8 Video Games That Reward You For NOT Levelling Up

For those that have never played the outstanding Nethack, the best way to describe it is to think of a Dungeons and Dragons adventure in which every single NPC, enemy, and especially the minds behind the game itself are in on a joke that you are only occasionally privy to.

It's a tongue in cheek affair that offers a huge amount of depth when it comes to what can happen to your party, and it's a title that is completely unafraid of inverting or destroying tropes.

This also somewhat comes to affect the way the title handles levelling up, as to be quite honest there's little incentive to actually hit max level, as the bonuses tail off long before the cap and all it seems to do is bring high-level enemies to the forefront which can be a nightmare to battle.

By staying low level you avoid these heavy hitters, but better still you can also take part in a feature that fans have dubbed "the Protection Racket". In the game, you'll come across a Priest who will buff your protection stat, which reduces physical damage taken, in exchange for gold.

The amount of gold to buff the stat increases as you level up, and players soon realised that if they stayed low level and just farmed as much gold as possible, they could purchase this Holy Protection multiple times over, so much so that it was possible to make a character almost invulnerable to physical harm!

All it cost was some pennies and not levelling up!