Experience levels, Is there really that much to kill? Options

[Aledeth]

Hello everyone.

I just picked this mod up last week, and was QUITE suprised by how difficult it was.
Without an idea of what quests are designed to be done early, I got a very rude wake-up when I tried to do the Copper Coronet with my fresh-from-Irenicus's-dungeon party! Still, I survived, came here, read hints and such, and got stronger.

My party has about 1.75 Million XP per char, so most people are at level 12-13(10-11 for multi-classes). I have cleared all the unbuffed quests, the Copper Coronet and Slaver ship, the De'Arnise Hold, the Planar Prison, the Planar Sphere, the Unseeing Eye, the Windspear Hills (Haven't killed Firkraag or the other party yet), The 1st level of Watcher's Keep, and am in the process of killing the Shade Lord.

What is confusing me, is that I see other players having level 38 characters by the end of SOA.

My main question is, am I not getting enough XP for these quests, or is there really that much more to kill in the later chapters?

And, if I want to install the Tower Of Deception mod, can I uninstall IA, install ToD, re-install IA, and still use my current game, or is it better to install ToD on top of IA?

Thanks for making such an awesome (and tough!) mod Sikret.

This post has been edited by Aledeth: Oct 26 2007, 01:37 AM

[DavidW]

In that case, though, a new game should be started, because string references in resources stored in savegames (such as stores and areas) may become invalid.

I (tentatively) don't think that's right: uninstalling a mod doesn't remove its strings from the dialog file, so when you reinstall, the mod will find and re-reference those strings. Obviously mucking with your install mid-game is always a little risky, but in general it's not going to wreak havoc on your savegames unless you actually physically reinstall the game (and wipe the dialog file in the process).

[Baronius]

In that case, though, a new game should be started, because string references in resources stored in savegames (such as stores and areas) may become invalid.

I (tentatively) don't think that's right: uninstalling a mod doesn't remove its strings from the dialog file [..]

You are right, I don't know what I was thinking when I was writing those lines. Semi-managed installations (practically what WeiDU offers) have correct TLK management, so the talk table doesn't suffer destructive changes. Thank you for the correction.

As we know, most objects are only referenced, which means their data (including strRefs) aren't stored in the savegame. On the other hand, store names, area info strings and similar TLK references directly stored in the savegame may become invalid -- if the talk table changes. But fortunately, as you've also said, the referenced strings won't be removed from the TLK during uninstallations. The re-use of existing entries doesn't matter here, because that applies on newly (re)installed files only (and old references in the savegame won't be updated or affected, neither their referees i.e. the TLK entries, so there will be no problem.)