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

R.Carter · Post by **R.Carter** » 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

Aegis · Post by **Aegis** » Sun Sep 09, 2001 8:02 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 · Post by **R.Carter** » Sun Sep 09, 2001 8:53 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 · Post by **nael** » Sun Sep 09, 2001 9:39 am

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

Kellen · Post by **Kellen** » Sun Sep 09, 2001 9:46 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 · Post by **Izgoth** » Sun Sep 09, 2001 10:36 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 · Post by **rapier** » Sun Sep 09, 2001 11:04 am

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

EDIT: Testing something...

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

Musashi Miyamoto · Post by **Musashi Miyamoto** » Sun Sep 09, 2001 11:23 am

Naw that's more like Xenocide

Aegis · Post by **Aegis** » Sun Sep 09, 2001 11:25 am

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 · Post by **rapier** » Sun Sep 09, 2001 11:35 am

Xenomorph!!

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

Aegis · Post by **Aegis** » Sun Sep 09, 2001 11:38 am

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

Musashi Miyamoto · Post by **Musashi Miyamoto** » Sun Sep 09, 2001 8:52 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 · Post by **two** » Mon Sep 10, 2001 4:03 am

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 · Post by **Musashi Miyamoto** » Mon Sep 10, 2001 6:01 am

But all i can say is Endurence war, that sounds fun

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 · Post by **King Leoric** » Tue Sep 25, 2001 10:18 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...

UserUnfriendly · Post by **UserUnfriendly** » Tue Sep 25, 2001 11:12 pm

kellen, go to the walls at saradush near where eduardo is defendin the walls with his spells. have one char equipp the gesen bow. most effective for this tactic. if its saravok or even any warrior type, they will start shooting arrows out of sight. keep him or her there until they get tired while the rest run around town doing quests. works out to around 8000 per giant, once every 90 seconds or so, around a million per real hours.

Cybot · Post by **Cybot** » Tue Sep 25, 2001 11:36 pm

Another good points is ofcourse the elemental portals in the Underdark SoA(Air or Fire and having a bad ass fighter equipped with Staff or air or Fire based right next to it). You could be amazed by the amount of exp a Wizardslayer/Thief with grandmastery in staffs could build up there.

Another cheesy way is ofcourse capping(or nearly capping) by exploring for yourself and the bring in the party effectivly giving you a really bad ass party.

Musashi Miyamoto · Post by **Musashi Miyamoto** » Wed Sep 26, 2001 2:57 am

LOL those elemental spawn i loved them, they were a little bit of challenge with my bard, vicy, edwin, and jan, i just used magic to buff up with stone skin and few others then just had my bard wail on the elementals and vicy healing him up, helping out there and there, and i got an nice lump of xp there

King Leoric · Post by **King Leoric** » Wed Sep 26, 2001 8:56 am

Ahh, the elemental portals!!!

You don't even need an staff of air/etc, since all elementals appear on the same point, so all you have to do is put all your party around that spot and as soon as teh elemental appears, begin hammering with everyone!!! he'll die really fast!!!

I actually thought that they would eventually end, to conclude some sort of quest in the first time i reached the portals, but about 15 mins of elementalcide, just with teh AI working i got bored and decided to leave (that cheese was waaaaaay to easy, with the derro at least you eventually get some damage...)

THE JAKER · Post by **THE JAKER** » Wed Sep 26, 2001 9:12 am

I was in the Underdark and I freed the imprisoned mage who took me around to the elemental portals, but after I killed him

(backstab before he could get off one spell) i go around to the portals and no elementals spawn!!! So does doing the quest with the mage shut off the portals? If so then I recommend killing the spawning elementals first (i think only 15 show up), THEN doing the quest with the mage...