Hey guys,

Loving the fuck out of this game but I've just got some questions about experience and how it works for out-of-party members. I'm sure this is covered in another thread somewhere but I've avoided a great deal of info on this game so I'd hate to change that now by stumbling into a thread.

I finally gained a 7th party member so they've been sent the stronghold. I'm playing on hard and I'd like to try and get as much of my party to level 12 as possible. Just by handing in a quest and then looking at the before and after of the companion who was not in the party at the time it looks like they get 75% of experience. My question is: Is there enough experience in the game (through lore bestiary xp and quests etc) to make it worth trying to swap party members around once they hit the cap worth it or should I just stick with whatever party I like the most and make do with the sub's ending up a few levels short? Is like BG1 where you can get the cap with your party easy if you do all the side content or is it more like BG2 where the cap becomes extremely hard to reach?

I suppose the short-short version is: Is to possible to end the game with all companions on level footing or is some characters falling behind inevitable?

Thanks a lot!

ps: What a game.

You will reach level cap way before the game ending, so you can swap later party for some side quest if you want to max every companion. If you are worried about some character in particular just send him/her on the adventures offered by the stronghold. I finished the game with every obsidian companion plus a full roster of 8 hired adventurers on max level and i still had a bunch of things to do after reaching the cap on everyone, so don't worry

My experience mirrors the above. If you're really exhaustive with the side quests, you'll reach level cap well before the end of the game, with plenty leftover to get everyone up there. It's almost impossible for any character to be more than one level behind your primary.

People on the forums seem to be complaining a lot about the XP curve and overleveling content/capping out early.

So exactly how big is the game world? Is the extent of the world just the world map you see from the start? Because that seems a little small?

At the same time, I've spent days playing this game doing all sorts of quests and I still haven't gone beyond Defiance Bay. I'm just hitting level 6 now and leveling seems pretty slow. Something here is crazy.

@seikenfreak: The world map is what you see from the start. It doesn't really matter because it's the number of locations you can travel to and what is in there that define the size of the game. Some have dungeons, some little caves, some basically nothing to explore beyond the area map (plus of course the two cities)