I have four fighters at level five, a paladin at level five, and a bard at level 6. I plan to dual class my fighters to illusionist, cleric, druid, and thief respectively once they've reached at least level 9. I played through the first two levels of Dragon's Eye with another party when I first got IWD. I'm a little leary of getting too far into Dragon's Eye without at least a thief (and hopefully a cleric!) due to the number of traps. Is there somewhere (in Kresselack's tomb perhaps?) where I can use the sleep-and-fight tactic to gain maximum expo in minimum time? The verbeeg's in the Temple of the Forgotten God are lame (420 expo each).

Cary

<font color = mediumspringgreen>Cary,</font>

I have four fighters at level five, a paladin at level five, and a bard at level 6. I plan to dual class my fighters to illusionist, cleric, druid, and thief respectively once they've reached at least level 9.

<font color = mediumspringgreen>Good girl! No one said this would be easy; but the longer you can go without, now, the happier you will be in the mid to late game and in HoW and TotLM.</font>

I played through the first two levels of Dragon's Eye with another party when I first got IWD. I'm a little leary of getting too far into Dragon's Eye without at least a thief... Is there somewhere...I can use the sleep-and-fight tactic to gain maximum expo in minimum time

<font color = mediumspringgreen>The best place amongst the areas you've already covered with your first party is, I think, at the end of DE1. Near the start of DE3 is another good (better than DE1) spot. I don't want to spoil for you, but if you make it through DE3 (should not be a big problem) there is an excellent place in DE4 to get lots (limitless) expo without even needing to sleep. You may need a bit of coaching so as to not terminate your opportunity before you recognize it. Also, getting expo here CAN BE like trying to get a drink of water from a fire hydrant, if you're not careful.</font>

Hope this helps.

</font>--------------------<font color = mediumspringgreen>
What's a party,
without a song?
Bards ROCK!
Party On!!

Cary
my party is about to face Yxunomei and it is as follows:
Fighter/Cleric 6/6, Ranger 7, Fighter 7, Pally 7, Mage 8, Mage/Thief 6/7

I am probably doing something very wrong again but the only traps I have found are those that shoot arrows causing poison or confusion. My Thief can detect traps but she has yet to do so on any I have faced on this 4 th level of DE. I don't think she has the ability to disarm traps yet. I use the save/reload system to walk around the traps I find. Near the end are a few chests that need picking but other than that the thief remains unemployed.

I stand corrected on this. My Thief found a number of places to unlock and disarm at the end of DE.


[ 10-16-2004, 07:43 PM: Message edited by: Calagari ]

...my party is about to face Yxunomei and it is as follows:
Fighter/Cleric 6/6, Ranger 7, Fighter 7, Pally 7, Mage 8, Mage/Thief 6/7

<font color = mediumspringgreen>Calagari,

I take it then that the Wight barbeque went well??

Hey!! That is a very decent front line you have. Did you change it or did I just not understand what you had before? (Your Pally will get better with age. Just make sure he can sling a longsword.)

</font>--------------------<font color = mediumspringgreen>
What's a party,
without a song?
Bards ROCK!
Party On!!
</font>

[ 10-15-2004, 03:09 PM: Message edited by: NobleNick ]

Cary,

You can rest in the Vale of Shadows outside, and be attacked by yeti. 420 XP each. One thing I might also suggest, is that you bump up the difficulty level before doing so - at Insane, creatures do twice as much damage, but they have to hit you first. And they have the same amount of HP (I think) and give twice as much XP. 700 for a shadow and 840 for a yeti is quite respectable, and they don't have the punch that verbeeg or lizardmen do.

Bar none the best place to rest for XP is DE lvl 3. I may have mentioned this before, but there are some convenient little alcoves where you can stash vulnerable members of the party, leaving a couple tanks out front.
_______________________________________________

Calagari,

There aren't any traps on DE lvl 4. To detect traps, follow these steps:

1) advance thief out in front of the party (watch out for monsters; you may want to have speed boots on the thief or fighter-interceptors keeping pace a couple steps behind)
2) Hit the little icon with four triangles at the corners of a square - right beside the other thieving options.
3) Wait a bit - it takes a round (seven seconds) for traps to be detected. They will be outlined in red. To disarm, hit the general thieving button (also opens locks and picks pockets), move the cursor over the detected trap, and click. It should show a little green loop and the trap outlined in green before you click.

I believe you also have to have your armor removed to disarm traps. Correct me if I'm wrong. :-D

Cary

Maybe, I'm not sure. In PnP D&D, there is a penalty to the thief's chances depending on what type of armour they are wearing. I'm not sure if that happens in IWD - I haven't read anything about it, and I haven't noticed any change in the listed percentage when I take armour off.

You should be able to disarm traps and do all the normal thieving skills wearing armour up to and including studded leather. Fighter/thieves, if they are wearing better armour, have to take it off. However, I think it's still possible to detect traps wearing heavier armours.

we had Wight ribs a plenty. Everyone had a great time at the BBQ I never could have done it without the help of yourself and Aerich. You two must have this whole game memorized to be able to know as much as you do. I sure appreciate the help that is for sure.

Cary, I just finished DE it was not as hard as I thought it would be. I lost one party member but that was my own fault. She was caught in the web while the rest of the party was under heavy fire. It was a clear choice take out the priest or help Laurin. The priest won the toss and died. By that time poor Laurin was fading into the sunset. Luckily we had a raise the dead scroll to revive her. All hands left the DE with more respect than we had when we entered.

Dancing Virginia... you can have unlimited exp in Vale of Shadows in dialogue with Mythos (read my post in Unfair Tricks). But I think, you have killed him. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I believe you also have to have your armor removed to disarm traps. Correct me if I'm wrong. :-D

<font color = mediumspringgreen>Cary,

Sort of. A single class Thief can do all Thief functions in any armor a Thief can wear. The rub comes when you have an MC or DC Thief. Then, if the Thief is wearing heavy armor that a Thief would normally not qualify to wear; then he needs to doff it in order to perform some Thieving functions, like Hide In Shadows and Disarm Traps. (I am pretty sure Aerich is correct: IIRC, my DC Thief/Fighter can Find Traps in heavy armor.)

</font>--------------------<font color = mediumspringgreen>
What's a party,
without a song?
Bards ROCK!
Party On!!
</font>

[ 10-18-2004, 09:04 AM: Message edited by: NobleNick ]

Everyone had a great time at the BBQ I never could have done it without the help of yourself and Aerich. You two must have this whole game memorized to be able to know as much as you do. I sure appreciate the help that is for sure.

<font color = mediumspringgreen>Calagari,

Glad to help, although I'm afraid Aerich's memory is a tad better than mine: I did have all of HoW and IWD memorized at one point; but feel like my memories are like sand, and my head a big bag with a hole in the bottom! I compensate by sticking with it...

Hey, got a few details on how you fared in that first DE3 battle?

</font>--------------------<font color = mediumspringgreen>
What's a party,
without a song?
Bards ROCK!
Party On!!
</font>

...Bar none the best place to rest for XP is DE lvl 3. I may have mentioned this before, but there are some convenient little alcoves where you can stash vulnerable members of the party, leaving a couple tanks out front. <font color = mediumspringgreen>

~

(Minor DE spoiler coming)

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~

~

~

Aerich, DE3 has its advantages, for reasons you mention above. But it MIGHT be possible to engineer a better situation in DE4, as follows:

There is a room in DE4 with High Summoners (IIRC, there are two Summoners in the room). These guys pump out an unending supply of (again, IIRC) lizards. So, just set up a formation outside the High Summoner's room and whack the summons as they straggle out the door. If the rate of monster generation is too high, go in and kill one of the summoners to cut the rate in half. Be careful, these guys (in HoF, and likely on Normal) run on a script that keeps pumping out summons even while your party sleeps!

I have not actually run the above expo trap in DE4, so am conjecturing, here; but, recently, I did end up exploiting a situation amazingly like this in TotLM: Two summoners were each scripted to generate a certain monster (name withheld), about every 1-1/2 to 2 minutes; so one got generated about every 50 seconds or so. Each monster was worth 12,000 expo; and they were easy kills for my warrior-heavy party. Every once in a while someone would take a hit; but the Bard kept everyone healed up with War Chant...

Kill monster, reform line, wait 15 seconds, repeat... The party remained there for about an hour, basking in the river of expo (about 3/4 of a million points!), until I simply got tired of killing the things, and put the hammer down on the source. (No one in my ridiculously high level party, except the MC Thief/Illusionist, needed the expo anyway.)

</font>--------------------<font color = mediumspringgreen>
What's a party,
without a song?
Bards ROCK!
Party On!!
</font>

The first time out everyone died. The 2nd time out I knew enough to cast armor, shield on my mage. I then cast protection from missles on my thief mage. My fighter cleric cast bless on the group. The mage then cast haste on the group. This was all done in front of the door where the caravan people are. Once my thief opened the door the group rushed in. I then equipped everyone with ranged weapons.

The caravan people started fighting and casting away, my group followed them around helping to kill what was left. My party didn't suffer much damage. From that point on the caravan group was there to watch over us so we could rest. That made area 4 a bit easier.

As much as I like haste the group wears out pretty fast after the battle from having it cast on them.

Disarm traps requires you to have a high find traps skill level.

The 4th level wasn't so hard as much as it required knowledge of what floor tiles to avoid. Going from door to door I walked each member single file to avoid the arrow traps. I would line my group up in front of the doors send in my lead fighter to draw the monsters back to the door and fight them there with ranged weapons.

This worked well with Yxunomei. I had monster summoning cast as well as armor, shield on the mage Protection from miissles on my T/M. Bless was on the group as well as haste. Protection from fire was cast on my F/C. As soon as the door opened web and entangle was cast into the room. I sent in the F/C to click on the last message of the speech with the little girl, then run back to the group. The mage cast some fire spells into the room randomly. The rest just hit Yxuonmei with what they had. She died fairly fast, the rest of her group right after her. The secret here as I see it is to make sure you have cleared out all the previous rooms before tackling her. I had missed 2 rooms when I got to her door the first time. Realizing my error I cleaned them out before opening Yxuonmei's door.

I like the tactic of sending in one target to draw the enemy back to the group with a doorway between the groups. That stops or at least slows down the surrounding of the group the enemy seems to enjoy doing so much. With my mage at the very rear he can fire off spells without being interupted and miscasting.

When it is all done I brush on some BBQ sauce and let them simmer until done. Yum!
[img]graemlins/fight.gif[/img]


[ 10-18-2004, 11:13 AM: Message edited by: Calagari ]

There's a couple of reasons why I don't like to mess around on DE lvl 4 trying to get XP.

1) It's so much easier and less risky on DE lvl 3 (Protection from Fire on tank that's a little in front of the party is gold, even though it can get boring).

2) I'm pretty sure the summoners on DE lvl 4 have a chance to pull in trolls - fire/acid arrows are a little too scarce at that point to risk that. I also am wary of the potential for getting swamped when I come back after resting to regain spells. Wights also give better XP and do less damage (iirc) than lizardmen. Although they don't spawn as often (at best, once per rest period), they are worth more per unit.

My preferred method on DE lvl 4? SPOILERS
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*
*
Set up outside the front door or in the library, then expose A. Cast Web, Entangle, Grease, Skull Trap, Glyph of Warding, etc to create a killing zone - the monsters will wander in, get trapped, and be easy meat. Wait for the spells to expire, then rampage to the summoners, then clear the rest of the level. Sans adventurers. I've never needed their help, and I like to hog the XP - you lose some if you let them out.