The first thing that is immediately noticeable about this game is that you don't start on level one. The Underdark is a serious place and can't be adventured into with a low level character. Therefore this game allows you to take previous characters with higher levels or create a character and level him or her up until level 15 is reached. This first leveling up can be done automatically by the game or if you so choose you may scrutinize each level and make a character to your exact specifications. The other thing most noticeable about the levels of characters in this game is the level cap. Instead of the normal twenty cap your character can reach up to level forty in this game. The reason the cap has been raised so much is to include the epic classes, left out of the last game which introduced the prestige classes.