The Things You've Done For EXP.

[FalloutJack]

This is a topic about all the greater-than-normal things you've done to gain EXP for your characters. This also includes AP or other earnable points of any sort for characters, equipment, etc. This does not include cheat codes or the usual grind, but exploits and glitches are fair game. Try not to mention online games in reference to this. They hate that.

We'll begin with the first one that comes to my mind.

Spoiler: Thusly

The game is the revamped Persona One, the recreation of the original 1995 RPG released for Playstation. It may be possible to do this for the old version of the game, but I never bothered. This was special. This was for bragging rights and sheer achievement. Because I can.

Players of the game will note that there are ruins in which you can revisit any creature in the game, simply by going up and down levels. This is important because if you want Personas to rank up fast, take them in there and you can end up battling a monster that absorbs magic, which therefore takes no damage from magical attacks, but you rank up anyway. You speed up the battles and hit repeat on your actions. That was the easy part.

The hard part is Alice, of course. Savvy players know - and have always known - that there's a max-level demon that rarely shows its face which has a number of abilities, max stats, a 'Strong Against Everything' status, impossible to talk to, and the highest rate of retreating from battle. It is very difficult to kill in time because of that, but of course there are those - like me - who have managed. However, it was not enough.

I was aiming for the max-level 'You will never even need this in the GAME!' Persona, because I never had before. To do that, the right character (Reiji) must reach Level 99, because it's one of his. All you need is LOTS AND LOTS OF EXP. Fine. Do you have lots of money after fighting countless enemies? I did. You would too. But what to do with it? Well, fighting battles is fine, but Alice delivers WAY MORE and there's an easy way to beat her.

Just keep casting that spell that prevents escape from battle and keep Reiji fighting her while using Clean Salt so only the enemies who are your equal or greater are seen. Eventually, that's just Alice. It took a long time. Wandering the bottom of the ruins, back and forth, saving money and items by reseting if like ten uses of the items came up empty for encounters. Even then, I used up quite alot to do what I did. Was it worth it? To say that I'd done it? Sure. For beating the game? I did that years ago. This was for posterity.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Playing Oblivion with a ring of waterbreathing on swimming into a wall in the corner of a pool in the imperial city for hours to get athletics exp, while periodicially tapping the bumper button to cast a spell. Or sneaking into a wall forever in a room in the inn for sneak exp. Or just jumping everywhere I went for acrobatics exp like a heroic warrior bunny.

That was before I started playing on a PC and in Skyrim I could just use the console to level up instead of wasting my life on a grind like that.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

Not so much EXP but for an item - The Tournesol Blade in Final Fantasy XII. Requires a number of rare items just to get the materials it needs to drop, and the materials it needs in the Bazaar only have a 2-4% drop chance based on chain level. The worst of these is the Hellgate Flame, which only drops of Cerberus enemies, which have a 1 in 4 chance of replacing another enemy in 2 areas across 3 map tiles.

I spent 18 hours grinding these wolves (thankfully the enemy the Cerberus replaces counts for chaining) trying to get the 6 needed (there's a way to only need 4 but I fucked that up), just running back and forth across these tiles, killing every wolf to maximize the chance for Cerberus enemies to spawn. I ended up maxing everyone's level and License Board doing this as well, which... really defeated the point of grinding for the Tournesol but hey, whatever, at least I got it in the end.

Then there was that time I replayed Chrono Trigger like a dozen times just so I could level Ayla up to a high enough level that her fist upgraded. Much easier to do in the DS version with the bonus dungeons, since the enemies in those give massive amounts of experience, respawn endlessly and are super easy to kill. But back in the SNES days... whew, that took a while.

 

[Kyrian007]

I don't. If something requires grind, I do without it. However...

I have a friend who will grind forever to get the thing... whatever it is. Rpg's, clicklooters (diablo and Borderlands) whatever has rare drops... he will grind for it. And he has a lousy track record of getting that drop, it takes him hours and hours. However, If I relieve him (for food or a bathroom break or something) I'll have like 3 of whatever he wanted before he gets back. I have incredible luck with random drops, and it totally pisses him off. When Borderlands 2 came out he ground in SP for hours to try for the Bee shield and the Conference Call shotgun. I refused to play SP on my own, but one time I wanted to play and started a game that he joined in on he was further along than me (he agreed to stop the grinding session.) We went to the place where the Bee drops and that boss summoned something that killed his guy, I finished the boss off... and got the Bee. I gave it to him (really I didn't want it.) We continued on (it was in my game) to the final boss (my first time beating the Warrior on TVH) but just before the fight he had to drop out (phone call) and instead of saving and quitting, I went ahead... and the CC dropped. In the same game session that a Bee dropped.

 

[WindKnight]

Buying/crafting/winning and mastering nearly every weapon, warframe, sentinel and breed of pet in warframe for mastery (only missing founding gear and one weapon only available before i found out about the game)

 

[BarryMcCociner]

Playing Oblivion with a ring of waterbreathing on swimming into a wall in the corner of a pool in the imperial city for hours to get athletics exp, while periodicially tapping the bumper button to cast a spell. Or sneaking into a wall forever in a room in the inn for sneak exp. Or just jumping everywhere I went for acrobatics exp like a heroic warrior bunny.

That was before I started playing on a PC and in Skyrim I could just use the console to level up instead of wasting my life on a grind like that.

Oh, I'm the master of grinding in Oblivion. Easy shit.

Armorer: Create a 3 point 1 second disintegrate armor on self spell, then repair it.

Athletic: Your tactic. [Takes 71 hours at longest, 32 hours at shortest, incidentally.]

Alchemy: Horde any two matching ingredients, then just make thousands of those potions. You only need two thousand of each at most.

Alteration: Create a Shield spell, 3 points, 1 second, cast it over and over. Or just use the Open spell on any container, even if it isn't locked.

Conjuration: Summon skeleton, kill it. Repeat.

Destruction: Use Weakness to [Element] spells on self.

Illusion: Cast light spells repeatedly.

Mysticism: Detect life on self repeatedly.

Restoration: Restore fatigue on self repeatedly.

Acrobatics: Mash the jump button while climbing a hill or stand underneath a low overhang and jump repeatedly.

Mercantile: Sell items one by one at lowest price.

Security: Fix three or four tumblers on very hard lock, but exit it before completing it. Repeat.

Sneak: Autorun into a wall to boost sneak.

Speechcraft: Play the speech minigame making a conscious attempt to do horribly.


Sadly, there's no quick way to level up the combat skills easily. Unless you summon skeletons and kill them that way.

 

[WindKnight]

Playing Oblivion with a ring of waterbreathing on swimming into a wall in the corner of a pool in the imperial city for hours to get athletics exp, while periodicially tapping the bumper button to cast a spell. Or sneaking into a wall forever in a room in the inn for sneak exp. Or just jumping everywhere I went for acrobatics exp like a heroic warrior bunny.

That was before I started playing on a PC and in Skyrim I could just use the console to level up instead of wasting my life on a grind like that.

Reminds me of playing fallout 3 on PC - I played through over several months doing all the dlc and earning all the achievements along the way (this was in my achievement obsession days). Shortly after it, someone on my friendslist bought it on pc, and used the console to earn all the achievements in a few minutes.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Sadly, there's no quick way to level up the combat skills easily. Unless you summon skeletons and kill them that way.

Best way I found to level combat skills quickly was to start (but not finish) the 'Whom Gods Annoy' quest so that you get the Staff of the Everscamp. You can then spend a few hours killing hordes of infinitely spawning, initially non-hostile, Scamps. And when you're bored? Complete the quest and get a magic ring that fortifies Blade and Block.

OT: As I can't mention online games I won't go into my biggest XP cheat (it's not a cheat per se, just a guaranteed hefty payout with no chance of failure), but I have many fond memories of finding the various ways (mostly outlined by others above) of fast-tracking skills in Bethesda RPGs.

 

[Raddra]

I still do the sneak and autorun in Skyrim, even with access to mods / console.

Using the console just seems..I dunno 'cheaty'. It sort of kills the character for me. Using a legitimite tactic in the game though? That's fine in my book.

 

[Catnip1024]

Sadly, there's no quick way to level up the combat skills easily. Unless you summon skeletons and kill them that way.

Well I'm not sure about on Oblivion, but on Skyrim my strategy for levelling up armour (and restoration) skills was to find something weak, like a rat or some wolves, and let them attack repeatedly. You run the risk of disease, which is a pain, and it takes a while, but it gets there. And your mana regenerates fast enough to keep healing.

Also, on Skyrim, I'm not sure if it is a glitch, but the Circle of Protection seemed to regenerate mana for me, so I could spam it and other spells repeatedly. Tried it on a friends console and it didn't work, so maybe it was updated in a patch (I ran it offline).

 

[Cowabungaa]

Oh man, this is a perfect question for tabletop roleplay adventures.

As for me, a friend of mine wanted to GM Star Wars: Edge Of The Empire and promised me extra XP if I dared to play a Lepi character. What's a Lepi you say?

Naturally I couldn't resist playing a carnivorous, man-sized bi-pedal rabbit so I hardly even needed the incentive of extra starting XP. I took that dare with a grin on my face, so now I'm playing a Lepi bruiser who's equal parts Rocket Raccoon and Joe Pesci's character from Goodfellas.

An honourable mention goes towards to me dragging one of my current D&D characters through an existential crisis to justify leveling him up further in the wonky situation of that particular campaign. Long story short; the GM set his story in the Warhammer universe but doesn't actually know that much about Warhammer. I did, not knowing he didn't, and wanted to play a slightly unhinged Dwarven Ranger (the Warhammer kind [http://warhammerfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Dwarf_Rangers] so he was in actuality a 4th level fighter and 1st level rogue).

Que me reacting to his setting screw-ups totally in-character, at first not knowing they were screw-ups, so when that got a little out of hand I saved him by said existential crisis and setting him down the Paladin path. The group really liked that actually, got me a free Paladin spell before I could take an actual Paladin level to boot.

 

[hermes]

Final Fantasy XII allowed you to program all the characters in the party with macros, even your own. So there were simple sets of rules that, when used on the right enemy, allowed for infinite respawn of lesser enemies and your party being able to grind from them eternally with no interaction from you at all. It was like a watching videos of people playing an MMO.

So I just put the controller down and went to sleep... Some hours later all my characters were 20+ levels higher than before, and I had maxed out the entire skills grid by less than half of the game. It went so bad/silly that I was able to watch the entire final battle with the controller on the floor.

 

[Denamic]

Solved things through diplomacy in Wasteland 2, only to slaughter them all for the XP and loot afterwards. I apologise for nothing. They were (probably) assholes anyway.

 

[meiam]

Buying/crafting/winning and mastering nearly every weapon, warframe, sentinel and breed of pet in warframe for mastery (only missing founding gear and one weapon only available before i found out about the game)

Purely F2P? I tried warframe but grinding for stuff was so slow as F2P that I eventually gave half way trough building my first frame.

In FF7 you could kill some enemy with morph (a weak attack) and they'd have a chance to turn into stats boosting item, I wanted to get my party to 255 in every stats (they were all level 99 obviously) but I gave up after spending like 2 days getting all of there strength to 255, it's 100% pointless since damage cap out at 9999 way before you hit 255 strength.

 

[FalloutJack]

Conference Call shotgun.

I have a question. Is there a shotgun called a Crowd Pleaser? That would be a kickass name for a shotgun.

Joe Lepi

That was brilliant. I just needed to say that.

Chrono Trigger

Say, did you ever do this?

So, you go through the story and you end up with the Black Omen looming over all, Queen Zeal's fortress. You start from the present, go through it all, fight Zeal, Fight Lavos' outer shell, go in, go back in time, and then go through the Black Omen like that further into the past until you do it in the Dark Ages. It takes a while, but to be honest...it's fun.

 

[WindKnight]

Buying/crafting/winning and mastering nearly every weapon, warframe, sentinel and breed of pet in warframe for mastery (only missing founding gear and one weapon only available before i found out about the game)

Purely F2P? I tried warframe but grinding for stuff was so slow as F2P that I eventually gave half way trough building my first frame.

I've spent some money on the game (most notably, I bought the prime vault pack in December in part cause i wanted the Misa syandana, and in part to say 'thank you' for the second dream) but the overwhelming majority of stuff I've farmed and/or traded for.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

The only one that comes to mind is the bridge Drake from Dark Souls. I must have done that run hundreds of times on my first playthrough when I still really sucked.

On my second time through I only did it twice before I realized I had gotten good (gitten gud?) enough that I didn't need those cheap souls anymore.

 

[FalloutJack]

Well in Fallout 4 I maxed out my luck and charisma. I took the idiot savant perk and used my charisma to basically extort everyone for money and idiot savant procs.

Optimal way to play? Not really. But everyone wanted to give extra caps to a mouthbreather yelling "HGGUUUUURGGGHH"

The point where it became a problem was when I extorted the little girl in Vault 81 for her toys. I never even salvaged them. I dropped them in the trash next to where she was standing.

I never went he idiot route. My luck should be a supernatural thing, always. I maxed out luck in New Vegas so that I, being in a game where gambling was going to be a BIG THING would be filthy rich. I never wanted for money, which is why I didn't even try to empty the Sierra Madre vault. Just took three bars of gold and a load of the lighter stuff. Casinos will cut you off after a while, but they also forget after a while. And considering I had the most powerful laser pistol in the world that simply ate up lots of energy cell to operate, I could take on anything by then.

In Fallout 2, I went wandering quite alot, all to find caves containing enemies in paramilitary outfits or Deathclaws. When I say (in reference to the new games) that I gained a new healthy respect for Deathclaws, I meant that I had found a good system to use against them in the oldies. Turn-based fighting does that, and Deathclaws had sensitive heads in the game. Take a Super Sledge and a good swinging arm, and you will stagger the Deathclaw, maybe even get it sliding. Move away and wait for its recovery. Let it come to you and not have enough points to attack, then repeat. You almost never get hurt, and I killed alot of 'em that way, even with groups.

Of course, in Fallout 3, you couldn't do that because combat was live, but I did another thing. I remembered all the Vertibird locations for when the Enclave gets in motion, dropping off troops and such. It's not only fun to blow them up...but it pays in experience.

As for Fallout 4...I've already explained how I'm Jack the Giant Killer. All the big monsters seek me out. Mirelurk Kings and Queens, Legendary enemies, Super Mutant Behemoths, and of course more Deathclaws. The things I've done for experience there? Only gone on living. Only blasted the hell out of them before they could tear me apart.

 

[Odbarc]

Probably the worse instance of terrible grind for XP was in Fallout 4.
Basically if you had the Idiot Savant perk (level 2 for the most) there's a chance you'll multiply quest XP which is the best single source of XP. All you need to do is Quick Save, turn in, and load if it doesn't trigger (it's about 5% chance, 1/20) with the lowest Intelligence. Intelligence is another XP multiplier so the more you have, the more XP you get but lowers the chance you'll trigger Idiot Savant. So I spent an hour loading my game to get it to trigger. A large portion of a single level up becomes two free level ups.
This maybe more of a Survival Mode trick you can sleep/save and repeat if your desperate for levels/power but it's highly irritating to aim for but it almost always levels you. It wasn't fun so I stopped playing the character. I had learned that it even triggers off quests when I found myself almost leveled up (99%) and suddenly found I had 2 level up points to spend and didn't realize right away what had happened.