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Gaining Experience
Version: 1.03
Skil Level: Introductory
Game Type: Any
Author: Depth Charge
Objective: To Maximize Experience Gain
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Ever wonder why in Normal Difficulty you level up so fast while you
usually only level up a few times in Nightmare and Hell Difficulty? Yes,
one of the reasons is that the amount of experience you need to level up is
much higher than before, but mainly it's because you're moving too fast.
To those of you who are impatient little bastards and can't wait to boast
about killing Diablo in Hell Act 4, then you're probably not going to want
to read this. But to those of you who don't care about how good you look
to others but just want to have fun, or want to take things nice and easy,
this is what you should read.
You see, it seems to me to be a little known fact that the amount of
experience you get from monsters is dependant on how close / far you are in
terms of level from the monsters you are slaying. It's in the official
internet strategy guide under Experience in basic strategies, so don't you
go arguing that I'm wrong. The link is over here so go see for
yourself mister smarty pants.
You see, to get the full amount of experience you rightly deserve for
killing any monster, you need to be within five levels of the monsters you
are killing. So if you are level 12 you will get more experience from
killing a Bone Mage (level 10) than from killing a Quill Rat (level
1). Not only because the amount of experience you get from killing a Bone
Mage as opposed to a quill rat is higher (21 for the Quill Rat and 66 from
the Bone Mage), but because you get an Experience Penalty for being 11
levels above the poor spiked rodent. If you are 10 or more levels above OR
below the monsters you kill, then you only get 5% of the amount of
experience. So killing a Quill Rat at this stage would only yield you
about 1 experience more or less, and killing a Fetish Shaman would yield
you 7.6 experience as opposed to the normal 276 from killing a midget magician.
This normally doesn't affect you in the slightest in Normal Difficulty
because you usually level up about as quickly as the things you kill even
if you rush through everything. This is a great difference in Nightmare or
Hell difficulty when things level up a lot faster than you do.
In Act 1 Nightmare the Quill Rats are level 26, which shouldn't be a
problem for those of you who like to rush things. But when you reach Act
4, the Urdars are level 57 and normally you're no higher than level 40 when
you beat Nightmare without repeating areas more than three times. In Hell
Difficulty the Quill Rats are level 51 but the Urdars are level 82, and
mostly no one is higher than level 65 when they kill Diablo in Hell
Difficulty. To those of you who don't like math, there is a big difference
between 82 and 65, and so the game hands you only 79% percent
of the amount of experience.
Do I have to repeat an area more than once? How do I get the full amount
of experience I deserve? To question one, unfortunately, yes, you do need
to repeat areas several times. To remedy this, I recommend you check out
the official Chaos Sanctuary Diablo 2 web site
and find what level are the monsters in the
area that you're fighting. If they are much higher than you (and they
usually are), then backtrack to well known monsters in earlier acts and
find something roughly five levels in your range and kill those until you
are five levels higher than them, and then move on to the next.
bracket. This way you can make things easier and you will get the amount
of experience that you should be getting. My level 50 Paladin is still in
Nightmare Act 4 and is leveling up much faster than those who are well into
Kurast in Hell difficulty.
"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
-- Sir Winston S. Churchill.
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