How to reach the x.p. cap with a full party

R.Carter · #1 (**permalink**) 09-09-2001, 08:45 AM

In all of the parts of the BG series, I never experienced a problem reaching the cap. Then came ToB with its 8 mil cap. At first I thought, "must be plenty of game." Well, we won't go into that disappointment. After two times through with a full party, I found that I was winding up with about 6 mil apiece. Call it pride, tenacity, the fact that I don't have a real social life, whatever, but I knew that there was a way to earn the 48 million xps needed to top off a party of 6. And I found it. Oh yeah kiddies, spoilers follow. Cover your eyes.

A month or so ago, I posted that you could go to Sendai's lair to the tunnel of the Derro (maybe the north tunnel) and kill a seemingly endless stream of Derro at 12k a pop. Well comrades, let me tell you something. That there tunnel leads to the River of Experience, and you can drink till your thirst is slaked. The trick is not to go to far into the tunnel. If you stay right near the entrance, you won't run the risk of the Slave Master from triggering an event that will stop the Derro from spawning in. I really mean it, you should stay in the initial area that you arrive in.

Now how you can do it:
First the prep work. My party had one mage and one cleric. This is a multiplayer party (run since the Original BG), but I am absolutley certain that this will work with a single player party as I have killed Derro for a couple hours at a time in two single player games before I got bored. However, since I was on a mission this time, I fought off the boredom and saw my task completed. Anyways, I had my spell casters memorize all of the big area, long duration damage spells. Incendiary Cloud kind of stuff here. I also had some success with Grease. The only buff spells that I memorized were Rightous Magic and Stoneskin. Just about everything else caused damage. The Cleric was then dressed in a -13 AC config including the Belt of the Inertial Barrier. Hindsight tells me that I should have held on to the Reflection Shield. Oh well.

Now for the positioning. I kept my two big whackers as close to the entrance as possible, and moved my spell slingers and thieves in just a bit with the Cleric slightly ahead of the others to attract the missle fire. One of the spawn points is right near the entry point. This one drops in two Derro every ten seconds or so (I didn't time it that closely). These guys were a Paladin w/ Carsomyr, and a vanilla Fighter dualling a buffed Axe of Unyielding and the Cromster. These guys had absolutley no problem picking up the Derro as they came in. The other four (Mage, Cleric, Multi Fig/Thief, Dual Fig/Thief) all had ranged weapons that either made their own ammo, or used a quiver or bag that cranked ammo. I'd cast a big area death bringing spell a ways down the hall to soften the 3 or so Derro that would spawn there (I think they spawned in about every 10 secs as well). As the Derro down the hall spawned in, they would take it from the spells, and my posse would pelt them at a distance. It was ugly. As I ran out of memorized spells, I used all of the big area/duration damaging scrolls and wands and such. I ran out right near the end.

Anyways here are some numbers. When I arrived at the tunnel in the natural course of the game, each of my party had about 6 mil xps. At the rate that I was harvesting Derro, I was earning about 2.4 mil xps per real time hour. In about 5 real hours (I took a couple of breaks) I figure that I did about 1000 Derro, to earn a little over 12 mil xps. This translated into 10 hours of game time, so I had to recast Stoneskin once. As far a healing, I think that I drank 4 or 5 Superior heal pots, and about the same in X-Heal.

Lest you write this off as cheese balling, let me tell you something. No cheats were used, and the only thing exploited was the spawning points. You have to stay on your toes even with scripts. It is real easy to lose control of the situation. You cannot save during the combat. Not even once. If you walk out of the tunnel to save, you run the risk of bringing the whole thing to an end. This is not cheesing, this is endurance gaming. 5 hours in one combat.

Like I said, I lack a life.

R.Carter

Aegis · #2 (**permalink**) 09-09-2001, 09:02 AM

@R. Carter: I've used the same method before, but found it grew tedious, and was exploiting a rather odd situation in the game. It's not quite cheese, but does seem a little unethical.

R.Carter · #3 (**permalink**) 09-09-2001, 09:53 AM

I never would have thought to call it "unethical." Hey, I still don't think its "unethical." What does ethics have to do with it? It's a game. I mean it's not like we are talking about the philosophical "goodness" of a particular reply to the Solar or anything. Exploitation maybe, but odd? No way. Torment and Icewind Dale both had spawning areas at which you could drink your fill of xps.

Yeah, it was tedious, but I've been at this series since 2 weeks after BG hit. It was the last milestone left to reach.
R.Carter

nael · #4 (**permalink**) 09-09-2001, 10:39 AM

if you are going to go through that much trouble, why not just CLUA yourself to the exp cap?

Kellen · #5 (**permalink**) 09-09-2001, 10:46 AM

Cause thats not the same thing, thats cheating. I heard theres a spot on the walls of saradush where you can snipe fire giants for infinate xp.

Izgoth · #6 (**permalink**) 09-09-2001, 11:36 AM

You can just rest again and again. I prefer sendais enclave because the enemies are easy and give nice exp. (spawns 4 drows each worth 5k exp)

rapier · #7 (**permalink**) 09-09-2001, 12:04 PM

The thing about the derro make me think: Genocide...

EDIT: Testing something...

[ 09-09-2001: Message edited by: rapier ]

Musashi Miyamoto · #8 (**permalink**) 09-09-2001, 12:23 PM

Naw that's more like Xenocide

Aegis · #9 (**permalink**) 09-09-2001, 12:25 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Musashi Miyamoto:
<STRONG>Naw that's more like Xenocide</STRONG>

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't Xenocide be the slaughter of Aliens?

rapier · #10 (**permalink**) 09-09-2001, 12:35 PM

Xenomorph!! http://cse.unl.edu/~jraises/aliens/jpg2/adult01.jpg

[ 09-09-2001: Message edited by: rapier ]

Aegis · #11 (**permalink**) 09-09-2001, 12:38 PM

Great... It's a bug hunt....

Musashi Miyamoto · #12 (**permalink**) 09-09-2001, 09:52 PM

Yeah but in a way, those drudgers are kind of like different being, but being different spieces wouldn't that define them as alien, they may be on the same planet but if those drudgers came from other planets, wouldn't u call them aliens, so in a way its like Xenocide

two · #13 (**permalink**) 09-10-2001, 05:03 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by R.Carter:
<STRONG>Well comrades, let me tell you something. That there tunnel leads to the River of Experience, and you can drink till your thirst is slaked. </STRONG>

Hey man -- this is honestly funny. Good coupla sentences!

Musashi Miyamoto · #14 (**permalink**) 09-10-2001, 07:01 AM

But all i can say is Endurence war, that sounds fun :P and challengeing to, esp consdering i always play on diffucient or insane difucity

next time i hit that area i'll make sure i take a drink out of the river of exp

King Leoric · #15 (**permalink**) 09-25-2001, 11:18 PM

i've been drinking from the river of experience and noticed that, with a lot of precision and luck, if you keep all of your guys really close to the entrance, except for two guys, who must finish really fast teh two derro who come from above, and then run to the entrance to help finish the two derro that respawn near the entrance, and if they are killed really fast, you just unpause the game and keep hitting qqqqqqqqqqqqqqq (in order to quick-save via hotkey), you CAN save the game

Ps: This may seem very hard, but once you learn how to do, it becomes very easy to save teh game in teh river of experience. i myself have saved the game there several times, aiming to get to the cap...