No XP scaling?

[Ineth]

In this post grogerson said that XP rewards would scale with the difficulty setting, but it does not seem to work for me.

 

I tested it by killing the wolf in one of the houses in the starting area (Easthaven) and noting down the awarded XP, at each of the five difficulty levels.

The results:

 

Vanilla IWD: 240 / 180 / 120 / 180 / 240

 

IWD-in-BG2 v7.13: 120 / 120 / 120 / 120 / 120

 

IWD-in-BG2 v8: 120 / 120 / 120 / 120 / 120

 

Is there anything I need to do to enable the XP multiplier for the higher difficulties, when playing with this mod?

 

(PS: I'm using the GoG.com versions of IWD and BG2.)

[lynx]

it would require an engine hack, bg2 has no scaling.

[Jarno Mikkola]

it would require an engine hack, bg2 has no scaling.

Or we could make a mod that scales the XP rewards permanently during the install... it's not the same, but.

[lynx]

or using gemrb, which has these details externalised.

[Jarno Mikkola]

or using gemrb, which has these details externalised.

Well, I was thinking a little smaller externalizing option, say this mod of mine:

IwDXPmultiplier.zip

Yes, you read that correctly, it's size is 747 B, probably the second smallest weidu mod ever, I also made the smallest... using the very same technique. A .bat installer, as a total conversion mods come with the weidu.exe already in them.

And in the the reference of the above, the setup gives the option to set the (original 120)XP to these levels: 60, 180, 240, 360 or even 480xp from all the creature kills, the quest XP stays the same.

[DavidW]

In this post grogerson said that XP rewards would scale with the difficulty setting

 

He was wrong.

[Ineth]

In this post grogerson said that XP rewards would scale with the difficulty setting

 

He was wrong.

it would require an engine hack, bg2 has no scaling.

 

Ah, too bad. I thought maybe ToBEx made it possible.

 

Anyways, there is a second "XP scaling" difference between IWD and IWD-in-BG2 which, I assume, could be fixed without engine hacks - namely scaling of quest XP to the party size.

 

To continue with the example of the wolf in Easthaven, after you kill it you can talk to Apsel (the 'scrimshander') who thanks you and gives you some XP.

 

If I'm not mistaken (my NearInfinity skills are limted), the XP reward is coded in DAPSEL.DLG like this:

AddXP2DA("Level_1_Easy")

...and Level_1_Easy is defined in XPLIST.2DA like this:

Level_1_Easy cmt 200 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1

 

IWD-in-BG2 does not change this, but the in-game result is different.

 

In vanilla IWD, the party does not actually receive 200 XP from Apsel, but 1200 (i.e. six times as much) on the default difficulty level (and 1800 / 2400 XP on other difficulties). This value is then fairly divided among all party members - so in smaller parties, each character get more.

 

In IWD-in-BG2, on the other hand, each party member gets the fixed amount of 200 XP, regardless of the party size.

 

Difficulty-dependent and party-size-dependent XP scaling combined, gives the following result:

 

If a dialog script awards 200 quest XP, each party member actually gets...

	  |		 p a r t y   s i z e		 |
	  |  (6)   (5)	(4)	(3)	(2)	(1) |
------------------+-----------------------------------------+
vanilla IWD:	  |					   |
 Normal	  |  200   240	300	400	600   1200 |
 Easy/Hard	  |  300   360	450	600	900   1800 |
 VeryEasy/Insane |  400   480	600	800   1200   2400 |
------------------+-----------------------------------------+
IWD-in-BG2:	  |					   |
 Core		  |  200   200	200	 200	200	200 |
 Normal/Hard	  |  200   200	 200	200	200	200 |
 Novice/Insane   |  200   200	200	200	200	200 |

(Disclaimer: I have not actually tested every single combination in this table, but I tested enough to be able to fill in the blanks.)

(EDIT: The forum software apparently messes up whitespace in code tags, this is the best I could tweak it.)

 

So, in the worst-case-scenario, IWD-in-BG2 only gives one-twelfth of the quest XP that the original game would give...

 

Now the reason I assume that at least the party-size scaling can be fixed, is because BG2 has both kinds of quests - ones that give a fixed XP amount to each party member, and ones that give XP to the whole party to be distributed fairly. So I guess if the IWD quests were simply converted to the second kind, then the BG2 engine would handle them like IWD handles them in their current version?

 

Well, I was thinking a little smaller externalizing option, say this mod of mine:

IwDXPmultiplier.zip

 

[...]the setup gives the option to set the (original 120)XP to these levels: 60, 180, 240, 360 or even 480xp from all the creature kills, the quest XP stays the same.

 

Cool, I'll try that.