Level squatting - what's it really worth?

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Hey there,

currently I'm playing through the game with a semi-power-gaming party of four. I only plan on doing one single non-HoF run on 'Insane' difficulty but here is my dilemma: When I created my party I expected to be at least level 24 by the end of the game and planned my characters accordingly. However, because of the way experience works in IWD2, my final level will in fact be quite a bit lower.

The answer to my problems? Level squatting!

There's only one problem. How do I know when to stop?

My plan is to eventually get to a point where I can play the rest of the game normally while still reaching my desired level(~25) by the end.

But what is squatting really worth? By squatting early and then using the stored levels I will get a lot less XP later in the game because I'm at a higher levels than I would have been without squatting. Doesn't this kind of cancel each other out?

TL;DR: If you use up your squatted levels at some point in the game, how much is it really worth? Does the reduced XP you gain later cancel out the additional XP you gained by squatting? When can I stop squatting if I want to reach level ~25 by the end of the game?

 

Pretty much yes. Once your party "unsquats", your xp gains from kills go way down until your party gets closer to the level it "should" be. Because of the dynamic xp system, you really have to work hard to finish normal above xl 17 (or below 16)

When your party has enough xp to be just short of level 25. Your combat xp will go to zero once you unsquat, deservedly so since you'll be stomping most encounters. You'll still gain quest xp.

Honestly, if you are going to only play through the game once, play the normal way -- it'll be more fun.

 

Level squatting is good to get a quick bump at the start and then cruise through the rest of the game. It eventually evens itself out when it doesn't really matter anymore.

Also, I find the XP system in 3E completely ridiculous. But to be fair, I find XP systems in general pretty ridiculous.

 

Squatting can be useful in order to let specific party members gain higher levels by letting other party members squat levels. This way your average party level stays at what the game thinks it should be for that area, but some party members are actually higher level.

 

If you're only considering Normal mode, I'd say squatting isn't worth it at all, on top of it being an engine loophole exploit/cheat and all that.

You need to play several areas with increasingly much behind the standard leveling curve to reap much benefit at all from squatting, and if you're shooting for mid twenties, you pretty much need to keep going for several chapters.

The final nail in the coffin is the fact that the early chapters are actually the hardest in this game, yet you pretty much need to start squatting during them if you're to gain much of a benefit by the end of Normal.

 

Ok,thanks. I already feared this was going to be the case. As I said, when I created this party I didn't consider the way XP works in this game and how it will affect my APL by the end.

So just playing the game "normally" isn't really an option because I need a certain level for my templates to turn out the way I want them.

I'm probably just going to scrap this party and create a new one(the one I posted in your XP guide thread) which should work very well without having to reach certain levels.

 

Forgive me if I hijack this thread, but does it count as squatting if I want my dumb fighter or barbarian to put their skill points into Hide and Move Silently instead of Intimidate, but they only get 1 skill point per level, so I hold back until they can gain two levels at once?
Does this have much effect on my XP progression?
I like to do this early on so I can sneak through the Horde Fortress for the extra XP, and there are other times having a few ranks can help. They need the points just to overcome the armor check penalties.

 

Why would you need to squat for that?

You can only put one point in Hide or Move Silently per 2 character levels. When you level up you are allowed to save 1 skill point and use it at a later level. => no squatting needed

 

Yeah, we call that xp muling. If OP was going to stick with his original 4-man party, his best shot of reaching level 25 would be to add two xp mules late in chapter 1.