has anyone ever played a minimum experience game?

wise grimwald · Post by **wise grimwald** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 2:54 am

Following my non-violent minimum deaths games, I thought that it might be a challenge to play a non-violent minimum deaths, minimum experience game which I have just started. I was wondering if anyone else has played a minimum experience game. If so, I would be interested to hear of the challenges this caused and how much experience they had when they finished.

Silvanerian · Post by **Silvanerian** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 5:43 am

To calculate minimum amount of XP I suggest you go through the game in your mind/walkthrough, and note down all story critical kills/quests to be completed and then add up the XP.

IE:
Chapter 2:
Kill Mulahey/talk to Berrum Ghastkill: 1,650 XP total
..
..
up until you kill Sarevok and get the last 15,000 XP.

How you are going to do it will require a ton of sneaking, so suggest some sort of thief/mage combo, as you definitely need to rely on wands/Algernons cloak to get the required kills as well as invisibility/Hide in Shadows/Otiluke's recilient sphere to avoid all non-critical kills.

Personally, I think the idea is odd, and a sign that you might be needing a new game ; ) but to each his own. I foresee though, that most of this game would be dull trying to sneak around with low hide in shadows but on the other hand interesting 'bossfights' considering your low level.

For absolute minimum XP, get as many thieves in your party (or other characters who can get invisible) to get the XP split and thereby even less XP for your PC.

Cheers and good look!

Edit: if you create a fighter/mage/thief you might be going through most of the game as level 1/1/1, which should opt the challenge even more due to low HP.

Edit 2: Believe you can get a party of 6 for minimum XP: PC, Imoen, Safana, Minsc, Kivan, Coran, which only Coran not being available for division of XP from the beginning. Plus, all these can use missile weapons making the necessary kills a bit easier..

Grombag · Post by **Grombag** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 10:21 am

No, but I read a story on the bioware forums on a 0 xp runthrough with the minimal mage solo (lowest attributes available). After quite a critical reception he even got some of the members behind his idea.

wise grimwald · Post by **wise grimwald** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 11:47 am

Grombag wrote:No, but I read a story on the bioware forums on a 0 xp runthrough with the minimal mage solo (lowest attributes available). After quite a critical reception he even got some of the members behind his idea.

I can well believe it. Whilst I have not used a minimum stats character, I have got as far as the final battle with only Mulhaney, Davercorn and the Shapeshifters and Lila in the Ducal palace dying. I didn't kill any of them. They were killed by their allies and the flaming fist etc. I failed in nobody dying except those strictly necessary, as having only 7 hitpoints I could not take hits for the dukes without dying myself. I will try again with a fighter-mage-thief as I might then be able to succeed. My experience at the start of the final battle was zero, far less than I expected. It is certainly a fun way of playing for somebody wanting a change from the normal beat-em-up game.

VonDondu · Post by **VonDondu** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 4:00 pm

wise grimwald wrote:...I was wondering if anyone else has played a minimum experience game. If so, I would be interested to hear of the challenges this caused and how much experience they had when they finished.

I'm surprised that you could make it to the final battle in BG1 without getting any experience. In BG2, experience points are liberally available, but in BG1, you can't get much experience without trying really hard.

What I wonder is, how can you win the final battle in BG1 with a 1st level character?

I hope this isn't too far off-topic, but I'd like to compare my experience in BG2 with your experience in BG1. When another player in the Shadows of Amn forum said that he wanted to play a minimal-experience game in SOA, I was intrigued, so I started an experimental minimal-experience game of my own, just to see what it would be like. I posted my results (unfortunately, I'm afraid that I pissed off the original poster). I played an Illusionist/Thief who could sneak around and cast Charm spells. I made it to the Underdark, but I wasn't sure how to proceed from there since every path I could think of for the rest of the game would have resulted in gobs of experience. Besides, I had a lot of trouble suppressing my instinct to do as much as possible. Since I wasn't as committed to the concept of "minimal experience" as the original poster, I tried to do just about everything I would do in a normal game, but while getting as little experience as I could. (On the other hand, maybe I was even MORE committed to the idea of "minimal experience" since I didn't take the easy way out.)

I did find ways to avoid getting any experience at all. I killed almost everything with Yoshimo's traps while he was out of the party. I call it "trap cheese"--when you kick out Yoshimo, his traps are refreshed when he rejoins the party, so you can set infinite traps. If he is not in your party, you don't get any experience for the kills when his traps kill the monsters. For example, I killed Firkraag and Mae'Var without getting any experience. (I didn't return to Renal or Garren to get the quest experience.) I had to reload several times to make everything work--for example, it wasn't easy to lure Firkraag into the traps without getting killed. (I do realize that I could have avoided the problem by not trying to kill him, but I was having fun.) In other cases, I charmed my enemies and let other hostile creatures kill them for me. I found that I could do most of the optional quests without getting any experience. But when it came to the critical path, trying to avoid experience began to feel pointless since it was necessary to kill so many monsters. For example, the guild war is a bloodbath no matter which side you take, and you can't get through the maze at Spellhold without killing monsters. On top of that, there's a lot of quest experience when you pass every "milestone". Unlike BG1, BG2 is the kind of game that practically gives experience points away.

wise grimwald · Post by **wise grimwald** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 7:07 am

Not off topic at all as the same idea is behind your game. Actually winning the game with zero experience is fairly easy. What is more difficult is winning the game AND having minimum deaths. The game that Grombaq mentions was difficult only because of his "AND minimum stats". What I have found difficult is the traps.
The game that Grombaq mentioned got me thinking. How did he do it. My surmising is: SPOILERS
Charmed Mulhaney so that he got killed by the Kobalds and skeletons. In Bergost charmed Algernon so that Tranzig killed him. Used the cloak to charm anyone else he wanted killed. At the Ducal Palace used wand of sleep on the doppelgangers and weakened them with other spells.Healed the dukes. At the end battle used a protection from poison scroll. used Cloudkill where it would get Saverok and myself. Use invisibility potion and run away leaving Saverok in the middle of it. Finally go to a position where I can see both Saverok and Angelo. Use the resilient sphere on myself. Saverok will attack me and get killed by Angelo's arrows of detonation. There might be minor differences, but that strategy should work.

Silvanerian · Post by **Silvanerian** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 9:04 am

A couple of notes: If you run Tutu, Otiluke's resilient sphere will not work on most people including yourself, as it now allows for a saving throw. (Putting it in a contigency (SOA/TOB) to cast on self when: helpless would have been nice though)
Secondly, Sarevok is only marginally damaged by arrows of detonation: 2-3 HP per arrow or so. He's near-immune to all elemental damage as far as I remember.

VonDondu · Post by **VonDondu** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 3:34 pm

The paragraphs below are quoted from an old post of mine. I don't know if Sarevok has any resistance to poison (I think that is the sort of damage inflicted by Cloudkill); it's difficult to figure that out with Shadowkeeper and Infinity Explorer, and I don't remember ever using Cloudkill against him.

When you fight Sarevok, he isn't actually wearing any armor. He has a "natural" Armor Class (without armor) of AC -1. I think a +4 DEX bonus is subtracted from that because he has DEX 18, giving him AC -5. He does wear a helmet, presumably to protect against critical hits. His stats are 18/00, 18, 17, 14, 12, 13 (the last 3 are essentially meaningless). He has 285 hit points. I don't think he gets extra hit points for having CON 17; he's not an ordinary class such as Fighter--he's considered a 15th Level "Sarevok".

As for his "weapons", he's carrying a +5 two handed sword, but he also attacks you with a built-in weapon (called "Sarevok") that acts like a +5 two handed sword (+5 to hit, 1d10+5 damage). I think that's the reason why he has a base value of two attacks per round. He's also wearing a ring that makes him Hasted, so I guess that means he gets 4 attacks per round. I think a STR bonus is added to his attacks (+3 to hit and +6 damage for 18/00 STR). His base THAC0 is 2, so if you add his +3 STR bonus and his +5 weapon bonus, I guess he can hit AC -8 on a roll of 2 or higher. He has 90% resistance to fire, cold, electricity, and acid and 50% resistance to missile damage.

wise grimwald · Post by **wise grimwald** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 6:22 am

I know for a fact that Cloudkill is most effective, having used it on him. However I used dispell magic beforehand, so he may have had some resistance prior to that. Unfortunately I have just had the windows blue screen of death and since then my game hasn't worked and I have been having difficulty getting it to work, so I am slightly stuck at the moment.
Thanks for the information though. I found out for myself once that he isn't like other characters. I was playing a thief and tried to see if the plot changed if I almost killed him with my fists. I actually killed him instead of knocking him out! I guessed that he had some resistance to fire damage as the necklace of missiles only does 2 hitpoints of damage. I'm afraid that all my knowledge of the game is experiential rather than theoretical.
One piece of information that would be much appreciated is this. Can you stop characters from saving against Algernon's Cloak by buffing up your character in any way?

wise grimwald · Post by **wise grimwald** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 6:44 am

Just to let you know that I finished the game with a fighter/mage/thief with an experience of 0, except that I got 15000 points when Saverok died even though his allies killed him. I was protected by the resiliant sphere and the cloudkill that was cast to kill me together with arrows of detonation etc was what killed him whilst leaving me untouched.