Imoen question
FredN
Member Posts: 640
.....I know a lot of folks like to head off to rescue Imoen ASAP, but I ended up putting it off for a bit. I had those damned acorns from Irenicus' dungeon all the way back in Chapter 1, and wanted to dump them. And, hey! Once I am in the Windspear Hills, I may as well rampage through Firkraag's dungeon while I am there. Pick up a level or two for my crew and myself.
.....So, my question is, when we finally do get to Spellhold and grab Imoen, will she still be at the level she was initially, or will she gain a level to catch up with us, the way newly recruited NPCs often do? I suspect the answer is no she won't, since she she isn't a new hire, but I have a mild hope that the asnwer will be otherwise.
.....So, my question is, when we finally do get to Spellhold and grab Imoen, will she still be at the level she was initially, or will she gain a level to catch up with us, the way newly recruited NPCs often do? I suspect the answer is no she won't, since she she isn't a new hire, but I have a mild hope that the asnwer will be otherwise.
Post edited by JuliusBorisov on
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Comments
So yeah, the level she will rejoin you at will depend on yours. But keep in mind that there is a limit to that. I think the highest starting Exp in SoA is 1.25 million (but I haven't played unmodded in ages).
If I do sidequest stuff after Underdark I'd be so overleveled that it would just be way too boring.
I do get Crom forged though.. and if i'm eeeevul, i finish the human skin armor. But that's about it.
If SoA were all there was to the game, I might agree. But I am looking ahead to ToB. I want to grab as many HLAs as I can, so I try to maximize esperience gain in SoA. If you really feel that stonrgly about it, I guess you could put off levelling until you hit ToB. Seems a bit awkward, though.
I always do all the side content, but I do it before going to the Underdark.
Once out of the Underdark I am usually so high level and got so much great gear, that the side content becomes meaningless.
So in order to not be bored with it, I do it before Underdark.
An other strategy is to kick from the party everyone but Imoen and the one you are romancing if you have a love affair, telling them to wait there, then let Imoen learn all those scrolls. This is worth to do if when you rescue her the average party level is way higher then Immy's one and she is going to be your primary mage, she will catch up anyway as she is dual class so all the xp goes into the Mage class, but it will take some time, if the learning boost is shared between only 2 or 3 characters she will get 2x or 3x the xp that she gets if learning with a party of 6 and the gap between her and the rest of the party will be reduced. It is usually also worth for the one you are romancing: if you are in a love affair with Jaheira or Aerie that are dual class as each class gets only half of the xp a boost is always a good thing and if you are romancing Viconia or Anomen a high level Cleric makes every undead battle way easier.
Once Imoen has learned all the spells that she can you can talk to the kicked party members and continue the game with a more balanced party.
.....Additionally, with the luxury of having two mages in the group, I am having them specialize. Edwin is learning a bunch of summonings, while Imoen is going for direct attack spells.
For me, when I keep her in the party is more necessary as I use some strategies to level faster like soloing a part of the game and recruiting the party when charname has like 1M xp, that soloing is only few quest, so also the npcs will start at that xp level and I also often go with small 3 or 4 people parties so the gap between Imoen and the rest of the party is huge and swapping lets say Nalia for Imoen is swapping a mage that can cast lev8 spells to one stuck to lev6 ones.
Having more then one mage is indeed a luxury and I am a big fan of that, in the party I am running now I have 5 arcane casters and 2 divine casters and I can still fight mlee very effectively when I don't want to unleash magic nuking. Charname multi FM, Anomen, Aerie (my frontline guys), Jan (backstabber and theving utility), Haer Dalis and as main mage a Sorcerer from a mod, very effective party. After crafting Crom I have the luxury to send mlee 3 guys dual welding with 25 str enhanced by the Bard's song, 2 of them tanking with arcane protections, when they are improved hasted I have 27 attacks/round with that +7 Thac0 +14 damage from strength, the enemies melt so fast that I rarely have to use the party's magic power, the mighty Sadalex took about a round to go down, no magic needed, a single hit with the Staff of the Magi to take down his stoneskin and then they bashed him with their weapons so fast that he had no time to react.