Are stronghold adventures the only way to level up dismissed party members?

[Oink]

Hello everyone, I'm Oink and I'm new - I look forward to meeting you all. Buckle up, because this is a bit of a yarn:

 

I read in one of the threads here (I can't remember what it was called, but something to do with Durance's quest) that Kana should be one of the four members in your active party - along with Edér, Aloth, and Durance - when you reach endgame. However, there are no other members in my current party whose quest I have completed (I finished Time and Tide a while ago), and I really like the build I have right now.

 

Further complicating matters, I noticed that when I finally did swap Kana back in for the first time in a while, his XP had not caught up with the rest of my party. In fact, he's about 2000 XP behind everyone else. But seeing as I'm now about halfway through Act II with only his quest finished, I still feel compelled to leave him at Caed Nua, meaning even more time of him falling behind in terms of leveling. I'm concerned that I'm basically going to be yanking him along just for his role in the endgame, whatever that may be, but he's really going to suck in that final battle.

 

Are there ways, other than sending him on Caed Nua adventures, to get him caught up with everyone? I'm on a Mac so I'm not yet able to conjure up levels for my characters with Eternity Keeper.

[Luckmann]

There's an Eternity Keeper?

 

Anyway, judging by that, you're not adverse to some cheating, so just use the console.

 

That being said, I don't see any reason for you to have Kana with you if you don't want to.

[AshenPlanet]

I use a mac, and I haven't tried console, but I read somewhere that it works on mac.

Your kana does gain xp while you are not adventuring with him as does everyone in your keep, but it's not as much as your active party members get.

If you send him on adventures as well, he will actually get more xp than you or your party members.

 

I usually use Aloth in that role, because he is not as useful pre-9th level.

I send him on adventures until he hits 9th level and then take him out to do stuff.

 

There is a problem that you can run into though, and that is that they seem to cap xp just before they would gain 2 levels.

ie. if you park someone at 5th level, and you go to 8th level, he/she will be short of 7th when you take them out.

To get around this, stop in cad nua or an inn every other level at least to switch out party members, level them up, and then you can park them again.

 

 

[Oink]

There's an Eternity Keeper?

 

Anyway, judging by that, you're not adverse to some cheating, so just use the console.

 

That being said, I don't see any reason for you to have Kana with you if you don't want to.

 

I'd rather not cheat, I just figured while writing the post that the first response I would get would be, "Why don't you just use Eternity Keeper?"

[Kriber22]

While out-of-party NPCs gain some XP, they don't keep up with the active ones in the party; like you've noticed, they lag behind some. Apart from the quests that pop up in the keep I haven't seen any way of giving them more XP (aside from "cheating" with the console or somesuch). To me this isn't much of an issue, since I like to mix it up and occasionally swap out one NPC for another just for flavour's sake. Unless there's someone you really detest having in your party I'd suggest you just bring the under-levelled ones along for a while.