What exactly is Monster Experience?

[ivnwng84]

Title. Is it the amount of monsters you killed? Does it count if it was killed indirectly like getting pushed to the ledge and whatnot? I'm, fine with experience bottles because it's all about exploring and keeping an eye out, but Monster Experience often felt like a roll on the dice cz I somehow always miss out on one or two eventho I could've sworn I've killed every last bit of skeletons on my way.

[AuraFB]

It's dropped by some monsters but not all, indirect kills (such as environmental hazards) count. I don't know the exact math behind which monsters drop EXP and which ones don't, but the monsters spawn in waves and if you're fast at defeating them, them you might have already progressed when there are still enemies spawning.

There is also a known issue with the mini-bosses that occurs occasionally - if it falls into a pit, it might not die from the fall, and the player has to use arrows to kill it. This has in some cases been the reason for missing monster EXP.

[JLarja]

The "math behind monster experience drops" is about following: Every monster has an "experience holder" associated with it (for spawned monsters, it's typically the spawner, for pre-placed monsters the monster itself). When the monster dies, the experience holder checks if it should give experience. If the monster was the last one associated with the holder (e.g. the last monster to spawn from a particular spawner), all the experience left will be given to player.

The system makes sure that for any difficulty level, if a player slays all the monsters, then all the experience will be given. Typically on higher difficulty levels, experience will be given for first few skeletons and the rest won't give any.

As far as I'm aware, there aren't common bugs in Trine EE regarding that (can't know if there are uncommon ones, as we wouldn't have heard of them), but there are couple of places where, especially on higher difficulty, it takes quite some time to spawn all the skeletons. It's easy to miss some, but if you play the map again, you are likely to get the missing experience even if you make the same mistake again. The first skeletons from a particular spawner will likely be enough for you to get the missing ones.

Trine 2 does have a spot in first swamp map that sometimes bugs so that not all enemies get spawned (the game also stays in "battle mode", playing battle music, so it's relatively easy to spot if that happens). So it's not unheard of for there to be bugs concerning this, but like I said, I'm not aware of there being any in Trine EE.

-JLarja / Frozenbyte

[quandarian]

I had been wondering about this too, and these answers are actually really insightful. Thanks!