Level based difficulty in Kotor 2?

[Guest Dane]

Hello folks, I hope I'm posting in the right section- if not, please feel free to move or delete this at your discretion.

 

I'm a speedrunner, and after having played Kotor2 I found there were a number of obvious bugs and glitches that could be exploited to speed through the game. Further looking into this I found that it had already been done, VERY well might I add, by a fellow speedrunner at the SDA. For a sample, here's the entire planet of Korriban in under 4 minutes

 

 

Anyways, I was thinking about possible improvements and noticed a brief discussion of the enemies being leveled based upon player level. The full discussion here.

 

http://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/kotor_ii_done_quick__new_knights_of_the_old_republic_2_speedrun_in_157_now_out.html

 

So that got me to thinking- leveling up takes time, several seconds at least. Theoretically you could trim time from the game by leveling as little as possible, perhaps even staying level 1. In the ideal circumstances, you would remain at level 1 all game, and enemies would be leveled to you, providing easy fights all game since your weapons and armor would be vastly more effective by comparison.

 

However, I don't know anything about how the actual game system works, and I figured this seemed like a good place to ask a technical question

 

First off, this all assumes enemy difficulty scales to your level. If I'm wrong in assuming that, please ignore this silly thread

 

1. Is enemy difficulty scaled to the Exile's level ONLY? For instance, could I keep the Exile at level 1 and have all my teammates at level 10+, so that they would kill everything in one hit?

 

2. Or perhaps is it based upon the currently selected character? If that were the case, would enemy difficulty scale in real time, switching between characters?

 

3. Or perhaps is it based upon experience level, such that if you never leveled up and stayed level 1, the game would still scale enemy difficulty to the level you should be at if you spent your level-ups? (if you were level 1 but had 150,000 exp, enemies would be scaled for a level 10+ character?)

 

I'd appreciate any insight into this matter, thanks!

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

 

I'm a speedrunner, and after having played Kotor2 I found there were a number of obvious bugs and glitches that could be exploited to speed through the game.

 

Different from power gaming, I assume? Why would you want to rush through the game? Ah well.

 

So that got me to thinking- leveling up takes time, several seconds at least. Theoretically you could trim time from the game by leveling as little as possible, perhaps even staying level 1. In the ideal circumstances, you would remain at level 1 all game, and enemies would be leveled to you, providing easy fights all game since your weapons and armor would be vastly more effective by comparison.

 

Not quite. You wouldn't be able to use some of the more fancy armors and weapons which make the game exponentially easier. You get a lot of bonuses that are based on your character's level, so if you stayed level 1 the whole game, you wouldn't get any of those bonuses. You'd eventually run across a boss-like enemy with stats that are impossible to counter.

 

 

3. Or perhaps is it based upon experience level, such that if you never leveled up and stayed level 1, the game would still scale enemy difficulty to the level you should be at if you spent your level-ups? (if you were level 1 but had 150,000 exp, enemies would be scaled for a level 10+ character?)

 

This is the closest. Enemy level is based on the max level of the player character that first enters the module. Generally it's the Exile, but while you're at the Dxun tomb or on Goto's Yacht, you can have another character as the player character.

 

So, say you were a level 16 Atton on Goto's Yacht - the enemies would scale according to Atton's experience level (we'll assume he's levelled up all the way.) Once you switch back to the Exile though, let's say he's... level 20. The enemies will still be based off of Atton's level experience because he was the first one to enter the level.

[ttlan 18]

Challenging the game.

 

The level of opponents is based on the real level of experience (the number of XP) and not on the "apparent" level.

 

The apparent level is the sum of :

PC (or NPC) class > [Class] > level + second class > [Class] > level

ie : Atton level 26

Atton > thug > Level 6

Atton > sentinel > Level 20

 

This is a trick that I recommend to harden the game: to remain at a relatively low level (with few constitution, strength, powers, etc. ...) and all adversaries will be much harder to defeat. This without any mod.

 

The real level used is computed at each map change and is in :

globals > numerics > G_PC_LEVEL

 

ie :

My actual PC is at real level 50 and apparent 24

 

Opponents are... cantankerous.

 

TTLan