Couple of off-the-wall questions

1. Does anyone ever play an archer? I mean if you want cool ranged weapons guns seem to be the way to go.

2. Since you gain experience for hitting/damaging monsters personally (in addition to you or followers killing them) is playing a mage with fireflash the fastest way to gain levels? I've played a couple types of characters (none to very high levels becuase I keep starting new games with different charcters whenever I think og a new cool idea) but it seems my fire mage gained levels a lot faster than my tech guy.

 

I have never played an archer, but as far as I know the arcane bow is the strongest and it is only marginal compared to some of the swords and spells. I think it was meant to be an augmentaion of another type of fighter. Like if you are a melee and the bad guy runs way the hell off the screen. You could switcha nd use the bow instead of chasing him down.

The fire mage doesn't gain any MORE exp than a fighter. He mearly gains it at a faster rate. Check this out. 4 sewer rats takes at least 4 swings of the sword to kill. The mage does it in one spell. 1/4 of the time for the same amount of xp. Same for jolt, squall and poison fog I think

 

rate of XP gain

Let me ask this as a follow up then. If you hit and kill a monster do you get more XP than if a follower kills it (i.e. xp for the hit and the kill as opposed to just for the kill)? The point is: if I take the fire mage and do more of the killing personally do I go up in levels faster?

 

First of all, as the Self-appointed Unofficial forum Welcomer I would like to say, "Welcome to the forum, SteveTheERB!" :wavey:

In answer to your follow up (yes, I also answer questions), the kill is worth the same amount of XP if you kill it or your followers kill it. The thing is that you actually get more XP for the damage you do to the creature than the kill. That is why area effect spells cause XP to go up faster. Grenades and cocktails do the same. I personally go after the creatures with the most hit points left and then let my followers mop up.

 

I played an archerlike char, but like Orlon said, she was mainly melee / magick, and used bows to hurt enemies stroming in / or running away.

 

Heres a little example to make it clear for you.

Lets say you are being attacked by a rat. The game gives you 1 xp for hitting the rat and 1 xp for killing it. Lets say it takes you 3 hits to kill it. That means

(hit xp X # of hits) + killing xp = total xp for creature
(1 X 3) + 1 = 4

Thats if you kill it and have no NPC help. If your npc kills it all you get is the killing xp. Now if you were to use a fireflash on a group of 5 rats

# of rats X [(hit xp X # of hits) + kill xp]

5 X [(1 X 1) + 1] = 10

so it took 1 hit to kill each rat. you got 1 xp for the hit and 1 for the kill for each rat. You got all of this in a single blow because the fireflash killed them all at the same time.

These numbers are completly made up and hold no bearing on the actual game.

What I dont know is whether the hit xp is based on number of hits or amount of damage.HTH

 

It seemed to me that it depended on the level of the creature. I have no definitive proof, but as you get up there in levels and you kill a putrid rat for example, your little XP bar barely moved, but if you take on Stringy Pete your XP bar moves quite a bit with each hit.

 

wow, algebra... i haven't seen that stuff in years... vlad, welcome back... i'm so glad you're here...

 

Yea I think the xp progression works the same as diablo 2. If the creature is a higher level than you you get the full xp for the creature X a modifier(like 1.5 or something). If the creature is a lower level then you get full xp X a lower modifier(like .2 or something). Thant way a charecter couldn't run around killing monky swarmers by the hundreds and gain levels ike crazy. Thats how it works in most RPG's cause if they didn't a charecter could level at a spawn point and crew up the blance of things. Although I have noticed that there aren't that many spawn points in the game(like the one near Liam lab in black root)

 

that place is wonderful for getting quick levels...

 

I liked Ellumyn's bow. Super fast and it seemed to do more criticals than usual.

 

I made an envenomed bow that I'd hoped Raven would use. It's two found schematics (i.e. tech manuals work) that require a long bow, boat pulleys and strong poison (a chemistry schematic using Monroes Cleaner & Varhams Aqua Vitae). It looked like it would be great, but she would have had about a 30% aptitude adjustment for critical misses, so she might have done more harm than good. Even through she could pull the compound bow, her aptitude adjustment was still too high. The best magick bow that she (being weak) can pull seems to be Ellumyn's - she gets in so many shots that its effective damage is much higher than I'd have guessed from the stats.

Anyway, my point is that an envenomed bow in the hands of a neutral or tech bow master could be a formidable weapon. On the other hand, I've had such fun as a master thrower with the aerial decapitator and various grenades, that any bow would probably be a disappointment...

 

That's because the bar is only a graphical representation. Numerically, you get the same XP from the same monster, no matter your level. But the bar represents a larger amount of XP, so it takes longer to fill.

You probably already know this, but if you see your character sheet you actually can see the amount of XP you need for next level. This could be used to do some calculations, just try killing the same monster several times in different ways (single blow, several blows, etc, or even try to pause the game after a single blow and check your XP in the character sheet).