How to reach the x.p. cap with a full party
Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2001 7:45 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
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
