IWD2 gets an HD Let's Play!

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Been checking your Battle Squares videos and lo and behold, even I learned something new. The experience bonus for higher ranks is just HUGE, and can be "forced" if you want to do some Power Word: Reload cheese there. The complete Squares is worth quite a bit over 100,000 exp if you're to push it, dwarfing the quest exp of the whole CHAPTER by quite a margin.

That's absolutely something to consider if you're to maximize experience gain.. and absolutely something you should NOT do while you're in Chapter Two yourself. Just save it until the end of Chapter Four instead, backtrack to the Ice Temple and own the place with your high level characters, lest you get absolutely HUGE exp reductions all the way through chapters three and four.

 

Good God, I've helped Sir Rechet learn something about IWD2. Something I ignored, at that.

I truly am blessed.

 

The XP you can get for winning a battle square level is also level scaled, it's treated like a level (rank+5) monster IIRC, so a level 15 party won't get any XP for fighting on the first 2 ranks for example.

 

Oh, that's yet more news then. I just assumed it'd be quest exp, but if it counts as a "monster", then of course you want to cash it in as soon as you can.

Considering that the party was average level 10 (a whole lot of level 11s and a Drow dragging the average down by a notch) at the time of doing Rank 10, it actually matches your assumption of CR equivalency = Rank + 5. CR15 "monster" vs level 10 party is exactly 9,000 exp, just as in the video. I'll have to double-check some other spots in the videos, but IIRC I saw a 8,100 exp reward doing Rank 9, which would match level 9 party's exp award for CR14 mob.

Edit: Confirmed. First he got 8,100 exp for Rank 9 levels, but after a level-up to average party level 10 (levels 11, 11, 11, 9, 11, 10 in march order) it dropped down to 6,000 exp. That confirms both the "monster" type exp award (instead of Quest exp) and gives three matching datapoints to the CR = Rank + 5 formula.