The goal: to complete Baldur’s Gate: Shadows of Amn without getting a single point of experience that isn’t absolutely, positively 100% mandatory.
The character: In order to avoid unnecessary experience, I’m going to have to avoid unnecessary combat. That means I’m going to need some sort of means of rendering myself undetectable. This means either Thief/Monk/Ranger for Hide in Shadows, or Mage/Sorcerer for Invisibility. I’m ruling out Mage immediately, because I can’t scribe scrolls without getting some disastrous experience totals. My secondary consideration has to be the ability to beat several difficult encounters with an extremely underpowered character. I’m ruling out the Monk here because, while the increased speed would be really handy, I don’t think he’s going to be capable of defeating some plot-required battles while at a relatively low level. It might wind up being a mistake, but we’ll see. I’m also eliminating the Beastmaster and Stalker, because they suck. Sorry, they just do.
That leaves me with an Archer, a Sorcerer, or a Thief (or thief kit). In the end, I’m going with the Thief because the pickpocket skill will be hugely useful (especially in chapter 2- more on that later), and Traps are a great means of disposing of enemies I have no business being able to beat. One note- I cannot disarm traps or open locks (pesky experience again), so I will be focusing on the skills Pick Pockets (augmented by potions of master thievery), Hide in Shadows, Move Silently, Set Traps, and if I have enough points late in the game, Find Traps (I can’t disarm them, but I can still find them) and Detect Illusions (handy ability to have).
Since I have decided Traps will be my cheesy method of disposing of high-level enemies, I will be a Bounty Hunter to double my trap usage. Finally, a name… I went with Tyro. It just seemed appropriate.
Chapter 1:
Irenicus’ dungeon has never been so simple before. After Imoen joined up, I left her by the cages while Tyro grabbed a long sword, buckler, and Studded Leather armor (which he left unequipped to avoid a Hide in Shadows penalty). Minsc and Jahiera stayed cage, lest they try to reward me for freeing them with some dratted XP. Tyro then hid in shadows and snuck past the Mephit Machine. I ignored Ataaq’s request for an interview, slipped past the pack of goblins, and picked the pocket of the Golem to get myself the Sewer Key without having to bother with any pesky Exp-giving quests.
Armed with the Sewer key, I snuck past the pack of Goblins again and into the Otyugh room. I opened the far door and tried to sneak past the goblins in the next corridor, but ran into a problem. The first two goblins were in the middle of the corridor, and I couldn’t slip past them. I backed up so that only those two goblins were on my screen (not the third one), and then revealed myself to them. As they charged towards me, I slipped out of the corridor and towards the far right side of the Otyugh room. The otyugh saw me, but I managed to get into the corner before anyone came back into my view. Once out of sight, I hid in shadows again and headed to the left side of the room. Sure enough, both pesky goblins and the Otyugh all trundled into the far right corner and snuffed around, trying to find me, unaware that I was already long gone.
I went through the corridor, past the Dryads (again, ignoring their request for an interview), and into Irenicus’ love’s room. Now I was facing another puzzle- I knew of the traps in the room, and knew they were powerful enough to kill me if I charged through. I decided now would be a good time to bring Imoen into play. Her Hide in Shadows was pretty pathetic, but was still sufficient to sneak her past all of the enemies I had bypassed as long as I took it one leg at a time, assuming that even if I could get her hidden in the first place, she’d fail a check the first chance she got. After some patience, I caught her up to Tyro. She then stoneskinned up so she could absorb the traps, and she walked over and grabbed the teleporter key. At that point, I just made a mad dash for the teleporter, not even bothering trying to sneak past the goblins guarding it.
Once I was on level two, I was approached by Yoshimo, who requested to join my group. Since he was an accomplished thief capable of hiding himself more easily than Imoen, I granted his request. I tried sneaking past the Mephit Generators, but to my dismay the doors were magically sealed and wouldn’t open until those imps went down. I equipped Imoen with the long sword and buckler and gave Tyro Yoshimo’s short bow. The 4 mephit generators went down in a hurry, but unfortunately I was forced to take 20,000 XP (5,000 per generator). This made me very sad.
Mephit Generators destroyed, the rest of the dungeon was a snap. I just hid Yoshimo and Tyro, left Imoen in the generator room, and walked the rest of the way out (making sure Yoshimo sprung the trap on the bridge, just in case). Once I got to the exit, I dropped Imoen from my party and went up the ramp. For my efforts, I was punished with 34,500 quest experience… but I suppose it was a small price to pay for my freedom.
Chapter 2 (or, “If anyone ever told you crime doesn’t pay… they lied”).
Ah, good old Chapter 2- the easiest chapter in the entire game. I went to the slums and listened to Gaelen babble on, and then went to the docks to make my fortune. I went straight to Mae’Var’s guildhall. Once inside, I scavenged around in any containers that were either unlocked or bashable by Yoshimo. I gathered up all the odds and ends I collected, and found I had just enough to afford a potion of master thievery. At this point, chapter 2 is basically over.
I imbibed the potion, then stole a second from the merchant. I imbibed that, and then stole a third and imbibed that one for good measure. After that, I robbed the merchant of anything that looked remotely interesting to me- potions of invisibility, speed, and master thievery, mostly. Then I stole his Leather Armor +3, his Nymph’s Cloak, and his Rogue Stone. Selling those back to him netted me 4500 gold. Stealing them and selling them again got me another 4500. I settled in and burned about a half hour, until I had 200,000 gold. Then it was a quick trip to Rybald to grab a Girdle of Giant Strength (for bashing locks), as well as some Bracers AC3, a Ring of Protection +1, Amulet of Protection +1, and a ring of Air Control. I also pickpocketed a ring of regeneration from Rybald, and bought a Mercykiller ring from Diedre (I only put 80% into my Set Traps skill on the assumption that I would be purchasing this ring, anyway). Since I still had money to burn, I bought myself a Sword of the Balduran (I’ll rarely use it, but it looks pretty and the 10% magic resistance might be handy), and I outfitted Yoshimo (Bracers AC4, Dakkon’s Zerth Blade).
That left me with one last piece of gear to get, and no hard plans yet as to how I’d get it. I figure that the cloak of non-detection that Amon is wearing is going to be a near-mandatory piece of gear. I considered making one exception to my no-unnecessary-XP rule, but decided to try something sneaky, first.
First thing I tried was removing Yoshimo from my party, hostiling the adventurers, and trying to coerce the (now unpartied) Yoshimo to attack them. No dice. Plan #2 was to set a bunch of traps from Yoshimo, then kick him out of the party and go hostile on the adventurers. Bingo! Yoshimo’s traps triggered and took out Amon, but since he wasn’t in my party, I didn’t get a single point of experience! I grabbed the cloak of non-detection, used the Improved Invisibility on my Ring of Air Control, and high-tailed it out of there. I went back to the Copper Coronet to pick up Yoshimo again (I suspect he’s going to prove VERY useful in this quest), and while I was there, I grabbed the Sling of Everard from the merchant to give me a ranged weapon, should I ever need one.
Valen and Brus have both sent me invitations to meet with their bosses. All that’s left to do in Chapter 2 is to figure out what other gear I can manage to get without accidentally getting any XP, and then decide whose side to take in the upcoming guild war.
Anyway, I’ll probably go back and use the trap trick again to net myself a Sandman ring from Amon’s thief companion (you can never have too many sources of invisibility). I’m also going to try to pick up Jan, just for the extra trapsetter. I’d do Nalia, but I have no intention of freeing her keep and I figure she’ll just get pissed and leave me eventually. Are there any other suggestions for XP-free gear I could possibly use? Party recommendations? Suggestions for which side I should take in the upcoming guild war (I’m leaning towards joining the vampires, since I’ve never tried it before, and because I think I might be able to get some boots of speed off of Renal- the ones in the Astral Prison are entirely out of the question, and I don’t want to wait until I get to spellhold).
Thanks for your time, and in advance for your suggestions.