7 replies to this topic

[Jarno Mikkola]

...

Well, in the transition, your experience points are kept, as there's no rational explanation one would just forget what he just did.
Now, one of the strong points of the Baldur's Gate is the level system, it begins low, and it end up really really high, so even if you reach the level 10, it takes a lot more to get to level 11... at least in the BG1 portion of the BGT, so from the sound of it you are doing fine. And of course you can 'skip' the areas and quests by just running from point A to B in the plot without killing anything in between(but the essential creatures)...

[Jarno Mikkola]

There has been efforts of making the BGT balanced... but I would say that it's about the player preference more than the judgement of somebody else.
The Def Jam, or more accuratly the "Ding0 Experience Fixer" is actually pointed towards the BG2 experiences... so, if I remember it correctly, it actually doesn't cut the BGT's experience at all, if I remember it correctly. The BiG World Setup uses it's own mod for the BGT&BG2 experience cutting, the Mix Mod v5, it's the download link, can be found here . There's also the BP-Balancer, but it's item parts of that remove some quest essencial items and so it's not in use anymore in the BWS.

Edited by Jarno Mikkola, 01 December 2010 - 02:30 AM.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Well, I won't talk about my experience, as it's twisted on it's own ways always but let me use others words...

E. XP SETTINGS IN THE MEGAMOD MEGAMOD
For the BiG World Project we have tried to manipulate the experience points as fair-minded as possible with the XP-Mods. Without this XP-Mods all characters would reach with all additional mods too fast too high experience levels and thus make the game too easy.

BGT(-WeiDU)
With this mod the experience caps are removed, thus you receive continuously experience points. Besides, BGT reduces the experience points for "open locks" "find traps" and "learning spells".

BGT Tweak Pack
With the component "Restore BG2 XP bonus for traps, locks, and scrolls" the suitable experience points that are used by BGT are removed again. Thus is everything again like that, as it is intended for BG1.

BG2 Tweak Pack
With the component "changed experience caps" we have the possibility to remove the ToB-experience caps, so that you can collect consistent experience points up to level 50 in the mega-mod.

BP-Balancer
The "BP-Balancer" is made especially to balance the experience points of the big BG1 mods in the MegaMod, because some mods give atypical high experience points which do not fit to the game balance of BG1. Besides, it restores again all original experience points that these mods have changed in "Baldur's Gate 1".
In addition, the "BP-Balancer" has also individual experience points settings for "open locks" "find traps" and "learning spells" that are applied also in BG1 and BG2. We have set the experience points to 4% of the original value of experience. Thereby you receive a diminished number of experience points, but then you have them constantly for BG1 and BG2. Furthermore you get still more than enough of experience points by the additional mods.

Ding0’s Experience Fixer
The "DEFJAM" is made to adjusted the XPs in a MegaMod. With so many mods there are vast amounts of experience points that would allow to level up the characters too fast and thus to endanger the game balance.
Who would like to have in BG2 in chapter 3 already level 20 that actually is intended for "ToB"? This is why it is important for a MegaMod to reduce the experience points. Players' reports have pointed out that 50% of the original experience points for killing creatures and doing quests are good settings.

BP-Balancer and Ding0’s Experience Fixer
With Ding0's Experience fixer (DEFJAM) the values XP are reduced global with the value of x%. With the BPBalancer there is consciously no global reduction of the experience for killing enemies but the single mods are anew (specifically) balanced.
Depending on the installed order either the Balancer works on the diminished values of DEFJAM (what would not be bad, because the Balancer sets the values explicitly) or, DEFJAM would reduce the values set by the Balancer once more.

Summary
The game balance should guarantee well balanced settings in the MegaMod.
In the original BG1 together with legends of the sword coast you could reach level 8-9. This was the start level for BG2.
With all mentioned settings these values are preserved. However, if you solve all quests in BG1 you have the possibility to get a bonus level that was not possible in the original game. Now you can reach about level 9-10 in BG1. This is anyhow a duplication of the experience points. Although BG2 has more mods at disposal than BG1, these settings guarantee that the game remains fair up to
the end. At the end we have these settings:
XP levels 50
learning spells 40
traps 40
picking pockets 10

There is also a mod called "Zyraen's Miscellaneous Mods"(link) that can cap the XP points to a few ways based on what stages your game is at...

Edited by Jarno Mikkola, 01 December 2010 - 06:54 AM.

[Anomaly]

Def Jam works as well on the BG1 portion. Il you would like to have no more XP that you should get if you play real BG1 followed by BG2, you should use 75% XP reduction for creatures, and nothing else. You should get 160000 xp in average (level 8 to 10 depending on class) if you are in a party of six at the end of BG1 and did everything, which simulate the XP cap in the original game.