Question: SOD XP Farming Locations
GrimjackMV
Member Posts: 151
Can anyone can suggest good places to farm XP in SOD?
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Excess XP transfers over to bg2ee as well so nothing is lost.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.