outleveling zones way to easily

I have just finished my first play through of normal difficulty and one problem i found was i outleveled act 2's zones way to easily near the end. has anyone else found this problem at all?

I would probably prefer, if the one side was higher level that the other. I don't like, that after killing Kraitlyn, you'll have to run through the low level areas on your way to Alira.

I've also found it odd that Act 2 progresses in two different directions. I wonder why not start with FE in the lower left corner and just move up and over whilst carving through the bandits and into the Pyramid - IOW, like the game moves in Act 1? You're right; I always seem to be over-leveled when I reach the Pyramid; not only do you amass XP when killing so many enemies, but the inevitable game crashes force you to start over. Making the Act 2 map a bit more linear would offset some of this.

The main issue is that if you do even one side quest, you're already overleveling in Act 1, which carries over into Act 2.

In order to finish Act 2 without being overleveled you must:

Not do any side quests
Not grind in any area (besides the ledge/cove briefly)

Kripp's the only one I know to do a full video of Act 1-2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJFltQe4sl0&list=UUeBMccz-PDZf6OB4aV6a3eA&index=10&feature=plcp

But basically, if you want to finish Act 1 and 2 FAST and do it efficiently you need to:

Skip the first area you spawn in, kill Hillock to move on

Mow down monsters in the next zone, don't grind here, just train mobs into chains and use your AOE skill to clear them quickly; don't do medicine chest

Very quickly grab the glyphs in the next zone and move on forward

Kill squids, skip the depths, go to upper submerged passage and kill some squids, but don't really grind here

Dash through the ledge killing everything; skip the false god. When you reach the end of the instance, go back reset the instance, clear the part after the old god a few times for easy experience

Run through the next two zones; do not even try to kill things in prison part 2 (it's soo slow and often very dangerous due to mages and necros); kill brutus

Run through next 2 zones, clear the tar zombies in the zone before cavern of anger. Farm them a little bit, but don't linger too long here.

Clear cavern of anger, skip the next cavern and kill merveil

Run through the zone after merveil; clear it as quickly as possible. When you get to act 2 town, go left and get waypoint; then go back to town and get crossroads waypoint. Then go back to dark forest and clear weaver. When you finish weaver, go kill Alira in the next zone. Then head back to town and jump to crossroads, clear up to Kaitryn, then run to chamber of sins; I would honestly suggest running through chmaber of sins - although the experience is great, it's slow/dangerous to level there. Clear the boss and open the ruins. Get Oak's waypoint and if you're in a speedrun tournament, side with him for speed. Go back and kill Kaitryn. You can kill him if you want though.

Dash through oak's zone and go to the waterfall cave. This place is really tricky and I'm not sure what advice to give. Projectile Weakness skeletons will rip soft classes to bits if you're following this build (you won't be overleveled in the least, you might even be 1 level below zone reccomendation), so you might have to clear your way to the ancient pyramid.

When you're in the ancient pyramid, it's usually easiest to run all the way to the final boss. Though, if you're a poison cloud user, I would suggest killing all the mages through spamming it everywhere, it's basically free experience if you keep moving around and drop clouds in their face.

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tl;dr: Skip everything, grind easy mob packs for levels in areas like the ledge. If you do this, you won't be overlevelled in normal difficulty.

I wouldn't be too worried about the pacing of POE or its "overleveling problem" because Act 3 is coming and is going to throw a wrench into any suggested changes you might have.

personally i find it strange that to keep a decent experience gain for each zone i am expected to skip all the side quests and run directly through a number of zones . I like to take my time and explore and largely finish a zone before i go onto the next. Hopefully GGG does something to fix this once they are finished with act 3.

tell me though does the same hold true for the higher difficulties? SO that to keep concurrent with the zones level i haveto skip a large portion of the game?

I always skip the golden hand for every difficulty, however it's not a bad idea to do act 1 side quests on the other difficulties.

It isn't strange at all. You overlevel if you run side quests because they're supposed to be optional content. If you want the rewards they provide - do them! But you're going to get overleveled if you do them all, especially for normal difficulty.

As I said, Act 3 is coming, so your concerns over the leveling balance is kind of moot. I'd rather we had this discussion after Act 3 is in.

The video/strategy I provided is mainly for a level race, so you're not really stopping to view the scenery with those strategies. The most efficient path will always involve some trickery.

But if you're grinding, clearing a zone of all of its monsters ever, and/or doing side quests, you will be overleveled in normal and cruel, though ruthless/merciless will probably be more balanced for your level due to their ramping difficulty.

If you're doing a wonky build or a new player - it's honestly a GOOD thing to be overleveled because playing the game underleveled can be more than a bit challenging. You can easily screw up and die.

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perderabo wrote:

personally i find it strange that to keep a decent experience gain for each zone i am expected to skip all the side quests and run directly through a number of zones . I like to take my time and explore and largely finish a zone before i go onto the next. Hopefully GGG does something to fix this once they are finished with act 3.

tell me though does the same hold true for the higher difficulties? SO that to keep concurrent with the zones level i haveto skip a large portion of the game?

IIRC your experience gain won't drop much from that little overleveling (on lvl 1 the 'window' in which you get full xp/loot is about +-2 lvls, but this window grows larger the higher lvl you achieve...)
I'm overleveling opponents for around 4 lvls on Ruthless and i am 100% sure that i get full xp and loot with this.

It also depends on your dsp

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anubite wrote:

As I said, Act 3 is coming, so your concerns over the leveling balance is kind of moot. I'd rather we had this discussion after Act 3 is in.

I just said this same thing in another overleveling thread. I agree 100%.