Confusing XP system

[Rad-Icarus]

I've played many CRPGs before, including Baldur's Gate II, Icewind Dale, Fallout 2, Shadowrun Dragonfall etc...

I just don't get how this Xp system works. I get the idea that in many RPGs the higher your level the less XP you get from an enemy, and sometimes the more of an enemy type you kill the less XP you get...but I don't know what's going on here.

I'm kind of "stuck" at a point where I can't advance the story without taking on any number of unwinnable fights, and I even screwed myself over more because I wanted to make my own party and this game seems to punish you for that and punish you even more for having lower level people in your party.

Seems like I just stopped getting XP from battle completely, only from quests and non combat activity like going to new places or picking locks.

Can someone explain this system to me before I feel like I have to start over or just give up?

[happybjorn]

The main source is questing.

You get some for unlocking Bestiary entries, which you get for defeating things. Once you've completed the entry for a type of thing you won't get more xp for fighting it.

You get a little for discovering new areas

[Rad-Icarus]

Originally posted by happybjorn:

The main source is questing.

You get some for unlocking Bestiary entries, which you get for defeating things. Once you've completed the entry for a type of thing you won't get more xp for fighting it.

You get a little for discovering new areas

I'm looking through other topics, but that's not even entirely true.

I got to a point where there's no more quests to turn in until I get deeper into the game, new enemies don't give XP at all, (I went back looking for stuff I hadn't fought, it just stops entirely or there's some other weird mechanic preventing XP gain) and everything just crushes my party which are mostly hand-made, and because I didn't know better...somewhat underlevelled.

I have it on the hard difficulty, and I've been managing to get through most fights, but now I'm kind of screwed.

They really should say: Do not make your own party unless you play on easy! You must play our linear point and click adventure with the party we created!

I went from really liking this game to wanting to give up (I know who cares) but damn...these mechanics really punish players that try to do things a little differently...and I am not trying to sequence break or exploit any systems...I just wanted to make a custom party of characters and it punishes you for that.

[mr.raider2]

There's enough XP in the game to reach level 16 well before the end of Act 3. The warden bounties alone have almost 4 levels worth of XP.

[Rad-Icarus]

Originally posted by mr.raider2:

There's enough XP in the game to reach level 16 well before the end of Act 3. The warden bounties alone have almost 4 levels worth of XP.

I'm still in act 1 I assume...

I'm completely stuck and I think screwed over to where I have to start over.

My party is all hand-made characters except Eder. I didn't want to party with the elven wizard that dragged me into a fight to murder innocent townsfolk, and I had just made a priest before running into Durance who seemed annoying and creepy. My rogue, which I realized I needed when I ran out of lockpicks halfway through the castle...is stuck and level 1 and unable to level up.

In fact that's when I started to realize the XP was very finite, and not taking along the characters which level up to your level on joining would be punished severely.

I guess now I know...but I'm 17 hours in, and the last 3 or 4 were mostly me banging my head against the limits of my under-leveled party that can't level until I can get past the next "story beat" quests...which I can't because they lack the combat ability and skillset.

This game has very little replay value to begin with since it's extremely limited and forces you to have the same party everytime...do I really want to start over? The other option is to tone down the difficulty...but I'm not going to do that because having no challenge in combat is boring.

So...I know..."if you don't like it, don't play"...but still, what a disappointment for a game with such potential.

[Farsha]

XP works just as Happybjorn described.

If you don't use story companions you are missiong on XP from their quests and on some good writing.
But there is really lot of extra XP, specially if you own White March expansion (you should it's great)

I actually think that game has great replayability (finished it 4times)
As you can really effect what is gonna happen based on what character you roleplay. (you can do some really horrible stuff if you decide to be evil)

And yes there is set order in which you should idealy do stuff specially in 1st act, as XP is limited there the most.

Hiring low lvl companions is on you, not using story companions too. You made you game more difficult by your bad choises. Either thoughen up or restart with your newly attained knowladge and do better this time.
Also you should use Aloth the wizard and his aoe controls spells. The oil surface spell can get you far in 1st act same as the chill fog spell. Aoe control is the way early when your defences suck.

[psychotron666]

You don't get exp from Battle, except when filling up the codex thingy which only gives you a tiny bit of Exp for each type of creature killed.

Doing quests is how you get exp, and there's so much experience in this game you'll be Max level before you're done.

And there's no reason you need to take the premade companions. The game is beatable solo, and many people make full custom parties.

Where exactly are you stuck? You don't need to do side quests like raedric castle right away, that's best left for like level 5 or 6 anyway

[Rad-Icarus]

Originally posted by Farsha:

XP works just as Happybjorn described.

If you don't use story companions you are missiong on XP from their quests and on some good writing.

...

Hiring low lvl companions is on you, not using story companions too. You made you game more difficult by your bad choises. Either thoughen up or restart with your newly attained knowladge and do better this time.
Also you should use Aloth the wizard and his aoe controls spells. The oil surface spell can get you far in 1st act same as the chill fog spell. Aoe control is the way early when your defences suck.

1) The only story companion that I liked and my character I'm allegedly "roleplaying" would like so far is Eder. Aloth ropes you into helping him kill two locals by treachery, and Durance is a fanatical religious weirdo...

2) My party was doing well, but:
A) The custom characters don't get auto-leveled like story companions
B) Custom characters cost a lot of gold for a low level hero to recruit
C) They come equipped with bare minimum gear while story characters have better
D) They don't get XP for fighting stuff or quests you did

So it starts you out in a gold and XP deficit and punishes you if you managed to beat a lot of the quests early on.

[Rad-Icarus]

Originally posted by psychotron666:

You don't get exp from Battle, except when filling up the codex thingy which only gives you a tiny bit of Exp for each type of creature killed.

Doing quests is how you get exp, and there's so much experience in this game you'll be Max level before you're done.

And there's no reason you need to take the premade companions. The game is beatable solo, and many people make full custom parties.

Where exactly are you stuck? You don't need to do side quests like raedric castle right away, that's best left for like level 5 or 6 anyway

I'm stuck at the Readric castle, seemed like that would be an important quest...but I can't get farther in the main quest because the shades and phantoms in the courtyard of the place I'm supposed to go to meet the watcher person shred my party as well.

Also, since you are actually being helpful: the way armor works and who should wear what armor is really confusing. It seems like they just re-purposed the old D&D 3.0 type armor but changed AC to DR... seems anyone can wear any armor.

What is the advantage of a cipher wearing light padded or leather armor as opposed to scale or breastplate? Should my barbarian with a two hander find the strongest armor possible, or will they lose some sort of dexterity bonus and get flanked easier in heavy armor?

Are there in-game explanations of these systems?

[Gilmoy]

Yes, all terms are explained in the Cyclopedia, including DR.
Press 'Q' to open the Quests window, then click the Cyclopedia tab.

Damage Reduction is different from AD&D AC. DR simply subtracts from incoming damage (of its type). It's much more like Runequest's armor AD&D's THAC0 is completely replaced by Accuracy vs. 1 of 4 defense stats (Deflection, Fortitude, Reflex, Will).

Yes, any class can wear any armor, with no restriction. Every suit of armor penalizes your recovery speed between actions. Most average actions, including melee/ranged attacks and "average"-speed spells, have about a 2.0 second recovery phase before your next action. Each 1 point of DR gives -5% recovery speed, capped at -50%, so 5 DR armors give -25%, while 10-12 DR gives -50% (which means double the recovery time). You choose wherever you want each hero to be along that spectrum.

The advantage of wearing light armor is that your casters/shooters act more often.

The advantage of wearing heavy armor is that you could soak 10-20 damage from every hit you take. Then you could almost ignore half a dozen weak monsters because they're tapping you for the 20% minimum threshold of 3-5 per hit, while you hit them for 25+ per swing. That could make sense for anybody who gets hit a lot, hence most melee characters.

~~~~

Finally, none of the quests are strictly necessary. You can skip Readric's Castle (and its entire region), and come back to it later.

- If you haven't freed Caed Nua yet, you could try pecking at that, although the outdoor fights vs. Phantoms and Blights might not be any easier for you.

- Or you could go directly to Defiance Bay (although Caed Nua is kind of on the way). Some of the catacomb fights under Defiance Bay's city districts are not too bad for a medium-level party.

In general, throughout PoE1, the way to get more quests is to just travel to a new site and talk to every NPC there. Wherever you go, you'll get many quests, until you have about 30 quests and tasks all still pending, running concurrently. They never expire, so there's no hurry to get to any of them.

[Rad-Icarus]

Originally posted by Gilmoy:

Yes, all terms are explained in the Cyclopedia, including DR.
Press 'Q' to open the Quests window, then click the Cyclopedia tab.

Damage Reduction is different from AD&D AC. DR simply subtracts from incoming damage (of its type). It's much more like Runequest's armor AD&D's THAC0 is completely replaced by Accuracy vs. 1 of 4 defense stats (Deflection, Fortitude, Reflex, Will).

Yes, any class can wear any armor, with no restriction. Every suit of armor penalizes your recovery speed between actions. Most average actions, including melee/ranged attacks and "average"-speed spells, have about a 2.0 second recovery phase before your next action. Each 1 point of DR gives -5% recovery speed, capped at -50%, so 5 DR armors give -25%, while 10-12 DR gives -50% (which means double the recovery time). You choose wherever you want each hero to be along that spectrum.

The advantage of wearing light armor is that your casters/shooters act more often.

The advantage of wearing heavy armor is that you could soak 10-20 damage from every hit you take. Then you could almost ignore half a dozen weak monsters because they're tapping you for the 20% minimum threshold of 3-5 per hit, while you hit them for 25+ per swing. That could make sense for anybody who gets hit a lot, hence most melee characters.

~~~~

Finally, none of the quests are strictly necessary. You can skip Readric's Castle (and its entire region), and come back to it later.

- If you haven't freed Caed Nua yet, you could try pecking at that, although the outdoor fights vs. Phantoms and Blights might not be any easier for you.

- Or you could go directly to Defiance Bay (although Caed Nua is kind of on the way). Some of the catacomb fights under Defiance Bay's city districts are not too bad for a medium-level party.

In general, throughout PoE1, the way to get more quests is to just travel to a new site and talk to every NPC there. Wherever you go, you'll get many quests, until you have about 30 quests and tasks all still pending, running concurrently. They never expire, so there's no hurry to get to any of them.

Thanks, that's actually pretty helpful, but I think I still screwed myself over.

Either I'll have to:
- pot it down to a lower difficulty - which to me feels like defeat or giving up
- give up on my idea of a custom party and grab the story NPCs that will level up to me for free

Problem though, is that I did all the quests I could find early. I even got down to the second floor of the catacombs under Gilded Vale with just three party members. There's just no more quests until I get through areas that I can't get through with my under level party that's not stealthy.

Again, I figured like a classic CRPG you would do better to travel with a smaller group of four, level up quicker and have fewer party members to stretch good gear over...

But like using a custom party, this system punishes you for playing with a smaller party too.

I may give this game one more shot and start over...but from everything I hear it really punishes you over for not playing the way the devs want to funnel you into. I like to build a party and clear maps and explore them fully.

I honestly dislike stealth games in general.

[Gilmoy]

Sneaking in stealth mode is also your search mode, which detects traps and hidden treasures (using your Mechanics). So you want to always be exploring new areas in stealth/search mode anyways.

Stealth is tactically useful in a kill-'em-all approach. All of my melee fighters have heavy missile weapons (arbalest, arquebus, war bow) for single alpha-strike shots, so reload time is irrelevant. When you see 1 monster at the edge of a set encounter, back off and set up your standard chokepoint trap, then send 1 stealthy hero forward. She fires 1 arrow at max range to break her stealth and initiate combat, then runs back to your line, chased by some monsters. Then everybody breaks stealth with a 1-shot volley on the lead monster, which sometimes just vaporizes it :) Melee fighters promptly switch weapon sets, shooters keep shooting. Then fight normally, win, resume stealth, repeat.

I never sneak past monsters, because I don't like leaving monsters alive behind me. OTOH, there are a couple of buildings with walking sentries and secret doors holding loot, and that becomes a timed puzzle. I'd rather not start a fight and kill every guard in a house I might later need to cultivate. For those few encounters, it's silly fun to watch the guards until you figure out their walking pattern, then time the pattern, sneak behind them, open the secret door, steal the treasure, and escape out the window without them even noticing you. You don't need particularly high Stealth for that. I sent Durance because he's my Mechanics expert, and his Stealth 2 sufficed.

You can build a custom party. Buy them early enough with your limited early funds, at the max level you can afford, to minimize level differences. Your custom party can be far stronger than the default companions, because their stat choices kind of suck, and yours can be better if you build them that way. You can also solo the game, so a party of 1 or 2 can still win (although I haven't learned that yet).

You can always just travel from area to area, regardless of your current quests. I'm pretty sure you can walk from Gilded Vale to Defiance Bay, or even to Twin Elms. You might have to sprint past a few monster encounters as you travel from the top center of an outdoor region to the top right corner (to enable walking east), or from the top to the bottom (to enable walking south). Walk into Defiance Bay and talk to every NPC, and you'll get 10-15 new quests without ever seeing a combat. That will give you new options.

Heck, I bet you could take a solo L2 guy and go on a walking tour, where the silly anti-goal is to open as many quests as you can get, without actually solving any of them. Walk to Caed Nua, walk to Defiance Bay (and 3-4 of its 5 districts), walk to Twin Elms. (You couldn't walk to White March 1 this early, since you must finish at least 1 quest to unlock it.)

You might be able to get 50 quests and tasks all at the same time, never fight anybody, never finish any task, run away from every monster, and never gain (much) XP. So you'd still be L2, and you'd have visited nearly the entire map That would be a total hoot. I bet we could turn that into a "skills" (anti-)challenge: Screencap your L1 hero with 55 open quests, longest list of unfinished quests wins. It might take 1 hour of realtime to sprint through the map like this.

Now I must try this myself, because it's such a silly idea that it'll itch until I scratch it

[Rad-Icarus]

Originally posted by Gilmoy:

Sneaking in stealth mode is also your search mode, which detects traps and hidden treasures (using your Mechanics). So you want to always be exploring new areas in stealth/search mode anyways.

Stealth is tactically useful in a kill-'em-all approach. All of my melee fighters have heavy missile weapons (arbalest, arquebus, war bow) for single alpha-strike shots, so reload time is irrelevant. When you see 1 monster at the edge of a set encounter, back off and set up your standard chokepoint trap, then send 1 stealthy hero forward. She fires 1 arrow at max range to break her stealth and initiate combat, then runs back to your line, chased by some monsters. Then everybody breaks stealth with a 1-shot volley on the lead monster, which sometimes just vaporizes it :) Melee fighters promptly switch weapon sets, shooters keep shooting. Then fight normally, win, resume stealth, repeat.

I never sneak past monsters, because I don't like leaving monsters alive behind me. OTOH, there are a couple of buildings with walking sentries and secret doors holding loot, and that becomes a timed puzzle. I'd rather not start a fight and kill every guard in a house I might later need to cultivate. For those few encounters, it's silly fun to watch the guards until you figure out their walking pattern, then time the pattern, sneak behind them, open the secret door, steal the treasure, and escape out the window without them even noticing you. You don't need particularly high Stealth for that. I sent Durance because he's my Mechanics expert, and his Stealth 2 sufficed.

You can build a custom party. Buy them early enough with your limited early funds, at the max level you can afford, to minimize level differences. Your custom party can be far stronger than the default companions, because their stat choices kind of suck, and yours can be better if you build them that way. You can also solo the game, so a party of 1 or 2 can still win (although I haven't learned that yet).

You can always just travel from area to area, regardless of your current quests. I'm pretty sure you can walk from Gilded Vale to Defiance Bay, or even to Twin Elms. You might have to sprint past a few monster encounters as you travel from the top center of an outdoor region to the top right corner (to enable walking east), or from the top to the bottom (to enable walking south). Walk into Defiance Bay and talk to every NPC, and you'll get 10-15 new quests without ever seeing a combat. That will give you new options.

Heck, I bet you could take a solo L2 guy and go on a walking tour, where the silly anti-goal is to open as many quests as you can get, without actually solving any of them. Walk to Caed Nua, walk to Defiance Bay (and 3-4 of its 5 districts), walk to Twin Elms. (You couldn't walk to White March 1 this early, since you must finish at least 1 quest to unlock it.)

You might be able to get 50 quests and tasks all at the same time, never fight anybody, never finish any task, run away from every monster, and never gain (much) XP. So you'd still be L2, and you'd have visited nearly the entire map That would be a total hoot. I bet we could turn that into a "skills" (anti-)challenge: Screencap your L1 hero with 55 open quests, longest list of unfinished quests wins. It might take 1 hour of realtime to sprint through the map like this.

Now I must try this myself, because it's such a silly idea that it'll itch until I scratch it

1) Oh yes, I always enter the "fog of war" in stealth. I figured that out really early.

2) I didn't bring a rogue along early, and I was punished for it severely by the game mechanics.

3) If I had known it would punish me for trying to organically level up a custom party, rather then require meta-knowledge strategies...that would have been helpful, but it's now good to know in hindsight.

4) Again...requiring meta-knowledge to have adequate stealth and sort of manipulate the game to grab later quests early seems like a poor solution. Won't that ruin a lot of the oh-so-precious narrative that the developer's punished me for not following in the first place?

Honestly, your suggestions are really helpful - but ultimately there's no way around the fact that this system is set up to punish people who don't play the way the devs want, or to use a lot of meta-knowledge and extreme workarounds to "fix" mistakes you were punished for that you didn't realize were mistakes.

[smilehigh]

The game has a level cap. If you do side quests you will hit this cap much earlier than you finish the game - with any party.

If you have explored all areas before the story-progression bottleneck encounter with Maerwald at the Caed Nua keep then you should be able to fight your way through Raedric's castle with a party of 5 characters on any difficulty.
Your problem is not "being underlevelled", your problem is "not understanding the game's mechanics well enough". (which is okay for a first time player)

What level is your main character? And why is your hired rogue level 1 at this point in the game?

Anyways, rogue is one of the weakest classes in the early game and he is not needed to pick locks or disarm traps. You may raise Mechanics on Mage, Cipher or Chanter and the difference will be unnoticeable. Just make sure to have a character dedicated to raising Mechanics skill.

Raedric's Keep is a big SIDE-quest. It's not a roadblock. So if you can't beat it you may return later.

Basically, what you're complaining about:
- you can't beat an optional area in the game because your player-skill is low enough;
- you demand from the developers to give YOU more exp (either by letting you grind enemies, or rebalancing the game)

At the same time:
- you refuse to progress further down the story line that will open up a huge world with dozens of quests, hundreds of items and enough xp to level you up to epic levels;
- you refuse to understand that the game has been balanced in a certain way, and had the developers allowed you to get exp from monsters they would have to cut down on exp from quests to balance this issue.

Once again: the game has a level cap, this means limited exp that you can use for your party.
You are now at a very early point in the game.

What you have now:
kill enemy (0 xp) + kill enemy (0 xp) + complete quest (100 xp) = 100 xp

What you demand:
kill ememy (25 xp) + kill enemy (25 xp) + complete quest (100xp) = 150 xp

What the developers would have done to balance the game if they had had to implement xp for kills:
kill enemy (25 xp) + kill enemy (25 xp) + complete quest (50 xp) = 100 xp

Why? Because taking on a lord's castle filled to the brim with professional guards with a rag-tag noob party of 4-5 people SHOULD be difficult at early levels. This is called "balance".
And yes, you can play the game more and return with a full party later - better equipped and at higher level - and you will be able to beat Raedric.
And yes, you can do it even with a low-level small party like yours if you know what you are doing - which doesn't require metagaming knowledge, but does require understanding game mechanics; you will come to understand these mechanics as you play further.

[Mercenaru]

Isn't there an option in gameplay settings that auto-levels your party ? On difficulty tab or something.

Though I guess now it's too late to activate it.

Raedric's keep is a high-level stuff (or a bigger party thing), especially if you want to storm your way into the castle.

I am slightly amused, because he doesn't know what awaits at the end of this quest. If he thinks now it's hard...

The spirits in Caed Nua are a little tough...but not that tough to impede progression. You should be able to beat them even at level 3 with a crappy party, with a little tactic.
And you don't need to clear the area right now, you only have 2 waves of them before reaching the main keep, and another one inside the keep. And the "difficult part" is done !

Try harder with this part, get it done, then you can progress further in the game, and it gets even easier !


PS : I notice nobody brought the question of enchanting. You could enchant some of your gear now, for an easier fight. And eat some consumables before the fight.

[Rad-Icarus]

In reply to the last two comments:

- I get the taunting of "git gud" but I am playing on "hard" on "expert mode" and I was doing well and progressing with good tactics and use of skills. Any encounter can wipe your party if you aren't micromanaging early on...and I tend to micromanage encounters and make liberal use of skills and resting.

- The issue is that I didn't play the way devs want: I didn't enlist the pre-made characters which match up to your level and come with their own gear which is slightly generally decent. Making a custom party means:

- spending most of your very little gold on recruiting
- spending the rest on gear and items
- Which leaves no gold for enchanting

I was only able to gather up a respectable amount of gold from going through readric's castle and looting all the corpses in the first place. The higher floors just had too large of mobs of troops and my custom made characters were stuck at levels 3 and 2...(yes I figured out you can avoid fights with the Preist of Berath robes)I want back to hire a rogue and level them up...but it turns out you can't do that, because XP is finite and managed to ensure you have the exprerience the devs want at the points they want you to have it.

Also: My "main" character is a cipher and I had moderate mechanics skill...but I ran out of lockpicks and those are finite too it appears.

I'm sure stuff gets way harder and I'm sure I haven't seen most of the game, but I don't feel like dumping the party I made for the story NPCs, and I don't feel like starting over and essentially using meta knowledge to cheese the game mechanics to let me play with a custom party and not be punished severly for it.