Strange things are happening to my character

1. My character lost a Beauty point fifteen minutes into the game. He had eight points initially and several minutes later it decreased to seven. Number seven was also highlighted in red. During this time, I didn't equip anything though I did find an unidentified shield in the Shaman's chest. I picked it up of course but a cursed shield wouldn't affect my character unless he was wielding it, right? I even discarded the shield from my inventory without results. Then I slept for a whole day having in mind that perhaps my character looked tired from lack of rest. Again, nothing happened.

2. I went two times through the game. The first time, after killing every creature at the Crash Site, I advanced a level. During the second time I remained level one even though I followed exactly the same steps. What happened? Both times I had Virgil with me and the difficulty setting was set to Hard.

Thank you.

 

1. You probably scarred yourself. (caused by a critical miss). You can get it healed by Doc Roberts in Shrouded Hills.

 

Thank you for taking your time to answer my questions.

 

Check your injury log. You probably got scarred. It can happen sometimes if you do a critical miss, or if the monster who attacks you scores a critical hit.

Ways to remove the "scarred" condition:

1)Major Healing spell (Virgil gets it later in the game).

2)Being healed with bandages (not sure if it's all the time or on a critical success).

3)Visit a healer NPC, like Doc Roberts, as per Vyenna's post.

My (wild) guess is that the experience you gain is dependent on the hit points of the monsters you kill. I think you can sometimes level up mid-battle after having dealt damage but before having scored a kill. Monster hitpoints are somewhat variable, and some spawn with less life than others. Perhaps you simply had a weak monster day?

 

Isn't experience given when you, i.e. not a follower, hit a monster, and when a monster is killed by you or your followers? Which means that every hit Virgil makes basically makes you lose experience from the total that monster has?

 

If that's the case and if my character tends towards technology, should I drop him as soon as the game begins?

Thank you Solaris and mathboy.

 

Don't worry, you'll level up fast enough. I tend to hoard followers, myself.

 

I've always thought it was rather stupid that you didn't get a (small) amount of exp when your follower kills something. What if you're a non-com diplomat? Makes leveling harder when most of your exp is through quest completion (most of which require killing anyway).

 

Alright, I have my own list of things that net you experience;
Hitting opponents
Killing opponents
Making certain tech items
Quests
Kills made by party members

They can hit an npc for hours and you won't get experience, but they will.
However, if you hit something, they get experience from your hits (either that or they just get more XP per kill than you).

 

The NPCs level up when you do, they don't have any experience gaining of their own.

(Or am I thinking of some other game?)

 

Please elaborate.

Yes and yes (Fallout).

 

Tech items you learn by spending character points will net you experience when you make them.

 

No, the NPCs in arcanum do level up when you do. I'm a lvl 50 warrior in arcanum, and my virgil is lvl 49. I made him fight every single battle and random encounter by himself, and he's still level 49.

 

I just loaded up a character and tried it with a few different schematics. I didn't get any XP.

Re-read my post.

 

I just tried that myself, and it works sometimes in the un-patched version, and not at all in the patched version.
Then again, a lot of weird stuff happens in the un-patched game...