Grimrock

thufir wrote:I can accept that it's not as good of a bonus if you want to grind everyone to 18, but I don't think that's a reason to be like "I'm sick of this, it's terrible and here's why" because a lot of people aren't going to grind to 18. It's something to think about if you are going to grind and grind, sure. The question isn't whether or not you can get the bonus in-game or not by other means. Unless the necklaces overwrite (as opposed to add) to the xp bonus, bringing that up is something of a red herring too. More xp is never bad unless you are at the "soft cap".

Well as I said in the post before this, during the main campaign, and low level custom dungeons, I can see this not being a problem because as you said, you won't reach the cap probably. However, look through a lot of the Dungeons made for LoG 1. Most are more challanging for higher level parties, to take the characters you make in the campaign or other weaker dungeons and import them to continue onward to even harder stuff. But with the Soft Cap, you can no longer get any higher.

You could argue that leveling any higher is not needed because of the skill system, at around that level with skill books you shouldn't need anything else. But that isn't the point. It's not the 'maxed' level, you CAN get higher, stronger, better. And some people like being that strong and overpowered, having most of the skills unlocked and being a jack of all trades. So why put in a road-block to discourage high levels? Why not just set that as the maxed level?

In LoG 1, the skill system was massive and almost every single point was a reward. Even at max level, you couldn't unlock everything I think. And going through the main game, you didn't even reach 1/5th of the maxed level. Here in LoG 2, you reach the Soft Cap very easily just in the main campaign. I ended my first run through at lvl 15, and that was without exploring the Pyramid and doing all the optional stuff and getting the 5th element. That is not including importing the team into a custom dungeon.

The road block is still there, and while the 10% extra exp might help a little when you DO reach the road block... Then what? All the other races will still have bonuses and be better at their classes than the human, but the human will have nothing. Not even the extra skillpoint is useful, because you can find skillpoint books to give you more skill points anyways, without being restricted by race and without being restricted to only use it to level a skill from 0 to 1.

The only thing humans have going for them is the balanced 10 across the board... Which isn't useful. Balanced, but not useful at all. Mages for example, have no use for Vit, Dex, or Str. As a human, they can have maxed 15 Wis. Meanwhile they can be an Insectoid for 17 Wis and less chance of breaking a leg falling down a hole. Lizard has 2 less Wis for 13, but has Endure Elements for very high Magical resist which will be the only thing that might kill your mage.(If you know how the game and combat works and aren't stupid anyways...) And even the Ratling as the same 15 Wis as the human, but higher Carrying load, higher Dex, immune to Disease, and the Mutation trait would could randomly add even more Wis per level and make up for the other lack of stats if not.

The human race adds NOTHING.

And this is the true with EVERY class, EXCEPT the Farmer, and that's because he's a joke class your meant to max the EXP he gets from eating all the food to level up very very quickly. BUT AGAIN, He will easily reach the Soft Cap! And then what?!

Jirodyne wrote:Even at max level, you couldn't unlock everything I think. And going through the main game, you didn't even reach 1/5th of the maxed level. Here in LoG 2, you reach the Soft Cap very easily just in the main campaign. I ended my first run through at lvl 15, and that was without exploring the Pyramid and doing all the optional stuff and getting the 5th element. That is not including importing the team into a custom dungeon.

LoG1 experience thresholds: 0, 850, 2014, 3609, 5794,
8788, 12890, 18510, 26209, 36757,
51208, 71006, 98129, 135288, 186196,
255940, 351489, 482391, 661727, 907417,
1244013, 1705150, 2336908, 3202416, 4388162,
6012635, 8238163, 11287136, 15464229, 21186847,
29026834, 39767616, 54482488, 74641863, 102260207,
140097338, 191934208, 262950720, 360243342, 493534235,
676142758, 926316435, 1269054372, 1738605346, 2381890181,
3263190405, 4470571712, 6124684102, 8390818077, 11495421623 ...

LoG2 experience thresholds: 0, 1000, 3000, 6000, 10000,
15000, 21000, 28000, 36000, 45000,
55000, 75000, 100000, 150000, 200000,
250000, 300000, 400000, 500000, 1000000,
2000000, 3000000, 4000000...(every level after 19 is (n-19)*1000000 experience)

Experience needed to reach level 20 in LoG1: 907417
Experience needed to reach level 20 in LoG2: 1000000
Experience needed to reach level 50 in LoG1: 11495421623
Experience needed to reach level 50 in LoG2: 31000000

There's plenty of things to criticize about this game without resorting to making things up about its predecessor. I'm definitely not fond of the weird experience breakpoints, but the LoG1 formula wasn't significantly better (you can see that they are actually quite close together up to level 20).

Jirodyne wrote: The human race adds NOTHING.

And this is the true with EVERY class, EXCEPT the Farmer, and that's because he's a joke class your meant to max the EXP he gets from eating all the food to level up very very quickly. BUT AGAIN, He will easily reach the Soft Cap! And then what?!

Even in this case, you'd probably be better off with a ratling. Assuming you're willing to put in a bit of extra time hunting food drops to make up for the missing 10% bonus, the mutation trait will likely give you a superior farmer in the end. Humans definitely need something to make them stand out but I'm not sure what would be balanced. Always being the second-best choice never counts for much in party-based dungeon crawlers.

All credit goes to Seorin over on the SA forums - he did a fair bit of testing and it's quite interesting how useless the human bonus ends up being (saves a whole 10 minutes and that's WITH fast learner. So a wasted trait basically. Whee!):

SA Seorin wrote:I just did a bunch of testing and experimenting, and now I'm going to dump a bunch of info about farmers.

Short version: for the vast majority of people, a farmer's class benefit is +2 skill points (or less), and its drawback is starting out shitty, eating all your food, and possibly requiring you to go out of your way to farm exp for them. Don't take a farmer.

Longer version:
The exp curve starts to soft cap around 17 and then hits a brick wall at 19. This means your farmer is likely to only reach 17-18 in normal play or maybe 19 if you fish and kill turtles a lot. If you get the exp necklace and farm herder caps, you can get to 19 in only 2 hours even from level 1. Going from 19-20 would take another hour on its own, and each level after that is about another 2 hours.

Assuming you've farmed enough to get your farmer to 19, the rest of your party will most likely hit at least 15. That puts the farmer at +4 levels, netting you +2 skill points and nothing else (your hp and mp have finally caught up from their lower starting values). If you compare +2 skill points to something like 15% crit on a ranged rogue, or +15 strength and a boatload of hp on a barbarian, I think most people will agree the farmer is a pretty crappy choice. The only way your farmer is going to pay off is if you go out of your way to make them.

To that end, you probably want to go ratling. Assuming you eat nothing but herder caps (which won't be far from the truth anyway) here's a comparison of how many it takes to level for a ratling and a human with the fast learner trait (assume both have the exp necklace):

Ratling: 4-5-5-6-6-6-6-6-6-6-9-11-16-15-15-14-27-25-123-234 (total to 19: 188)
Human: 3-4-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-6-8-9-14-14-12-12-23-22-105-200 (total to 19: 162)

In short, a ratling will take about 10 more minutes of herder cap farming and come out +18 random stats ahead for the inconvenience. Not a bad trade off! I'd make the ratling into a strength weapon user because they benefit from every stat (dex increases their accuracy, and even willpower gives them more specials). I'd probably do heavy weapons and use bane for maximum benefit. A dex weapon user is also not a bad choice due to the ratling's substantial strength penalty, but they won't benefit from their mutant strength except to gain a little extra carry weight.

The human starts to look more tempting if you're looking at levels 20 and beyond. If you want to spend a dozen hours grinding out a small handful of extra skill points, human will take the edge off. I'd stay away from the skilled trait, though, because if you're already grinding for a dozen hours, what's another two to pick up that extra one in exchange for a better trait? If you want to spend days of your life looking at nothing but mushroom men, you could actually pump your farmer all the way up to level 81, where they would max every skill in the game. This would take approximately 6400 herder caps at a rough average of maybe 80-100 caps an hour. Have fun

Grognard Neckbeard wrote:Even in this case, you'd probably be better off with a ratling. Assuming you're willing to put in a bit of extra time hunting food drops to make up for the missing 10% bonus, the mutation trait will likely give you a superior farmer in the end. Humans definitely need something to make them stand out but I'm not sure what would be balanced. Always being the second-best choice never counts for much in party-based dungeon crawlers.

Which is just proving my point. No matter the situation, class, attribute points, armor, weapon, setting, enemy, or ANYTHING The human is just plain useless and inferior compared to the other races and their abilities. There is no reason to pick him, over any other race. He levels up just a tiny bit faster, and that's it. A super special ability that 2 Necklaces in the game does 2.5x better and can be put on any race...

Jirodyne wrote:Which is just proving my point. No matter the situation, class, attribute points, armor, weapon, setting, enemy, or ANYTHING The human is just plain useless and inferior compared to the other races and their abilities. There is no reason to pick him, over any other race.

I wouldn't say that's quite true. Sure the Human isn't that great for power-gamers whom will grind and reach level 18 or whatever.

For a normal casual game where you reach around 110k (lvl 13-14) experience at the end of the game, a human is looking at two extra skill points. For many classes this isn't so useful since they will already have all the skills they need, but there are some scenarios where it is nice.

Take your alchemist for example. He really needs those spare skill points to remain effective in combat whilst still providing the utility from the alchemy skill. Those 2-3 skill points for a large portion of the game are the difference between being a complete non-factor in combat to having skills into say fire magic or a weapon type and thus becoming more than just a potion brewer.

Sure another race could just as easily wear the spirit pendant, but with only the 25% they would only ever be a a few minutes worth of experience points higher than any other race. When a human wears it though, they can reach a threshold where they spend most of the early/mid game 2 levels higher (3 skill point advantage) and even mid/late game still be a solid level higher (2 skill point advantage). It's easy to say "end game my ratling has 18 more attributes!" or "end game my minotuar has 14 more strength!", but endgame is only like 5% of the experience, during the other 95% of the time those extra skill points probably matter more than a couple stats.

Humans are good because there is no replacement for skilled. A single skillpoint is better than pretty much any trait in the game, and keeps its value the entire game. You will always learn important abilities one level sooner (such as learning a useful spell earlier, level 5 heavy weapons earlier, level 4 armor earlier, etc). And in the end game, that skill point can still be the difference between learning a useful ability or not (such as level 5 in an element, level 3 in dodge, max critical, etc). Even for a basic weapon user, getting armor 4, weapons 5, critical 5, accuracy 3, and dodge 3 would take 20 skill points. A magic user with concentration 5, air 3, water 5, fire 5 takes 18. So I'm not seeing that you'll ever have everything you want. The extra skillpoint holds its value.

Heres the problem I have with humans. Their innate 10% xp bonus and unique trait for another 10% is pointless compared to the Skilled trait.
Why would you want an experience bonus if you can choose to essentially start at level 2 sans the health and willpower increase?


In practice, the experience bonus translates to your non-humans having to kill a few more monsters before leveling. And with the occasional death, two +25% exp necklaces, and level ups becoming less frequent at high levels, the bonus experience becomes meaningless.

I'm totally fine with starting with all attributes at 10, you'll never have negative evasion or accuracy. Attributes only give minor bonusses anyway, especially if you have an alchemist to create infinite potions to boost whichever attribute.