Am I doing it wrong?

[Ikariusrb]

Just a quick check here;

I'm currently going through the avernum 5 demo, and I read up on some of the char-opt stuff, so set up all my chars with divinely touched plus a primary trait-

 

Elite Warrior - slith fighter

Deadeye - neph archer

Pure Soul - neph priest

Natural Mage - hume mage

 

Now, I've cleared out a large portion of the demo area- just about everything short of finishing the crawler area, and my characters are only just now all level 4. I'm playing normal mode at the moment. Did I go too heavy on the experience penalties, or should this end up fine?

 

Cheers

Ikarius

[Mea Tulpa]

it should end up fine. pity you let that mage be a human though.

[Marak]

From what I've seen and read, the Exp penalties you get from positive Traits are canceled out by the fact that you're always getting good Exp from what you're doing. Because you're Leveling more slowly than you "should be", the game rewards you extra Exp for killing a monster/doing a quest because they're almost always "higher level" than you.

 

What will happen is that the Exp penalty will "cost" you about 3 or 4 (if I recall correctly) Levels by the end of the game, but this is offset by all the free Skills/Abilities you're getting from your Traits. Traits like Natural Mage, Pure Spirit, Elite Warrior, and Divinely Touched scale with Level - so you're basically getting a hefty amount of free Skill Points out of them.

 

However, I find that taking both Divinely Touched and *whatever else* and dipping your Exp Penalty into the 40-45% (or more!) range takes things to an extreme. I don't personally like it, but honestly, unless you're playing on Torment or something you should be just fine.

[Ikariusrb]

Thanks for the input. I started getting worried when I peeked at the singleton discussion, and saw folks exiting the demo area with their characters in the 17-20 range.

[Alorael at Large]

The game works fine if you fill your party with the most expensive traits. Don't worry about overloading.

 

—Alorael, who isn't sure it's strictly optimal. It is, however, strictly good enough, which means it's, um, good enough.

[Randomizer]

You leave the demo area after doing everything for a party of 4 about 7th to 9th level depending on the race and traits. A singleton character get roughly twice the levels of a party of 4 with the same experience penalty or bonus.

 

So in terms of experience levels you are about right. Having lots of experience penalty traits means at the start you go up slower, but it balances out later in the game because you get more experience per monster killed than having lower penalties.

[Mea Tulpa]

You may not like it, but the difference between a one-penalty party at 20-30% and a two-penalty party at 35-45% is pretty tiny, one or two levels over the course of the game. There's absolutely no strategic reason not to take them.

[Earth]

DT+EW/NM/PS exp penalty is 45% but gives nice bonuses etc.

[Marak]

I just feel dirty about piling Divinely Touched onto an already powerful Trait like Natural Mage or Elite Warrior. It just feels dirty to me, even though the logical side of me knows that there's no long-term drawback to it.

 

I guess it seems a bit like cheating to me to "load up" a character so much, and I loathe cheating if I can at all avoid it. But I'm stubborn like that, so don't mind me.

[Lilith]

I don't see why. If you weren't supposed to have the option of loading up on positive traits, the game would have limited the number of traits you can have to 1 instead of 2, or put a cap on the maximum experience penalty you can have.

 

Actually, that's an interesting idea. Limiting experience penalties to a total of -30% would force some tough decisions, especially for nonhumans.

[Alorael at Large]

In fact, in Exile loading up on positive traits apparently worked well enough that Jeff decided to make it impossible in Avernum. Or something.

 

—Alorael, who never quite understood, really. Until A4 traits didn't seem to provide enough benefit to be game-breaking. Maybe Jeff just didn't want new players wrecking their parties with too-high penalties?

[Marak]

Thuryl: I don't see why either. I'm just stubborn. It's not logical but I do it (or in this case, don't do it) anyway.

 

Original poster: I can't believe no one's done this yet...

 

YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!!!

 

=p

[Erebus the Black]

see Thuryl's signature

[Earth]

only 30% exp penalty? that would require quite hard party thinking and torment would be real torment.