Andor's Trail

I find that there are numerous examples of monsters which, on average, do lots of damage to you by the time the battle is over, but yet only give not much more experience than another monster which does much less damage to you on average for a given fight. I'd like to see this adjusted a little bit. There is more than one approach to this, certainly. One is to scale the XP by the amount of damage taken (probably not the best implementation), another is for the devs to manually adjust the XP payout for some monsters. Your current stats could figure into it.

Can you give some examples? Also, please give the stats for your build.

Without more information it's hard to do anything about it. Or even to evaluate whether it's a real problem, a perceived problem, or something to do with your build.

Some examples:

The Auleth creatures are pathetically easy to deal with, and one hardly comes out with more than a few HP lost from a battle with them, yet you get 150 to 200 XP from them. On the flip side, the Gornauds and White Wyrms hit you with those effects (Daze and Fatigue, I think they are), and are much harder to deal with, and I generally lose tens of HP in a given fight with one of them. Yet you also get around 150 to 220 XP from them.

In the forest areas near the start of the game, the dogs, wolves and foxes pose only a moderate challenge, whereas the burrower creatures have the potential to do mega damage to you due to their chance of criticals. I remember fighting one of the tougher burrower creatures (further out east), and losing 60+ HP in one round, due to 3 consecutive critical hits. Comparing damage taken, the burrowers seem like they should be worth 5 times as much XP as other creatures that do much less damage, yet the XP payout is comparable.

Another example is the Izthiel creatures, which have the bleeding effects, which can be lethal when compounded. Yet, these only give 200ish XP.

As for my stats, here they are, but bear in mind I have the Kazaul rotworms at the moment:

Attack: 180% 16-28 +10
Defense: 91% / 2
L34, 116 HP

I prefer to use the Skullcrusher for the critical damage, but I can't at the moment due to the rotworms.

Encountered the Morkin monsters for the first time, and these are a perfect case in point. You get 240 to 310 experience per kill, and they only do 0-3 damage per hit, with no criticals. My character has 3 damage resistance, so I effectively have zero risk in fighting these. Yet, I can gain so much more experience than I do fighting some monsters which actually do hurt my character, yet give under 100 XP. Theoretically, I can grind on these Morkin monsters as much as I want, until the boredom makes it impractical relative to the XP gains.

I agree. Some things don't seem to be well balanced in the calculation of XP. Looking through a list of the monsters, the effects of criticals and actor effects are under-weighted in the calculations. As you note, monsters with very low damage are also overrated, because even a small DR makes you immune. I think this could use some adjustment, but since I am not a developer that's just an opinion

I noticed that disarrangement too, but I interpreted that as a challenge.
Like the example wit the burrower. I always "used" the one borrower to the north as a border with the consequence that i can only pass this border when im strong enough.
But this effect is only there when you try to pass an area for the first time. Afterward, when your build is strong enough, then it comes true that this disarrangement of xp ist really annoying.

rijackson741 wrote:I agree. Some things don't seem to be well balanced in the calculation of XP. Looking through a list of the monsters, the effects of criticals and actor effects are under-weighted in the calculations. As you note, monsters with very low damage are also overrated, because even a small DR makes you immune. I think this could use some adjustment, but since I am not a developer that's just an opinion

well, you are on the development team now, so maybe it's not just your opinion anymore?

Ha Ha!. I put it on my to-do list to look at it. My to-do list is quite long though, so I don't know when.