XP hint...delayed levelling

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So stop me if you've heard this one...lol

This was something I came to notice (don't know if anyone else did) because I got bored and fed up loading and reloading when the party was ready to level up trying to max out my HP. So I'd get three out of five levelled up and then trot off adventuring again because the process was getting tedious and making me throw things at my cat.
This is when I noticed that after the whole party had been brought up to speed, the characters began gaining their new level at different times where they had always levelled up concurrently before. The amount of XP they had differed and the ones I had levelled up last were hitting their next levels first!
I chewed on this math and came to the staggerlingly obvious conclusion that, until you ACTUALLY level up even though you READY to, the game still considers you to be the lower level (and rightly so because you still are)
Translating this into XP value..you continue getting the old XP value for the monsters...not the lower XP value because the comparative challenge rating has been reduced...
So if you can tough it out and hold off levelling up you'll actually get to the bracket for the next level faster. I usually wait until I'm 3/4 (or even closer) then level up. After that it's only an encounter or three before I see those stars again...of course if the beasties are getting too nasty or your wizard's threatening suicide because they're dying for that fireball spell, level up at your convenience and in any combination. Bump up your tanks and let your magic users sit for a bit and they'll actually level up faster...
Levelling up happens fairly quickly at the start, but when the gap is 8-10,000 XP or more between them...the XP per monster really starts to add up (or not).
Since the game has an Uper cut-in-stone linear sort of story, after puttering around a bit, most players know the details and the places for the BIG fights and what you need to beat them. The random monster encounters on the world map never really throw you a curve (got jumped by an owlbear once, which was neat, but only once on all my hours of gaming) so delayed levelling is a pretty safe process...you generally won't end up a skid mark on a Troll's rear end but you'll get the most out of kicking it.

 

Yep. It's called level squatting, and some people do it... I'm too impatient.

 

Ah...figured there was a name for it. Cool