Farming and Powerleveling: Understand XP, farm Death and Cursed Items

Death is possibly the most popular enemy to farm. It gives you +999999 XP per kill and its most popular exploit is pretty easy to repeat.

Keep in mind that there's various ways to farm Death, so we'll start with the most efficient and accessible one.


This trick is easier to explain with video reference than just plain text, so I recommend watching this YouTube video that contains everything I talk about here and a bit more.

https://youtu.be/6t7FZTho6UY?si=_UqapKN785EzR1wi

You'll need a lot of Knokdown. Some people suggest having more than 500 but I got this to work with only 349 on Knockdown Power. You can obtain a good boost on Knockdown by using the Barbed Nails (Can be purchased from Madeleine).



The 'Impact' and 'Emphasis' Augments can be useful too.



Knockdown accumulates per-hit (Every time you hit an enemy, your knockdown effect on that enemy increases, meaning higher chances to stagger them) and he's more susceptible to Stagger if you aim at his head.

The easiest way to perform this exploit is by using a Bow Vocation with Blast Arrows equipped (as they provide Knockdown by explosion) and the Tenfold Flurry skill, which is the way I'll be showing here; but I'll also mention how to perform this with other Vocations.

Play through Bitterblack Isle until you access The Bloodless Stockade.



This place will contain Death roaming around, he will eternally respawn here if you haven't killed Daimon yet.



It does not matter in which part he spawns, you need to lure him to this area with a cliff:



When he gets here, lure him into this very corner and wait for him to start his attack animation.



Immediately after he starts that animation, run to the other side of the room (The corner of the cliff).



Once you're there, wait for him to reappear before you (Over the cliff) and spam your Knockdown skill to make him stagger and fall to an immediate death.

• Strider, Assassin and Ranger can use Bows, Tenfold Flurry and Blast Arrows.
  
• Fighter, Assassin and Mystic Knight can use the skill Antler Toss against him at the cliff.
  Warriors can use the skill Indomitable Lash against him at the cliff.
  
• Sorcerers can use the skill Gicel against him at the cliff.
  
• Mages can use the skill High Frigor against him at the cliff.
  
• Magick Archers can use the skill Explosive Rivet against him at the cliff, but you'd need to provoke the Knockdown with a melee attack, skill like Toss and Trigger or a Throwblast.

You can still change your Vocation at any time if you wish. I think the easiest of them all is just going full Blast Arrows on him.

This method stops working after you kill Daimon.


Fastest way to face Death after having kiilled Daimon for the first time would be by using Rancid Bait Meat at the Garden of Ignominy.



Rancid Bait Meat is an item that can trigger the spawn of certain enemies if placed specific places of Bitterblack Isle. You can find it in chests, through purification of Bitterblack Novelty Level 1 or you can buy it from Barroch after having finished the quest 'Eyes of the Deep' from Bitterblack Isle's Questboard.

• If you're not lucky finding various Rancid Bait Meat, try making copies at The Black Cat. It's the most simple way to get more of them.

Garden of Ignominy is the first room of Bitterblack Isle (after the start point).



The enemy variety of this place change every time you enter. You want to enter and exit until the starting enemies of Garden of Ignominy become the Saurias (the giant Lizards).



If you got Saurians in there, keep on going and kill everything you see. You might find a Chimera there, kill it too.

Then place a Rancid Bait Meat...



...and Death should arrive soon. If he haven't noticed you yet, you can save your game to re-try his fight if he runs away.



You won't have an insta-death for Death this time, but with 4 Conqueror's Periapt, endgame equipment and a lot of Knockdown you can make him your ♥♥♥♥♥.

You'll have to be really, really fast this time or he'll just run away. If that happens, you can use Godsbane to kill yourself and re-try.

If he doesn't appear even after doing all of this, save your game, then use Godsbane to kill yourself and press 'Retry'. Now place the Rancid Bait Meat again and he should appear this time.

If he fails to appear again, leave the Rancid Bait Meat in the floor, exit to the next area and come back. He should appear now.



Try to always keep stamina recovery items and Blast Arrows in your inventory.

Two things to keep in mind:

• Pariapts (and every other booster item) can be used four times to stack them, this way you can get a X4 Strength from a Conqueror's Periapt.
  
• All boosting effects stack regardless of the source, but they don't stack independently of each other. All of them feed into the same stack value, up to X4.

Avoid confusion, the Death you see in the Fortress of Remembrance only appears once. He's over a cliff as well, so with only one Knockdown you can kill him; but he won't respawn.



You'd have to reset your world state (by going NG+ or switching from Normal to Hard) to see him again.

I'll link you to this video again, as it contains all of this but with visual references.

https://youtu.be/6t7FZTho6UY?si=_UqapKN785EzR1wi

To do this, we're gonna perform the Barrels Glitch, you can find more detailed info about it on this other guide I made.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3668558843

There's also this video I made to complement said guide:

https://youtu.be/YHCYCSe39pY?si=Sv15MgaZQU__OOKU

However I will provide you here with the basic information on how to perform said glitches.

And keep in mind a few things:

• This glitch will freeze your Bitterblack Isle progression temporarily.
  
• You won't be able to use Liftstones.
  
• We'll perform the Barrels Glitch, so you'd probably don't want to take Pawns with you. They'll target barrels and break them, which can ruin this glitch or softlock you out of it.

And for this section I made another tutorial on YouTube with video references. Yo go check it out, as this guide is more easily understood with video reference.

https://youtu.be/6M9ZUbAPkK8?si=g3KvWYJDRg0118eR

---

First of all: Finish all Bitterblack Isle and kill Daimon's first phase.



Then take the items from the chests on the door that opened after Daimon's death.



But DO NOT exit through this door.



Go back to the entrance instead, which will now be locked.



Take one barrel and put it at a corner in front of the locked gate, just like in this picture:



Take something else like another barrel or a pot and walk towards the barrel. You may clip through it, and if you don't, grab the barrel and place it there once again. The idea is to jump between the barrel and the gate while holding something else. Eventually the barrel will disable its noclip state and push you to the other side of the locked gate.

If you're playing as a Dagger Vocation such as Strider, Ranger, Assassin and Magick Archer, you can Dodge, which allows you to perform an alternative way of glitching with barrels.

To perform this Dodge Barrel Glitch alternative method, all you have to do is put the barrel at a corner of a door and noclip on it just like a before, but instead of grabing another prop, just spam Dodge into the door's direction until you pass through it. If it didn't work in 5 to 8 Dodges, move the barrel a bit further from the door and keep trying.

This is easier to show than tell, so please, watch the linked video.

https://youtu.be/6M9ZUbAPkK8?si=g3KvWYJDRg0118eR

If you clipped successfully, exit through the door from which we entered, the one leading back to 'The Fallen City'.



Now run all your way back to the starting area of Bitterblack Isle (Where Olra is), but get there through the 'Corridor of the Hallowed'.



Normally if you visit Olra after killing Daimon, a cutscene would start. But by doing this all, said cutscene is skipped and BBI's progression gets frozen.

Now speak with Olra and go all the way back to Daimon's boss fight arena (yes, all the way back once again). Keep in mind that all Post-Daimon enemies are now roaming around, so it will be not only a long ride but a wild one.



When you get to the Bitterblack Sanctum once again, you'll see that Daimon isn't there and the main gate isn't locked anymore.

Go forward until you reach the gate with the four chests. You can see that the gate between you and those chests is now locked, but the chests got restocked.

Those chests will restock each time we exit and re-enter through the door leading to 'The Fallen City'.

The idea is to use barrels to glitch ourselves in and out of the locked chests room.

The main loop from now on would be like this:

• 1・Take a barrel and glitch yourself into the room with 4 chests.
  
• 2・Take the items from each chest (Will have lots of Bitterblack cursed items).
  
• 3・Glitch yourself out of that room (by taking the barrel from the other side of the gate).
  
• 4・Exit Daimon's arena and re-entering immediately.
  
• 5・Repeat until you feel you're done.

There's also this Wakestone that will restock each time we re-enter the door, so we can farm them too.

There's various spots to farm XP in the game. Here's two of them, accompanied by a video I made for each one.

---

Here, at Barta Crags in front of the Greatwall and the Greatwall Encampment you can find a Wight at night, a creature which eternally spawns undead enemies with high XP reward.

Go there, consume XP boost items, and start farming them without killing the Wight. If you kill it, it will not respawn until NG+, so try to go with no range-magic pawns, only melee so they can not reach it.

Generally they will reach the Wight anyways, so if your pawns are getting close to killing the Wight, try to escape and wait a day or sleep for it to respawn with full health.

---

After the quest A Warm Welcome, every Gran Soren guard at the Castle Grounds and Noble Quarter will be hostile towards you. They will keep spawning, there's no limit on that.

As shown in my video, you can find one or more spots where no guard could reach you. Get there and let your pawns do all the hard work (Guards are not hostile towards them) or kill them by yourself. You can even go AFK here.

Each pawn you have with you will take part of your experience.

• For an enemy that gives 100xp:
  
  3 Pawns = 100xp
  2 Pawns = 100 x 1.2 = 120xp
  1 Pawns = 100 x 1.2 = 120 x 1.2 = 144xp
  0 Pawns = 100 x 1.2 = 120 x 1.2 = 144 x 1.2 = 172.8 xp (shows as 173xp).

So if you want to farm XP, you might want to be alone or with the fewer pawns possible.

However if any of your pawns is 25 levels below your character, it will not cost you any XP. So if your Arisen's level is high, you may want to get a few pawns with great utility/damage skills and 25 or more levels below you.

Conqueror's Periapt is one of Dragon's Dogma's most valuable items. It provides us with a 20% of Damage Boost for 1 minute, up to a total of 100% if you consume 4 of them.

Both Fournival and Madeleine sell them, but the only one that allows you to buy infinite Conqueror's Periapt is Fournival, so you might wanna make him look innocent on that trial.

I've already said this before but it's important to keep this in mind anyways:

• Pariapts (and every other booster item) can be used four times to stack them, this way you can get a X4 Strength from a Conqueror's Periapt.
  
• All boosting effects stack regardless of the source, but they don't stack independently of each other. All of them feed into the same stack value, up to X4.

Weal is a status effect displayed as small four-leaf clover next to their name under the item menu. It doubles Experience, Discipline Points and Rift Crystals earned by pawns.

You can get the Weal effect from using one of these items:

Gain Weal for five minutes.

You can buy it from Barroch at Bitterblack Isle.

It can be found inside a Treasure Chest within the Everfall at Ceremonial Cage, Chamber of Absence, Chamber of Fate and Chamber of Hope.

It can be found inside a Treasure Chest at Bitterblack isle in The Fallen City and The Black Abbey.

Gain Weal (Double XP) for 5 minutes.

Can be stolen from Gran Soren Soldiers, Salvation Members, Wandering Pawns and certain Bandits using Master Thief.

Aelinore rewards you with 3 Veteran's Periapts for escorting her to the northern Healing Spring in the Notice Board Quest Beyond This Stony Cage, initiated from the Union Inn in Gran Soren.

May be found inside a chest towards the northern edge of the Witchwood, at the area before Selene's Cottage is reached.

Can be found as loot inside sarcophagi located around the northern Healing Spring in the Northface Forest.

May be found in a chest in The Ancient Quarry.

You can buy it from Fournival at Gran Soren during Post-Game/Stage 7 if you have high affinity with him.

Gain Weal (Double XP) and Prosperity for 5 minutes.

You can buy it from Fournival at Gran Soren after the Off With Its Head quest.

You can buy it from Madeleine and Aestella after killing Grigori, at Post-Game/Stage 7.

It may be found around Soulflayer Canyon, and inside chests in the DLC chapters Garden of Ignominy and Gutter of Misery, from Bitterblack Isle.

When carried in the inventory, the flower grants Weal; after one ingame day the flower will transform into Dead Flower becoming useless.

You can get it from Quina during the quest Talent in Bloom.

A perfect copy can be forged at The Black Cat for 180000 Gold.

Gain Weal for five minutes and the Curse status effect, which reduces Strength, Defence and Stamina.

You can find it in a chest at The Blighted Manse, near to the rear entrance of the sewers.

You may find it in chests at Bitterblack Isle, in Fortress of Remembrance, Rotwood Depository or The Forgotten Hall.

Can be stolen from Harpies, Skeleton Mages, or Skeleton Sorcerers, by using Master Thief.

---

Also Hardmode doubles all experience for you and your pawns.

And check this other guide I made :)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3668558843