Importing from Sod + NPC Experience

Comments

• jmerry Member Posts: 3,943

  February 2021

  All standard NPCs get triggers for experience when they join; 125K, 250K, 500K, 750K, 1000K, or 1250K, based on which milestone your protagonist has passed. And if you know the system, you can push things - my current character spent day 1 on a mix of solo/one partner adventuring, and reached 1250K experience that day before recruiting the full party. Many shoplifted scrolls were involved
  
  So - sure, it's nice. But you get so much experience in the game that it isn't a huge deal in the long run. It just makes the early game easier.

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• JuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,773

  February 2021 edited February 2021

  I'd played with increased XP from SoD in BG2 and it had been "easy-peasy" until I found my first scaled-up encounters: 2 liches in the Temple Ruins (the Umar Hills quest). Mind you, I play with SCS, but each of these liches summoned a Dark Planetar. My party was a bit higher than 1 mln XP each, and dealing with the Planetar and the lich was harder than everything else in that game before that.
  
  Other scaled-up encounters are very difficult as well, including beholders in the Sewers (not the second section or the Unseeing Eye dungeon, just the first section of the Sewers, you know, the one where kobolds spawn?).
  
  While the increased XP from SoD might seem to make your party "OP" in the starting dungeon of BG2 or during the Circus quest, it will make encounters much harder, and the difference between playing BG2 the usual way, with usual encounters, and playing BG2 with scaled-up encounters, is huge: the latter is much riskier and contains many more "game over" scenarios across.
  
  One can say that the increased XP from SoD will mean you're getting HLAs in SoA. Well, yeah, but I always got them anyway (even starting with 89k in SoA) in the Underdark, playing completionist and scribing scrolls. The HLAs break many SoA battles, true, this is why I would recommend this mod: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/78441/shadows-of-amn-xp-cap
  
  The summary: extra XP from SoD makes playing BG2 a bit different, true, but to me, it makes the game more difficult (especially if you play with minimal / no reloads).
  
  More info on scaled-up encounters (some crazy stuff there): https://sorcerers.net/community/threads/experience-based-spawns.3240/

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• DinoDin Member Posts: 1,605

  February 2021

  Yep, as both jmerry and julius point out, the early game gets a lot easier, and areas without level-scaling in chapter 2-3 will be easy, i.e. stuff in the Copper Coronet. But most of the stronghold-opening quests have level scaling in their dungeons, so they will have tougher encounters if you hit certain benchmarks, even without SCS. As well, the amount of XP you get in BG2 quickly outstrips any difference you could have from SoD or TotSC. So, really, certain quests will only be difficult depending on the order in which you pursue them, something that was true in the original games.

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• tedmann12 Member Posts: 128

  February 2021

  @JuliusBorisov So I am playing on SCS on insane, and I kept my 500k exp but edited all my companions to 89k.
  
  So will I still be facing the high level encounters with a gimped party? Hoping I don’t set myself up for utter disaster!

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• JuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,773

  February 2021

  @tedmann12 Spawns should depend on the protagonist's experience, so your companions being at 89k shouldn't affect the high-level encounters. But the number of companions can affect the number of enemy spawns. https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/64863/does-bgii-ee-scale-spawns-with-party-size-like-bg-ee-does
  
  Confirmation that it's the protagonist's experience, not median party XP: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/600749/#Comment_600749

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