Tips and Exploits (fastest XP, OP weapons, dupe items, infinite gold etc…)

[GastNDorf]

Hello, here I’ll introduce you to some really cheesy stuff and exploits I found while experimenting with the game. It’s kind of crazy that nobody documented these yet after all these years since the original game or even the enhanced edition came out. There won’t be some lame tips like selling your starting clothes for 1 gold a piece like I found searching on the internet, I’m talking about some real hardcore game crushing stuff.

 

A lot of these take advantage of one thing: multiplayer mode. Don’t fret, it’s all soloable. Basically multiplayer is the same as the solo mode, except for one key element: you can import any character you want anytime you load a save, and now you may already figure out how it’s very good…

 

But first I want to explain a little bit more into details how multiplayer mode works, and also a few bugs you may avoid. If you want to go straight to the exploits though just skip this paragraph.

 

So multiplayer mode is very similar to solo, it saves the module progression and unlocks as if you played one character, the game saves your character info separately, the only way it recognizes different characters is only by their name (case sensitive) and their XP. If the character has played in a save, it will retain his last position, if he didn’t then he will be put back at the start of the campaign. This can be annoying if you save in a specific place and have to backtrack, this can also glitch the save in specific cases, for example if you import a new character in the Kingmaker module, he will be put in the forest at the start but the dialogue won’t begin and you will be stuck in cinematic mode, and you will have to close the app. A workaround is to rename your character in the exact same way as the original character in order to replace him in his position, just be careful not to save your game before you make sure the old character is exported if you don’t want to lose it forever. If you want to keep track of different characters with similar names, you can just use different portraits.

When you load a game with a different character of the same name, or a different version of the same character, it asks you if you want to keep the character from the save, or the imported one, of course choose the imported.

A bit of a warning though, use the import/export at your own risk in the main campaign (NWN), somehow it breaks the henchmen and they treat you as if you were a different person. Even if it’s the very same character you import and you have their tokens in your inventory, they will refuse to join you and you won’t be able to finish their quests.

One last warning in multiplayer, there’s a recurrent autosave which doesn’t bother whether you are in dialogues, scripts or setup menus, if you load it when it has saved during any of these, it can break the game. You can set the timer between two autosaves though, and it can be handy sometimes, just make sure you don’t load it if you think the save is at risk, just wait for the next or use a manual save.

 

Now let’s get down to the exploits. Most of them take advantage of exporting characters and importing through MP mode. You can take advantage of this by replaying specific parts of the game over and over for example, and duplicate items.

 

- Fastest XP method: At the end of Hordes of the Underdark campaign chapter 1, you will find Halaster prisoner from the drows, this is probably the biggest XP influx in the whole game, because when you free him, you get 7500 xp and after he cast his quest spell on you, you get another 7500 xp, so 15k xp in total for basically doing nothing, and with the MP mode you can repeat this over and over, no need to replay the whole chapter. 

I’ll get into more details: first get rid of all the drows at the end of the chapter, then destroy two out of three stones keeping Halaster prisoner. Dismiss all your henchmen if you have them so they don’t soak up xp (besides Nathyrra who doesn’t count and that can't be dismissed) and save your game now. Destroy the last stone for 7500 xp, a cutscene will follow. Engage conversation with Halaster, then you can hit circle to skip it and receive another 7500 xp. You will then load into chapter 2, I haven’t found a way to skip this loading unfortunately. But you can skip all the dialogue with the Seer too. You can then export your character, load your save before freeing Halaster, select your freshly exported character and repeat this process until you get enough XP. You need 780000 XP to get to max level, if you subtract the 105k xp you start with in HotU, that’s 45 exports exactly, which take around a minute each. If you’re diligent you should be at max in about an hour. Another thing, if somehow you want to do that on another character, name it the exact same way as the character who made the save first, so you will be put back before Halaster instead of the Gaping Portal Inn and having to walk through all of Undermountain. This trick also saves you from having to play a wizard or sorcerer just for the Bigby’s hands and epic spell trophies, since you can create one apart and upgrade him to level 22 very fast.

 

- Duplication: Quite a simple trick, you export your character first with the items in their inventory. You then drop the items on the floor, and make a save. Load your save in multiplayer mode, then import the character you just exported (choose the exported version when asked). You can now grab the items on the floor and still have your copy in inventory. If you want to duplicate multiple items, I really recommend you use a bag of holding, so you don’t have to grab multiple things, only the bag.

 

- Pass an item to a different character: I put that here because it’s not very intuitive but it’s kind of like duplication. All you have to do is drop the item on the floor (preferably at the starting zone of the chapter, or you will have to travel, unless you name both characters the same), save the game, load it in MP mode, choose another character and grab the item, you can then export this one to play it somewhere else.

 

- Infinite money: This is trickier than you think, you can’t just dupe your whole gold at once. For some reason when you drop gold on the floor, no matter the value, it only saves up to around 65k (I tested the exact value but don’t remember), after that it reverts back to 0 in some sort of cycle, like if you put the max value two times in one stack, it will still be 0, if you put say 85k, the stack reverts back to around 20k (because it reverts back to 0 at 65k and then you have an extra 20k). 

So if you want to directly dupe gold, the best way I found is to first export your character with all their gold in their inventory and then find a container in the world, because containers have virtually infinite room compared to bags, I did this on the pile of books near the merchants in the city in chapter 2 of HotU for example. You have to make as many stacks of 50k gold as you can (because if you put more than 50k, stacks start merging and glitching, for some reason again…), and put them in the container. Once done, save, load your save in MP mode, import your character, grab the gold, export again, rinse and repeat… This is a little bit tedious to prepare but the repeat process gets quicker and quicker, and it lets you build a good amount from nothing.

BUT, there’s a better way, although a little more convoluted, you need to have a good amount of gold already and you need access to chapter 2 of HotU. In chapter 2, there’s a blacksmith called Rizolvir, he has a pretty unique talent which is to enchant any weapon to boost their stats and add abilities, for quite a steep price. I won’t go into more details because it involves exploits used in the creation of your overpowered weapon, so look for the next tip if you want to know more! But basically you want to make the best weapon you can with the gold you have at Rizolvir’s (must not be a quest item so don’t use your magic weapon, again look for the next tip if you don’t know what I mean). After that you can dupe this weapon, and sell it. DON’T SELL IT IN HOTU! In HotU, sale prices are capped at something like 10k for chapter 1, 15k for 2 and 3. You want to import your character in NWN or SoU campaign to sell your weapons for a couple millions, depending on what you put in it, the price of items goes up exponentially with the number of effects it has.

 

- Make the best weapon in the game (of any type!!!): Now that involves a little work and exploration. We are going to upgrade the enchantment of weapons and add more special effects to them. Some steps can be skipped of course, all that does is you lose a few extra powers, but the most important one is Rizolvir. It involves the help of two blacksmiths at some point, which share a rule: they can’t add more than 8 lines of effect. I say lines because unfortunately some stuff like class or alignment restriction counts in those 8, which sucks a lot, but in our case it’s not really bothering, you will get to know why.

 

 Now let’s go through the steps.

 

1) Create your base weapon: Start a Kingmaker campaign, don’t worry you won’t play much in it. You will be stripped of your inventory and be set back at level 1 so don’t do this on your main character if you already have one, take a new one and transfer the weapon later through import/export (important precision: you won’t be able to drop the magic weapon until it got through a blacksmith). Just make sure the character can use the weapon type you want from the start. The start in Kingmaker is pretty straightforward: skip dialogues, rush to the front gate by ignoring all mobs, skip more dialogues, die, revive. Then the magic weapon talks to you, this is the opportunity to choose what weapon you want. If you don’t know what to take, choose a scimitar, it is the most balanced weapon between damage and critical, and it’s one handed, you will need the martial mastery or be a druid to be able to choose them though (and use them, eventually). After that, when asked, choose any two of the four henchmen to sacrifice, and the remaining two to revive, skip through all dialogues again until you are free to go in the castle yard. You can now save the game and export your character weapon, this is your base material. Keep your save for later, you will need it.

 

2) Spindrift Blacksmith: Okay this step is highly optional because it doesn’t bring that much, you need to play through Pirates of the Sword Coast campaign for a while and at some point you lose all your items (so make sure the character you play has nothing important on him, at least when starting). It saves a little bit of money for later though, and it also allows you to upgrade a piece of armor or shield as a bonus (just not as godly as you will for your weapon). So progress through the DLC until you get to Spindrift town. Just do the captain’s quest in Harbor district, wash up on a desert island, find your way through the gelly cave… Honestly I don’t remember the actual progression very well, at some point you get captured by lizardmen, do the arena fight and then kill the lizard king outright to save time, take the wood from his chest, bring it to the cave in the northwest of the island to find the inventor, he will craft you a raft, you then go on another island and Spindrift will be in the east. Find Prugdush World, where Prugdush will craft upgrades on your magic weapon. 

You can add this:

- Enchantment +1 to +5 (total 35000g)

- Keen (7500g)

- Vampiric +2 (7500g)

 

Don’t bother with elemental damage and spell resistance, as it will get overwritten later (also they don’t stack, only the biggest applies once).

 

3) Rizolvir: I have talked about him earlier if you followed through it all, he’s a blacksmith found in the city in Chapter 2 of HotU, and also in the tavern in Chapter 3, in ghostly form.

He also adds upgrades to weapons like Prugdush, but here there’s more to it. There’s a little exploit that lets you get past all the upgrade limits, which means you can add more than 8 lines to your weapon, circumvent the enchant limit (although it caps at +10) put more than one element (which is normally impossible; side note the first element you put will alter your weapon visually). You can even put the attack bonus from ranged weapons to melee weapons which caps at +20 and make it even more OP. Now to explain the trick: when you ask Rizolvir to upgrade, he checks the weapon in your hand. Select the upgrade you want, he says something like “it shall be done”, then when you close dialogue, your weapon is upgraded, this is the regular way. The exploit way now, is to take a very low level weapon in hand, and ask to upgrade it and the actual upgrade. Then when he says he’s done, before closing the dialogue, you swap it to the actual weapon you want to upgrade (you have to move from the dialogue box to your character with R1/L1 by highlighting him, then open inventory with triangle and swap there). Now go back to the dialogue and close it, the upgrade will proceed. I really advise you take a non-enchanted weapon as your substitute, like a simple dagger, and a bow for ranged. This way you always pay the lowest price when you add enchant levels and attack bonus.

With Rizolvir you can add:

- Enchantment +1 to +10 (500000g total, 50000 each provided the substitute weapon has < +6 enchant  

- Acid damage +2D6 (75000g)

- Fire damage +2D6 (75000g)

- Frost damage +2D6 (75000g)

- Electrical damage +2D6 (75000g)

- Haste (150000g)

- Keen ( if you didn’t do in Spindrift, 50000g)

- True Seeing (30000g)

- Spell resistance +20 (75000g)

- Regeneration +2 HP/round (75000g)

- Attack bonus +1 to +20 (600000g, 30000 each, only with a ranged weapon as substitute)

 

It’s very expensive, if you don’t have enough gold, see above for tips about making some. You don’t have to do all the upgrades in one sitting anyway.

 

4) Drearing’s Deep altar: this is part of one of the 5 mini adventures you have to complete in chapter 2 of HotU. Go to Drearing’s Deep (south exit in the Underdark) , go ring the gong in the northern part of the village and fight off the vampires. In the temple, go up to the second level, eventually you find an altar, you need to find a black pearl too, thankfully there’s one in a chest close by. The altar adds Drain Ability STR DC24, that’s all, pretty short. You can always save this part for when you do your regular playthrough of chapter 2, as you need to complete some of these adventures to finish the chapter.

 

5) Decrease level, get loads of XP and back to Kingmaker: Alright, for this last step you need two things: a low level character with a lot of XP, and of course your weapon. There are several ways to achieve the first, but the simplest would be to just start a new character in HotU chapter 1 so at the start you get enough XP to be level 15. Just don’t level it up now, export your character directly, and name it the exact same as your character in Kingmaker. The second thing you need is to transfer the weapon to them. Once done, you can load your Kingmaker with that character, and start leveling. After each level starting at 4, the sword asks you to add power-ups to it, just do it. You can add a lot of stuff too including healing spell and crowd control effects, but again don’t bother with elemental since they won’t stack.

 

And there you have it, your weapon has now the maximum amount of effects possible. Do note that you could always do it with any weapon in the game, apart from the Kingmaker leveling of course, if you don’t want to mingle with this mod. But if you find a weapon you would prefer over the magical weapon, feel free to use it.

 

- Infinite magical item charges: In SoU chapter 1, go to the High Forest map (to access: Hilltop West -> Hilltop East -> Foothills exit south -> High Forest). In the northern part, there’s a bridge leading to an isolated house where a hermit lives. The hermit has a machine which allows you to recharge magical items, and it turns out it can charge items over their original cap, and it can also charge items that aren’t originated from the module. While there are some good items, I have to admit there aren’t overpowered one to the point you need to do this. It is a pretty nice thing still (one item you may want to charge is that totem you craft in the maker’s island in HotU, that does massive damage to golems, it’s pretty neat to finish the underground levels of the island quite simply). Each time you click the machine, it adds 1 charge, and it should cost 100g each charge. You wouldn’t be able to leave the house if you didn’t pay the hermit but you could always export/import to do it for free.

 

- Infinite army of goblin warriors/driders followers: This trick only works in HotU because the items you need have scripts tied to the module, which don’t exist outside of it and thus it is rendered ineffective. So in HotU chapter 2 you can get an item, nearly from the start, it is called Tynan’s top. Getting this item is tied to the trophy “That baby does not go there” by the way, so you will have to do this eventually. You first need Nora Blake’s baby from SoU chapter 1, this is a quick grab. Then go to HotU chapter 2, outside the city in the Underdark, west part there is a Beholder control panel, just choose the option to put the baby in, then you can choose to turn him into a goblin warrior or a drider, I advise you choose the goblin (you can’t have both even by importing/exporting due to how the script works). The item can summon your minion once per day (a day being a period of time in between two rests), but it turns out the summon number isn’t capped, nor does it respect the party limitations nor does it despawn like it should. This means you can have as many as you want at a time. You could summon one, rest, summon another but the best way is to just duplicate a bunch of Tynan’s top and summon everything at once. Combat gets pretty effortless with such an army, but unfortunately it’s not that great for Mephisto hardcore because they tend to die quickly after phase 2 or 3, unless you can summon even more after they die, and then casting  improved sanctuary/invisibility on yourself and let them do the job.

 

- Pirates of the Sword Coast tattoos: In PotSC module, you get two occasions to get tattoos (they don’t show though so don’t get your hopes up): in Neverwinter Docks District and in Spindrift Town (though you first have to free the guy from the town hall). Normally you can only get one tattoo in each tattoo parlor, among a choice of four in each location. But if you save before getting each of them, export/import your character you can get more tattoos. Unfortunately you can’t stack the same tattoos several times for infinite stats (I wish) but you can get one of each for some extras. I have to warn you that they are a bit glitchy. First if your character goes in another module then somehow comes back to PotSC in any place, he loses all his tattoos. Second, I suspect the tattoos that give ability scores interact weirdly with armors also giving ability scores (like the armor giving +3 STR instead of +5 because I had a +2 tattoo, not sure if it comes from the tattoos though).

 

Extra non exploitative tip, if you want a cheese build with your cheese weapon and your cheese minion army, I’d advise this one since as I said you’re not as coerced into making a wizard or sorcerer thanks to the xp tip: https://world-of-greyhawk.github.io/builds/data/build243768.html

One issue though, they changed bard requirements in Enhanced Edition, you need 10 natural CHA so you have to take 2 ability points from elsewhere at character creation. Fun fact I had to redo my character because of this and it’s how I found the MP exploit in the first place. You can’t touch WIS and INT, and DEX too IIRC (I’m not 100% sure about this one) so you’re left with STR and CON, you can do a combination of the two, or just -2 CON because at the end you’re already very tanky. Also, putting skill points in Taunt is useless, I assume this build was made for pvp where it may get useful, but for solo it’s not worth it because you already get all the aggro and the single target debuff isn’t worth using. You could instead use the extra skill points in Persuade (while leveling bard or RDD, or it costs more points), it can be of use in the NWN module, otherwise put it in Perform if you want to use the bard song, or really anything, 14 points are not really game changing (well considering you already max out the skills that ARE game changing).

Cleric is quite OP with great buffs (divine power, magic weapon, dark flame weapon etc), great heals and resurrect abilities, and nice AOE spells (implosion, firestorm etc…). RDD gives plenty of passive stat buff, natural immunity to fire and makes you super tankier, and bard is just there because you need it to be a RDD (and also to put some points into specific skills).

 

Well that’s it for me, I’ve been done with the game for a while now so I don’t think I’ll find more than these unless maybe they release new stacks on the PS5 or other regions. But feel free to share if you find more.

Edited May 15, 2022 by GastNDorf

[MesterJeger]

Thanks. This will be very helpful.

[WiktorM101]

On 15.05.2022 at 6:03 PM, GastNDorf said:

- Fastest XP method: At the end of Hordes of the Underdark campaign chapter 1, you will find Halaster prisoner from the drows, this is probably the biggest XP influx in the whole game, because when you free him, you get 7500 xp and after he cast his quest spell on you, you get another 7500 xp, so 15k xp in total for basically doing nothing, and with the MP mode you can repeat this over and over, no need to replay the whole chapter. 

I’ll get into more details: first get rid of all the drows at the end of the chapter, then destroy two out of three stones keeping Halaster prisoner. Dismiss all your henchmen if you have them so they don’t soak up xp (besides Nathyrra who doesn’t count and that can't be dismissed) and save your game now. Destroy the last stone for 7500 xp, a cutscene will follow. Engage conversation with Halaster, then you can hit circle to skip it and receive another 7500 xp. You will then load into chapter 2, I haven’t found a way to skip this loading unfortunately.

If you spam circle and X you can get multiple 7500xp out of this. 

Depends how fast you can do it before chapter 2 loads.

[GastNDorf]

On 17/11/2022 at 10:14 AM, WiktorM101 said:

If you spam circle and X you can get multiple 7500xp out of this. 

Depends how fast you can do it before chapter 2 loads.

Nice find, I don’t think I’ve ever thought of trying it, this should be even quicker to level up then. How many times in one sitting did you get it to work?

[WiktorM101]

7 hours ago, GastNDorf said:

Nice find, I don’t think I’ve ever thought of trying it, this should be even quicker to level up then. How many times in one sitting did you get it to work?

I just needed to level up my mage from lvl 15 to get epic spell. Didn't really counted, but that took just 3 restarts.

 

Unfortunetly I did whole 15 -> 40 your way 15k per restart. 

Edited November 18, 2022 by WiktorM101

[WiktorM101]

I highly recommend this Barbarian build.
Pros:

- high strength = no problems with carry weight limit

- high HP - you can tank everything. Lvl 40 i had 500+HP

- easy gameplay - you click on a thing and it dies. Only 2 skills to use in combat and you don't need them 99% of the time. Rage and Power Attack, both are "turn this on and kill everything faster". That's all you need. No magic no potions needed. (Healing potions may be needed in Hordes of the Underdark)

 

Cons:

- in situations where enemy has  "if less then X% of health -> stop fight to talk" mechanic you often overkill them before they have chance to talk.

e.g. I had to restart Chapter 1 boss because killing him or talking to him finishes the chapter but only talking gives trophy and I actually fistfighted him to not overkill.

 

Skills: 30 in Discipline then put more in it when you don't have anything better to level up,

30 points in heal is overkill. You will never use it. 1 point in Heal is enough,

1 point in disarming traps, exactly 20 in Spellcraft, max out Tumble, then put few points in Lockpicking and many in Persuade. There are many persuade checks in this game and few need to succeed to start/progres some quests so that may save your time. At least one of these quests is needed for trophy.

I used Tomi Undergallows as my henchmen. For locks and traps I couldn't do myself. There is no need for another damage dealer.

 

 

So, I figured out that having henchmen quest reward in inventory counts as finishing their quest.

What happened was I had one Tier 2 quest reward and all items rest of henchmen needed for their quests.

I restarted chapter 2 as "new game", gave all items to henchmen and then attempted to start quest of henchmen that I already had reward of. His quest auto-completed and I got the trophy.

I don't know if it works backwards (Tier 3 rewards auto-complete chapter 1 and 2 quests), but it is possible that if someone drops you all henchmen Tier 3 rewards you can get all henchmen trophies much easier.

Edited December 6, 2022 by WiktorM101