The benefits of delayed gratification (semi-spoilery)

[Sirrocco]

So... you all know that when you get a level, that happy little green plus sign pops up, and you can push it to get your level.

...and you all know that you can keep going, and earn additional levels, and the benefits of leveling are just saved up.

...but there are some things you maybe do not know.

- First, your HP and mana gained from leveling are based on your stats after you finish adding leveling stats - and applied to all of the levels you're gaining. So right there, if you're trying to push your stamina/perception for hp/mana gain, the longer you can hold out, the higher your stats will be at calc time, and the more permanent hp/mana you get.

- second, at least based on my calculations so far, it appears that you get a bonus +1hp/+1mana for every additional level beyond the first that you have saved up at the time you take that level. leveling two at once gives you +1/+1. leveling four at once gives you +3/+3.

so... to take it to the extreme... I rolled a character with 13 con and 14 per. I'd wanted 14 con, but the other rolls were too good to pass up. I placed racial and base points so as to end up with 30 con. then I began to level. Currently, I'm at level 6, getting close to level 7, and I haven't hit the plus sign yet. (I made something of a mad dash to Blackwater while simply ignoring the fact that people were whaling on me to get myself combat skills. I've also been playing the save-and-reload game on locks and traps at skill 1. It's cheese, but eh? On the other side, I haven't been chest-scumming pretty much at all.) In any case, I'm currently doing fairly well with 7 points of sword skill and a 4 damage sword out of the crypts, buffed up with bless, cat's eyes and minor heal. I'll cash it in at level 8.

...at which point I'll be able to raise myself to 50 endurance and 15 perception, giving me +76 hp and +27 mana. There's part of me that wants to try to eke it out to level 10, when I could drag the perception up to 20, but I think that might be a bit much.

[Atch]

Interesting. So how'd it go?

[Sirrocco]

Well, I'm halfway through level 7 now, and relieved to find that level 7 still has thugs as the ambush-while-sleeping mob. I got a nice little power boost once I noticed that the +hit/+dam from bless depended on the level of the spell and bought divination up to 5. I also lucked into one of those +2dex/+4throw amulets. I'll post again once I've finished the level and confirmed the hp gain.

[Sirrocco]

Well, I made it to level 8 and decided to cash in there (rather than grinding through to level 10 for the +1mana/level). I got 78 hp out of the deal (endurance 50 - slightly over 11 per level gained. Clearly the function is not quite as simple as I'd thought) and about the right amount of mana (though I didn't record it, so I'll have to go back and check savefiles to say exactly how much). The last half of level 8 was pretty much sitting on the eastern border of blackwater, napping for thugs. I will say that the jump, when it came, was *huge* - not just the bit where it pretty much doubled my hp, but upping my sword skill from 7 to 12 and my castable bless from 3 to 5.

[Artius]

One thing that I started doing, along these same lines, is to not spend all of my skill points during character creation.

During creation, you can't put more than 5 points in any one skill (6 for the class skill). When you level up though, there is no such restriction.

Doing this, for a mage for instance, lets you max out your mana regen by level 2, regardless of your starting role. Achieving a "Meditation + Perception >= 38) is pretty easy when you can put all of your initial skill points and attribute points into that equation.

[durzagott]

I gave this delayed gratification a shot and here are my results:

I went up 4 levels at once (Level 12 - 16)

HP went from 65 to 84 (gain of 19)
Mana went from 96 to 117 (gain of 21)

Before the delayed thing, my mana was increasing at 5 per level. So I only seem to have improved it by an extra 1. This could even be because of rounding issues stacking up (ie, perhaps I was increasing by 5.25 per level)

One drawback with the delayed levelling up is the the 5-Skill-Points-On-One-Skill limit is there (as per character generation). So I wanted to add 7 points to my Elemental Magic, but could only add 5.

My advice, live in the now. The only reason I can see for holding back from press the flashing green cross is the free health/mana refill. Great if your in the middle of a big battle and don't want to waste potions.