Shattered Kingdoms

So this spell is pretty riotously good times, but I'm curious...when I get jumped by a bunch of undead and do this to one that's at 100%

You utter the words, 'barh ay ohifl'.
A bolt of light bursts forth from your hand!
A flaming banshee cringes in terror from your bolt of glory!
A flaming banshee bursts into a glorious flash of holy light and crumbles to dust!
A flaming banshee is DEAD!!
You hear a flaming banshee's death cry.
A flaming banshee's body dissolves into a shower of sparks.


Am I still getting full xp for that kill?

You get XP for damage dealt, not number of creatures killed. If you kill them through a save or die effect, you are probably not getting the XP.

Personally, I've noticed that even if you don't get full xp for the kill, it's still much more worthwhile than using say, spear of faith, or just melee damage. This is quite possibly just due to the insane damage the BoG puts out regardless of whether the undead saves.

I think I'd tentatively agree with that assessment Edoras, assuming there's enough undead in the training area you're in that you are out of mana before/as you're out of NPCs. I mean, bolt of glory is clearly more damage per ME spent than spear of faith, so using it over spear should result in higher xp.

In some areas I've been though, I think rocking stuff so hard (and not getting xp past the first bog tick of damage) is actually detrimental in terms of getting max xp/time spent as I run out of NPCs while still very high ME.

Boo! It should do 100% damage, instead of insta-die.

Doesn't the killing blow give a bit extra experience?

As I read Dulrik's reply,

a) any spell that has a save-or-die possibility doesn't damage the NPC, it just slays it, effectively; and,

b) in terms of killing NPCs, XP earned is based on damage caused.

Why does bolt of glory have so many affects? Against evil NPCs that it affects it makes them flee from the room (an effect that alongside fear is practically useless in actual practice, but that's a subject for a different post that I keep meaning to make). It causes undead to die instantly, and against PCs it traps them in the room. Why doesn't it cause demons to burst into flashes of light and explode into bloody chunks of awesomeness, or that evil priest? Why doesn't it trap the Grand General Infernal in the room?

Man if bolt of glory did 100% damage that would be completely awesome. I'd not train self defense and use the auto kill bolt of glory to reap in tons of xps. If I wanted to play a paladin again, which I don't.

Thank god.

What about petrify? I thought I remembered hearing that petrification was a good spell for XP so I tried it out. I managed to get a tick of XP just petrifying (probably 25 in a row) but it was a lot slower than using acid or magic missiles.

It seems like petrification has some non-damage based XP component. Could other spells have something similar?