The viability of being villianous (alliteration FTW)?

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Hello all,

I'm about to try ToEE for the first time and I've been reviewing guides etc.

Seems the first major decision is one of alignment. Before getting into the finer increments of alignment I am more concerned with the matter of whether to be heroic or villianous.

I'm not opposed to the idea of doing all the available quests in a village or town and then proceeding to murder the inhabitants for XP and stealing their belongings now that i've milked everything of worth they have to offer me.

It's not that I'm sick (well, maybe) but I'm just coming from a power gamer or 'min/max' perspective. I'd like to milk every bit of benefit an NPC has for me, even if that means his life for experience points.

That said, I am concerned that if I do this in one village/town that my reputation will travel and the following village will not let me complete their quests etc on account of my murderous reputation.

My primary concern is getting the most amount of XP and loot I can. So if this were to happen, and one act of genocide would 'lock out' all following quests then naturally I will avoid said genocide as it is not the approach that yields the most xp/loot.

So I'm basically asking what approach will lead to the most amount of XP and loot gained? Being perfectly good to allow all access to all quests? Or can I empty a town/village/faction(?) of all it's quests and services and then proceed to systematically slaughter it's inhabitants for combat practice without any negative consequences? Or perhaps the secret formula lies in some sort of middle ground, completing the bulk of quests but with a selective amount of murder on the side?

Thanks for your advice in this most grim and calculating of matters.

On a related note, if my approach turns out to involve a certain degree of murderation I think it's fair to assume that locks out Paladins for me. How viable is a Paladinless team? I understand the basic differences between a Paladin and Barbarian but would like further opinions. Is there another option for a front line 'tank' type class? Can you just have a guy fill that role as 'fighter'?

Thanks again for helping a noobie.

 

sry, I just have to laugh

 

I may be way off here. Can you even kill NPC's?

 

LOL ! ! !

HAHAHA! ! !

 

Oh dear.

As far as ToEE is concerned, your experience point rewards are affected by your level (I.E. Killing say, a troll at very low levels will yield far more than murdering him at the appropriate one). In that case, chopping up villagers at mid-level isn't going to give you much experience (in fact, it probably won't give you any). That being said, most of the time, there are very few NPCs worth killing for experience in Hommlet or Nulb (except very, very early on, but you'll end up missing on a fair amount of quests if you *do* cause them to cease breathing).

I would suggest doing an heroic party, or a "smart evil" one if that's your sort of thing. The best places to really rack up levels are in dungeons (doubly so if you have the Co8 mods). If you're really, really *that* much worried about experience, you can run around on the world map farming for random encounters.

The next section is a bit spoiler-ish if you haven't played ToEE before, so you may want to refrain from reading it if that is the case.

Spoiler

Rannos Davl and Gremag, the two merchants in Hommlet, are traitors and can be killed without any consequence whatsoever (in fact, successfully doing so gives you a fair amount of reputation on the 'good' side). They have some tremendous amount of experience to give out, as well as some pretty nifty magic loot. However, there are two minor quests preceding this encounter that you may want to complete before assaulting them.

[Edit]: Thanks, Tal. I'll keep that in mind next time.