Experience Question

[Taem]

I've been having my first character "throw" everything I find in front of me. In Dungeon Master, this earned me experience in Ninja levels. In Grimrock, I haven't noticed any differences in experience from tossing items in front of my character. Is this true, or did I miscalculate something? If it is true, then you can only gain experience from killing monster?

[Brodie301]

Each character needs to hit each monster, that's how you get it.
XP is not like Skyrim or any other game you've played.
Throw a rock, use a spear from the back row, hell even use a torch to hit and you will get Xp.

[Taem]

So your experience is limited by the number of monsters in the dungeon? I guess that's one way to control what level the characters are at to ensure balance, but I much prefer the old Dungeon Master style of exp where you got a small amount of exp every time you performed an action, such as casting a LIGHT spell, or beating on a door with a club, but got scaled experience based on monster level for doing said objectives against monsters. It was obviously much more advantageous to gain exp from monsters, but was possible to advance your character and kill time by practicing spells in the air and tossing ninja stars in front of you as you walked. Major bummer that this was not included ~ I disapprove of games that shoehorn your play-style towards bashing monsters all day long to gain a level. Not sure if this is a game-breaker for me atm or not. Thanks for the reply.

[Thels]

Indeed you only gain experience from killing monsters.

However, it shouldn't be a major concern. Without going out of your way to kill each monster in the game (which is practically impossible, since some areas have respawning monsters), you should probably still arrive at level 13, or level 12 at the least, and that should be high enough to finish the game.



Gaining XP from solving puzzles and discovering secrets would've been nice, but I don't see how gaining XP from actions you could repeat endlessly would do the game any good. That way, whenever you'd start a new party, some players would consider themselves forced to repeat pointless actions to level their party to 3 or so, to trivialize the game.

[waylander]

i understand the question,on DM i would bash walls throw stuff and cast spells so i could become a neophyte on all levels before i went into the game proper,however i hated every minute of it and am glad its not in this game.

[Merethif]

In DM you got separate experience count for each skill/class, which is not a case in LoG.

@Thels
Your idea with EX for secrets sounds interesting. Characters gain experience every time a new secret is found and it is triggered by secrets count in statistics, so you can't repeat it endlessly. Likewise every Toorum note and treasure found could also provide characters with EX.

[Thels]

@Thels
Your idea with EX for secrets sounds interesting. Characters gain experience every time a new secret is found and it is triggered by secrets count in statistics, so you can't repeat it endlessly. Likewise every Toorum note and treasure found could also provide characters with EX.

I was actually surprised it wasn't part of the game. Not that it matters much.

[Darlos9D]

Yeah, I know EotB gave you experience for completing certain objectives, like getting a key or something. I did think about that myself as well, while playing LoG.

[Goffmog]

It worked well in DM and it wasn't actually that easy to get yourself up levels without fighting monsters once you got to a certain point. Ninja and priest classes were used by most people just as ways of levelling up so that they could get the health and mana bonuses - but I never had a character get beyond craftsman in anything, before I'd completed "choose your door, choose your fate" and only in the bit where the screamers spawn, just before "this is my prisoner..." would I ever stop and grind out levels like that, and then only when I had screamers to throw my attacks at. I can't beleive anyone got to be an archmaster ninja in DM by punching a wall

I'm sure though, if this was the case in grimrock we'd have a bunch of people complaining that the game is rubbish because they have to stand around for ages attacking walls in order to get anywhere, and then it makes them too powerful - much like we have people complaining that the only way to fight monsters is to dance around them. Because of course you have to do it like that that, and you never get hit, and there's always enough space. The game simply FORCES you to do it (sometimes forcing you to backtrack half a level to find a nice 2x2 spot)

[Goffmog]

I can't beleive anyone got to be an archmaster ninja in DM by punching a wall

Although in DM2 I seem to remember the levelling being too fast, and maybe in DM Java too. One of the cool things about DM was that you'd never legitimately (without lots of grinding screamers) get yourself past the 9th or 10th out of 15 levels in any "class", even with a single character playthrough - you weren't supposed to max out your character and the game wasn't designed to give you any extra reward for doing so... Furthermore, it just didn't cross most people's minds that it was at all the point of the game.