level depending on class. Almost as soon as you start SoA you are earning experience by the bucketful. You can start any one, of half a dozen quests to raise money to rescue Imoen. They are all roughly the same in terms of difficulty and rewards. Each of them being more or less equal to the whole adventure of SoD (soD is a little longer in terms of gameplay, but offers lesser rewards). So all told, it means no more than one of said Chapter 2 quests are you operating with any relative advantage compared to playing/not playing SoD. And only your own character’s advantage actually transfers, so that’s actually 1/6 of your team has a 1 level advantage? And actually the comparison is easy in my current game playing a Cavalier, he’s almost exactly one level higher than Keldorn. I think that’s the entirety of the SoD advantage.

Obviously this isn’t “hard” math, just a sloppy estimate. But I do not believe there is any advantage of consequence to having played SoD. Just that the main character, the party “leader”, is now 1 level higher than his team?
I’d keep it. Not worth trying to “fix” something that has such little impact.

gorgonzola

atcDave wrote: »

I think this is seriously not a thing to worry about. The difference between BG1 and SoD is what, 200K experience?

BG1 cap is 161 K,
SoD cap is 500 K,
The xp you get starting a game directly in BG2 is less then 90k.
So reaching the cap in SoD lets Charname start with more then 5x xp compared to who starts in SoA and more then 3x the xp starting in BG1 and skipping SoD, that is the maximum level for Charname when the BG2 enemies where originally balanced to face. SoA is designed in a way that the enemies become more powerful as Charname gets xp, so it is possible to play every quest order keeping the difficulty balanced, i.e. if you do the Unseeing Eye quest late you can find more Beholders where doing it early you find only Gauths or a Beholder and few Gauths. But this ability of the enemies is not designed to balance a Charname that starts with 350K xp more then coming from BG1, all the balance of cap 2 is changed.
Maybe there is not a great difference playing a Cavalier, but if you start as Mage you start at lev 11 instead of 9 (8 if starting in SoA), you have 3 lev 5 slots and 3 lev 4 ones compared to 1 and 2 (no lev 5 spells starting in SoA) and also if you play a warrior type that maybe is less affected as will have only a slightly better thac0, ST and little more hp your party will be affected as their xp changes according to the one of Charname when he first meet them, the party casters will have more spells, Haer Dalis dispel magic will work more often and so on.

Is it a problem? Maybe not as I could solo my lev 8 Sorcerer trough the Tactics Mod starting dungeon, that is way harder then the vanilla one and others play the LoB difficulty or ScS, how the player is competent is more important than some levels more, amazing stats rolls and so on. Also some of us like to play quest mods that also give xp that changes the balance.
But if it is not a problem for some of us can be a problem for others so I see the point of the OP question.

Because actually playing the whole saga as it is now, with SoD capped at 500K xp changes the balance of the game, at least the balance of a big part of SoA chap2, exactly as playing quest mods, scribe and erase spells or other possible tricks change it. The balance is changed also later as the toons will reach HLAs and lev9 spells earlier while with a full party, no xp tricks and playing all the quests, but skipping SoD, reach them only near the end of SoA.

Trouveur

I use EET tweaks to reduce XP gained and with many quests nods in BGEE, I usually finish SoD at 300,000 XP.

atcDave

I'll stand by saying trivial difference. Even the difference from 0 - 500K is not a big deal for one character in a party of six. You gain experience in BG2 at a blistering pace. The opening dungeon is the only place I can see it mattering. Even in the above example with a mage, you're talking a minor difference that won't make a huge difference in any given fight.

If some gamer wants to gimp his characters that's fine, most of us have done weird things at one time or another just playing around with things. But I reject the argument "balance" has been disturbed in some way. My main recommendation would be to download the BG1 final save instead of a SoD save if you're really worried about it. But I'll put this up there with worrying about how to spell the color grey (or is it gray?). This just isn't really a thing.

gorgonzola

@atcDave I respect you opinion, but I respect also the opinion of those that think that the difference is not trivial, they are personal interpretations of a fact, Charname starts with up to 3 times the xp if imports from SoD, and interpretations are subjective.
My personal take about it is that that 350K more xp can be helpful, but my opinion relates to my own way to play SoA. I usually solo the first dungeon and some chap 2 quests and I usually run small parties as I want to have more xp, my approach to the game is fewer people, but very competent, easily micro manageable and over levelled. I also use some tricks to squeeze more xp from the game like turning dragons into stone and then again into flesh or calling vampires with the Limited Wish to get xp killing them. I had never run a full saga from Candlekeep to the Throne, but I believe that this 350K xp would be helpful if I will ever do it.
I also think that even if is (maybe only slightly) relevant and not trivial it is far from being game breaking, choosing to have the maxed HP gain levelling up in my opinion makes the game way more easier then that 350K xp as any time a toon is badly injured in battle with the maxed roll he would die without it, that and other things have a way more relevant impact on the difficulty of the game.

holdstrong

What I'm gathering is that objectively you are more powerful. Approx 5x as much experience, approx 2 levels, which can translate into additional statistical advantages and extra high level spells that you would not otherwise have. You get a head start in the game.

What I'm also gathering is that subjectively some people don't think that head start makes that much of a difference in the experience.

I confess, to me, that sounds like an unfun advantage at the start of a game. It is really hard to imagine how that much xp and 2 levels doesn't tilt the opening experience of the game. But since I haven't actually played it yet, I have to acknowledge that that perception could be very wrong

atcDave

Yes it is fair to say there’s a few ways of looking at it, and individual experience may vary based on some issues related to play style.

I just want to be clear that in the most “normal” way to run it (1 player character in a party filled out with up to 5 NPCs), the one player character is the only one getting a small boost. I guess I’d also add, you will work a whole lot harder for the extra 300K in SoD than you ever will in SoA.

gorgonzola

It is not completely true as if you start at the SoD cap you are just at the xp threshold where the recruited NPCs also get more xp. Even if you are little lower then that you will reach that threshold fast in cap 2 so the NPCs that you take there, but not the ones you get in the starting dungeon will have more levels. A 6 people party starting at 500K can be a lot of xp more as what Charname gets is multiplied by 6, they will get a total of about 2M xp more then a party with Charname coming straight from BG1.
We can agree or disagree about the impact of that boost and this is fine as the play style matters, for some players that more slots in the spellbooks, more skill points to the Thief and a Remove Magic more effective from the Bard can make the life easier as well as getting HLA 340K xp before in late SoA while for other styles it does not make that difference, but if Charname reaches or comes very near to the SoD xp cap all the party benefit of it.

_Connacht_

I would like to add that theoretically in EETrilogy the xp caps of BG1 and SOD should not be in effect: since you are working within the boundaries of BG2, your xp cap would be that one - or at least that's how the old BGTrilogy back in the day worked, unless the EE modders added some ways to enforce the previous caps.

You could potentially reach the level cap of BG1 way before the final battle, while IIRC in SOD you can reach it right before the final battle, so in total it's not a tiny amount relatively speaking.

That means that potentially you could start SOA with even much more than 500k xp, provided that you do every single quest and achieve every possible intended occasion of getting xp. If you like to farm a lot in areas filled with respawning monsters, that is even more.

As for the effect of the additional xp: I remember that in BG2, before TOB, you could reach the xp cap in SoA (2.95 millions) during chapter 6. When TOB was added, the xp cap increase (8 millions) was unwisely enforced to the SOA part as well. This is still effective in the EE, unlike BG1 and SOD which have separated level caps. So even if you ignored the Watcher's Keep you could reach the final battle against Irenicus with HLA unlocked and level 9 spells in the magebook. All was easier, nobody can deny it.

If you played the Watcher's Keep during SOA, the unbalance was ridiculous thanks to the massive rain of xp and powercreeped loot of that megadungeon, and the epic fight against Irenicus became a cakewalk.

With EETrilogy, if you started with 500k xp, you might expect to potentially end SOA in the range of 3.5-4 millions xp if not more, considering also the additional content introduced with the EE characters. If you started with 700-800k xp, say goodbye to Irenicus as you cut through vampires, beholders and mind flayers like a hot knife in butter.

P.S. I'm talking about a full party of 6, if you go solo things would become exhilarating as you could unlock HLA during SOD (!).

jmerry

EET does enforce experience caps by campaign; the infrastructure is there in BG2EE, even though the standard SoA and ToB campaigns aren't set up to use it. It's also possible to accumulate XP past the campaign's cap even if you can't use it, though this is reset any time you load a save.

In my last fully modded run, I finished SoA with every member of the party at over 6 million XP. My Dragon Disciple protagonist was throwing around Wishes and HLA spells before even entering Spellhold, and that was with me deliberately leaving some of the stronghold quests for later. Compared to that, an extra few hundred thousand from starting post-SoD instead of just doing BG1 would have been a drop in the bucket.