A good place to grind xp? - ID: 392
FORUM: Gossip - The rusty dagger tavern
This topic was started by thecasualoblivion on 25/01/2012, 16:24:20
When I played the original Bard's Tale, my first two mages changed classes before level 13 to get into Sorcerer and Wizard early, and I later replaced them(and one of the other four characters) with true archmages with level 7 magic in every class. The key to doing this in the long run was grinding the 396 Berserkers fight on level 3 of the castle(teleporting in and out, spamming Mind Blade).
Is doing this viable in this game? I've heard people grinding the Bandit's Cave but I haven't gotten there yet.
The Bandit's cave is a good place to grind, but you probably don't have to change your caster's level early. I doubt that saves much time in the long run for this game. Plus, for one battle there that works well for grinding, the level 7 conjurer and magician spells are really usefull.
Before getting to Annharbour, the Bandit's cave is good. Someone mentioned earlier that at the bridge that enters the central "maze" area, there's a large group of monsters...I forget which ones...that can be taken out with 2 or 3 hits of Sodar's Cleansing. If you've been working on your mages' DEX, it's easy to wipe them out and then exit the dungeon to reset and go back and wipe again.
In Annharbour, there's an even better place for EXP...which someone also mentioned. The harbor section of Annharbour has 3 houses which always have mutants in them. Of the creatures which "call" more of themselves, mutants don't do too much damage when they actually hit you. If you go to each of those houses and just "defend" until there are 50 mutants (this seems to be the limit), you can then hose them down with either 3 Sodar's Cleansings or else 1 Sodar's Cleansing and 1 Demon War. You'll probably also need to do some healing either during or after each battle. Each battle will give you a total of 40K experience for a total of 120K experience for doing all 3 houses. (Well, there's 5 Fanatics in one of the houses, so you'll get 45K experience in that one so that the map screen gives you 125K experience total.)
After you clear the 3 houses, run to the slums to reset and then it's back to the harbor for another 125K exp. Your guys will level VERY quickly in the process.
I changed my caster's levels early due to how I've always played Bard's Tale, with my first two casters being temporary placeholders.
Just wanted to update this old thread, especially now that abusing summoned enemies no longer gives xp.
The bandit cave is still a great spot for grinding early on: that one fight that gives 10k xp just off the island.
After that I found Paradosa to be the next great spot. Going through the Dedranat cave repeatedly gives consistent xp, but even better is the zone transition between Paradosa and Paradosa Plains. There's a guaranteed combat one square from the zone in Paradosa that gives anywhere from 15k to 45k xp (somewhat random). There's a couple battles on the plains side that also can give a lot of xp (also random, though). Doing these battles is fast, and with around 500mp on my casters I can rack up a good half a million xp or more before needing to rest. The battles are fairly easy too, unless you get a large group of marksmen at 90ft or something -- I usually just run from any battle like that.
Anyone else have advice on your favorite level-up spots?
I only started playing after the rules had been changed so that there was no XP gain for summoned creatures so hopefully the comments below are helpful to anyone trying to level up in the current version of Silversword.
Guardians of the grove - for (relatively) early grinding, the 5 guardians of the grove which you come across in the castle grounds near the crypt are pretty handy. If your group can beat them, you can then take a few steps and meet another group of them on the road from the castle - beat them, turn around and the guardians in the castle grounds will have respawned. It should be possible to keep going between the two groups for as long as you want since if your group is at a certain level it doesn't take any spells to win these fights and 10 such encounters gets you around 25,000 XPs.
Paradosa plains/Dedranat caves - agree with Syro that these two areas are great for gaining lots of XPs. Each area has about 5/6 fixed encounters and marking these on your maps saves time as you wander from fight to fight. One of the benefits of gaining XPs in these areas is not having to worry about enemy casters blasting your entire group with spells (though a large group of Marksmen/Dedranat Hunters can be troubling with their ranged attacks).
Inferno - of course, only worth doing if you're still levelling up after defeating Maruziel! You might not get as many XPs as with the Paradosa plains/Dedranat caves and it can be harder work but the item drops that you get in the inferno can make up for this.
Mountain ridge - just as you enter the mountain ridge area there's a mountain dwellers' hideout which has three fixed fights which will give you over 100,000 XPs in total. This is a pretty tough area and best taken on with at least a couple of mages who can cast demons war (and a bard with a decent horn helps!).
I never thought to check if the mountain dweller battles in that hideout were repeatable! Thanks for reminding me ... that's definitely the best xp grind spot I've seen. And I believe it's accessible at any point in the game too. But to survive that last battle efficiently, as you said, you really need 3 casters with two of them up to demon's war. Still, great spot.
I found running around in Horon's Sanctum to be ok for gaining both experience and gold. I was able to raise my Archmages from beginner to level 7 spells, and by the time I got that much experience I had over 2 million gold. The only drawback is the long trip back to the nearest review board.
Bandit's Cave until you kill Jakob.
The Sewere (follow the left hand rule and reset each time you pass the maintenance exit).
Dedranat Cave.
