Couple of Quick Questions from a New Player

[Sentience]

1. Is there a cap on character level? If so, what is that limit?

 

2. Normally how many hours does it take to finish the game (including almost all of the side quests)?

 

Thank you in advance.

[Lilith]

1. There's a cap, but you won't ever reach it because nearly all monsters will stop giving out significant experience long before you hit it. Expect to finish the game at a level from the mid-30s to low 40s, depending on what traits you take.

 

2. I finished it in a couple of weeks of fairly concentrated effort, but I didn't keep track of how many hours I was playing a day. If you don't get really stuck on any quests or fights, maybe around 60 hours? It's not a short game.

[Student of Trinity]

As a singleton I think you can probably reach high 40's even with the best traits. I'm at 46 having just reached Melanchion, and there's actually quite a bit to do yet. True that the monsters themselves will give only peanuts, but there are quite a few quests still to complete.

[Randomizer]

If Jeff didn't cap it, you should reach almost 60 with the highest experience penalty. A singleton has double the levels at the equivalent XP penalty as a party of 4.

 

Edit - I remember Jeff adjusted the cap after a two character party hit the cap during beta testing.

[Student of Trinity]

Hmm; breaking 50 is looking more doable now, as I see that some of the Dark River monsters are actually still giving decent XP. But pushing 60, that seems unlikely, unless you take some bad traits or something. There isn't that much of the game left for me now. And I think I've done everything reasonable to gain XP. I dunno; maybe I could have rushed sooner to tackle some of the tougher optional areas at lower level. It'd be nice to hear a firm report of how high a level anyone has reached in the final version of A5.

[Randomizer]

Quote:

Bryce -
My Singleton was Ssthss the Divinely Touched Natural Mage Slith Custom, lv 45 at game's end.

He missed a few places that would probably give him at least one and maybe two more levels. This is also the highest XP penalty and probably cost him another 4 levels over a nephil character. So I'd say 50+ is easily reached.

[Sentience]

My lone rogue is a human with the following two traits: Elite Warrior and Strong Will. The reason why I asked for the level cap is that I want my character to be able to 'master' all special physical special skills by the time she reaches level 50+. At 5 skill points per level gained, this comes to roughly 250 skill points to distribute (there could be quests or events in game that might award extra skill pts -- I don't know).

[monolith94]

There are actually a fair amount of knowledge potions/wisdom crystals in the game, and if you use them all on one character, I'd bet that they add up significantly.

[Student of Trinity]

They do, especially since every Energetic Herbs you find can eventually be turned into a Knowledge Brew. (You need all the other herbs too, but the Energetics are by far the scarcest in the second half of the game.)

 

How doable that is depends on what you mean by 'master'. You can certainly end up with a few points in every special physical skill. Magic items and paid trainers can even boost you to quite high levels in some of them: I'm at Lethal Blow 11, for instance, even though it isn't trainable for me. Riposte and Gymnastics, on the other hand, are hard to raise above 5 or so.