Grimrock

Alright i made this post originally in the general discussion forum but i'm making another here. The game uses a very odd way of gaining experience that's not quite easy to understand. The manual is actually currently incorrect about telling you how to get full experience from killing a mob. So here's a copy and paste version of the original post if you want to see the original post from general discussion here it is also.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1197

SLOTS
[1][2]
[3][4]

The way the system works currently is that when the enemy dies any of the slots that does dmg to it must do at least a point of dmg to get full experience. If you missed the entire fight or don't do any dmgin that slot it will only get half experience after the mob is dead.

Experience is not split amongst the party if someone only gets half the experience.The number you see when you kill a monster is the number everyone gets unless a slot on your team does no dmg and only get half of it and the other half is NOT distributed to the other players.

You will not be able to get extra exp for other characters thus you're just flat out losing it. By the end of the game everyone should be at the same amount of experience so it's not advisable to one shot monsters but use lesser attacks so everyone can get the full experience in the game. I haven't finished the game so I'm not aware if there's any certain types of immune to certain attack mobs or not that will throw this off.


Here are some scenarios to make this easier to understand what I have been talking about.

[1][2]
[3][4]

So with a team setup like this if the slots [1][2][3] does dmg but slot [4] doesn't do dmg in a fight then only the [4] gets half exp.

[1][2] -> [1][4] -> [1][2]
[3][4] -> [3][2] -> [3][4]

You start the fight with [1][2][3] does dmg and [4] doesn't
Then you switch spot [2] with [4] for whatever reason like take a hit quickly but never attack with [2] in that bottom slot and attack with [4] in the front slot
Afterwards you bring [2] back to the front and [4] to the back
Kill the mob

The character in slot [4] will only get half experience even though he did dmg.

[1][2]
[3][4]

If [3][4] blows up a mob before it even gets to your group only [3][4] will full experience and the front [1][2] will only gain half

[1][2] -> [3][4] -> [1][2]
[3][4] -> [1][2] -> [3][4]

Slots [3][4] does dmg [1][2]
You switch the front with the back and [3][4] only does dmg and [1][2] does no dmg
Switch the front with the back again with [3][4] doing dmg and [1][2] does no dmg
Mob dies

The entire team will gain experience even though [1][2] Never does dmg

Pack of FOUR mobs

After getting further in the game I finally encountered the pack of four mobs. Now if you followed everything above the same still applies. The problem with this pack of mobs is the front 2 If they're melee and can only do single target dmg they will only be able to hit the one that's directly in front of them which causes problem since the one of the left won't get full experience from the right and vice versa. Same goes with the back with a rogue with a range waepon they will only attack the one that's directly. When a monster dies in the front row the melee that was fighting will fight the next monster in the front row and will get more experience then the other melee since it was not able to get a shot on the other one since it is still preoccupied with the one currently in front of it. The range will continue to shoot the next mob in the back though and will not get experience from the other front mob unless the back one dies first before the other front mob dies.

The trick to getting everyone full experince is to have someone do aoe dmg in each slot. By moving him around and attack with a aoe spell in slot before the mob dies. I used a mage with fire burst to do this.

Example on how to do this if my explanation is to complicated
[1][2] -> [4][2] -> [1][4] -> [1][2] -> [1][2]
[3][4] -> [3][1] -> [3][1] -> [4][3] -> [3][4]

Slot [4] does aoe like fire burst or any other aoe spells the other slots can do what ever as long as it doesn't kill a monster
Move slot [4] to another spot and cast fire burst or any other aoe spell the other slots can do anything else as long as it doesn't kill the monsters
Keep repeating this pattern without killing a monster.
once you get back to your original position you can finish off the monster

This will allow you to gain full experience for everyone in your party.


Did quite a bit of trials to figured out not sure if it's a bug or what but i'll put this finding in the bug section soon.

This is good to know... but I am not sure it is worth the trouble.

My party is level 12, and while I sort of knew this was happening I never went out of my way to make sure everyone got a hit in. The end result... maybe a 2-3% experience difference between my highest and lowest. I doubt it will amount to more than 1/2 a level up over the course of the game, since enemies have so much HP (on normal difficulty).

Definetly don't let people just sit idle... but switching party memebers around during combat seems silly to me.

And since there are spots where mobs spawn infinitely, xp isn't really an issue in the game.

Thanks for the info, I actually started to suspect it worked something similar to this, though didn't know it was slot specific instead of character specific(the way it should?).

Though I will ignore this and just enjoy the game(atleast in the first run:P) I tend to min maxing to much in games which really takes the fun away when I get to powerful so I have decided I wont do it.
I try to load as few times as possible to, so if 1-3 prisoners die, I will have to manage with them dead as well as I can(which would make it hard to maximize the exp gain).
The game actually gets pretty nasty on hard when you only got your last mage or rouge left alive:P Its really satisfaction when they make due and pull through