Stonedead dragons are XP-mines

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I played BGII almost a year ago, and while reading threads about dragons, I remembered an interesting thing about the Shadow Dragon (probably it works with other dragons too). Maybe everyone noticed it already but nevermind.

You can petrify a dragon, so you get full XP for it. Then you turn him/her back to flesh, and petrify again: you get the full XP at every petrification. And you can leave the area and rest somewhere, and start the whole again. I know it is cheat, and maybe it was fixed by a fixpack/mod/anything. I didn't use this trick, by the way.

Just wondering what you think or whether noticed it already and used it.

 

I never tried it. Are they hostile when you turn them back to flesh? I try to avoid turning creatures that carry valuable treasure to stone (which is why I never knew you could do this), as you don't get the items they carry.

 

Yes they are. I never use Stone to Flesh either actually, the reason is the same as yours.
The precise story of this dragon-stondeath (petrification) is the following:
My party was at quite low-level but I wanted the Crom Faeyr scroll. I bought as many Flesh to Stone spell scrolls as I could before going to Umar Hills. So I petrified her (IIRC the gender) and then turned back to flesh: she had 1 HP so it was easy to slay the dragon. As far as I remember, I got XP both when petrifying and when killing her. I got the idea to try the multiply petrification for fun - and it worked. Of course I continued playing from a reloaded savegame created after the dragon's normal death (due to my attack), after turned back to flesh.

 

speaking of crom faeyr and double xp per kill : always kill the 12000 xp spirit trolls with crom feayr, gives xp for both knocking them down and killing them after that.

 

I always get the double xp from spirit trolls.

OnT: I never petrify from the same reasons(as probably most do); the items at stake are just too good.

 

And if the creature isn't carrying anything good, chances are you can easily kill them without using petrification. (Meaning that creatures without good items typically aren't from the difficult battles, nor are they particularly hard to defeat.

 

I wish Demogorgon could be petrified
Anyway, I always prefer Finger of Death to Flesh to Stone or to Disintegrate.

 

Finger of Death I like, but I tend to steer well clear of Disintegrate and Flesh to Stone because I like to pick up the items enemies drop.