Utility Experience Points: Baldur's Gate 2
There are two forms of Utility Experience Points in Baldur's Gate 2: spell scroll scribing uXP and Thieving uXP (picking locks and disarming traps).
Basically, uXP in general adds up and makes it easier to hit the ToB cap with a six-person party. Kill XP and Quest XP are the most important driving factors in experience point gain, though; the latter, for its sheer amount and the former for the fact that it's awarded to each and every party member, rather than divided.
uXP: Spell Scroll Scribing
As mentioned at the beginning of this series of posts, and also in my Best Classes write-up, the uXP gained from scribing spells to spellbooks is non-trivial for six-person arcane parties.
Not including the three Wild Mage-specific spells (which are auto-added, not scribed), and not including the six HLA spells (which are chosen, not scribed), there are 189 arcane spells in SoA+ToB.
Breakdown for each spell circle:
| Circle | No. of Spells | XP for Scribing |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 22 | 1,000 |
| 2 | 20 | 2,000 |
| 3 | 24 | 3,000 |
| 4 | 25 | 4,000 |
| 5 | 22 | 5,000 |
| 6 | 24 | 6,000 |
| 7 | 20 | 7,000 |
| 8 | 15 | 8,000 |
| 9 | 16 | 9,000 |
This means maximized uXP spell scribing equates to approximately 895,000 XP for each character over the course of the campaign, which is 11.18% of the ToB cap of 8mil.
That may not seem like much, but uXP spell scribing helps our party members gain a few levels in Chapters 1 and 2, which is going to give us a notable boost in power.
In my setup, each and every character can find each and every scroll, with the exception that Jan, being an Illusionist, can't scribe Necromancy scrolls.
Also, I didn't abuse the scribe-erase feature of the spellbook. If this is done, one can easily hit the cap (though if you're going to do that you might as well just console the XP in and be done with it, cheater :P)
uXP for spell scribing is felt more in the early stages of the campaign, where it's commonly used to eliminate dual-classing downtime for 9th level duals, such as Kensages.
We can also manipulate uXP in order to push our favored party member UP levels (usually Charname or Edwin due to his +2 spellslots per level). This is done through party reformation: temporarily kick out the others before going on a spell-scribing spree. Why would we do that? Because breaking into the next circle sometimes makes all the difference. Especially for someone like Edwin.
uXP: Thieving
As regards Thieving uXP, in the Prologue alone Imoen nets 33,350 uXP (17 traps & 9 locks). And Mae'Var's Thieves' Guild yields 19,650 uXP (20 locks, 5 traps).
Thieving uXP it dependent on character level: at higher level, uXP actually increases. Not by much, though. Certainly not enough for me to go into more depth on its scaling.
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