Divinity: Original Sin 2: Definitive Edition

[Anteros]

Has anyone else tried this yet? I've been playing around on it with my friend on PS4 since we have access to the first act, with the rest coming out at the end of the month.

Early Impressions and changes:
They finally made stealth not completely useless as Guerrilla drops the AP cost to 1.

The game is a bit buggier. I've had to save and reload a few times to fix text glitches, and during one fight the enemies started fighting each other instead of me. Hopefully these things are fixed on the official launch.

The new tutorial deck is short and completely useless. Maybe it's more useful for someone completely new to the game though.

They finally nerfed Lone Wolf so that it doesn't completely trivialize the entire game. Skill points caps are the same now whether you have Lone Wolf or not, so you can't just smash your way through the game without thinking.

Supposedly they've balanced things so that magic is more useful in later acts instead of Warfare being optimal on every single character.

Enemies seem a bit smarter, at least on tactician. Enemy rogues stealth more often, and all enemies use their CC more intelligently. It's still not as smart as a real player (obviously) but it's better than it was before.

[Slayn82]

There used to be a thread on Divinity, Original Sin 2, a few months ago. Link: Divinity: Original Sin 2: Larian doesn't know what 'original' means (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?536748-Divinity-Original-Sin-2-Larian-doesn-t-know-what-original-means)

You just got to play the game a bit late. Maybe others will join the discussion if you change the title to Divinity: Original Sin 2: Definitive Edition. DOS 2 is a bit opaque for a title.

EDIT: Oh, you were on that old thread... sorry.:smallredface:

[Anteros]

There used to be a thread on Divinity, Original Sin 2, a few months ago. Link: Divinity: Original Sin 2: Larian doesn't know what 'original' means (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?536748-Divinity-Original-Sin-2-Larian-doesn-t-know-what-original-means)

You just got to play the game a bit late. Maybe others will join the discussion if you change the title to Divinity: Original Sin 2: Definitive Edition. DOS 2 is a bit opaque for a title.

EDIT: Oh, you were on that old thread... sorry.:smallredface:

Yeah, I would have rather resurrected that thread than make a new one. Unfortunately, the forum rules are unreasonably strict about thread necromancy sometimes, even when doing so makes sense. I'll change the title, but I'd say most people just haven't played this version of the game quite yet since it's still early access.

[Keltest]

Have you set something on fire yet? Is it easier to make out burning enemies in the middle of a field of fire?

[Anteros]

Have you set something on fire yet? Is it easier to make out burning enemies in the middle of a field of fire?

Yeah, my friend has a habit of setting the enemies (and me) on fire in every fight. I don't have any difficulty seeing them, but I also always turn on the option for enemies to be highlighted and have a circle around them by default, so I never really had difficulty seeing them in the original game either.

[Thomas Cardew]

I've been crawling through a new coop playthrough. Still in Fort Joy and on classic difficulty so I can't really say how the balance changes have affected it yet. I will say the basic fire is more... magma-y(?) looking than classic. That might just be a difference in default graphics setting. I've always used the character outline so I've never really had a problem seeing people in/on surfaces. Still on the Joy so I haven't seen necrofire yet.

Classic Fire (https://gyazo.com/1a3477314f1a7edfc1abb6592a38b92d) Classic Ifan on Fire (https://gyazo.com/e643fb4877a72d8b6ed74d1eb089c1dd) Definitive edition fire (https://gyazo.com/856f96d22c0b191cc14b7fb5596b1334) Definitive Edition Lohse on fire (https://gyazo.com/1f151ddc5a717992420db93a9838b167)

On another note, I am loving the squirrel so far.

I think the new level on the ship was mostly for old players. My guess it that it was a relatively low resource cost to develop, but immediately says "HEY LOOK NEW CONTENT" to old players as they start the game. And TBH, it worked on me. I like that version better than just waking up on the ship not really sure why though.

[tonberrian]

Woo, just under the necromancy limit!

I like the Squirrel knight, I really do, but... so far he's just there. He's given me two recipes for spellbooks, and in exchange he's generally been a pain to keep track of. (I just entered Driftwood.) Otherwise, having a lot of fun.

[Anteros]

Woo, just under the necromancy limit!

I like the Squirrel knight, I really do, but... so far he's just there. He's given me two recipes for spellbooks, and in exchange he's generally been a pain to keep track of. (I just entered Driftwood.) Otherwise, having a lot of fun.

Yeah, he's amusing but generally not worth the headache of keeping alive so far. Supposedly you can still interact with him if he dies, but my friend and I have a compulsion to keep our party members alive, so it makes for quite a bit of re-loading when he randomly dies.

[tonberrian]

Yeah, he's amusing but generally not worth the headache of keeping alive so far. Supposedly you can still interact with him if he dies, but my friend and I have a compulsion to keep our party members alive, so it makes for quite a bit of re-loading when he randomly dies.

I did have him die on the fight on the boat, and he showed up in spirit form in the next scene. Got cool ghosty VA too, didn't realize he was dead until after I arrived back in the real world (looting his corpse didn't quite trigger it).

[Thomas Cardew]

Can anybody in Driftwood or later tell me if they changed how the mask of the shapeshifter works in definitive edition? Before you could craft one with a ripped face and source orb which would allow you to keep the assumed form even after you removed it, as opposed to Fane's mask which lose the shift after you take it off. Did they change that?

I'm not there yet to test for myself and it will be a bit before I am due to life right now.

[Morty]

I started out very sceptical of this game, then I actually got into it. But then the gear treadmill and general difficulty of keeping up with ever-escalating numbers drove me off. Physical skills felt bland and restrictive and all the neat magic tricks paled in comparison to just generating huge damage numbers and then CC-locking enemies into oblivion. Is the new edition likely to help with any of that?

[Anteros]

I started out very sceptical of this game, then I actually got into it. But then the gear treadmill and general difficulty of keeping up with ever-escalating numbers drove me off. Physical skills felt bland and restrictive and all the neat magic tricks paled in comparison to just generating huge damage numbers and then CC-locking enemies into oblivion. Is the new edition likely to help with any of that?

The gear treadmill is still very much in effect. Supposedly they did tone the number bloat down a bit, and also rebalanced to make magic more effective. It's still the same game at its core though.

[Keltest]

The gear treadmill is still very much in effect. Supposedly they did tone the number bloat down a bit, and also rebalanced to make magic more effective. It's still the same game at its core though.

Can confirm that magic is generally more competitive with physical now. Part of it is that physical is a little less useful, more of it is that monsters aren't as resistant to the various elements as they used to be.

Unrelated, but I just got to arx on my new playthrough as beast, and holy crap are some of these new fights kicking me up and down the street.

[Anteros]

I have been building my characters to have a lot of versatility instead of raw damage and I think it works fine. The neat tricks magic tricks are perfectly viable, if a bit sub-optimal compared to raw damage.


Can confirm that magic is generally more competitive with physical now. Part of it is that physical is a little less useful, more of it is that monsters aren't as resistant to the various elements as they used to be.

Unrelated, but I just got to arx on my new playthrough as beast, and holy crap are some of these new fights kicking me up and down the street.

I haven't noticed much difference so far, but I'm only in act 2. I'm playing with a friend and it's extremely slow going since we barely ever both have time to play.

[Thomas Cardew]

They did flatten the gear curve a bit, but the differences are a lot more apparent in the later acts. They also changed the vendors item offerings so it's a lot harder to gear now. Before vendors frequently had several items at highest rarity, so you could be a little picky about which stats you wanted. Now they have 1 at highest rarity which means you get what you get.

I think the changes to Torturer talent (allowing it to appply status through armor) are the bigger differences in for mages. Fire mages get a 10% damage buff since they can now apply burning directly to give -10% fire resistance plus the actual burning damage. Poisoned just gets its free damage. Hydro and Aero get nothing but they already had wet.

Physical definitely got a small downgrade. Enemies have both higher physical and a decent dodge chance resulting in a lot more misses. That said I was able to finish the game as solo tactician run as a Lone Wolf Ranger without skill/stat respeccing. It was definitely much harder than it would have been on classic edition. Arrowstorm got nerfed hard though. I don't think I ever used it outside of the final battle.

I actually like the changes to Lone Wolf now. Before you could increase skills past 10, which meant it was more effective to pump your primary damage skills. Now your Lone wold Bonus is capped at 10 so adding more points doesn't do anything. This encourages spreading the points out give more variety in play styles without feeling like you're short changing your build.

[tonberrian]

Well THAT could have gone better.

Found an area of Arx that had a few little voidwoken crawling around - the explody pillbugs, nothing difficult. But. Triggered the encounter. LOTS MORE enemies, including a type I haven't seen before - a version of the fliers with a Deathfog-spawning ability. And to top things off, a mage who was fond of teleporting. Needless to say, everyone but Fane died to Deathfog really quick, and Fane didn't last long after all that focus fire. Dunno how you're supposed to approach THAT battle.

[Keltest]

Well THAT could have gone better.

Found an area of Arx that had a few little voidwoken crawling around - the explody pillbugs, nothing difficult. But. Triggered the encounter. LOTS MORE enemies, including a type I haven't seen before - a version of the fliers with a Deathfog-spawning ability. And to top things off, a mage who was fond of teleporting. Needless to say, everyone but Fane died to Deathfog really quick, and Fane didn't last long after all that focus fire. Dunno how you're supposed to approach THAT battle.

Most of the new fights in Arx seem that way to me. Maybe trial and error will tell me the correct way to do these fights, but I don't have that kind of patience to lose a fight over and over again.

[Anteros]

I think that's just true for a lot of the game in general. There's a ton of "gotcha" moments where the first time you do a fight you get decimated by some mechanic you couldn't have possibly predicted, then come back and blow through the fight trivially.

I've taken to having my high initiative character start every new fight with smoke and evasive aura until I figure out what the gimmick is since it feels cheezy to re-load every fight and do it with magic future knowledge.

[Anteros]

So I'm getting towards the end of the game and I'm running into way more bugs than normal. Characters slipping for no reason on non ice surfaces. Enemies magically shrugging off status effects for no reason, or straight up ignoring applied status effects like taunt even when it's displayed on the character. Characters not being hit by AoEs that they're clearly standing in. I'm not sure if I'm just having a run of bad luck or if the end of the game is just a buggy mess.

[Thomas Cardew]

Could be your file, could be the last act being a glitchy mess. In one of my playthourghs the game kept crashing when the Lady Vengeance lands in Arx (XD). In another, deathfog went invisible. All deathfog. Anywhere in Arx. And I was trying to keep Sir Loras alive. That was fun.

[tonberrian]

Could be your file, could be the last act being a glitchy mess. In one of my playthourghs the game kept crashing when the Lady Vengeance lands in Arx (XD). In another, deathfog went invisible. All deathfog. Anywhere in Arx. And I was trying to keep Sir Loras alive. That was fun.

That sounds hilarious!

I think my Loras is still alive...

I should check...

[Thomas Cardew]

Heh. The time the deathfog disappeared was my first run in the new version. So I just kinda got blindsided by that new hermit.... Figuring out where exactly to was safe to walk after the sewers fight was fun too. Especially since it was a solo archer run (no respecing allowed) and I didn't have tornado or any of the other deathfog clears I could just spam.

[Anteros]

I've kept the squirrel alive so far. Very frustrating when you do an entire fight and only afterwards realize he died from standing in the one patch of fire so you have to reload.

[Keltest]

I've kept the squirrel alive so far. Very frustrating when you do an entire fight and only afterwards realize he died from standing in the one patch of fire so you have to reload.

Bonus points for not being able to teleport him to safety at all, because it deals damage.

[factotum]

I really wish they wouldn't do this--e.g. release a "Definitive Edition" of a really long RPG that I've already played through and finished twice. It's getting to the point where there's no point actually playing a game for months after release because of DLC and GOTY/Definitive editions.

[tonberrian]

The most frustrating for me was getting captured by the black ring dwarf. She puts you in a poison pit, with no easy way out. And Lora takes damage in real time, not turn based. Still, by then the squirrel has HUGE GUTS, and he's been patched to have magic armor, so while annoying, it wasn't hopeless.

[Calemyr]

I really want to get into the game, I really do. But I get hit by choice paralysis every time I try. I know my preferred party (Ifan, Fane, Beast, Lohse), but I barely get five minutes in before I realize I made some choice or another that doesn't seem right anymore and back to square one.

[tonberrian]

I really want to get into the game, I really do. But I get hit by choice paralysis every time I try. I know my preferred party (Ifan, Fane, Beast, Lohse), but I barely get five minutes in before I realize I made some choice or another that doesn't seem right anymore and back to square one.

Same, really. I had to bite my lip and DO it, and even then I missed a handful of quests.

[Anteros]

I really want to get into the game, I really do. But I get hit by choice paralysis every time I try. I know my preferred party (Ifan, Fane, Beast, Lohse), but I barely get five minutes in before I realize I made some choice or another that doesn't seem right anymore and back to square one.

I'm not above re-loading if a seemingly innocent dialogue choice ruins everything, but for the most part you just have to make your decisions and live with them. In the grand scheme of things nothing really changes with the overall story no matter what you do. There's a few decisions that effect the ending you get, but they're all very late in the game and also very clearly telegraphed.


The most frustrating for me was getting captured by the black ring dwarf. She puts you in a poison pit, with no easy way out. And Lora takes damage in real time, not turn based. Still, by then the squirrel has HUGE GUTS, and he's been patched to have magic armor, so while annoying, it wasn't hopeless.


When I did that fight I managed to clear a spot in the pits with Tornado literally one tick before Lora died. I don't mind looking after him since that's his narrative role, but I wish he didn't take damage in real time. Especially since half the time he's hidden in smoke or fire somewhere and you can't even tell if he's getting hurt or not. Also one time an enemy completely ignored my entire party and hail stormed Sir Lora when I almost had the fight beaten. So petty.


I really wish they wouldn't do this--e.g. release a "Definitive Edition" of a really long RPG that I've already played through and finished twice. It's getting to the point where there's no point actually playing a game for months after release because of DLC and GOTY/Definitive editions.

It's not really similar to a GOTY edition. It's a free add-on for people who bought the game with a bit of extra polish. You're not really missing anything major by not playing again. There's like 2 or 3 more fights in this version and a tiny bit of extra dialogue. Some of the talents work slightly differently, and 2-handed melee is balanced to be less overpowered. That's basically the entirety of the changes.

I agree with your overall point, but it's hard to be mad about free extra content.

[Thomas Cardew]

The most frustrating for me was getting captured by the black ring dwarf. She puts you in a poison pit, with no easy way out. And Lora takes damage in real time, not turn based. Still, by then the squirrel has HUGE GUTS, and he's been patched to have magic armor, so while annoying, it wasn't hopeless.

The black pits was worse for me. Not only are you less-leveled but you're also trying to keep Gwyn's dumb ass alive. I think I used every single frost armour or restoration scroll I'd found in the game during that fight. I basically had to save and reload each turn. Then again it was solo Tactician mode. The poison pit wasn't that bad since I could just Tactical Retreat out before nuking down 3-4 enemies. It was the wandering through the invisible deathfog AFTER the fight that was a pain.


Some of the talents work slightly differently, and 2-handed melee is balanced to be less overpowered. That's basically the entirety of the changes.

I agree with your overall point, but it's hard to be mad about free extra content.

Archery and some of the end game AOEs got toned down as well. But nothing game-breakingly different.

[Anteros]

Archery and some of the end game AOEs got toned down as well. But nothing game-breakingly different.

I was under the impression that these got nerfed in the classic mode already a few months before DE came out. Maybe not though.

Blackpits is awful unless you teleport the guy away from the fight. Especially since you aren't likely to have tornado yet. I somehow ended up with a huge patch of cursed ice on half the map this playthrough which made it much easier. He can't run himself to death in fire if he's frozen.

I had the foresight to leave Lora on the ship for it. Keeping him alive there would have been a nightmare if you didn't know it was coming. Especially since I did it before he had resistances and armor.

[Thomas Cardew]

Unfortunately, it was the solo play like I said; so I couldn't just leave him somewhere else. It was also before he had armor for me as well. I couldn't seem to teleport Gwyn to the right spot, he kept charging back in so eventually I gave up. One of these times I do want to leave him there to see what happens in the black pits end game scenes if you don't rescue him.

I'm not sure when they made all the skill changes, but I thought they did the AOEs with enhanced edition. -shrug- The bigger change was that lone wolf skills stopped increasing past 10 so you couldn't pump your main skill any more. I liked that change since it meant you generally built broader skillsets with more options than just dumping everything into Warfare/Magic School. Don't get me wrong you still maxed those first for damage, but I don't mind being pushed towards other options.

[Anteros]

Unfortunately, it was the solo play like I said; so I couldn't just leave him somewhere else. It was also before he had armor for me as well. I couldn't seem to teleport Gwyn to the right spot, he kept charging back in so eventually I gave up. One of these times I do want to leave him there to see what happens in the black pits end game scenes if you don't rescue him.


If you tell him you don't want him following you anymore he waits on the ship. You can pick him up again whenever.

[Calemyr]

Can anyone recommend any particular builds for me?

Here's the last time I tried:

Ifan (MC): Finesse focused. Huntsman and Summoning for primary skills, with some minor warfare and polymorph. End result is an archer who can spend his off turns setting up secondary damage sources, with Chicken Claw for close quarters crowd control and wings for added mobility. Naturally favors bows and crossbows. MC because he seems to have the most compelling personal plot. And having Pet Pal as a starting (and logical) perk.

Fane: Strength focused. Necromancy and Warfare for primary skills, with a little in water and earth. Heavy tank frontliner able to use Bloody Rain and acid attacks to buff himself. Being undead helps as he's probably the first to get sprung on with poison and/or death fog traps. Swaps between sword and shield and two-handers based on situation.

Lhose: Wits focused. Air and Earth for primary skills, leaning on dual weapons and warfare to boost her wands' flagging offense. Support and crit focused, providing teleportation, reinforcement, and crit-boosted attacks. Favors dual wands.

Beast: Intelligence focused. Water and Fire for primary skills. Offensive powerhouse that can also heal. Pairs well with Lohse, either setting up water for Lohse's air or using fire to play off Lohse's poison. Favors staves and has enough finesse to support medium armor to create an all-rounder that can hold his own at close range or long.

I thought it worked pretty well in the old version, but I haven't hit Fort Joy yet in Definitive Edition due to my aforementioned paralysis.

[tonberrian]

Two-handed Warfare + Polymorph is fun, and has huge damage numbers, but I'm not finding it to be the most effective build. All the best warfare skills - that is, the ones that inflict knockdown, the single best status ailment in the game - have reduced damage from your main attack. Tentacle Lash is spectacular, but doesn't get extra range from height, and the enemies you want to atrophy are precisely the ones that can't be atrophied in one hit. On the other hand, Medusa Head is SPECTACULAR if you have the moment to set it up. Medusa Head has two benefits - first is anything within a short distance around you gets immediately petrified if they have no magic armor, and can handily solve several fights against physical armor only enemies. The second benefit is that it unlocks another skill - Petrifying Visage, a relatively low Strength-based Earth Damage with hyuuuuuge aoe centered on you, no friendly fire, and a Petrify rider to finish things off with. The biggest flaw is AP - both Medusa Head and Petrifying Gaze require 2 AP to use, so that's a whole turn there with no movement to get in position, and you only get one use of Petrifying Gaze before Medusa Head wears off.

But I think my most effective character is Finesse based "Scoundrel", maxing Warfare and Polymorph and having only 3 scoundrel spent. They're incredibly mobile, and are my wits character so usually go second (because initiative goes highest > other team's highest > first team's second highest etc). Not as much damage per hit as the two hander, but enough. Since it's Sebille, she usually uses her racial unique for an extra AP, pawn to get a free move, then Backlash > Attack > usually even physical tanks lose all their phys armor, so Chicken Claw (second best status ailment, character can only move around for two turns) or Adrenaline to get another 2 AP for another attack THEN chicken claw. Scoundrel itself is a trap, the benefits are incredibly minor compared to, say, Warfare, and all the knockdown moves in Warfare are based on weapon (and therefore finesse). Unfortunately, all of Polymorph's damage moves are based on strength, though the utility provided by Chameleon Cloak and Chicken Claw is worth it in itself.

One-hand Warfare + Polymorph looks REALLY sick though. Shields are by FAR the best defensive items in the game, and while you may give up some damage based on your weapon skills, Tentacle Lash does not. And two of warfare's skills are shield dependent, and Shield Throw is oodles of damage - like, it compares slightly unfavorably to the 5 hit, 4 AP, 3 Source point uber skill. Slightly. And Two-Handers can only get the benefits of one rune in their weapon slots, while shields can also spawn with a rune slot. And there are some nice unique shields. And Shield's Up, which any shield grants and restores your shield's armor for 2 ap, looks to be far and away better than Two-Hand's All-In, 3 ap for an additional 50% damage - that stacks additively with strength and warfare, so it's not really worth using once you have good modifiers to your stats.

[Keltest]

Actually, I believe polymorph is based on your weapon skill as well. If you use a staff, its int based, for example.

[Anteros]

Can anyone recommend any particular builds for me?

Here's the last time I tried:

Ifan (MC): Finesse focused. Huntsman and Summoning for primary skills, with some minor warfare and polymorph. End result is an archer who can spend his off turns setting up secondary damage sources, with Chicken Claw for close quarters crowd control and wings for added mobility. Naturally favors bows and crossbows. MC because he seems to have the most compelling personal plot. And having Pet Pal as a starting (and logical) perk.

Fane: Strength focused. Necromancy and Warfare for primary skills, with a little in water and earth. Heavy tank frontliner able to use Bloody Rain and acid attacks to buff himself. Being undead helps as he's probably the first to get sprung on with poison and/or death fog traps. Swaps between sword and shield and two-handers based on situation.

Lhose: Wits focused. Air and Earth for primary skills, leaning on dual weapons and warfare to boost her wands' flagging offense. Support and crit focused, providing teleportation, reinforcement, and crit-boosted attacks. Favors dual wands.

Beast: Intelligence focused. Water and Fire for primary skills. Offensive powerhouse that can also heal. Pairs well with Lohse, either setting up water for Lohse's air or using fire to play off Lohse's poison. Favors staves and has enough finesse to support medium armor to create an all-rounder that can hold his own at close range or long.

I thought it worked pretty well in the old version, but I haven't hit Fort Joy yet in Definitive Edition due to my aforementioned paralysis.

You'll want more warfare than huntsman on your archer as it will give you the most damage by far for each point. Typically you want something like warfare>huntsman>scoundrel=ranged. You'll want at least 2 points in huntsman early to unlock the necessary skills and after that you should pump warfare. You'll get mobility skills from warfare, scoundrel, and huntsman already so I don't know if the wings are really worth it. It's one of those skills that I always equip but rarely actually use because my other mobility options cost less AP. Wings are fantastic if you pre-cast them before the fight, but you'll rarely get that opportunity with your main character since he's talking.

Blood rain is a fantastic setup for your archer because blood elemental arrows add a ton of extra physical damage. I'm not sure how much mileage you'll get out of the acid attacks on Fane, but extra versatility is never bad.

I'm not sure why you want to pump warfare on your wand caster. You're probably not going to be physically hitting much anyway. Unless you plan on speccing her into necromancy it's mostly wasted.

Get at least one point of scoundrel on everyone for adrenaline. It's the best spell in the game.

I'm mostly nit-picking. Your setup is fine and you should be able to handle anything in the game.



But I think my most effective character is Finesse based "Scoundrel", maxing Warfare and Polymorph and having only 3 scoundrel spent. They're incredibly mobile, and are my wits character so usually go second (because initiative goes highest > other team's highest > first team's second highest etc). Not as much damage per hit as the two hander, but enough. Since it's Sebille, she usually uses her racial unique for an extra AP, pawn to get a free move, then Backlash > Attack > usually even physical tanks lose all their phys armor, so Chicken Claw (second best status ailment, character can only move around for two turns) or Adrenaline to get another 2 AP for another attack THEN chicken claw. Scoundrel itself is a trap, the benefits are incredibly minor compared to, say, Warfare, and all the knockdown moves in Warfare are based on weapon (and therefore finesse). Unfortunately, all of Polymorph's damage moves are based on strength, though the utility provided by Chameleon Cloak and Chicken Claw is worth it in itself.

One-hand Warfare + Polymorph looks REALLY sick though. Shields are by FAR the best defensive items in the game, and while you may give up some damage based on your weapon skills, Tentacle Lash does not. And two of warfare's skills are shield dependent, and Shield Throw is oodles of damage - like, it compares slightly unfavorably to the 5 hit, 4 AP, 3 Source point uber skill. Slightly. And Two-Handers can only get the benefits of one rune in their weapon slots, while shields can also spawn with a rune slot. And there are some nice unique shields. And Shield's Up, which any shield grants and restores your shield's armor for 2 ap, looks to be far and away better than Two-Hand's All-In, 3 ap for an additional 50% damage - that stacks additively with strength and warfare, so it's not really worth using once you have good modifiers to your stats.

I'm not sure why you made your wits character the one who automatically crits anyway. Doesn't that seem like a waste?

The 5 hit uber skill is complete garbage. It's only slightly better than auto attacking. So you shouldn't really compare other skills to it. :smallbiggrin: All of the physical source skills are garbage. I guess that's the price they pay for being so much more effective normally.

Shield toss is fantastic, but by the end of the game you'll do more damage with a 2 handed auto attack than a shield toss. I usually use it on my casters though since I always give them shields and it's a fantastic option to help chip physical armor. Every time I try to make a sword and shield warrior work he's useless outside of utility spells and shield toss. The AI just ignores your tank anyway in favor of lower armor enemies.

[Thomas Cardew]

Can anyone recommend any particular builds for me?


If you're just looking for ideas, Fextralife puts out some decent builds/guides. It's good for ideas and general tips if anything. Here's link to first one that popped on google. https://fextralife.com/divinity-original-sin-2-builds-scourge-wizard/




Here's the last time I tried:

Most of these seem fine if not optimal. Are you looking for new ones or just better advice? Scoundrel 1 dip on everyone for Adrenaline is great. Pretty much all my comments are nitpicks, but everything here seems perfectly playable.



Can anyone recommend any particular builds for me?
Ifan (MC): Finesse focused. Huntsman and Summoning for primary skills, with some minor warfare and polymorph. End result is an archer who can spend his off turns setting up secondary damage sources, with Chicken Claw for close quarters crowd control and wings for added mobility. Naturally favors bows and crossbows. MC because he seems to have the most compelling personal plot. And having Pet Pal as a starting (and logical) perk.

Seems fine. Although, I wouldn't mix summoning and huntsman on a non-lone wolf character. Summoning REALLY wants to get rank 10 fast for the Incarnate Champion. Archers REALLY want to get to 2-3 huntsman and then rank 10 warfare. Lone wolf with tons of bonus skills can get there fast enough, summoning carries the early game while you build up Finesse/Wits warfare to start killing stuff. In a 4 man, I'd worry about spreading skills too thin. Maybe drop summoning. It's a trap on Ifan for anything other than flavor, his wolf sucks compared to the incarnate and the source point is almost always better spent elsewhere. Scoundrel 1 for Adrenaline is a great dip. So is Poly 1 for Chameleon Cloak or Poly 3 to grab Skin Graft. Huntsmen is more damage than ranged if you can get the height bonus consistently, if you struggle with that ranged is more consistent damage. Wits on Archers is great and I generally like my MC to have first initiative.


Fane: Strength focused. Necromancy and Warfare for primary skills, with a little in water and earth. Heavy tank frontliner able to use Bloody Rain and acid attacks to buff himself. Being undead helps as he's probably the first to get sprung on with poison and/or death fog traps. Swaps between sword and shield and two-handers based on situation.

As long as you aren't dumping too many points into necromancy you should be fine. While both scale with warfare, Necro spells only increase with intelligence. The earth and water might be unnecessary. Remember weapon is greater than all for PDPS so Fane and Ifan should get the best weapons you can get them.


Lhose: Wits focused. Air and Earth for primary skills, leaning on dual weapons and warfare to boost her wands' flagging offense. Support and crit focused, providing teleportation, reinforcement, and crit-boosted attacks. Favors dual wands.

So I wouldn't do a Wits character per se. Everyone should be getting wits to some extent for the crit chance but the damage will suck without main stat. Dual wands is fine, but can always consider tossing a shield on if feeling squishy. You want to be using skills not weapon attacks, so wands should be able the bonuses they give not the damage on them. If you really want to do a support character, I'd probably suggest grabbing 1-2 levels in all magic skills for the relevant buffs, then maxing summoning or aerothurge or hydro for damage/cc potential.


Beast: Intelligence focused. Water and Fire for primary skills. Offensive powerhouse that can also heal. Pairs well with Lohse, either setting up water for Lohse's air or using fire to play off Lohse's poison. Favors staves and has enough finesse to support medium armor to create an all-rounder that can hold his own at close range or long.

Again seems fine. You might have a better time if you consolidated earth/fire on Beast and Air/Water on Lohse. Reason is that most of the Earth and Fire skills do damage, so you can go pure offense on Beast. This should lower the offensive opportunity cost for healing, while letting Lohse focus on the CC. You could also combine both mages to the same damage archetypes (2 Earth+Fire or 2 Water+Aero) but that's probably unnecessary.



I thought it worked pretty well in the old version, but I haven't hit Fort Joy yet in Definitive Edition due to my aforementioned paralysis.

Yup everything here seems perfectly workable.



But I think my most effective character is Finesse based "Scoundrel", maxing Warfare and Polymorph and having only 3 scoundrel spent. They're incredibly mobile, and are my wits character so usually go second (because initiative goes highest > other team's highest > first team's second highest etc). Not as much damage per hit as the two hander, but enough. Since it's Sebille, she usually uses her racial unique for an extra AP, pawn to get a free move, then Backlash > Attack > usually even physical tanks lose all their phys armor, so Chicken Claw (second best status ailment, character can only move around for two turns) or Adrenaline to get another 2 AP for another attack THEN chicken claw. Scoundrel itself is a trap, the benefits are incredibly minor compared to, say, Warfare, and all the knockdown moves in Warfare are based on weapon (and therefore finesse). Unfortunately, all of Polymorph's damage moves are based on strength, though the utility provided by Chameleon Cloak and Chicken Claw is worth it in itself.

One-hand Warfare + Polymorph looks REALLY sick though. Shields are by FAR the best defensive items in the game, and while you may give up some damage based on your weapon skills, Tentacle Lash does not. And two of warfare's skills are shield dependent, and Shield Throw is oodles of damage - like, it compares slightly unfavorably to the 5 hit, 4 AP, 3 Source point uber skill. Slightly. And Two-Handers can only get the benefits of one rune in their weapon slots, while shields can also spawn with a rune slot. And there are some nice unique shields. And Shield's Up, which any shield grants and restores your shield's armor for 2 ap, looks to be far and away better than Two-Hand's All-In, 3 ap for an additional 50% damage - that stacks additively with strength and warfare, so it's not really worth using once you have good modifiers to your stats.


I second Anteros: why emphasize wits on the character that gets free crits? Polymorph is fantastic on scoundrel characters. Rupture Tendons+Chicken claw is hilarious if not particularly effective since you probably could have killed them other way. But the real strength, particularly on an elf like Sebille, is skin graft, since it will let you reset the cooldowns on chameleon cloak, scoundrel, and elf racial for an extra 6 ap in one turn. Some pretty ridiculous combos can be pulled off with Fane's scource skill and skin graft. Bonus points for combining it with glass cannon and abusing chameleon cloak to survive.

The 4 AP 5-hit skill is trash. All-in is pretty bad too, you're typically better off saving the AP and just basic attacking. But shield toss is definitely amazing.


Wings are fantastic if you pre-cast them before the fight, but you'll rarely get that opportunity with your main character since he's talking.

He should be able to cast them, then start talking. They won't time out since the character is in conversation.


All of the physical source skills are garbage. I guess that's the price they pay for being so much more effective normally.

Mostly true. Overpower is pretty amazing if you went plate for completely decimating a well armored enemy especially since its only 2 ap. Mortal blow is okay IF you're using it from stealth out of combat. You don't pay the AP cost, get double damage and have pretty good chance to 1 shot an enemy. Annnnddd it's not like you were doing anything else with those source points. Other than skin graft shenanigans.

For Archery, Arrow spray is niche but when it works OMG, IT. DOES. WORK.
In Probable order of appearance:

1. Transformed Mordus. You can completely shred his armor and take a good junk off his health. Follow up with copious amounts of knock down to win the fight without breaking a sweat.

2. Harbringer of Doom. Ditto. I think I first won this fight in classic 4 levels under below it. I had to combo like 4 resistance potions on the character I used to pull it to the top of the hill to be able to survive.But once I got it there, Ifan shredded its armor, and Fane's 2 handed hammer kept its butt flat on the ground.

3. Academy Arena. Not that this fight is particularly hard, but a quick tactical retreat into the boss's face followed by this skill can potentially one shot it.

4. Final Boss Fight. so Lucian gets to go first, he then walks up to you and smacks you. Putting Himself, Braccus, and Dallis all in a nice line for you. You waste 1-2 arrows but they pretty much take the full skill to the face.

Honorable mention to the Doctor. But there's too many adds to trivialize the fight. On the other hand, pyroclastic explosion for that fight...

[Anteros]

Ifan's wolf is actually really solid now that taunt pierces armor. It's not as good as a fully buffed incarnate, but it's actually really useful as a tank even with no points in summoning. Especially early game when you're still lacking damage and cc.

Overpower is situationally good, but the knock down doesn't work like it's supposed to reliably. At least for me.

You can pre-cast wings if you know a pre fight convo is coming, but that's hard to do reliably for a first time through. Sometimes it's obvious that it's coming but sometimes it's not. Wings are great, but I just prefer the other mobility skills. Personal preference.

[Anteros]

So I did the new optional deathfog fight in Arx that's supposed to be really hard. I actually beat it on the first try with no casualties, so that was a little disappointing. I expected to at least lose one person to being teleported into the fog, but by this point in the game you do so much damage that enemies are trivial to stun-lock. I try not to use overpowered abilities like invisibility or tea leaves, but the difficulty really falls off a cliff around this point no matter what you do. Oh well.

On the other hand, I still have to do the fight again because as soon as I finished it Sir Lora ran right into a patch of Deathfog for no reason and died. Despite the fact that I intentionally cleared him a path with the tornado spell. :smallsigh: I may just skip repeating it and move on to the end of the game. It's not like I need the loot or exp at this point.

[Thomas Cardew]

I'm not sure it's really that hard. Like a lot of the fights, if you don't know what's coming it's harder. I think the bigger deal, is it can very easily be the first fight you do as you see it on the way into to town. If you don't have great gear already it's going to hurt.

[Anteros]

I'm not sure it's really that hard. Like a lot of the fights, if you don't know what's coming it's harder. I think the bigger deal, is it can very easily be the first fight you do as you see it on the way into to town. If you don't have great gear already it's going to hurt.

Yeah, I do wish the game had more genuinely difficult encounters instead of just "Surprise! You're half dead, knocked down, and on fire! Now let's start the fight!" It makes everything trivial on second playthroughs when you know what's coming.

[Lord Torath]

Looking for help with an encounter:
There's a gargoyle maze with a burning Historian in the center. How do you extinguish his flames? I've tried "Bless" on him which worked fine on the poor pigs, but not on him. I tried teleporting up there, bleeding a big puddle around him, and then Blessing the blood. No effect. A Water Balloon was similarly ineffective. Not sure what else to try.

[Keltest]

Looking for help with an encounter:
There's a gargoyle maze with a burning Historian in the center. How do you extinguish his flames? I've tried "Bless" on him which worked fine on the poor pigs, but not on him. I tried teleporting up there, bleeding a big puddle around him, and then Blessing the blood. No effect. A Water Balloon was similarly ineffective. Not sure what else to try.

As I recall, the rain blood spell specifically is required. But its communicated poorly, and frankly I hate the whole maze, so I almost never do it.

[tonberrian]

Looking for help with an encounter:
There's a gargoyle maze with a burning Historian in the center. How do you extinguish his flames? I've tried "Bless" on him which worked fine on the poor pigs, but not on him. I tried teleporting up there, bleeding a big puddle around him, and then Blessing the blood. No effect. A Water Balloon was similarly ineffective. Not sure what else to try.

Blood rain specifically will work, but failing that, if you get close enough (which is hard) an elf's racial will splatter some blood which has a chance to put him out. THEN you bless him.

[Anteros]

As I recall, the rain blood spell specifically is required. But its communicated poorly, and frankly I hate the whole maze, so I almost never do it.

It's hard to even really consider it a maze when it's so trivial to skip to the end. I don't think I've ever actually done it legitimately.

[Lord Torath]

I black-cat-teleported through several gates and gloves-of-teleportation'ed through another before I noticed a skull appearing with a "click" on an altar. So now I need to have Fane put on his elf face, teleport him onto the platform, and then make him bleed on The Historian? I can give that a shot. Or find a Blood Rain spell (a much nastier spell in Tortall).

How do I get through the other rift in "rift" space. Both the rifts I've found in the maze lead to the same one in Rift Space.

[Ninjaman]

Got this game a couple weeks ago, when it was on steam sale, have been playing it religiously ever since. Currently on the Nameless Isle.

[Aotrs Commander]

Okay, after a great deal of not-knowing-what-to-do-with-myself, and while Kingmkaer and PoE2 are still sorting themselves out, I thought sod it, let's install this.

So, then.

Recommendations!

I think I will absolutely be starting with an Origin character. As you can imagine, I am EXTREMELY tempted to Fane (I mean, like, DUH), but if anyone can give me an arguement for a better avatar and him as a companion, I'm all ears.

What other things do I need to know going in, general recommendations, easily missable thindgs I might, in relatively spoiler-free fashion, wish to bear in mind?

[Keltest]

Okay, after a great deal of not-knowing-what-to-do-with-myself, and while Kingmkaer and PoE2 are still sorting themselves out, I thought sod it, let's install this.

So, then.

Recommendations!

I think I will absolutely be starting with an Origin character. As you can imagine, I am EXTREMELY tempted to Fane (I mean, like, DUH), but if anyone can give me an arguement for a better avatar and him as a companion, I'm all ears.

What other things do I need to know going in, general recommendations, easily missable thindgs I might, in relatively spoiler-free fashion, wish to bear in mind?

Fane, being an undead, adds a few extra complications to gameplay that may not be ideal for a first time player. Undead are healed by poison and hurt by most, but not all, direct healing effects. Typically, heals from necromancy work as advertised on undead. Go figure. He also has infinite lockpicks, which makes him really good as your thief. However, that also means you wont have the skill points for persuasion on him, and that tends to be most useful on your main character.

Playing as him with your first character also reveals a few additional aspects of the story, some significantly sooner than you would learn them as any other character.

Its kind of easy to fall into the traps of normal RPG conventions with character building, but for DOS, those aren't necessarily what you want to do. For example, the instinct is to make the dagger rogue your wits character, but they actually don't benefit from that because they automatically crit on backstabs. An archer or two handed warrior is much better for that.

[factotum]

I went through as Ifan on my first playthrough because I wanted a ranged character and he seemed to specialise in that. Bear in mind that you can pick up as many of the other origin characters as you can fit in your party and still do all their special quests, so the one you actually start with isn't so important--it'll only be relevant for the starting bit on the ship, once you find the others on the island you're good to pick and choose who you want to adventure with.

Starting island can be a bit slow and awkward. Picking up the teleport gloves from the relevant sidequest is enormously useful. Other than that, just enjoy yourself!

[Keltest]

I went through as Ifan on my first playthrough because I wanted a ranged character and he seemed to specialise in that. Bear in mind that you can pick up as many of the other origin characters as you can fit in your party and still do all their special quests, so the one you actually start with isn't so important--it'll only be relevant for the starting bit on the ship, once you find the others on the island you're good to pick and choose who you want to adventure with.

Starting island can be a bit slow and awkward. Picking up the teleport gloves from the relevant sidequest is enormously useful. Other than that, just enjoy yourself!

You must have modded your game. You can only have three other characters besides yourself in a party.

Additionally, having an origin as a companion instead of a player means you only hear as much about their quest as theyre willing to tell you, and you don't see all the specific details of what goes on.

Red Prince and Lohse are probably the most strongly affected by that divide.

[Anteros]

I recommend playing as Fane or Lohse. Fane because he's the most plot centric character and Lohse because a lot of her storyline is internal. Also, given the fact that you enjoy roleplaying evil characters being undead opens up a few late game story options unavailable to living characters.

[Keltest]

I recommend playing as Fane or Lohse. Fane because he's the most plot centric character and Lohse because a lot of her storyline is internal. Also, given the fact that you enjoy roleplaying evil characters being undead opens up a few late game story options unavailable to living characters.

Playing as Fane also opens up a couple of specific options unavailable even to an undead custom character.

[Aotrs Commander]

Fane, being an undead, adds a few extra complications to gameplay that may not be ideal for a first time player. Undead are healed by poison and hurt by most, but not all, direct healing effects. Typically, heals from necromancy work as advertised on undead. Go figure. He also has infinite lockpicks, which makes him really good as your thief. However, that also means you wont have the skill points for persuasion on him, and that tends to be most useful on your main character.

Playing as him with your first character also reveals a few additional aspects of the story, some significantly sooner than you would learn them as any other character.

Its kind of easy to fall into the traps of normal RPG conventions with character building, but for DOS, those aren't necessarily what you want to do. For example, the instinct is to make the dagger rogue your wits character, but they actually don't benefit from that because they automatically crit on backstabs. An archer or two handed warrior is much better for that.


I recommend playing as Fane or Lohse. Fane because he's the most plot centric character and Lohse because a lot of her storyline is internal.

I am still deeply in internal debate.

On the one hand, I... think the last time I was given the option of playing a Undead PC was when I modded BG2 very slightly with Gatekeeper. Loshe looks pretty easy to prod towards some of the interesting builds (because you KNOW I've been Doing The Research this entire time...!), rather than Fane. I also somewhat rarely do a second playthrough of a game (at least, not without some years between, so the working assumption ought to be I will have one playthrough.

One the other hand... I have heard what people said about plot (is that AS him or just WITH him in the party?), getting Fane not dead because of the healing thing seems more difficult (I read some stuff and was all geared up for a Frost Paladin/Crystalline Cleric/Blood Mage/Magick Archer team and then went "oh, crap, right, Undead, plus actual characters."

I idly toyed with custom PC for the start, but that has all the disadvantages and not of the bonuses.



If you were going to play likely once, then, Fane or Lohse, would you think, thread?





Also, given the fact that you enjoy roleplaying evil characters being undead opens up a few late game story options unavailable to living characters.

You'd be surprised how infrequently I actually play evil characters, actually, in CRPGs - I nearly always save that sort of thing for second playthroughs. (Which I don't do that often.)

(And, I mean, playing a thing which is not me is one o' the things about roleplaying...!)

[Keltest]

I am still deeply in internal debate.

On the one hand, I... think the last time I was given the option of playing a Undead PC was when I modded BG2 very slightly with Gatekeeper. Loshe looks pretty easy to prod towards some of the interesting builds (because you KNOW I've been Doing The Research this entire time...!), rather than Fane. I also somewhat rarely do a second playthrough of a game (at least, not without some years between, so the working assumption ought to be I will have one playthrough.

One the other hand... I have heard what people said about plot, getting Fane not dead because of the healing thing seems more difficult (I read some stuff and was all geared up for a Frost Paladin/Crystalline Cleric/Blood Mage/Magick Archer team and then went "oh, crap, right, Undead, plus actual characters."

I idly toyed with custom PC for the start, but that has all the disadvantages and not of the bonuses.





You'd be surprised how infrequently I actually play evil characters, actually, in CRPGs - I nearly always save that sort of thing for second playthroughs. (Which I don't do that often.)

(And, I mean, playing a thing which is not me is one o' the things about roleplaying...!)

Keeping Fane alive is less difficult than it sounds, because the same skill that can heal him also restores physical armor and has two different elemental damage types, so chances are youre going to have somebody with geomancy regardless. On top of that, if you make him a physical damage dealer, you can throw in some necromancy for some passive lifesteal on HP damage as well as a few nice abilities like Decaying Touch (which makes enemies get hurt by healing effects) and Bone Cage (a physical armor boost).

The bigger problem comes when enemies recognize that he's undead and start dropping healing spells on him.

Having said all this, Lohse is IMO the more interesting roleplay experience, and her quest is more interesting from the inside. Plus she sings a nice song when you finish her quest.

[Anteros]

There are some options that only Fane gets. You might see them as another character, but if he takes them it's going to be very bad for you. That's all I can really say without spoilers. That said, every character is going to have parts of the story that play out differently for them, so ultimately it doesn't matter too much.

Any character can play any build by the way. You get to place your own skillpoints and everything is changable except for the iconic starting skill that each character gets. Of these starting skills Fane's is easily the best. The generic character's skill is also quite good and Ifan's isn't terrible. The rest are almost all completely useless and outclassed by other skills you'll learn along the way.

I also wouldn't really worry about the healing thing. Armor is about a trillion times more important than health. Most of the time if your armor is stripped enough that you're taking HP damage the character is going to end up CCed out of the fight anyway. At least on higher difficulties. If you're playing on normal or casual healing is even less important.

[Aotrs Commander]

Aaaaaaaargh. The agony of indecision.

Right.

Okay.

I will, tenatively, take Lohse as the main character this time and Fane as companion, and I will place this on the possible list for "good playthrough/Evil playthrough." (Which I last did on DA:O and ME 1... Never worked up the enthusiasm to play 2/3 with Evil Idiot Shepard, but maybe one day...)

[Anteros]

It's a very good game. You're in for a treat.

Remember to save fairly often. Some fights in this game are unforgiving. Especially on a first playthrough when you don't know what to expect.

[Aotrs Commander]

Aaaand we're off to a good start; three hours sorting the character out, then having to restart because I didn't check my talent properly...

Stuck in the tutorial deck for ages because one the one barrel that didn't highlight which has te lockpick in it.

(Am I going mad, or did DS:O1 highlight containers, or is that so endemic and useful modern feature that I'm just missing it?)

[tonberrian]

One thing that bothered me when starting, is that 1.) you don't get the respec mirror until after the first huge chunk of the game, and 2.) using said respec mirror on an origin character locks them into a different character pick, based off their head features. Which isn't too bad, just jarring. I used a mod that allowed origin characters I picked up to start with nothing spent, so I could spend them at my leisure. Though when I used it, and maybe it still does, not like starting your first character right, so you have to install it after you start but before you recruit anyone.

(You can reset the character portrait for Origin characters with some save file editing, but your main character does not get their special headshot at ALL, and I wasn't able to save edit that away. Of course, you don't get to SEE special headshot at all for your main character, so it's not so bad for them.)

[Keltest]

One thing that bothered me when starting, is that 1.) you don't get the respec mirror until after the first huge chunk of the game, and 2.) using said respec mirror on an origin character locks them into a different character pick, based off their head features. Which isn't too bad, just jarring. I used a mod that allowed origin characters I picked up to start with nothing spent, so I could spend them at my leisure. Though when I used it, and maybe it still does, not like starting your first character right, so you have to install it after you start but before you recruit anyone.

(You can reset the character portrait for Origin characters with some save file editing, but your main character does not get their special headshot at ALL, and I wasn't able to save edit that away. Of course, you don't get to SEE special headshot at all for your main character, so it's not so bad for them.)

Actually, I think a recent patch changed all portraits. Theres no special headshots anymore.

[factotum]

You must have modded your game. You can only have three other characters besides yourself in a party.


Bear in mind that you can pick up as many of the other origin characters as you can fit in your party

Emphasis mine, since it apparently wasn't clear enough first time around...

[Spacewolf]

There are some options that only Fane gets. You might see them as another character, but if he takes them it's going to be very bad for you. That's all I can really say without spoilers. That said, every character is going to have parts of the story that play out differently for them, so ultimately it doesn't matter too much.

Any character can play any build by the way. You get to place your own skillpoints and everything is changable except for the iconic starting skill that each character gets. Of these starting skills Fane's is easily the best. The generic character's skill is also quite good and Ifan's isn't terrible. The rest are almost all completely useless and outclassed by other skills you'll learn along the way.

I also wouldn't really worry about the healing thing. Armor is about a trillion times more important than health. Most of the time if your armor is stripped enough that you're taking HP damage the character is going to end up CCed out of the fight anyway. At least on higher difficulties. If you're playing on normal or casual healing is even less important.

Honestly I've found that armour rarely lasts a single round without being stripped for allies at least, for enemies even with everyone focusing someone down it still takes forever.

[Keltest]

Honestly I've found that armour rarely lasts a single round without being stripped for allies at least, for enemies even with everyone focusing someone down it still takes forever.

In the early game this is true, just because gear is so scarce. By late game, where you have all sorts of moneymaking abilities, plus lots more loot, its a lot easier to have nigh-impenetrable armor.

[Anteros]

Honestly I've found that armour rarely lasts a single round without being stripped for allies at least, for enemies even with everyone focusing someone down it still takes forever.

You just need enough to last one round and for any nasty surprises. After that every enemy should be cced.

[Spacewolf]

You just need enough to last one round and for any nasty surprises. After that every enemy should be cced.

What does CCed mean?

[tonberrian]

What does CCed mean?

I don't know the specifics, but it's when you disable someone with a status ailment.

[Anteros]

What does CCed mean?

CC means crowd control. Basically disabled or unable to participate in the fight for whatever reason.

[Spacewolf]

CC means crowd control. Basically disabled or unable to participate in the fight for whatever reason.

Yea that doesn't really happen.

[Anteros]

Yea that doesn't really happen.

Umm...not only does it actually happen, it's practically mandatory on the higher difficulties.

[Spacewolf]

Umm...not only does it actually happen, it's practically mandatory on the higher difficulties.

Obviously I was talking for my own game.

Edit: and honestly I'm not sure what level my difficulty setting is considering there's like 5 and only Story, and the medium and hard of the other one give much information for what is expected.

[Keltest]

Obviously I was talking for my own game.

Edit: and honestly I'm not sure what level my difficulty setting is considering there's like 5 and only Story, and the medium and hard of the other one give much information for what is expected.

Story and Explorer mode basically trivialize the combat so you can play around with the setting, see all the quests and progress without spending two hours trying to kill the stupid voidlings at the oil platform when you don't have anything to counter all the necrofire. Classic mode is the "standard" difficulty, and Tactician mode basically expects minmaxing.

[Aotrs Commander]

So, just escaped Fort Joy (after deciding I would do that before I massacred all the Magisters...)

Not regrettig the choice of Lohse, being able to crack wise like that is so... Freaking awesome. I thank you for that suggestion, folks.

...

Yeah, okay, Fane is currently getting the sort of favour in gear assignement normally reserved for the main character, but in my defence, as he's harder to heal, I've focussed more on him not getting hurt to start with...!



Had a bit of a nasty tangle with a load of the magisters by the east gate after getting my collar off, as somehow, in the middle of the fight, Ifen went hostile. I eventually ended up running away after killing everything else, but BOY are summoners (because that was what I made him, for variety from my primary four) fricken' tedious to run from. But after that, he forgot all about it...

[huttj509]

I remember when I hit the point where it wasn't "ok, you get this thing I found and, um, pass that tattered shirt down the line."

[Winthur]

I might have a co-op of this during Christmas break. My SO is generally a fan of archery. Do I support her by being a tank melee myself, with summons or with some crowd control spells? How good are "hybrid" builds? I'm still considering a Tactician run. We're gonna do Lone Wolf.

[Anteros]

I might have a co-op of this during Christmas break. My SO is generally a fan of archery. Do I support her by being a tank melee myself, with summons or with some crowd control spells? How good are "hybrid" builds? I'm still considering a Tactician run. We're gonna do Lone Wolf.

Archery isn't great for most of the game in dos1 but the extra stats from lone wolf should counter its weaknesses and make it solid. Hybrid builds are good as long as you don't go crazy. I would make sure you can front line since they want to play an archer. Honestly anything can work in lone wolf though so don't stress too much.

[Aotrs Commander]

I found that Bairdotr-as-archer was pretty solid, myself; certainly, by the time you got Rain of Arrows, that's quite ridiculous. (I could have never done anything but shoot elemental arrows, but despite very copiously suppling myself via crafting, my, natural "save this for emergancies" hoarding still kicked in, though I was better with it.)

I guess to some extent it depends on what difficulty you intend to play on.

Though yeah, you probably want someone a bit tankier standing between your archer and the enemy.

[Anteros]

I found that Bairdotr-as-archer was pretty solid, myself; certainly, by the time you got Rain of Arrows, that's quite ridiculous. (I could have never done anything but shoot elemental arrows, but despite very copiously suppling myself via crafting, my, natural "save this for emergancies" hoarding still kicked in, though I was better with it.)

I guess to some extent it depends on what difficulty you intend to play on.

Though yeah, you probably want someone a bit tankier standing between your archer and the enemy.

I only used an archer on one playthrough. It was co-op with a friend and it became a running joke how often she missed. The lack of accuracy for archers is just a huge problem in DOS1 in the early game. The extra stats from lone wolf should basically remove that issue though I'd imagine.

[Aotrs Commander]

I only used an archer on one playthrough. It was co-op with a friend and it became a running joke how often she missed. The lack of accuracy for archers is just a huge problem in DOS1 in the early game. The extra stats from lone wolf should basically remove that issue though I'd imagine.

Odd. Don't recall that ever being an issue, myself. Difficulty level, maybe?

[Anteros]

Odd. Don't recall that ever being an issue, myself. Difficulty level, maybe?

Maybe. We always play everything together on the hardest difficulty.

[Aotrs Commander]

So, what is the point of Fane's flesh-mask?

I mean, seriously?

I don't get why the special item forn the Undead character is specifically so that you can burn an item slot to be... Not Undead. Kinda pointless, if you ask me, unless you're so deeply into min-maxing you have to turn him into an elf for the sake of Flesh Sacrifice.

I mean, I wouldn't mind, but it even replaces your portrait with a flesh-y one.

It basically seems to entirely defeat the whole point of being Undead if you are encouraged to... Not be Undead.

So it went on, once, to try it out, and immedialt went off again never to be used again.



I mean, I suppose you could use it to turn someone else into an elf so you could eat all the corpse parts that give you skills, but...

[Keltest]

So, what is the point of Fane's flesh-mask?

I mean, seriously?

I don't get why the special item forn the Undead character is specifically so that you can burn an item slot to be... Not Undead. Kinda pointless, if you ask me, unless you're so deeply into min-maxing you have to turn him into an elf for the sake of Flesh Sacrifice.

I mean, I wouldn't mind, but it even replaces your portrait with a flesh-y one.

It basically seems to entirely defeat the whole point of being Undead if you are encouraged to... Not be Undead.

So it went on, once, to try it out, and immedialt went off again never to be used again.



I mean, I suppose you could use it to turn someone else into an elf so you could eat all the corpse parts that give you skills, but...
It works on living people to. In conversation, it unlocks all the race specific reactions and dialogues. It gives you the racial abilities and feats as well. And yes, it lets you eat bodyparts too.

[Anteros]

There's lots of times in the game when being a certain race is more beneficial than another. It's more of a utility thing since there's no stats on it. Then again, the Elf racial is so much ridiculously better than every other racial in the game that it's almost worth losing the stats to turn your whole party into elves.

[tonberrian]

Still, it takes up your helmet slot, which is a drag. I'd rather have a divine helmet.

[Anteros]

Still, it takes up your helmet slot, which is a drag. I'd rather have a divine helmet.

Sure, the best helmets in the game might barely edge out the elf racial. Depends on your build I guess, but 1 extra AP is just ridiculously better than anything you can get from most helmets without even considering the 10% damage buff. Plus it lets you put blood under your feet for free which is incredibly useful for a bunch of builds.

[Aotrs Commander]

...

...

Lucky charm is shared by the party.

...

...

MOTHERFRACKERS!

Why didn't anything say that EARILER! I could have saved SO MUCH arsing around swapping over to Red Prince to loot containers!

Fragdammit!




See, the problem with changing everyone into elves is the same problem - it changes your portraits. And suddenly, I don't feel like I'm playing the same character any more. I does'na like it, Mr Baggins.

Now, if you could change the whole party into Undead (sod elven superiority mechanically - though it's nice for once in this day and age THEY get to be the OP ones again), I could see the point...

[Keltest]

...

...

Lucky charm is shared by the party.

...

...

MOTHERFRACKERS!

Why didn't anything say that EARILER! I could have saved SO MUCH arsing around swapping over to Red Prince to loot containers!

Fragdammit!




See, the problem with changing everyone into elves is the same problem - it changes your portraits. And suddenly, I don't feel like I'm playing the same character any more. I does'na like it, Mr Baggins.

Now, if you could change the whole party into Undead (sod elven superiority mechanically - though it's nice for once in this day and age THEY get to be the OP ones again), I could see the point...

There are enough undead mercenaries to do a full undead party once you hit act 2, if you play as fane.

The novelty wears off fast though.

[Thomas Cardew]

...

...

Why didn't anything say that EARILER! I could have saved SO MUCH arsing around swapping over to Red Prince to loot containers!

Now, if you could change the whole party into Undead (sod elven superiority mechanically - though it's nice for once in this day and age THEY get to be the OP ones again), I could see the point...

Well it didn't used to be, that was a patch change awhile ago. Loremaster is also shared so you only need that on one and you don't have to hand items around in bags.

The masks also let you retry different dialogue options so if you fail a check you can try again as a 'new' character. But mostly its for either RP reason or minmaxing as an elf/lizard/human for damage/persuasion/bartering . And for including a plot relevant device into the game as a mechanic.


There are enough undead mercenaries to do a full undead party once you hit act 2, if you play as fane.

The novelty wears off fast though.

So a full undead party is fun because you can do think like contamination for a giant aoe heal and the PC source spell or if you want to do it for self-RP reasons. But the mercs just pale in comparison to the benefits of the other members. Both in terms of game-play, origin characters give extra XP, items, or bypass checks, and story, the origin characters have stories and actually impact your playthrough.

[Keltest]

So a full undead party is fun because you can do think like contamination for a giant aoe heal and the PC source spell or if you want to do it for self-RP reasons. But the mercs just pale in comparison to the benefits of the other members. Both in terms of game-play, origin characters give extra XP, items, or bypass checks, and story, the origin characters have stories and actually impact your playthrough.

Having a FULL undead party actually swings the gameplay difference back around to normal. All your party heals from the same spells, you just need to be careful of different effects. Physical armor is easy to get a lot of and restored by the same skill that heals you, but its countered by the fact that you also have an extra effect that deals physical damage. Living guys have the same deal with magic armor and poison. Suddenly instead of having to balance two different healing types, youre just using different spells in the same way you would as a living party.

[Thomas Cardew]

I'd even say slightly easier than normal. You get a immunity to an entire element for free, there are more poison spells than healing ones, not to mention walking through poison is absurd, and they scale with intelligence while I don't think restoration ones do. You can also abuse the undying crap out of death fog a lot easier.

[Aotrs Commander]

On the other hand, as I discovered with Fane today, if something drops decaying on you, you are proper screwed because you can't heal at ALL. (He didn't even get healing from necromancy on damage and both poison and healing damaged him.)

[Keltest]

On the other hand, as I discovered with Fane today, if something drops decaying on you, you are proper screwed because you can't heal at ALL. (He didn't even get healing from necromancy on damage and both poison and healing damaged him.)

Yeah, that's the point of decaying. Fortunately, fortify takes it off.

Although I thought necromancy lifesteal still healed you through it? Are you sure you were doing life damage and not armor damage?

[Aotrs Commander]

Yeah, that's the point of decaying. Fortunately, fortify takes it off.

Although I thought necromancy lifesteal still healed you through it? Are you sure you were doing life damage and not armor damage?

Ah, I was under the impression (since I think it says just says "10% of damage" not "vitality damage" - I'll check in a bit could just be me not reading the tooltip properly) is was all damage.

[Keltest]

Ah, I was under the impression (since I think it says just says "10% of damage" not "vitality damage" - I'll check in a bit could just be me not reading the tooltip properly) is was all damage.

No, the necromancy lifesteal is just life damage. Mosquito Swarm's heal is from any damage it deals, although if it does life damage it gets the necro heal on top of that.

[Aotrs Commander]

Larien is REALLY GOOD at not telling you things.

Why the ftrack does it not say anywhere the cost of Flesh Sacrifice increases every so often? So now, because I levelled up and didn't know that, I more or less have to wait until next frickin' level before my blood mage lass can use it or lose her shield. Tiresome.

Let alone there not being any sort of notification when stuff gets unequipped...

[Keltest]

Larien is REALLY GOOD at not telling you things.

Why the ftrack does it not say anywhere the cost of Flesh Sacrifice increases every so often? So now, because I levelled up and didn't know that, I more or less have to wait until next frickin' level before my blood mage lass can use it or lose her shield. Tiresome.

Let alone there not being any sort of notification when stuff gets unequipped...

Yeah. Don't have elves be your sword and board tank. Its the only thing they aren't good at. The cost of Flesh Sacrifice is based on your level. Shields will never cost more than 14 con though, so its not totally unmanageable.

[Aotrs Commander]

Yeah. Don't have elves be your sword and board tank. Its the only thing they aren't good at. The cost of Flesh Sacrifice is based on your level. Shields will never cost more than 14 con though, so its not totally unmanageable.

Sebille is my blood mage, though, she's shield and wand. (And Bouncing Shield is one of the ways of dealing physical damage.)

That said, that's useful to know, though, since it means (from what I'm told) I need to aim for about 20 Con from various means by the end of the game (since folk were talking about it being -6 by 19-20th level).

[Keltest]

Sebille is my blood mage, though, she's shield and wand. (And Bouncing Shield is one of the ways of dealing physical damage.)

That said, that's useful to know, though, since it means (from what I'm told) I need to aim for about 20 Con from various means by the end of the game (since folk were talking about it being -6 by 19-20th level).

Thereabouts. There are a couple other annoying effects that lower Con to watch out for, but they mostly are resisted by armor of one kind or another.

[Aotrs Commander]

...

...

...

I...

I... think I just committed necrophilia.

I have been playing Lohse with the flirtations options (seems in character and also hilarity) when given but I did not expect that when I did it to Fane on the Lady Vengeance that... Would be a thing that happened.

Um...

Okay.

That...

That is a first for an RPG.

...

I.. suppose it does fall under what I always do say "what two sapient/sentient beings get up on their own time..."

[Keltest]

...

...

...

I...

I... think I just committed necrophilia.

I have been playing Lohse with the flirtations options (seems in character and also hilarity) when given but I did not expect that when I did it to Fane on the Lady Vengeance that... Would be a thing that happened.

Um...

Okay.

That...

That is a first for an RPG.

...

I.. suppose it does fall under what I always do say "what two sapient/sentient beings get up on their own time..."

Ah, yeah. Man, I remember the first time that happened.

If it makes you feel better, Fane does have his mask, which gives him flesh and stuff. Its not just an illusion, it gives the bodily functions too.

[Anteros]

If you have a human on the team you can use encourage to replace lost con. It's just a matter of remembering to encourage first so you don't lose your shield when you use blood sacrifice.

[Aotrs Commander]

Ah, yeah. Man, I remember the first time that happened.

If it makes you feel better, Fane does have his mask, which gives him flesh and stuff. Its not just an illusion, it gives the bodily functions too.

...

...

Fane is the new Geralt confirmed.

(Did Zharah quest... Mask irrelevant.)

Lohse meanwhile is crying in the corner.

(Not only did I apparently frack-up flirting with Butter so long ago, damn it, but the damned Lich-dude is getting more action than her.)

I seriously don't even, Larien.

This was empahtically NOT what I was expecting when a game finally let me play (mostly) Undead...



That was a trying, fight, though, must have taken umpteen attempts (as Fane is affected by the Black Rose buf, he's not allowed to be killed...)

[Spacewolf]

Well I've just gotten to the fight in the tomb in the Blackpits.

Having Fane as the party lead obviously means we get some bombshells here but god I really hate how summons work in this game.
So the Aterna person starts off with 6 pretty strong wolves, goes first, spawns in two more wolves, flies out of my trap, chain lightnings Iban and Lohse, the summon wolves then insta kill lohse and nearly kill iban. I mean already dislike how the enemies clearly use more AP than you can even have but then letting them both go first and their summons going first everytime is just beyond annoying. Especially when everything in this zone so far was a joke even when I am a level under the enemies and the only difficulty was the game crashing every so often with a weird DirectX error.

Also Lore wise when is this game set in relation to Divinity 2? It's obviously not long after Lucien has fought Damien but the setting doesn't really seem to match what Divinity 2 tells us happened at that point, shouldn't the divine order be busy exterminating dragon knights at this point, rather than dealing with sorcerers?

[Anteros]

I can't speak for the lore stuff but the dog fight is bearable if you have good aoe disable. Medusa head basically trivializes the fight since they have such low armor.

[Spacewolf]

No access to polymorph school unfortunately. Lohse it my main source of magic damage which is there weak armour but as I said she gets killed to fast to do anything.

[tonberrian]

No access to polymorph school unfortunately. Lohse it my main source of magic damage which is there weak armour but as I said she gets killed to fast to do anything.

Mid conversation, you can switch characters to move them around the map and out of range of being insta-dropped with a source skill before you get to do anything. Fane, as your actual character character, will probably not survive the nova, but at least the rest of your party will be out of range of it and can start wailing on the wolves.

[Spacewolf]

Mid conversation, you can switch characters to move them around the map and out of range of being insta-dropped with a source skill before you get to do anything. Fane, as your actual character character, will probably not survive the nova, but at least the rest of your party will be out of range of it and can start wailing on the wolves.

Yea I know how to do that, my issue is that no matter what I do she can incapacitate at least two of my characters before I can even get a turn thanks to being able to take a ridiculous amount of actions herself then being able to summon in wolves which again have more AP than you can possibly have and also get to go first.

[Balmas]

So, I started a playthrough back in March, before the Definitive Edition came out. I'd managed to get through to Driftwood before putting it aside.

Since old saves aren't compatible with the Definitive edition, what has the definitive edition changed? Is it worth restarting to get those changes?

[Keltest]

So, I started a playthrough back in March, before the Definitive Edition came out. I'd managed to get through to Driftwood before putting it aside.

Since old saves aren't compatible with the Definitive edition, what has the definitive edition changed? Is it worth restarting to get those changes?

It comes with significant balance changes, some new graphical improvements (fire in particular is different and should be less engine intensive now), and while the early game has changed little, it comes with significant improvements to act 3, giving you far more direction and incentive to deal with all the different situations there.

And you get to meet Sir Lora, who is fantastic.

[Spacewolf]

As much as I love Larien I've always found it funny that you're better off waiting 6 months or so to play the game for the first time so you can get the definitive edition. The only game I've played by them that didn't get it was Dragon Commander and that's because the writing was the only worthwhile part of the game. I do hope they make another Divinity game at some point in the same vein as Dragon knight, I loved that game.

As for the boss fight I found out if you stand at the back of the room you can avoid agroing her so long as whoever interacts with the coffin isn't your MC who she talks to. After that you can snipe one of the dogs to start the battle an avoid the first round summoning BS to keep things under control. After that it was easy now I'm off to kill a demon for Jahan mainly for Lohse as I've already got all three source points from Hannag and the evil dwarf.

I did like how for whatever the necromancer source users name was in his boss fight you could suck the souls out of his allies, it's pretty much the first time I've used source vamperism.

[Aotrs Commander]

Larien - very dissapointed in you. You pride yourself on having lots of clever ways to do quests, then when it comes to Higba, you block the ability to use your teleporters (you actually took that option out, apparently) and you won't even let the player do something like just pick up the barrel he's in and carry out, but force the player to either figh or frack about with an enforced stealth crap. That's absolutely railroady. Not cool guys, not cool at all.

Edit:

ARE YOU FRACKING KIDDING ME.

He won't even follow you if you go into stealth?

WHAT. THE. FRACK. LARIEN.

An enforced stealth section where you... can't even use stealth. Fracking hell.

Oh COME ON.

Now the magisters can just decide to TELEPORT magically to wherever you bloody are when they game just DECIDES for no reason it's spotted you?



Finally resorted to just as bloody cheap as the teleport - splitting my party into four individuals and then stopping the magisters in conversation, switching to the one with him and then walkng him to the west platform at the fishing warehouse and teleporting out of the village across the river with the teleport gloves.

[Keltest]

Larien - very dissapointed in you. You pride yourself on having lots of clever ways to do quests, then when it comes to Higba, you block the ability to use your teleporters (you actually took that option out, apparently) and you won't even let the player do something like just pick up the barrel he's in and carry out, but force the player to either figh or frack about with an enforced stealth crap. That's absolutely railroady. Not cool guys, not cool at all.

Edit:

ARE YOU FRACKING KIDDING ME.

He won't even follow you if you go into stealth?

WHAT. THE. FRACK. LARIEN.

An enforced stealth section where you... can't even use stealth. Fracking hell.

Oh COME ON.

Now the magisters can just decide to TELEPORT magically to wherever you bloody are when they game just DECIDES for no reason it's spotted you?



Finally resorted to just as bloody cheap as the teleport - splitting my party into four individuals and then stopping the magisters in conversation, switching to the one with him and then walkng him to the west platform at the fishing warehouse and teleporting out of the village across the river with the teleport gloves.
You used to just be able to use a waypoint (say, on the Lady Vengeance) to teleport out, and he would follow you through the teleport.

Unrelated, but if you hold down Shift, it shows you all NPCs line of sights.

[Anteros]

I've never had a problem with that mission. Mostly because the Magisters tend to end up attacking me at some point anyway. Can't get seen if everyone is dead.

[Aotrs Commander]

You used to just be able to use a waypoint (say, on the Lady Vengeance) to teleport out, and he would follow you through the teleport.

Yeah, they stopped you doing that in Definitive edition, it seems.

[Ninjaman]

Yeah. Don't have elves be your sword and board tank. Its the only thing they aren't good at. The cost of Flesh Sacrifice is based on your level. Shields will never cost more than 14 con though, so its not totally unmanageable.

I used a sword and board elf original character for my first playthrough, (classic mod), and that worked out fine.

[Aotrs Commander]

I have everyone but my archer Red Prince and sword and board tanks (not done that for a very long time...)



So, I ate Roost's spirit. Playing good, his was the first spirit I ate, and I didn't even need the Source point. Because he earned that.

Then Sahelia explained about Sebille and I REALLY wanted to go back and eat his spirit again, and several more times after that, because there is not enough times that guy can have his soul eaten.

[Anteros]

I have everyone but my archer Red Prince and sword and board tanks (not done that for a very long time...)



So, I ate Roost's spirit. Playing good, his was the first spirit I ate, and I didn't even need the Source point. Because he earned that.

Then Sahelia explained about Sebille and I REALLY wanted to go back and eat his spirit again, and several more times after that, because there is not enough times that guy can have his soul eaten.

Did you use spirit vision in his room? It gets even worse if you do.

[Keltest]

Did you use spirit vision in his room? It gets even worse if you do.

He had to have, in order to see Roost's spirit.

[Aotrs Commander]

Did you use spirit vision in his room? It gets even worse if you do.

That's why I ate ate his soul the first time.

[tonberrian]

Sebille is a dangerous assassin on the outside, cutest waifu on the inside. I do not regret romancing her in my Red Prince game - we were going to take over the world with trees and dragons.

Sadly I'm pretty sure that save got lost when my good laptop imploded, but it's not the end of the world.

[Ninjaman]

Divinity 2 includes some people who deserve getting their souls eaten for sure.

[Anteros]

He had to have, in order to see Roost's spirit.

Not necessarily. You can always just use it on someone's corpse.

[Ninjaman]

Sebille is a dangerous assassin on the outside, cutest waifu on the inside. I do not regret romancing her in my Red Prince game - we were going to take over the world with trees and dragons.

My first play through was with an original elf, Sebille, The Red Prince and Fane. The Red Prince and Sebille both mellowed out quite a bit, Fane will always be Fane.

[Aotrs Commander]

So, the last bit of Driftwood was the White Magiester fight. That was tedious, trying to keep the dude alive. No way to do it but cheese it. After a couple of attempts, I settled for teleporting Vorhh away, and then teleporting the dude in the opposite direction, and the had Fane run after him - which took Fane out of combat, so he could heel the dude as much as he liked.

And then, after the fight, I was like "wait, why's Sir Lora dead? He's tanked through everything else this adventure."

Reload. (fortunately, I had a mid-combat save...)

That litte [excrementer] Vorhh had lobbed his infinity mass shackles of Pain on SIR LORA! How much more frelling evil can you get, attacking the SQUIRREL. Bastard.

So that mean Lohse had to join Fane right out of way so she could keep slapping heals on Sir Lora, while Red Prince and Sebille (archer and blood mage respectively) dealt with the Magister.

Git.



Also, I have stacke the Lady Vengance's rear storage room with tons and tons and tons of oil barrels from when I discovered the oil-barrel filler and spent about an hour barrel hunting and abusing the magic pockets inventry swapping thing. (Lohse was running around finding barrels, passing them to Fane in the mines, who then passed them to Sebille, stacking the on the Lady Vengeance...)

[tonberrian]

For the two white magisters, I had Sebille nuke down the Shackles one and then turned him into a chicken BEFORE he shackles people. You can let the other escape, he'll turn up again later, but I wasn't feeling that merciful.

[Aotrs Commander]

For the two white magisters, I had Sebille nuke down the Shackles one and then turned him into a chicken BEFORE he shackles people. You can let the other escape, he'll turn up again later, but I wasn't feeling that merciful.

Couldn't, his initative was WAY higher than my whole party. (It was like, 27 or something, and the best of mine was maybe 22.)

Seems to be a running thing, everything seems to have crazy initative. (Last thing I checked was the Voidbourne thing that was responsible for the decay shroud in Paradise Falls and that was, like 51.

(This even assumes that they haven't tweaked it in the Definitive Edition to ensure that the magister always goes first regardless of initative, as that appears to be the case in some fights, according to some google searches...)



(I haven't invest into Wits (Str/Fin/Int/Int, with a bit into Memory), and looking into it, I hadn't even realised that the game doesn't even use D&D-style iniative ('cos I was assuming it worked like D:OS 1 (which did that, didn't it...?), but your iniative only determines whether your or the enemy have the first go, and only the order your dudes do after that, and while I try to keep some level of initaive bonus on my items I'm just realising now that that is rather pointless, because it can't be set such that the enemy all go before I do anyway. Huh. That... Completely changes things.)

[Keltest]

Couldn't, his initative was WAY higher than my whole party. (It was like, 27 or something, and the best of mine was maybe 22.)

Seems to be a running thing, everything seems to have crazy initative. (Last thing I checked was the Voidbourne thing that was responsible for the decay shroud in Paradise Falls and that was, like 51.

(This even assumes that they haven't tweaked it in the Definitive Edition to ensure that the magister always goes first regardless of initative, as that appears to be the case in some fights, according to some google searches...)



(I haven't invest into Wits (Str/Fin/Int/Int, with a bit into Memory), and looking into it, I hadn't even realised that the game doesn't even use D&D-style iniative ('cos I was assuming it worked like D:OS 1 (which did that, didn't it...?), but your iniative only determines whether your or the enemy have the first go, and only the order your dudes do after that, and while I try to keep some level of initaive bonus on my items I'm just realising now that that is rather pointless, because it can't be set such that the enemy all go before I do anyway. Huh. That... Completely changes things.)

Wits is good to have on an archer because it affects crit chance. It can be tempting to put it on your dagger wielder, but they already get automatic crits from backstabs, so its a bit of a wasted stat on them.

[Aotrs Commander]

Wits is good to have on an archer because it affects crit chance. It can be tempting to put it on your dagger wielder, but they already get automatic crits from backstabs, so its a bit of a wasted stat on them.

I have a Str-based frost paladin (sword and board, warfare with a by of Hydrosophist with sprinkling of other, including 1 polymorph for Tentacle Lash, and Scoundral 2 for Cloak and Dagger), my archer who is maxing Finesse first, a crystalline cleric (sword and board, Int-based, Warfare/Necro/Hydrosophist and Huntsman 2 for Tactical Retreat, working on "heal to death") and blood mage (int-based wand and board, Warfare/Necro/Hydrosophist (in a different mix, and with Cloak and Dagger and Mass Corpse Explosion). Was going for a whole ice-motif, since they cam all slap rain of rain of blood down, and then global cooling or join in with the Heal to Death once Fane sets it up.)

Mostly, though, they throw shields at people.

Wits will be the "finished maxing out Str/Fin/Int/Int) stat.

[Thomas Cardew]

Peace of mind is a massive wits boost. It starts at 4 and increases with level, combined with encourage that would get you over 27. If your high wits character is your party face, you can buff them while in convos and the buffs don't time out. Since you're in driftwood the herb mix are still usable with their massive 50 to 100 turn durations.

There are a few fights were the ai always get first move. But they are pretty rare, most of the time higher initiative goes first.

What you can also do is only start the fight with 1-2 people. The ones who join late get stacked at the end of the first round. If your highest initiative character joins late and is higher than the enemy, you can get two consecutive turns. Only works once though, after that it's strictly round Robin. Unless you start abusing escape mechanics.

[Keltest]

I have a Str-based frost paladin (sword and board, warfare with a by of Hydrosophist with sprinkling of other, including 1 polymorph for Tentacle Lash, and Scoundral 2 for Cloak and Dagger), my archer who is maxing Finesse first, a crystalline cleric (sword and board, Int-based, Warfare/Necro/Hydrosophist and Huntsman 2 for Tactical Retreat, working on "heal to death") and blood mage (int-based wand and board, Warfare/Necro/Hydrosophist (in a different mix, and with Cloak and Dagger and Mass Corpse Explosion). Was going for a whole ice-motif, since they cam all slap rain of rain of blood down, and then global cooling or join in with the Heal to Death once Fane sets it up.)

Mostly, though, they throw shields at people.

Wits will be the "finished maxing out Str/Fin/Int/Int) stat.

The two scoundrel is probably wasted. Warfare has its own teleport ability: phoenix dive. If you absolutely feel the need to have a second one, go for huntsman instead. Tactical Retreat gives a round of haste (meaning more move speed after teleporting and an extra AP the next round) and the huntsman also unlocks the ability to avoid attacks of opportunity, whereas The Pawn from scoundrel is mutually exclusive with Executioner from Warfare. Executioner is by far the better of the two for anybody but a dagger user.

The huntsman points also give you a minor damage boost from high ground, should you throw your shield or use an ice spell, whereas scoundrel just gets you a tiny bit more movement per AP.

[Thomas Cardew]

Scoundrel one gets him adrenaline which is amazing. Scoundrel 2 for coal and dagger is fine since it comes crit damage and speed. You're right in that warfare brings plenty of its own gap closers but the ability to use cloak and dagger in stealth to get into position before entering a fight is pretty useful.

And I find the pawn to be more useful on sword and board characters and in a 4 man party. It lets you move to set up attacks of opportunity or kills for your other character who is executioner. If you aren't getting a kill every turn the free movement works out to more ap. Potentially a lot more if you have elemental affinity and are moving on to correct surfaces.

PSA: you can combine boots with nails to get immunity to slipping for free. One of the most effective QOL upgrades you can do in this game imo.

[Aotrs Commander]

The two scoundrel is probably wasted. Warfare has its own teleport ability: phoenix dive. If you absolutely feel the need to have a second one, go for huntsman instead. Tactical Retreat gives a round of haste (meaning more move speed after teleporting and an extra AP the next round) and the huntsman also unlocks the ability to avoid attacks of opportunity, whereas The Pawn from scoundrel is mutually exclusive with Executioner from Warfare. Executioner is by far the better of the two for anybody but a dagger user.

The huntsman points also give you a minor damage boost from high ground, should you throw your shield or use an ice spell, whereas scoundrel just gets you a tiny bit more movement per AP.

Lohse has both phoenix dive and cloak and dagger. (For one, the fire surface is kind of annoying when the party is supposed to be fighting on frozen ice or better blood all the time.) I took Scoundrel on her and Sebille (blood mage) as opposed to Huntsman because Scoundrel increases the critical multiplier (the movement is not something I even paid attention to), and especially for Loshe, she's not going to be up high, so huntsman is of little use to her. Fane (cleric) does have Tactical Retreat. Tactical Retreat is obviously better than Cloak and Dagger, but I felt that the trade off for Huntsman I wasn't using wasn't huge, compared to increased critical damage. Sebille was a case of touch and go, but as her approximate build (https://fextralife.com/divinity-original-sin-2-builds-blood-mage/)1 advised Scoundrel for critcals, I erred on the side of that rather than Huntsman.

(Everyone except Fane has Executioner, and it's a toss-up whether I give him that of Far Out Man as his likely last talent at 18th, since a lot of his powers are ranged - I need to check to see if it increases the range of Decaying Touch, as an extra 2m on that would save him an action point almost every single combat in round 1, where he's consistently just out of range...)



1From the same source, Lohse is nominally Frost Paladin, Fane Crystalline Cleric and Red Prince Magick Archer.

[Keltest]

Lohse has both phoenix dive and cloak and dagger. (For one, the fire surface is kind of annoying when the party is supposed to be fighting on frozen ice or better blood all the time.) I took Scoundrel on her and Sebille (blood mage) as opposed to Huntsman because Scoundrel increases the critical multiplier (the movement is not something I even paid attention to), and especially for Loshe, she's not going to be up high, so huntsman is of little use to her. Fane (cleric) does have Tactical Retreat. Tactical Retreat is obviously better than Cloak and Dagger, but I felt that the trade off for Huntsman I wasn't using wasn't huge, compared to increased critical damage. Sebille was a case of touch and go, but as her approximate build (https://fextralife.com/divinity-original-sin-2-builds-blood-mage/) advised Scoundrel for critcals, I erred on the side of that rather than Huntsman.

(Everyone except Fane has Executioner, and it's a toss-up whether I give him that of Far Out Man as his likely last talent at 18th, since a lot of his powers are ranged - I need to check to see if it increases the range of Decaying Touch, as an extra 2m on that would save him an action point almost every single combat in round 1, where he's consistently just out of range...)

As a melee range skill, Decaying Touch doesn't get boosted, im pretty sure.

[Thomas Cardew]

Lohse has both phoenix dive and cloak and dagger. (For one, the fire surface is kind of annoying when the party is supposed to be fighting on frozen ice or better blood all the time.) I took Scoundrel on her and Sebille (blood mage) as opposed to Huntsman because Scoundrel increases the critical multiplier (the movement is not something I even paid attention to), and especially for Loshe, she's not going to be up high, so huntsman is of little use to her. Fane (cleric) does have Tactical Retreat. Tactical Retreat is obviously better than Cloak and Dagger, but I felt that the trade off for Huntsman I wasn't using wasn't huge, compared to increased critical damage. Sebille was a case of touch and go, but as her approximate build (https://fextralife.com/divinity-original-sin-2-builds-blood-mage/)1 advised Scoundrel for critcals, I erred on the side of that rather than Huntsman.

(Everyone except Fane has Executioner, and it's a toss-up whether I give him that of Far Out Man as his likely last talent at 18th, since a lot of his powers are ranged - I need to check to see if it increases the range of Decaying Touch, as an extra 2m on that would save him an action point almost every single combat in round 1, where he's consistently just out of range...)



1From the same source, Lohse is nominally Frost Paladin, Fane Crystalline Cleric and Red Prince Magick Archer.

It doesn't. That's one of the real benefits of the pawn on anyone who ISN"T a dual wield rogue, it lets you move that stupid six inches to be able to touch someone or stand on a surface for elemental affinity without penalizing you an AP. Dagger characters of course use it to be able to backstab.

[Anteros]

Couldn't, his initative was WAY higher than my whole party. (It was like, 27 or something, and the best of mine was maybe 22.)

Seems to be a running thing, everything seems to have crazy initative. (Last thing I checked was the Voidbourne thing that was responsible for the decay shroud in Paradise Falls and that was, like 51.

(This even assumes that they haven't tweaked it in the Definitive Edition to ensure that the magister always goes first regardless of initative, as that appears to be the case in some fights, according to some google searches...)



(I haven't invest into Wits (Str/Fin/Int/Int, with a bit into Memory), and looking into it, I hadn't even realised that the game doesn't even use D&D-style iniative ('cos I was assuming it worked like D:OS 1 (which did that, didn't it...?), but your iniative only determines whether your or the enemy have the first go, and only the order your dudes do after that, and while I try to keep some level of initaive bonus on my items I'm just realising now that that is rather pointless, because it can't be set such that the enemy all go before I do anyway. Huh. That... Completely changes things.)

I've found it's typically worth it to have a set up character that focuses primarily on initiative and utility. The ability to go first and set up the battlefield is absolutely priceless. Especially when so many encounters will have enemies nuking half your party to death before you can even move otherwise.


The two scoundrel is probably wasted.

I disagree with almost your entire post. The pawn is far more useful than executioner for most characters. In general you only want executioner on one party member anyway. Typically an archer who can just sit still and finish off enemies anywhere on the map for the extra AP. You'd want the pawn on casters, warriors, rogues, and basically anyone who ever needs to move in combat. I can't overstate how great the pawn+elemental affinity is for a caster, and warriors are just going to use that extra AP to move to their next target after a kill anyway.

Also, at least 1 point in scoundrel is completely necessary due to the fact that adrenaline is easily the best spell in the entire game.

[Thomas Cardew]

I've found it's typically worth it to have a set up character that focuses primarily on initiative and utility. The ability to go first and set up the battlefield is absolutely priceless. Especially when so many encounters will have enemies nuking half your party to death before you can even move otherwise.

Not particularly applicable to Aotrs, and in order of increasing both cheesiness and usefulness: I had great results my first play through with high initiative on my Mage/Summoner. Dropping your incarnate is basically get a free extra turn. Relatively unoptimized but was still great for rearranging things with Aero and dropping my meatshield where it needed to be.

On my second playthrough (For Honor) I had a high initiative glass cannon passive archer. I'd start the fight on 1 character, sneak my rogue into backstab someone and ensure I had a spot in the first round reserved. Then I'd wait for all enemies to take their turn, bring my mage in to rearrange everyone or AOE as neccesary, then bring my glass cannon archer finish off a target for the executioner ap and set up an easy kill for next round. Then I'd get an immediate second turn with the archer to pick up that kill, and work on another. I then had all the other characters available to debuff/uncc the archer.

My third play through, I'd just go full alphastrike with high initiative lone wolf Fane abusing Time warp+adrenaline+apotheosis+ skin graft. Good times. THERE WERE NO SURVIVORS.

[Ninjaman]

For the white magister fight I snuck though the back door and planted about five barrels near them, then shot a fireball though the doorway.

Though if there's anything to be gained by saving the black ring captives I will have missed it.

[Lord Torath]

For the white magister fight I sneaked though the back door and planted about five barrels near them, then shot a fireball though the doorway.

Though if there's anything to be gained by saving the black ring captives I will have missed it.Do multiple barrels increase the burn damage? Asking for a friend.

[Thomas Cardew]

Do multiple barrels increase the burn damage? Asking for a friend.

Yes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgLqZLjvBUU). Skip to like 3:40 if you're impatient.

You didn't miss much. They can help you fight and won't attack you. There's a bit a dialog about the Swallow Man and some insults from there. If Neko lives, you can get out of a fight on the Nameless Island with the Black Ring. He'll be with the witch summoning the portal to drown the orc temple. You'll recognize you and cover for you when the captain challenges you.

[Ninjaman]

Yes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgLqZLjvBUU). Skip to like 3:40 if you're impatient.

You didn't miss much. They can help you fight and won't attack you. There's a bit a dialog about the Swallow Man and some insults from there. If Neko lives, you can get out of a fight on the Nameless Island with the Black Ring. He'll be with the witch summoning the portal to drown the orc temple. You'll recognize you and cover for you when the captain challenges you.

That's a fight you can get out of anyway by helping Almira, right?

[Thomas Cardew]

That's a fight you can get out of anyway by helping Almira, right?

I think so. Almira or Tarquin/Ifan can get you out of most/all the Black Ring fights. Neko is specifically only for that one. However, I tend to treat it like Belkar (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0115.html)when it comes to magisters and the Black Ring. I'm not sure if you get more/less/the same xp for killing him in Act 2 or 3 though...

[Anteros]

His level doesn't change, so I imagine the exp is the same. Also, that fight is fun. There's not really much reason to skip it.

[Ninjaman]

I think so. Almira or Tarquin/Ifan can get you out of most/all the Black Ring fights. Neko is specifically only for that one. However, I tend to treat it like Belkar (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0115.html)when it comes to magisters and the Black Ring. I'm not sure if you get more/less/the same xp for killing him in Act 2 or 3 though...

Didn't even know about Ifan and Tarquin. I didn't pick Ifan for my first playthrough, and I killed Tarquin.

I too kill every black ring or magister I come across. They know what they've done.

[Keltest]

Didn't even know about Ifan and Tarquin. I didn't pick Ifan for my first playthrough, and I killed Tarquin.

I too kill every black ring or magister I come across. They know what they've done.

Aww, don't be mean to Tarquin, he has lots of money!

[Thomas Cardew]

Aww, don't be mean to Tarquin, he has lots of money!

You must truly savor his company, Godwoken.

[Aotrs Commander]

Nice [EXPLETIVING] job, Larien, nice [EXPLETIVING] job.

How the merry [expletive] do you manage to make it so that it is possible to miss a trigger for one of your companions that means it becomes impossible to complete her quest?

So now I either have to a) restart the Nameless Isle completely, b) lose Sebille c) fight the master without her (and then wonder if that means it also breaks the potential romance tag).

All because Larien were so FRACKING INEPT as to put this sort of critical dialogue in a time-limit thing that expires if you talk to someone else (like Sir Lora, apparently).

That is SO. FREAKING. STUPID.

This isn't even an unknown bug, it's been known WELL before the Definitie Edition, and tyhey still haven't apparently even attempted to fix it.

[Aotrs Commander]

The final battle is a load of [EXPLETIVE].

It's fracking TERRIBLE design.

The Sallow Man's plague aura, which you have NO CHANCE to avoid since it randomly decides to place you stacks - and my last attempt (of about five) he got two goes before Fane got one and could get out of the way; AFTER I had to go ALL THE WAY BACK to the fragging conversation to make sure Fane had a Major Constituion potion.

The game seems to concentrate on Fane specifically because a) he's got the Black Rose Exilir and b) doesn't have a glowing idol, but it's getting so many goes before I in that final phase I can't do ANYTHING before it killed Red Prince twice. I explicitly drank a load of resist lightnig potions, so Lucian then used something else. And it's not like I'm dallying, I took Dallis out in one round consistently, but then I get screwed because the enemy get to go so many bloody times before I go.

I can't be clever with terrain or position of battlefield control because the game slaps you right in the frakcing middle, wipes your surfaces away and then spams enemies that cripple you before you even get an action.

Steaming pile of crap design Larien, way to frack it up at the last moment.

I wanted to bloody finish the game tonight, but no. Not a fricking chnac,e because the devs decided that there is only, like one SPECIFIC WAY you are allowed to do the last boss battle and if you don't prepare for that explicit way (never mind anythign you've done prior, you can't beta it).

[EXPLETIVING] [BOVINE EXCREMENT] level design.

[Keltest]

The final battle is a load of [EXPLETIVE].

It's fracking TERRIBLE design.

The Sallow Man's plague aura, which you have NO CHANCE to avoid since it randomly decides to place you stacks - and my last attempt (of about five) he got two goes before Fane got one and could get out of the way; AFTER I had to go ALL THE WAY BACK to the fragging conversation to make sure Fane had a Major Constituion potion.

The game seems to concentrate on Fane specifically because a) he's got the Black Rose Exilir and b) doesn't have a glowing idol, but it's getting so many goes before I in that final phase I can't do ANYTHING before it killed Red Prince twice. I explicitly drank a load of resist lightnig potions, so Lucian then used something else. And it's not like I'm dallying, I took Dallis out in one round consistently, but then I get screwed because the enemy get to go so many bloody times before I go.

I can't be clever with terrain or position of battlefield control because the game slaps you right in the frakcing middle, wipes your surfaces away and then spams enemies that cripple you before you even get an action.

Steaming pile of crap design Larien, way to frack it up at the last moment.

I wanted to bloody finish the game tonight, but no. Not a fricking chnac,e because the devs decided that there is only, like one SPECIFIC WAY you are allowed to do the last boss battle and if you don't prepare for that explicit way (never mind anythign you've done prior, you can't beta it).

[EXPLETIVING] [BOVINE EXCREMENT] level design.

If youre having trouble, you can actually skip phase one and enter phase two with Lucian and Dallas and co fighting as your allies against Team Void, and then betray and fight them later after Team Void is defeated. Just agree with Lucian to give up your source, and it wont actually commit you to that until after the fight, where it gives you a chance to confirm or change your mind.

Also, what difficulty are you playing on and what level are you? Its a nasty fight, but I rarely get killed before I even get a turn unless im severely under leveled or botched Phase 1.

[Anteros]

I've not had too much trouble with the last fight either. You can't group up or you'll get AoEed to death.

For Sallow specifically, you can cleanse his aura with the healing source skill you get for slotting a source orb into a chest piece. Not great for Fane, but super useful for everyone else.

[Aotrs Commander]

If youre having trouble, you can actually skip phase one and enter phase two with Lucian and Dallas and co fighting as your allies against Team Void, and then betray and fight them later after Team Void is defeated. Just agree with Lucian to give up your source, and it wont actually commit you to that until after the fight, where it gives you a chance to confirm or change your mind.

Also, what difficulty are you playing on and what level are you? Its a nasty fight, but I rarely get killed before I even get a turn unless im severely under leveled or botched Phase 1.

Classic, I think?

I'm level 20, which is the maximum I could get without killing all the NPCs in the game - I've done basically every quest.


I've not had too much trouble with the last fight either. You can't group up or you'll get AoEed to death.


Except, of course, phase two automatically bunches you up and lets the enemies have one to two goes before you do. Sallow got off TWO rounds of his cheap, stacking plague effect before Fane got a single go.

Fane, is of course, my primary damage dealer and the one member of the party I can't afford to have die, and the game seems to be specifically targetting him for being hit by that effect, as it ALWAYS puts him where he can be hit by it instantly, regardless of what order I put the party in, or where he was standing before the phase two starts.

Frankly, if it wasn't for that utter bovine excrement stacking plague, I'd possibly be less annoyed, but that's just fracking terrible game design on the basic conceptual level of the most petty, Nintendo-hard varity. It's t sort of thing that if I knew how to do so (or this was a Paradox game) I'd have gone in a fricking modded out myself as a frack-you to the devs.

(I'm still fracked-off as hell after a nights meditation (the double-whammy of this and then watching Steins:Gate pulls some narrative bull-crap really did my temper no favours.)



So, I can see, for a kick-off, the difficultly is going right down, if it can, and I guess I will have Lucian and company not hostile (against what I acually wanted to roleplay) because I am no longer interested in playing fair, because DS:O2 isn't.

[Keltest]

Classic, I think?

I'm level 20, which is the maximum I could get without killing all the NPCs in the game - I've done basically every quest.



Except, of course, phase two automatically bunches you up and lets the enemies have one to two goes before you do. Sallow got off TWO rounds of his cheap, stacking plague effect before Fane got a single go.

Fane, is of course, my primary damage dealer and the one member of the party I can't afford to have die, and the game seems to be specifically targetting him for being hit by that effect, as it ALWAYS puts him where he can be hit by it instantly, regardless of what order I put the party in, or where he was standing before the phase two starts.

Frankly, if it wasn't for that utter bovine excrement stacking plague, I'd possibly be less annoyed, but that's just fracking terrible game design on the basic conceptual level of the most petty, Nintendo-hard varity. It's t sort of thing that if I knew how to do so (or this was a Paradox game) I'd have gone in a fricking modded out myself as a frack-you to the devs.

(I'm still fracked-off as hell after a nights meditation (the double-whammy of this and then watching Steins:Gate pulls some narrative bull-crap really did my temper no favours.)



So, I can see, for a kick-off, the difficultly is going right down, if it can, and I guess I will have Lucian and company not hostile (against what I acually wanted to roleplay) because I am no longer interested in playing fair, because DS:O2 isn't.

Something else to remember is that all of your enemies in this fight are undead, except Lucian and the magisters if you choose to fight them. If you drop a mass healing spell, its going to hurt everybody in range, and blessed surfaces are going to give them a lot of trouble. I want to say that bless also cures the stupid plague, but im less certain in that regard. Either way, you have unlimited source points for this fight, so don't hesitate to bring out all your big guns.

Also, if you have rez scrolls to spare, you can actually recharge the idol while in combat for like one AP. Its much cheaper than using the scroll, with the only down side being it doesn't reset your cooldowns like an actual scroll does.

[Aotrs Commander]

Something else to remember is that all of your enemies in this fight are undead, except Lucian and the magisters if you choose to fight them. If you drop a mass healing spell, its going to hurt everybody in range, and blessed surfaces are going to give them a lot of trouble. I want to say that bless also cures the stupid plague, but im less certain in that regard. Either way, you have unlimited source points for this fight, so don't hesitate to bring out all your big guns.

Also, if you have rez scrolls to spare, you can actually recharge the idol while in combat for like one AP. Its much cheaper than using the scroll, with the only down side being it doesn't reset your cooldowns like an actual scroll does.

Dropped to explorer, offered up source and stomped throguh the figth. Probably could have done in classic doing that, but I was, at that point, no longer interested in doing that.

I had plnety of res scrolls spare, but a couple of times, it killed Red Prince twice in a round before he was allowed an action.

Bless does cure the plague, and the main advantage of allying Lucien is that his first action was to lob of a blessign that cured everyone. (And, because FRACK HIM I focus-fired Sallow Man to death immediately. Apparently the other advantage of doing that is that the phase doesn't start mid-round, so I got a go with everyone before the Sallow Man got his second one.)



Worked through all the available endings:

Starting with Lohse Divine, which I thought was, on balance, probably the best ending. Sure, Driftwood carked it which was a random "screw you," but overall, I felt "and the adventuers continued" was better than the others, though the "sacrfice all cource" was debatably "better." (Except all but Lohse Divine screwed poor Malady.)

Kind of odd the the choice not to become divine wasn't the one that gave your source to Lucian - which is what I thought when I did that option, and that to do that, you had to become Divine first and then give it to him. You'd be seriously peeved if you hadn't saved and thought that, 'cos that was the defnite Worst Ending (possible with Lohse, anyway).



Credit where credit is due, the endings were, crappy last fight aside well-executed, and as this is often the point where games drop the ball, they didn't do that, at least. So a bit of a reverse Neverwinter Nights 2, then.



But, seeing as they explictly told me to go make up my own ending (bit of a copout, lads), okay then:

Lohse Divine went around with Sebille, doing Hero Stuff (occasionally assisted by Fane, Red Prince, and I guess, since they said nothing about her to preclude it, Dallis (making sure she didn't get up to any more mischief), and Lohse continued to level up and eventually max allher stats out and then in the course of Bkeabane's D:OS 3, solved Malady's ills (also making her a full part member) along with Sir Lora, Jahan and Han (ditto, because Lohsa is divine so frack four-person party limits) and together with Red Emperor's dragon kids, they entered the void itself, vivisected the God-King, got Tarquin to figure out stuff and cracked the Void good and proper; they were aided at the last moment in the battle by a nameless, heavily scarred, grey-skinned fighter dude of ridiculous level from another dimension - apparently he gotten bord after single-handedly ending some "Blood War" by killing all of the participants single-mace-dly. Als, Fanbe, who had a riculous Int at this point, worked out how to make resurrect work on non-party peopel, so thy ressed everyone who wasn't evil in Driftwood.

And then they lived happily ever after.

So there.






Fane playthrough for next time thought as this run-through took 150 hours, not gonna rush. Cant complain about the length, though, that's got to be the second-longest single RPG I've ever played, second only to Witcher 3. (But I was starting to feel I'd about had enough by the end, which is why I wanted to push on through.)

[Keltest]

Dropped to explorer, offered up source and stomped throguh the figth. Probably could have done in classic doing that, but I was, at that point, no longer interested in doing that.

I had plnety of res scrolls spare, but a couple of times, it killed Red Prince twice in a round before he was allowed an action.

Bless does cure the plague, and the main advantage of allying Lucien is that his first action was to lob of a blessign that cured everyone. (And, because FRACK HIM I focus-fired Sallow Man to death immediately. Apparently the other advantage of doing that is that the phase doesn't start mid-round, so I got a go with everyone before the Sallow Man got his second one.)



Worked through all the available endings:

Starting with Lohse Divine, which I thought was, on balance, probably the best ending. Sure, Driftwood carked it which was a random "screw you," but overall, I felt "and the adventuers continued" was better than the others, though the "sacrfice all cource" was debatably "better." (Except all but Lohse Divine screwed poor Malady.)

Kind of odd the the choice not to become divine wasn't the one that gave your source to Lucian - which is what I thought when I did that option, and that to do that, you had to become Divine first and then give it to him. You'd be seriously peeved if you hadn't saved and thought that, 'cos that was the defnite Worst Ending (possible with Lohse, anyway).



Credit where credit is due, the endings were, crappy last fight aside well-executed, and as this is often the point where games drop the ball, they didn't do that, at least. So a bit of a reverse Neverwinter Nights 2, then.



But, seeing as they explictly told me to go make up my own ending (bit of a copout, lads), okay then:

Lohse Divine went around with Sebille, doing Hero Stuff (occasionally assisted by Fane, Red Prince, and I guess, since they said nothing about her to preclude it, Dallis (making sure she didn't get up to any more mischief), and Lohse continued to level up and eventually max allher stats out and then in the course of Bkeabane's D:OS 3, solved Malady's ills (also making her a full part member) along with Sir Lora, Jahan and Han (ditto, because Lohsa is divine so frack four-person party limits) and together with Red Emperor's dragon kids, they entered the void itself, vivisected the God-King, got Tarquin to figure out stuff and cracked the Void good and proper; they were aided at the last moment in the battle by a nameless, heavily scarred, grey-skinned fighter dude of ridiculous level from another dimension - apparently he gotten bord after single-handedly ending some "Blood War" by killing all of the participants single-mace-dly. Als, Fanbe, who had a riculous Int at this point, worked out how to make resurrect work on non-party peopel, so thy ressed everyone who wasn't evil in Driftwood.

And then they lived happily ever after.

So there.






Fane playthrough for next time thought as this run-through took 150 hours, not gonna rush. Cant complain about the length, though, that's got to be the second-longest single RPG I've ever played, second only to Witcher 3. (But I was starting to feel I'd about had enough by the end, which is why I wanted to push on through.)
I have to say, there is a certain satisfaction with having a "screw the puny mortals" playthrough as fane. I recommend doing a Lone Wolf run as Fane and either solo the whole game or with an undead partner. Really embrace the "I am a man in a society of rats" attitude that he has and just burn everything to the ground.

As far as endings go, you actually missed two (arguably three) that you need to go out of your way a bit.

The first one has you make a deal with Lohse's demon who's name I cant spell, letting him possess you when you become Divine.

The second and third-ish ones are only achievable with Fane. You can choose to bring back the Eternals, as they were, with or without bringing back the God King as well.

[Aotrs Commander]

I have to say, there is a certain satisfaction with having a "screw the puny mortals" playthrough as fane. I recommend doing a Lone Wolf run as Fane and either solo the whole game or with an undead partner. Really embrace the "I am a man in a society of rats" attitude that he has and just burn everything to the ground.

As far as endings go, you actually missed two (arguably three) that you need to go out of your way a bit.

I figured, but the latter will be for a second playthrough (as/when/if) and I wasn't gonna go that far to not spifflicate the individual in question just for that former ending...

[Anteros]

Having Ifan in the party also unlocks a unique ending where instead of taking the power of the divine you share it with EVERYONE. It's probably the most classically good ending.

[Keltest]

Having Ifan in the party also unlocks a unique ending where instead of taking the power of the divine you share it with EVERYONE. It's probably the most classically good ending.

I wasn't aware that was Ifan exclusive?

[Aotrs Commander]

I wasn't aware that was Ifan exclusive?

It isn't. I did that one too.

[Anteros]

They must have changed it then. Which is certainly possible. Are you sure though? The "make everyone a source user" ending is not the same as the "remove all source" ending that everyone can get, although they're superficially similar.

[Aotrs Commander]

They must have changed it then. Which is certainly possible. Are you sure though? The "make everyone a source user" ending is not the same as the "remove all source" ending that everyone can get, although they're superficially similar.

Considering I did both, I'm absolutely positive.

[Anteros]

Considering I did both, I'm absolutely positive.

Fair enough. They must have changed it.

[Ninjaman]

If you can kill Vrederman before he gets time to begin stage two then it won't happen and the fight will be a lot easier.

[Lord Torath]

I found the Genie's lamp. What did you guys wish for?I wished for knowledge, first, and got a useless book of nursery rhymes.
I reloaded my game, and this time I wished for power, and got a decent 1-handed sword.

[Aotrs Commander]

I found the Genie's lamp. What did you guys wish for?I wished for knowledge, first, and got a useless book of nursery rhymes.
I reloaded my game, and this time I wished for power, and got a decent 1-handed sword.

I found an empty one, but not one that worked... Where'd you find that?

[Lord Torath]

I found an empty one, but not one that worked... Where'd you find that?Near the statue of the "non-burning" prophet near Driftwood in the Definitive Edition. I did not find any clues at the statue for how to get the torches to stay lit, so I checked out the surrounding are. The lamp was on a low beach to the east (I think) of the statue (which is on a somewhat high bluff). Also, the genie offered to teach me to handle more Source before granting the wish; all I had to do was eat some rotten, void-infused "something". I declined.

[Anteros]

The genie actually requires a specific set of tags as well as high persuasion in order to get a real wish. Otherwise he perverts your wish into something useless or negative. One example is that he can strike your entire party permanently blind. You must have picked made the right persuasion option to get the sword and the wrong ones when you got the nursery rhymes.

[Ninjaman]

I found the Genie's lamp. What did you guys wish for?I wished for knowledge, first, and got a useless book of nursery rhymes.
I reloaded my game, and this time I wished for power, and got a decent 1-handed sword.

The real trick with the genie is that he scales of your level, and nothing he can give is better than the XP, so just save it until you're ready to leave act 2 to summon him on the ship in level 17/18, and take him out with the help of the seekers. You can possibly kill him later too.

[Spore]

I am hopefully faster than the necro time limit. So I just found this gem in the Wintersale and after having it stew amongst the dozens of other games I have never played I tried it.

First with a Lizard Warrior, and I quickly found out Lizards are capable wizards, and that the Red Prince is also canonically a warrior (I like staying with the canonical class). Then I tried a Wayfarer Summoner, and I settled on a male Elven Enchanter.

Gameplay is wonky to solid thus far, my group doesn't really come together. I got the Red Prince as a Warrior and tank whom the AI constantly ignores because his armor makes it almost impossible for them to CC him. They regularly manage to make him burn though which is gladly amended with Geomancy. Ifan as a Wayfarer is very decent though I think I'll remove the standard Geomancy from him in favor of some more precise damage because sniping enemy wizards and weakened warriors is his job. Beast is a very decent offtank and warrior as a battlemage, but he is often targetted instead of the Red Prince. I need to find a way to bolster his defenses while keeping his offensive power (and a way to make sure the Red Prince actually does something other than running after teleporting and CCing wizards). Finally my Enchanter Elf is actually a very decent healer now but the Rain/Shock combo doesn't work more often than it does. Rain is situationally useful but much of the early game is funnily built around poison, oil slicks and explosions. I figured I sorta shouldn't have switched out Hail Strike for Regeneration and now I cannot figure out where to find an Enchanter vendor.

[Keltest]

I am hopefully faster than the necro time limit. So I just found this gem in the Wintersale and after having it stew amongst the dozens of other games I have never played I tried it.

First with a Lizard Warrior, and I quickly found out Lizards are capable wizards, and that the Red Prince is also canonically a warrior (I like staying with the canonical class). Then I tried a Wayfarer Summoner, and I settled on a male Elven Enchanter.

Gameplay is wonky to solid thus far, my group doesn't really come together. I got the Red Prince as a Warrior and tank whom the AI constantly ignores because his armor makes it almost impossible for them to CC him. They regularly manage to make him burn though which is gladly amended with Geomancy. Ifan as a Wayfarer is very decent though I think I'll remove the standard Geomancy from him in favor of some more precise damage because sniping enemy wizards and weakened warriors is his job. Beast is a very decent offtank and warrior as a battlemage, but he is often targetted instead of the Red Prince. I need to find a way to bolster his defenses while keeping his offensive power (and a way to make sure the Red Prince actually does something other than running after teleporting and CCing wizards). Finally my Enchanter Elf is actually a very decent healer now but the Rain/Shock combo doesn't work more often than it does. Rain is situationally useful but much of the early game is funnily built around poison, oil slicks and explosions. I figured I sorta shouldn't have switched out Hail Strike for Regeneration and now I cannot figure out where to find an Enchanter vendor.

The blue lizard in Fort Joy who wanders around the back camp area sells hydrosophist books. The lightning vendor is actually the guy who tries to convince you to get the teleporter gloves for him.

Skill books are sold by school rather than class, although some vendors will sometimes sell complimentary schools at the same time.

[Anteros]

As you've discovered, tanks are pretty much worthless. There's only one skill to force enemies to attack you, and it's not worth building a character around at all. Shields are a lot more useful on mages than they are on warriors.

[Spore]

The blue lizard in Fort Joy who wanders around the back camp area sells hydrosophist books. The lightning vendor is actually the guy who tries to convince you to get the teleporter gloves for him.

Skill books are sold by school rather than class, although some vendors will sometimes sell complimentary schools at the same time.

Thanks a bunch! It is still an odd feeling that every NPC has some story or gear to buy rather than one central merchant.


As you've discovered, tanks are pretty much worthless. There's only one skill to force enemies to attack you, and it's not worth building a character around at all. Shields are a lot more useful on mages than they are on warriors.

Thanks a bunch for the info. Dished out almost 1k gold for a good sword and shield. I guess the shield gets sold, Red Prince takes Beast's spear and Beast gets to buy another sword for two weapon fighting. I assumed the skills whose damage is dependant on armor are better.

[Keltest]

As you've discovered, tanks are pretty much worthless. There's only one skill to force enemies to attack you, and it's not worth building a character around at all. Shields are a lot more useful on mages than they are on warriors.

I would suggest rather that tanks work by being bruisers. Warfare has a number of AoE hard CC effects and in general has the easiest time of any school at keeping people off their feet, IMO.

[Anteros]

I would suggest rather that tanks work by being bruisers. Warfare has a number of AoE hard CC effects and in general has the easiest time of any school at keeping people off their feet, IMO.

They're definitely good at that. It's just not what I would traditionally call a tank.

[Ninjaman]

I got the Red Prince as a Warrior and tank whom the AI constantly ignores because his armor makes it almost impossible for them to CC him. They regularly manage to make him burn though which is gladly amended with Geomancy.
Most people will tell you that tanks aren't good, and I agree, but that doesn't mean shields can't be good on fighter characters. Shield bounce is one of your most damaging abilities, and as you say enemies tend to ignore him because he is so durable, use that to stay right in the middle of the action.
Or just switch to using two handed, which is definitely also an option.


Ifan as a Wayfarer is very decent though I think I'll remove the standard Geomancy from him in favor of some more precise damage because sniping enemy wizards and weakened warriors is his job.
Alternatively if you want him to do something other than just shooting things you can also throw some points into summoning, which will also make his source ability better.


Beast is a very decent offtank and warrior as a battlemage, but he is often targetted instead of the Red Prince. I need to find a way to bolster his defenses while keeping his offensive power
If he has just a few points in strength he can use strength armor, that should make him more durable against melee attacks.


(and a way to make sure the Red Prince actually does something other than running after teleporting and CCing wizards).
I don't know what level you are at now, but pheonix dive, the warfare teleport ability, unlocks from vendors at level 9. Blitz, which lets you jump 8 feet and jump between two enemies is also sold at around the same time I think.


Finally my Enchanter Elf is actually a very decent healer now but the Rain/Shock combo doesn't work more often than it does. Rain is situationally useful but much of the early game is funnily built around poison, oil slicks and explosions. I figured I sorta shouldn't have switched out Hail Strike for Regeneration and now I cannot figure out where to find an Enchanter vendor.
I don't know if you are aware of how shock/wet/frozen works, because I know I weren't when I first started using them. Most status effects, wet is an exception, can only be applied after the enemy has been stripped of their armor, magical armor in this case. If you use lightning on someone and they end up with no magic armor, you shock them if they become shocked again, or are/become wet, they are stunned instead. Wet is good because it makes them take 20% more damage from air spells, along with 10% more from water, if you can strip them of all their magic armor then they are stunned. With both Beast and your Enchanter slinging lightning effects this shouldn't be too difficult to do.



Thanks a bunch for the info. Dished out almost 1k gold for a good sword and shield. I guess the shield gets sold, Red Prince takes Beast's spear and Beast gets to buy another sword for two weapon fighting. I assumed the skills whose damage is dependant on armor are better.
Spears use dex, so don't give that to the Red Prince if you used strength weapons before. Don't sell the shield, give it to your enchanter.

With the last sentence I assume you are talking about reactive armor? I found it quite useful when I played a shield fighter.

[Spore]

Not a fan of shield bounce but I use it to damage people before closing in. Oddly my sword and board setup features a lightning sworf now so I can shock and strip magic and normal armor all while hitting normally.

As for summoning I understand there ia a limit of one creature to summon so Ifan could invest in summoner and just slot out incarnate when when we get rid of these blasted collars?

[Keltest]

Not a fan of shield bounce but I use it to damage people before closing in. Oddly my sword and board setup features a lightning sworf now so I can shock and strip magic and normal armor all while hitting normally.

As for summoning I understand there ia a limit of one creature to summon so Ifan could invest in summoner and just slot out incarnate when when we get rid of these blasted collars?

You can also summon elemental totems in surfaces, of which there is no hard limit, but it caps out in practice because they have a timed life.

Also, in general, the incarnate will be soooo much better than his wolf unless you just need a body with taunt to absorb an attack from somebody for a round or two. It takes a few rounds to get up to steam with all the infusions, but a fully loaded incarnate is an absolute horrific monster.

[Ninjaman]

Not a fan of shield bounce but I use it to damage people before closing in. Oddly my sword and board setup features a lightning sworf now so I can shock and strip magic and normal armor all while hitting normally.
Why don't you like shield bounce? I find it's the sword and board ability that deals the most damage, and it is ranged, and can hit to.

The lightning sword isn't going to do much magic damage, but being able to shock along with your two other characters is going to be quite good at CCing.


As for summoning I understand there ia a limit of one creature to summon so Ifan could invest in summoner and just slot out incarnate when when we get rid of these blasted collars?
Depending on how deeply you spec summoning the incarnate ends up being better. It is definitely better when you hit 10, but I don't know at which point it gets better. If you play him as mainly huntsman with just a dash of summoning I think the wolf is going to be better for a long time.

[Aotrs Commander]

Shield Bounce was my bread-and-butter. The only one who didn't have it was Red Prince, who was The Archer. It was dealing ridiculous damage by the end of tge game (especially as my party focussed a lot of physical damage and everyone had scads of Warfare).

[Anteros]

Shield bounce is a good skill, but 2-handers or daggers on your damage dealers will do much more damage overall. It's only worth using a shield on your warriors if you're having trouble with survivability, or you're doing some sort of weird reactive armor build (I've tried it, and it's not that great either.) In general it's a bad thing to have the majority of your damage tied up to one or two cooldowns.

It's absolutely amazing on mages though. It gives them a solid physical damage option that stays relevant all game while also shoring up their defenses. Ironically though, the best mage setup in the game for damage is dual wielding swords (or maybe sword+wand) due to a unique sword that you get in act 3 that gives 6 initiative, 3 memory, and +20% to crit. The damage on it makes it not worthwhile for your warriors, but it's easily the best mage weapon in the game, and it's not even close.


You can also summon elemental totems in surfaces, of which there is no hard limit, but it caps out in practice because they have a timed life.

Also, in general, the incarnate will be soooo much better than his wolf unless you just need a body with taunt to absorb an attack from somebody for a round or two. It takes a few rounds to get up to steam with all the infusions, but a fully loaded incarnate is an absolute horrific monster.

The incarnate will be better at summoning 10, but the wolf is a powerhouse right away even with no investment. It got a huge buff in the definitive edition and is actually one of the more useful source skills now. In general I consider the wolf the better skill because it's free while the incarnate requires an absolutely enormous investment.

[Ninjaman]

It's absolutely amazing on mages though. It gives them a solid physical damage option that stays relevant all game while also shoring up their defenses. Ironically though, the best mage setup in the game for damage is dual wielding swords (or maybe sword+wand) due to a unique sword that you get in act 3 that gives 6 initiative, 3 memory, and +20% to crit. The damage on it makes it not worthwhile for your warriors, but it's easily the best mage weapon in the game, and it's not even close.

Why is that better than that sword and a shield?

[Anteros]

Why is that better than that sword and a shield?

It's not necessarily, but if you're going for a crit build on a mage you probably prefer the extra 8% crit or so from a good offhand to the shield. Sword and shield is admittedly good as well.

[Spore]

Honestly I played most of Fort Joy with a onehand wand not realizing I COULD equip a shield and this comment alone helped me. I build my avatar character as a tanky mage to be buffer and healer.

Also gear warped my group a tad bit.
Red Prince's tank setup gets a lot more mileage now that I know which debuffs are and aren't blocked by armor because he basically has double armor. I can march him into an ambush of 2-3 archers and a mage and he doesn't even get stripped off his armor values.

Beast's twohanded approach starts to struggle. I have the blind aura and favorable winds, but everything he does is very short-ranged. I'll pocket rogue gear and respec him when the time is right.

MC is faring a bit better (as healing the undead in the swamp is just incredibly easy) but I need to rework him too. Probably Hydro/Geomancer/Summoner for buffs, heals and summons.

Ifan is now the priority target for any 'striker' the enemy has. He has low physical armor, is prone to status effects of both kinds, and just dies in a single turn combo from most damage dealers. I should've slotted in Fortify instead of Fossil Strike.

[Ninjaman]

Beast's twohanded approach starts to struggle. I have the blind aura and favorable winds, but everything he does is very short-ranged. I'll pocket rogue gear and respec him when the time is right.
I've played to act two with a melee aerotheurge Beast build that I thought worked quite well, so I'm curious as to what your build is. One thing to note is that Warfare skills scale off your weapon, meaning if you have an air damage staff you scale of earotheurge and intelligence, and Beast can therefore use warfare skills. Keep in mind that his attacks don't strip physical armor, so you will have to use battering ram and stomp more carefully, but it's still quite good.
I haven't used favorable winds, I don't think it does nearly enough, but blinding radiance, shocking touch, electric discharge and dazing bolt for ranged, all the teleport skills, along with the warfare abilities make for a solid build.

Also if you have savage sortilage your spells gain the crit damage bonus from two handed when you're wielding a staff.

[Anteros]

Honestly I played most of Fort Joy with a onehand wand not realizing I COULD equip a shield and this comment alone helped me. I build my avatar character as a tanky mage to be buffer and healer.

Also gear warped my group a tad bit.
Red Prince's tank setup gets a lot more mileage now that I know which debuffs are and aren't blocked by armor because he basically has double armor. I can march him into an ambush of 2-3 archers and a mage and he doesn't even get stripped off his armor values.

Beast's twohanded approach starts to struggle. I have the blind aura and favorable winds, but everything he does is very short-ranged. I'll pocket rogue gear and respec him when the time is right.

MC is faring a bit better (as healing the undead in the swamp is just incredibly easy) but I need to rework him too. Probably Hydro/Geomancer/Summoner for buffs, heals and summons.

Ifan is now the priority target for any 'striker' the enemy has. He has low physical armor, is prone to status effects of both kinds, and just dies in a single turn combo from most damage dealers. I should've slotted in Fortify instead of Fossil Strike.

Warfare builds tend to struggle in the first chapter, but once you get a few gap closers in act 2 they'll be much better.

[Aotrs Commander]

Warfare builds tend to struggle in the first chapter, but once you get a few gap closers in act 2 they'll be much better.

Well... Only if you consider Warfare builds as "melee." Some of the casters benefit significantly from Warfare *look meaningfully at necromancy* as does archery. Plus shield-bounce. (One of the reasons shield-bounce is so great!) My party was stuffed to the gills with warfare and cryomancy (if we weren't fighting on ice or frozen blood, it was because the game as pulling tedius cut-scene deployment on me) with a bit of necromancy (and a splash of scoundral (Cloak and Dagger) or Huntsman (Tactical Retreat) later on; there are SO many places were having one or everyone teleport is nearly required outside of combat, even).

No-one had any significant fire magic (that wasn't required for corpse explosion) or geomancy, summoning, and Lohse MC had just a dash of polymorph entirely for tentacle lash which is STUPID GOOD on a Str character. (Sporeegg, if you haven't tken a point of polymorph for your Beast meleer, do so. It's stupendously good, both in damage and in effect. If you're struggling to get close, Phoemix Dive should come along soon enough, and on top of that, it's worth two points of Huntsman or two points of Scoundral just for their respect teleports, nevermind anything else.)

(Mind you I played Definitive Edition, and before I even did anything, I spent a good couple of hours researching character build ideas.)

I think the thing about D:OS2 is it that it seems like just picking a straight foward "my character is going to do this skill tree" doesn't really work as well (exception for archery, but even then, you take Warfare and Hunstman first); actually the weapon skills are a bit blah and you're far better off putting the points into other skill trees to broaden the amount of powers you have to activate.

[Spore]

Well, I am playing classic mode by ear now. As soon as (and if) it comes to my tactician run, I will employ a more optimized MMO-y style of gameplay.

[Anteros]

Well... Only if you consider Warfare builds as "melee." Some of the casters benefit significantly from Warfare *look meaningfully at necromancy* as does archery. Plus shield-bounce. (One of the reasons shield-bounce is so great!) My party was stuffed to the gills with warfare and cryomancy (if we weren't fighting on ice or frozen blood, it was because the game as pulling tedius cut-scene deployment on me) with a bit of necromancy (and a splash of scoundral (Cloak and Dagger) or Huntsman (Tactical Retreat) later on; there are SO many places were having one or everyone teleport is nearly required outside of combat, even).

No-one had any significant fire magic (that wasn't required for corpse explosion) or geomancy, summoning, and Lohse MC had just a dash of polymorph entirely for tentacle lash which is STUPID GOOD on a Str character. (Sporeegg, if you haven't tken a point of polymorph for your Beast meleer, do so. It's stupendously good, both in damage and in effect. If you're struggling to get close, Phoemix Dive should come along soon enough, and on top of that, it's worth two points of Huntsman or two points of Scoundral just for their respect teleports, nevermind anything else.)

(Mind you I played Definitive Edition, and before I even did anything, I spent a good couple of hours researching character build ideas.)

I think the thing about D:OS2 is it that it seems like just picking a straight foward "my character is going to do this skill tree" doesn't really work as well (exception for archery, but even then, you take Warfare and Hunstman first); actually the weapon skills are a bit blah and you're far better off putting the points into other skill trees to broaden the amount of powers you have to activate.

Well, if we want to be pedantic, I'd have a hard time coming up with a build that doesn't benefit from points in warfare. Every single physical damage class benefits more from warfare than from their respective class skills. Necromancer? Pump warfare. Rogue? Pump warfare. Archer? Pump warfare. Even straight casters typically want a few points for things like shield toss and battering ram because they're so cheap and there are plenty of fights where you can't reasonably strip magic armor. The only exception I can think of is a summoner where you'd pump summoning to 10 first and then warfare.

Warfare is completely broken. Even with the nerfs to it in definitive it's still the strongest skill tree in the game.

[Ninjaman]

Well, if we want to be pedantic, I'd have a hard time coming up with a build that doesn't benefit from points in warfare. Every single physical damage class benefits more from warfare than from their respective class skills. Necromancer? Pump warfare. Rogue? Pump warfare. Archer? Pump warfare. Even straight casters typically want a few points for things like shield toss and battering ram because they're so cheap and there are plenty of fights where you can't reasonably strip magic armor. The only exception I can think of is a summoner where you'd pump summoning to 10 first and then warfare.

Warfare is completely broken. Even with the nerfs to it in definitive it's still the strongest skill tree in the game.

How is it broken? The fact that most builds can use it doesn't make it broken. And it makes sense that the skills that are the most straight forward "just hit things" is the one with the broadest applications.

Warfare seems perfectly balanced to me.

I'm also curious why you didn't add executioner to that long list, because it's the best trait in the game and it is locked behind a point in warfare.

[Spore]

Warfare is not that OP imho. Alphastriking just is in turn based combat. If you don't have the time or power to focus down a single enemy, Warfare quickly becomes pretty useless. That is also why I try a pretty balanced approach to things. I don't want a cakewalk, but I don't want a random encounter that tests my capabilities to be insanely brutal.

Imho two things strike me as odd: Everyone should have Opportunist (because else mages can just kite your meleers) and Executioner should not be in the game or at least heavily nerfed because half of the use of armor is too block debuffs.

[Anteros]

How is it broken? The fact that most builds can use it doesn't make it broken. And it makes sense that the skills that are the most straight forward "just hit things" is the one with the broadest applications.

Warfare seems perfectly balanced to me.

I'm also curious why you didn't add executioner to that long list, because it's the best trait in the game and it is locked behind a point in warfare.

It's not the fact that they can use it. It's the fact that it's objectively the best choice no matter what your build is. It's mathematically better than scoundrel for rogues. It's better than huntsman for archers. It's better than necromancy for necromancers. Are you seeing the trend here? And this is after the nerf.

Executioner is good, but the pawn is better for most characters so I don't consider it that good. You typically only want executioner on one character who is going to stand still like an archer while everyone else takes the pawn. Anyone who moves in combat will get more use from the pawn. It's more useful for lone wolf characters who are powerful enough to kill someone every single round, but not for normal parties.


Warfare is not that OP imho. Alphastriking just is in turn based combat. If you don't have the time or power to focus down a single enemy, Warfare quickly becomes pretty useless. That is also why I try a pretty balanced approach to things. I don't want a cakewalk, but I don't want a random encounter that tests my capabilities to be insanely brutal.

Imho two things strike me as odd: Everyone should have Opportunist (because else mages can just kite your meleers) and Executioner should not be in the game or at least heavily nerfed because half of the use of armor is too block debuffs.

It's still useful because it buffs damage and you need to strip armor to keep opponents stunlocked. Success in this game is less about eliminating enemies one by one and more about keeping the entire enemy team stunlocked to death. At least on tactician where enemies can wipe you out in one turn. It's probably different on classic.

Opportunist isn't that great. They can still run away, you just hit them with an attack in exchange. With the pawn you can just close to melee range again for free. Or you can blitz attack or something to close the gap. Between the pawn, wings, and the numerous other teleports available in the game you shouldn't get kited. Opportunist is a good skill, but it's not top tier.

I think you have executioner confused with torturer. Executioner gives 2 AP on killing an enemy. Torturer allows some of the weaker debuffs to pierce armor.

[Ninjaman]

Imho two things strike me as odd: Everyone should have Opportunist (because else mages can just kite your meleers) and Executioner should not be in the game or at least heavily nerfed because half of the use of armor is too block debuffs.
Pretty much very melee class starts with opportunist, and pretty much all melee enemies, (and summons), also have it.
Mages can't kite your melees, because your melees should have opportunist.

Executioner? Are you refering to torturer? Executioner has nothing to do with status effects.
Torturer only applies damage effects, (and Worm Tremor, which is crazy good and should probably be changed).
Yes half the point of armor is to block status effects, and the point of torturer is to play around that, just like the point of duck,duck,goose is to avoid opportunity attacks.


It's not the fact that they can use it. It's the fact that it's objectively the best choice no matter what your build is.
No it isn't. This is an objectively wrong statement.



It's mathematically better than scoundrel for rogues.
How so? Scoundrel adds both extra movement and higher damage, and rogues should be critting all the time.
And warfare doesn't work with extra elemental damage for the daggers that have them, (not that important). I'm also not sure if it works with piercing damage.


It's better than huntsman for archers.
It's different than huntsman for archers. If you have high ground then huntsman is always better.



It's better than necromancy for necromancers.
It does something completely different than necromancy. Yes blood mages should have more warfare than necromancy, because that's how they deal damage. Dealing loads of damage is more important than loads of life drain.
Necromancy is like polymorph in that it's not the kind of skill you tend to max, you just take a couple points based on your build.


And this is after the nerf.
Definitive edition is a fix, how it worked before is irrelevant to the discussion.



Executioner is good, but the pawn is better for most characters so I don't consider it that good.
Executioner gives 2 AP on a turn where you kill someone, which for most characters is about every other turn, at least. Pawn grants you 1 AP that can only be used on a specific thing, that often won't matter because your teleport gets you where you want to be. Also it does nothing if you are within attack of opportunity range unless you have duck-duck-goose.
If you spend 1 AP on moving, but then kill someone, Executioner is better.

On rogues it can be argued which of Executioner and The Pawn is most powerful. On pretty much every other build the answer is Executioner. Summoner and healer builds are obviously exceptions, being better with the pawn.


You typically only want executioner on one character who is going to stand still like an archer while everyone else takes the pawn.
You want Executioner on pretty much every character, because in this game action economy is king. Why do you think flesh sacrifice is by far the best racial ability?


Anyone who moves in combat will get more use from the pawn.
Anyone who kills enemies in combat will get more use from executioner.



It's more useful for lone wolf characters who are powerful enough to kill someone every single round, but not for normal parties.
Yes, still for normal parties.



Opportunist isn't that great. They can still run away, you just hit them with an attack in exchange. With the pawn you can just close to melee range again for free. Or you can blitz attack or something to close the gap. Between the pawn, wings, and the numerous other teleports available in the game you shouldn't get kited. Opportunist is a good skill, but it's not top tier.
If they try to run away you get an attack that is a free, and they use AP on running away. That's great for action economy.
Unlike pawn/executioner, opportunist is not either or.
On let's say a two handed warfare build what talents would you pick over opportunist besides the aforementioned pawn/executioner, and possibly hothead?

[Ninjaman]

On an unrelated note, I just found out about Divinity: Fallen Heroes.
https://divinityfallenheroes.com/

It seems to be divinity meets XCOM, so I am super excited.

What are everyone else's thoughts?

[Aotrs Commander]

On an unrelated note, I just found out about Divinity: Fallen Heroes.
https://divinityfallenheroes.com/

It seems to be divinity meets XCOM, so I am super excited.

What are everyone else's thoughts?

Maybe more interested if, as it mentioned the Lady Vengeance, it is a direct sequel to D:OS2 with some continuity.

[Anteros]

Pretty much very melee class starts with opportunist, and pretty much all melee enemies, (and summons), also have it.
Mages can't kite your melees, because your melees should have opportunist.

Executioner? Are you refering to torturer? Executioner has nothing to do with status effects.
Torturer only applies damage effects, (and Worm Tremor, which is crazy good and should probably be changed).
Yes half the point of armor is to block status effects, and the point of torturer is to play around that, just like the point of duck,duck,goose is to avoid opportunity attacks.


No it isn't. This is an objectively wrong statement.



How so? Scoundrel adds both extra movement and higher damage, and rogues should be critting all the time.
And warfare doesn't work with extra elemental damage for the daggers that have them, (not that important). I'm also not sure if it works with piercing damage.


It's different than huntsman for archers. If you have high ground then huntsman is always better.



It does something completely different than necromancy. Yes blood mages should have more warfare than necromancy, because that's how they deal damage. Dealing loads of damage is more important than loads of life drain.
Necromancy is like polymorph in that it's not the kind of skill you tend to max, you just take a couple points based on your build.


Definitive edition is a fix, how it worked before is irrelevant to the discussion.



Executioner gives 2 AP on a turn where you kill someone, which for most characters is about every other turn, at least. Pawn grants you 1 AP that can only be used on a specific thing, that often won't matter because your teleport gets you where you want to be. Also it does nothing if you are within attack of opportunity range unless you have duck-duck-goose.
If you spend 1 AP on moving, but then kill someone, Executioner is better.

On rogues it can be argued which of Executioner and The Pawn is most powerful. On pretty much every other build the answer is Executioner. Summoner and healer builds are obviously exceptions, being better with the pawn.


You want Executioner on pretty much every character, because in this game action economy is king. Why do you think flesh sacrifice is by far the best racial ability?


Anyone who kills enemies in combat will get more use from executioner.



Yes, still for normal parties.



If they try to run away you get an attack that is a free, and they use AP on running away. That's great for action economy.
Unlike pawn/executioner, opportunist is not either or.
On let's say a two handed warfare build what talents would you pick over opportunist besides the aforementioned pawn/executioner, and possibly hothead?

I mean this in the nicest possible way, but you don't know what you're talking about. Warfare always does more damage than scoundrel, huntsman, etc. It just does. That's how it works and there's a ton of math to back that up. Feel free to look at any of the many reddit threads or other sources if you're interested. The +5% from each level of warfare is calculated differently than the +5% from other sources. If you don't believe me go load up your game, give a character 2 daggers, stand behind an enemy, and test 10 scoundrel vs 10 warfare. The warfare build will do more damage by a significant margin.

If every single one of your characters is killing at least one target every other turn you must be playing on easy, so I'm not sure why you're weighing in about optimization anyway. There are quite a few fights in this game with a smaller number of very tanky foes. In fact, these are typically the more difficult ones. You don't need the extra help on the fights where you're mowing through minions anyway.

On a 2 handed build? It really depends on what you're trying to do and how much you want to break the game. Opportunist is a fine talent, but it doesn't prevent things from running from you. It just adds damage when they do. CC and gap closers are what prevent you from getting kited. Opportunist isn't that useful if you're playing properly, because proper play ensures the enemy doesn't get a turn to run away in the first place.

[Ninjaman]

I mean this in the nicest possible way, but you don't know what you're talking about. Warfare always does more damage than scoundrel, huntsman, etc. It just does. That's how it works and there's a ton of math to back that up. Feel free to look at any of the many reddit threads or other sources if you're interested.
You could at least have thrown a link to something.



The +5% from each level of warfare is calculated differently than the +5% from other sources. If you don't believe me go load up your game, give a character 2 daggers, stand behind an enemy, and test 10 scoundrel vs 10 warfare. The warfare build will do more damage by a significant margin.
You are right that warfare is multiplicative while the weapon abilities are additive. I wrongly assumed they were all additive because the descriptions of each don't indicate that there is any difference between how the two function.

It should be noted that it's not different than all the other sources, pyro/hydro/geo/aero all work the same way.

Damage is calculated: [Weapon Damage]*(1+[Attribute Bonus]+[Weapon Ability Bonus])*(1+)

[S]Huntsman notes that it is applied after all other bonuses, after a google search I didn't find any explanation, but I assumes this means it is another (1+[Huntsman]) multiplied on. If it is like this then while having high ground it doesn't matter if you take ranged or warfare:
50*(1+0.4) = 70

But the most optimal actually becomes a 50/50 split.
50*(1+0.2)*(1+0.2) = 72
Might be wrong because I think huntsman adds to the base +20% height advantage damage. Let me try that again.

So at 8 ability points warfare is:
50*(1+0.4)*(1+0.2)=84
Huntsman is:
50*1*(1+0.6)=80
In this situation the optimal choice would be 6 warfare 2 huntsman for:
50*(1+0.3)*(1+0.3)=84.5

Huntsman also might work with the damage from elemental arrows and special arrows, though I'm not sure.


You are, however, correct that warfare deals more damage for a rogue.
50*(1+0.4)*1.5 = 105
50*1.9 = 95

This is true because crit starts as a 1.5 modifier instead of a 1 modifier. If you manage to get over 10 warfare due to gear it actually starts getting better to take some point is scoundrel.

This of course doesn't factor in that scoundrel grants bonus mobility.

And of course even if it is optimal to take more points in warfare and just take the other abilities for the skills, in no way does that actually make warfare overpowered.


If every single one of your characters is killing at least one target every other turn you must be playing on easy, so I'm not sure why you're weighing in about optimization anyway. There are quite a few fights in this game with a smaller number of very tanky foes. In fact, these are typically the more difficult ones. You don't need the extra help on the fights where you're mowing through minions anyway.
I'm currently level 11 on my tactician playthrough, and I think that's about how it tends to go. I'm not sure if you're playing the same game, because this game is really fast. It might not be exactly a kill every second turn each, but it's not far off. If I'm fighting 4 on 6 I wouldn't expect it to last more than 3-4 turns.



On a 2 handed build? It really depends on what you're trying to do and how much you want to break the game. Opportunist is a fine talent, but it doesn't prevent things from running from you. It just adds damage when they do. CC and gap closers are what prevent you from getting kited. Opportunist isn't that useful if you're playing properly, because proper play ensures the enemy doesn't get a turn to run away in the first place.
I asked what talents you would pick over opportunist.
I do not see a single talent mentioned in this paragraph.
Please respond to my actual question.

[Thomas Cardew]

You are right that warfare is multiplicative while the weapon abilities are additive. I wrongly assumed they were all additive because the descriptions of each don't indicate that there is any difference between how the two function.

It should be noted that it's not different than all the other sources, pyro/hydro/geo/aero all work the same way.

Damage is calculated: [Weapon Damage]*(1+[Attribute Bonus]+[Weapon Ability Bonus])*(1+)

Damage = (Base Damage) x (1 + Elemental Bonus%) x (1 + Attribute Bonus% + Weapon Skill Bonus% + Misc Bonuses% [if attack]) x (1 + High Ground Bonus% + Crit Bonus%) x ( 1 x Misc Bonus% [if spell])

The Crit and High ground bonus only get counted if they flag true.



[S]Huntsman notes that it is applied after all other bonuses, after a google search I didn't find any explanation, but I assumes this means it is another (1+[Huntsman]) multiplied on. If it is like this then while having high ground it doesn't matter if you take ranged or warfare:
50*(1+0.4) = 70

But the most optimal actually becomes a 50/50 split.
50*(1+0.2)*(1+0.2) = 72
Might be wrong because I think huntsman adds to the base +20% height advantage damage. Let me try that again.

So at 8 ability points warfare is:
50*(1+0.4)*(1+0.2)=84
Huntsman is:
50*1*(1+0.6)=80
In this situation the optimal choice would be 6 warfare 2 huntsman for:
50*(1+0.3)*(1+0.3)=84.5

Huntsman also might work with the damage from elemental arrows and special arrows, though I'm not sure.


Huntsman works for all damage types so it would increase the magic damage from elemental arrows. But that doesn't really matter for a physical damage based character since you want to maximize physical damage to break armor over splitting damage types. The free high ground bonus means you always want your huntsman skill to lag behind warfare. Assuming your 20% base is correct, you'd always want huntsman 4 points behind warfare to optimize damage. Except that warfare is more reliable since it is ALWAYS on, where as the huntsman bonus is removed if you're on the same level.



I asked what talents you would pick over opportunist.
I do not see a single talent mentioned in this paragraph.
Please respond to my actual question.

Anything that helps you alphastrike harder. You want to focus one target, and either kill them or break their armor and cc them so they can't act and then kill them. Both of which make opportunist superfluous. Off the top of my head, (0) Lone Wolf or Glass Cannon if you're choosing to play that way.

(1) Hothead. 10% accuracy removes the automatic 5% chance to miss or lets you use a higher level weapon without penalty which is ridiculous damage boost. +10% crit chance is amazing. This will let you burn 1 target faster over maybe damaging 1-2.

(2) The Pawn or Executioner. The Pawn is a consistent free 1 AP in movement per turn allowing you to focus on the enemy you want to attack. Executioner is an inconsistent free 2 ap/ extra attack. Rogues realllly want the Pawn to be able to backstab every turn.

(3) Living Armour triggers off lifesteal/necromancy. Melees are more likely to be in plate and lack magic armor, this synergizes with hothead to make sure you always have that damage boost/ can't be cc'ed by magic.

(4) Torturer if playing a rogue so you can apply ruptured tendons through armor.

Less damage focused, there's a strong case for taking Pet Pal on your melees since they have to be next to people to hit them, they might as well do your talking. There's also a strong case for taking All Skilled Up on your melees early since the extra civil point in Lucky Charm or Thievery gives you faster and easier access to funds, skill books, and gear. And gear is by far the most important stat in the game. And melees get less out of talents than mages or archers.

Opportunist is a great talent. However, it only really works against mages. Other melees are likely to just hit your melee, or use a gap closer to get to your ranged avoiding the AOO. A lot of ranger enemies get the Duck Duck Goose talent, so you'll miss anyway. Or they'll jump away with tactical retreat.

[Spore]

I switched my battlemage to sword and board as well. With my still poor gear Beast simply dances the line of live and death too often.

Slotted Frost Armor, another Geomancy enhance on Ifan and will probs give Ifan full on Con next level up.

I then need to spec into hard CC. MC will probs pickup Chicken Claw since I really struggle with tanky bruisers. Other than that I need another Source of blinds on my characters other than Beast's Radiant whatever

[Ninjaman]

Damage = (Base Damage) x (1 + Elemental Bonus%) x (1 + Attribute Bonus% + Weapon Skill Bonus% + Misc Bonuses% [if attack]) x (1 + High Ground Bonus% + Crit Bonus%) x ( 1 x Misc Bonus% [if spell])

The Crit and High ground bonus only get counted if they flag true.

High ground and crit are additive with eachother? That seems really weird. Do you have a source for this?



Huntsman works for all damage types so it would increase the magic damage from elemental arrows. But that doesn't really matter for a physical damage based character since you want to maximize physical damage to break armor over splitting damage types.
You will usually deal physical damage, but sometimes elemental damage and special arrows are worth it, especially if you also have magic damage dealers on your team.



Anything that helps you alphastrike harder. You want to focus one target, and either kill them or break their armor and cc them so they can't act and then kill them. Both of which make opportunist superfluous. Off the top of my head, (0) Lone Wolf or Glass Cannon if you're choosing to play that way.

(1) Hothead. 10% accuracy removes the automatic 5% chance to miss or lets you use a higher level weapon without penalty which is ridiculous damage boost. +10% crit chance is amazing. This will let you burn 1 target faster over maybe damaging 1-2.

(2) The Pawn or Executioner. The Pawn is a consistent free 1 AP in movement per turn allowing you to focus on the enemy you want to attack. Executioner is an inconsistent free 2 ap/ extra attack. Rogues realllly want the Pawn to be able to backstab every turn.

(3) Living Armour triggers off lifesteal/necromancy. Melees are more likely to be in plate and lack magic armor, this synergizes with hothead to make sure you always have that damage boost/ can't be cc'ed by magic.

(4) Torturer if playing a rogue so you can apply ruptured tendons through armor.
You don't seem to have read the question that lead up to this. I mentioned pawn/executioner and hothead,

Unlike pawn/executioner, opportunist is not either or.
On let's say a two handed warfare build what talents would you pick over opportunist besides the aforementioned pawn/executioner, and possibly hothead?

So torturer for rogue doesn't count. (And doesn't ruptured tendons go though armor always?)
Lone wolf and glass cannon are good, but they're quite build around.
So living armor is the only suggestion out of these, but that only really works if you're making a deathknight build.


Less damage focused, there's a strong case for taking Pet Pal on your melees since they have to be next to people to hit them, they might as well do your talking.
Taking pet pal would be fine, but that's assuming you'd want pet pal, and that you don't take them on someone else.


There's also a strong case for taking All Skilled Up on your melees early since the extra civil point in Lucky Charm or Thievery gives you faster and easier access to funds, skill books, and gear. And gear is by far the most important stat in the game. And melees get less out of talents than mages or archers.
All skilled up is decent, but I suspect you'd get more out of your opportunity attacks than you'd get from those two skill.
The money you gain from lucky charm will become less and less relevant the longer the game goes on, and I wouldn't take it before Executioner and Hothead, so that's not until level 8 you can take it, which is at the end of act 1.


Opportunist is a great talent. However, it only really works against mages. Other melees are likely to just hit your melee, or use a gap closer to get to your ranged avoiding the AOO.
If they hit your melee that's fine, they're doing what you want them to be doing. They might have already used their gap closer, they only have one usually. If they close with your ranged then your ranged pops off and you close with them again.


A lot of ranger enemies get the Duck Duck Goose talent, so you'll miss anyway.
I don't think I've ever noticed an enemy having duck duck goose, can you come with some examples?


Or they'll jump away with tactical retreat.
That's assuming they didn't already use retreat to get into position.

[Anteros]

Anything is better than opportunist because if your melee is next to someone they should be CCed anyway. Bigger and better, hothead, all skilled up, pawn, executioner, and what a rush are all better than opportunist for damage dealing. If opportunist procs, you did something wrong.

[Spore]

Anything is better than opportunist because if your melee is next to someone they should be CCed anyway. Bigger and better, hothead, all skilled up, pawn, executioner, and what a rush are all better than opportunist for damage dealing. If opportunist procs, you did something wrong.

If you play it blind and arent the greatest tactician, things WILL go wrong. Yes, "white" damage is not the best effect but opportunist helps in the early game.

[Ninjaman]

Anything is better than opportunist because if your melee is next to someone they should be CCed anyway.
Why? Why not CC everyone else? The guy next to your melee guy is the guy you have to worry the least about. That's the guy you can CC last.


hothead, pawn, executioner
Already mentioned, I asked about other talents.


Bigger and better, all skilled up
If opportunist triggers once during a battle then it is better than a 5% damage increase unless you are making 20 attacks during a combat.


and what a rush
Are anyone actually using what a rush?
In order to be under 50% health you'll probably have either all your physical or magical armor stripped away, at which point you should either be CCed, or dead within a few actions.



If opportunist procs, you did something wrong.
If you define that to be true then opportunity is certainly bad, but that's not a very strong


Oh yeah, I also forgot to mention that opportunist hits chickens. And frightened enemies.

[Anteros]

Why? Why not CC everyone else? The guy next to your melee guy is the guy you have to worry the least about. That's the guy you can CC last.


Already mentioned, I asked about other talents.


If opportunist triggers once during a battle then it is better than a 5% damage increase unless you are making 20 attacks during a combat.


Are anyone actually using what a rush?
In order to be under 50% health you'll probably have either all your physical or magical armor stripped away, at which point you should either be CCed, or dead within a few actions.



If you define that to be true then opportunity is certainly bad, but that's not a very strong


Oh yeah, I also forgot to mention that opportunist hits chickens. And frightened enemies.

You do CC everyone else. You cc the guys next to your melee as well. There's approximately 40,000 movement skills in the game and no guarantee that the enemy will target your tank. Ignoring an enemy because it's in melee range is startlingly bad strategy.

If opportunist triggers once a battle then it's probably worth it. However, if opportunist is triggering once a battle you're not using crowd control effectively.

What a rush is amazing. Less than half health does not mean no armor. Entering combat with half health and full armor gives extra AP with negligible effect on survivability. If you're relying on HP you've already messed up. HP is useless. Once your armor is gone you're just going to get CCed and bursted regardless.

[Ninjaman]

You do CC everyone else. You cc the guys next to your melee as well.
A lot of the time you can't CC everyone all the time. That is when prioritizing comes in.


There's approximately 40,000 movement skills in the game
No there isn't. I know you're trying to use hyperbole for effect, but it's not working.
Most enemies will have only one movement skill. If they've already used it then opportunist will be relevant.


and no guarantee that the enemy will target your tank.
If they don't attack your tank and they have already used their movement skill then they take the hit.


Ignoring an enemy because it's in melee range is startlingly bad strategy.
No one said ignoring, I said focus on the other opponents first.


If opportunist triggers once a battle then it's probably worth it. However, if opportunist is triggering once a battle you're not using crowd control effectively.
Yes you are, you are keeping half their team CCed while you fight the other half. That's perfectly legitimate and opportunist is relevant for it.


What a rush is amazing. Less than half health does not mean no armor. Entering combat with half health and full armor gives extra AP with negligible effect on survivability.
I think for some people that would fall under the definition of cheese.
It is definitely a play style choice, one that seems obnoxious to pull off, so you can't blame people for not doing it.


If you're relying on HP you've already messed up. HP is useless. Once your armor is gone you're just going to get CCed and bursted regardless.
You're extremely good at making assertions that your play style is the only correct play style, and extremely bad at actually backing those assertions up.


In my last post I mentioned that Opportunist also works well with chicken claw and frightening effects, are you planning on addressing that argument?

[Anteros]

A lot of the time you can't CC everyone all the time. That is when prioritizing comes in.


You can pretty much always CC everyone with a decent build and correct play. It may require actually paying attention to the enemy move order though instead of arbitrarily ignoring the ones closest to your melee, so you may struggle to do so. I can only think of a few exceptions to this and they're mostly big bosses or fights where the enemies start so far away they have to waste turns to get to you anyway.



No there isn't. I know you're trying to use hyperbole for effect, but it's not working.
Most enemies will have only one movement skill. If they've already used it then opportunist will be relevant.

Well, it's not working because you're less than halfway through the game and you think you know everything. Despite the fact that I've pointed out several things you've been objectively wrong about. Play how you want. The game is easy enough to get through with sub-par builds.



If they don't attack your tank and they have already used their movement skill then they take the hit.


No they don't. Because they're CCed. And lots of enemies have more than one movement ability. Enemy warriors with both phoenix dive as well as blitz attack are extremely common for example. Rogues will have backslash and shadow step at minimum. Enemies with wings can fly every turn. This idea you have that enemies will only use 1 movement ability per fight each is simply untrue.


No one said ignoring, I said focus on the other opponents first.

Which is the same thing if you're focusing on others long enough to give them a turn.


Yes you are, you are keeping half their team CCed while you fight the other half. That's perfectly legitimate and opportunist is relevant for it.

It works for some fights. Some fights will punish you for this. I'm sure you can get through them anyway.


I think for some people that would fall under the definition of cheese.
It is definitely a play style choice, one that seems obnoxious to pull off, so you can't blame people for not doing it.

So you arbitrarily don't like it so it doesn't count. Ok.


You're extremely good at making assertions that your play style is the only correct play style, and extremely bad at actually backing those assertions up.

My playstyle is far from the only correct play style. You can get through the game with lots of sub-optimal choices. That's a completely different conversation than the one we're having where you stated your own opinions as fact and challenged me to disprove them. Now you're trying to reverse our positions.



In my last post I mentioned that Opportunist also works well with chicken claw and frightening effects, are you planning on addressing that argument?

I don't understand why you think I have to respond to every single bad argument you make. Extra damage on already CCed enemies is the least important thing in the world. There's absolutely no reason you should ever let them out of the CC once they're in it no matter how many turns it takes to kill them. Chicken clawed enemies don't move on their first turn as a chicken anyway, so opportunist is rarely ever going to be relevant. I can't think of any skills available to the player that even apply frighten, but the same concept about applying extra damage to CCed targets being a waste would apply anyway.

[Ninjaman]

You can pretty much always CC everyone with a decent build and correct play.
And now we're back to your build being the only build.


It may require actually paying attention to the enemy move order though instead of arbitrarily ignoring the ones closest to your melee, so you may struggle to do so.
Persuasion Failure! Your Persuasion: 0, Needed: 3


I can only think of a few exceptions to this and they're mostly big bosses or fights where the enemies start so far away they have to waste turns to get to you anyway.
Just because you can CC everyone every turn with a build focused on doing so doesn't mean that is the only build worth anything.


Well, it's not working because you're less than halfway through the game
I'm less than halfway through the game on tactician, I've beaten the game on classic.


and you think you know everything.
No I don't, I'm simply arguing that you don't and that there are several, all valid, ways of playing the game.


Despite the fact that I've pointed out several things you've been objectively wrong about.
Yes I haven't thoroughly studied how all the game mechanics work, must render all arguments I make useless then.


Play how you want. The game is easy enough to get through with sub-par builds.
Aka builds that are different from your god-tier mastermind build.

If a build is good enough to win the game then the build is good enough to win the game, easy as that.
Saying "No, you're playing it wrong because this build wins the game more" doesn't achieve anything.


No they don't. Because they're CCed.
Only if you choose to play heavy CC, which you don't need to.


And lots of enemies have more than one movement ability. Enemy warriors with both phoenix dive as well as blitz attack are extremely common for example. Rogues will have backslash and shadow step at minimum.
Blitz attack and backslash aren't move abilities, they are attacks that teleport you. They won't get you away if there are no other targets within range, which there won't be if your ranged is on high ground and your melees are in their face.


Enemies with wings can fly every turn.
What I said obviously didn't apply to enemies with wings.


This idea you have that enemies will only use 1 movement ability per fight each is simply untrue.
Many enemies will only use one.


Which is the same thing if you're focusing on others long enough to give them a turn.
No it isn't. I'll get back to them. They won't kill me in a turn.


It works for some fights. Some fights will punish you for this. I'm sure you can get through them anyway.
I'm sure I can, after all D2OS is actually designed in such a way that there are more builds


So you arbitrarily don't like it so it doesn't count. Ok.
That's not what I said. I said some people will consider it cheese. You can also easily win many rough encounters by sneaking to place explosives and triggering them all, but don't tell me that's not cheesy.
And don't tell me green tea isn't cheesy either.

I think you are correct that it can be powerful, but like glass cannon it is something you need to build particularly for, which probably isn't something you want to do on your first classic play through, which is what Sporeeg was on.

You can use it, and it can be powerful, but you can also choose not to use it simply due to it being too much of a hassle.


My playstyle is far from the only correct play style. You can get through the game with lots of sub-optimal choices.
On the bright side this doesn't at all make you look like a arrogant jerk.

[/QUOTE]That's a completely different conversation than the one we're having where you stated your own opinions as fact and challenged me to disprove them. Now you're trying to reverse our positions.[/QUOTE]
You're describing yourself quite well in this paragraph.
You were the one trying to paint opportunist as useless and your style of playing as the only way, I'm just offering alternatives.


I don't understand why you think I have to respond to every single bad argument you make. Extra damage on already CCed enemies is the least important thing in the world. There's absolutely no reason you should ever let them out of the CC once they're in it no matter how many turns it takes to kill them.
And here it is yet another time, the "any build that isn't my CC build is bad" argument. And it's just as good as it was when you first made it.


Chicken clawed enemies don't move on their first turn as a chicken anyway, so opportunist is rarely ever going to be relevant.
Um, yes it does, what is your source for this?
It does sometimes not move, but it doesn't seem to be consistently the first turn it is chicken clawed.


I can't think of any skills available to the player that even apply frighten, but the same concept about applying extra damage to CCed targets being a waste would apply anyway.
Terrifying Cruelty and Terrify off Summon Inner Demon.
I thought you were supposed to know this game.

[druid91]

So I just recently discovered the instakill that is shackles of pain + undead + healing potions.

It has really helped with making my main character a heavy hitter.

[Thomas Cardew]

So I just recently discovered the instakill that is shackles of pain + undead + healing potions.

It has really helped with making my main character a heavy hitter.

There's some cool interactions like that. Fun fact, there used to be an infinite damage combo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6toBFm70_E&feature=youtu.be) till Larian patched it.

[Ninjaman]

I think my favorite interaction is that the necromancy surface for elemental affinity is blood, and Flesh Sacrifice makes blood underneath you, meaning elves can turn it on while gaining one AP.

[Aotrs Commander]

I think my favorite interaction is that the necromancy surface for elemental affinity is blood, and Flesh Sacrifice makes blood underneath you, meaning elves can turn it on while gaining one AP.

Following it by freeing it.

Nothing better than having a battle field of frozen ice and blood.



Y'know, except the enormous tedium of the Voidwoken making everything a cursed surface, so that even if you have bless, it doesn't matter, because you can never remove enough curses.

"Hey, here's a load of interesting tactical options you can use, which is pretty unique compared to almost all the other games out there, combined with a really good tactical combat system! Oh, but by the way, in a significant fraction of all battles, all of them are worse than useless! Oh, and sometimes, we'll use a cut-scene to make a fight as cheap as possible by taking away deployment and thus actual tactical control for the sake of making it Nintendo hard!"

[Anteros]

Following it by freeing it.

Nothing better than having a battle field of frozen ice and blood.



Y'know, except the enormous tedium of the Voidwoken making everything a cursed surface, so that even if you have bless, it doesn't matter, because you can never remove enough curses.

"Hey, here's a load of interesting tactical options you can use, which is pretty unique compared to almost all the other games out there, combined with a really good tactical combat system! Oh, but by the way, in a significant fraction of all battles, all of them are worse than useless! Oh, and sometimes, we'll use a cut-scene to make a fight as cheap as possible by taking away deployment and thus actual tactical control for the sake of making it Nintendo hard!"

Yeah, a lot of the difficulty from the game comes from "gotcha" moments or arbitrarily being put into very poor tactical positions at the start of fights. Future playthroughs are practically easy mode as a result. I wish it wasn't that way, but I'm sure Larian did their best.

I do agree that enemies that bleed curse is a bad design. The terrain system is actually interesting, but you rarely see any of it besides fire or cursed surfaces. Good surfaces should be much more common, although you'd have to nerf some of them. Get rid of the invisibility from blessed steam entirely for example. Or just get rid of invisibility altogether. The AI can't handle it at all.

[druid91]

It was actually kind of funny. I ended up with a strange whirlpool of fire lag in the fight to kill Gareths buddy.

The Oil Voidspawn appeared and we ended up with a massive field of cursed oil that got ignited during the fight. Leading to a massive field of cursed fire....

Only because I bluffed my way past the guards, one of the primordial Voidspawn went over to kill them instead. So in order to get off our platform. We double blessed the fire. Creating Blessed fire. Which spread out from that point to then engulf the Voidspawn which hurt them, which unblessed and cursed the fire. Which flowed out from there.

Which lead to the holy fire expanding into the Necroflame and vis versa in a loop that took ages to resolve and froze the game, but looked awesome.

[Spore]

Geez, I enter chapter 4 now and after the rebuild, damn does the gameplay flow suddenly. My "healer" became a pure DPS hydromancer now since I have accepted the futility of focussing on healing infights. Ifan became a tad sturdier and got summons to distract from his frail body (make no mistake he is still the first to die), and Beast focusses on Warfare now with utility borrowed from Aeromancy. Red Prince still has the setup of Warfare/Geomancy. I planned on going Pyro because of Phoenix Dive but apparently that is a Warfare skill.

[Anteros]

Geez, I enter chapter 4 now and after the rebuild, damn does the gameplay flow suddenly. My "healer" became a pure DPS hydromancer now since I have accepted the futility of focussing on healing infights. Ifan became a tad sturdier and got summons to distract from his frail body (make no mistake he is still the first to die), and Beast focusses on Warfare now with utility borrowed from Aeromancy. Red Prince still has the setup of Warfare/Geomancy. I planned on going Pyro because of Phoenix Dive but apparently that is a Warfare skill.

This sounds very similar to my first playthrough. I used the same characters and the same builds, except I had Ifan as a dagger rogue instead of an archer/summoner.

[Spore]

This sounds very similar to my first playthrough. I used the same characters and the same builds, except I had Ifan as a dagger rogue instead of an archer/summoner.

It even feels a bit cheap but usually my hydromancer goes first, punches through magic armor and freezes 1-3 targets (with Ice Fan and Hail Strike, you trigger 6x Chilling, which usually is enough to freeze everybody).

[Ninjaman]

It even feels a bit cheap but usually my hydromancer goes first, punches through magic armor and freezes 1-3 targets (with Ice Fan and Hail Strike, you trigger 6x Chilling, which usually is enough to freeze everybody).

They both require 3 AP, right?

[Anteros]

They both require 3 AP, right?

Typically you'd move your character on water so they cost 2 each. Which is why basically every caster wants elemental affinity+the pawn.

[Spore]

They both require 3 AP, right?

4 AP + elf (+1AP, +10% dmg), + adrenaline (2 AP) = 7 AP. so I usually can move into position, and cast both without pawn as the rest of my talents is used for Hot-Head, Savage Sortilege and Executioner (which negates Pawn anyway).

[Anteros]

4 AP + elf (+1AP, +10% dmg), + adrenaline (2 AP) = 7 AP. so I usually can move into position, and cast both without pawn as the rest of my talents is used for Hot-Head, Savage Sortilege and Executioner (which negates Pawn anyway).

I assumed you were using Lohse for some reason. Yeah the elf racial negates the need for the pawn in a lot of builds. Not that it's not still good.

[Spore]

I assumed you were using Lohse for some reason. Yeah the elf racial negates the need for the pawn in a lot of builds. Not that it's not still good.

Was considering it but the mad ramblings where too annoying to me. I will do a "chick-flick" playthrough with both girls, a female MC tank and probs Ifan as rogue afterwards.

Just to poke fun at the lack of romance options, it will be exactly like a chick-flick only with loads more murder. Tank will probs be warfare/necro, Sebille will be the frosty 'female dog', Lohse might go pyromancer (madness and burning go so well together and Ifan will not be the charming rural boy at all.

[Aotrs Commander]

Just to poke fun at the lack of romance options

The... lack... of romance options...?

I mean, I was using Lohse on my playthrough and there was... sex with Fane... *thousand yard stare* and I'm pretty sure Red Prince was an option which I didn't explore (in addition to Sebille's actual romance) and, frankly, Fane got the most action throughout the game, which was... Slightly disturbing.

I mean, I sort of got the impression that at least Ifann might have been an option, and I would be surprised if Beast was excluded (no, a check indicates all origin characters are options for anyone) and so, I'm not sure how "you can literally romance anyone in the party" can qualify as... a lack of options...?

Frankly, I'm not sure, speaking as a Lich, that at least one of those options was one more than was strictly necessary.

*thousand yard stare*

*eyeglow twitch*

*eyeglow twitch*

*shudder*



Also, fair warning? If all the...culminations... are like the one I played through, D:OS2 manages to be way more explict than, say Witcher 3, without the least bit of nudity.

[Spacewolf]

I honestly didn't know there were romance options in this game until I saw it on here.

[Keltest]

After the Nameless Isle, you have the option to invite any companion to spend some, ah, personal time with you. If you've been doing their quests and generally being nice to them, they will accept, otherwise they will brush you off. After that the game will treat you as romantically involved, and they'll have a few dialogue changes to suggest that they have plans with you once the stave off the apocalypse.

You can also flirt with a few companions (ifan and Lohse come to mind) before then, but I don't believe it specifically affects anything beyond just being positive attention.

[Ninjaman]

Typically you'd move your character on water so they cost 2 each. Which is why basically every caster wants elemental affinity+the pawn.
Doesn't that require there to be water in advance, or can you usually cast rain before the battle begins?

Basically every caster? Necromancer and Hydrosophist obviously, poison seems good for undeads unless it's set on fire, but oil, fire and I guess electrified water all seem pretty awkward.

[Keltest]

Doesn't that require there to be water in advance, or can you usually cast rain before the battle begins?

Basically every caster? Necromancer and Hydrosophist obviously, poison seems good for undeads unless it's set on fire, but oil, fire and I guess electrified water all seem pretty awkward.

Mages with high magic armor don't worry about surfaces so much, especially if you make an effort to give them resistance to their favored element. Oil can be annoying for geomancers, but if you position yourself well they don't need to move that much, and anything that wants to close to melee with you is going to have a bad time. More problematic is when your oil and poison combust and take away your elemental affinity bonus.

[Anteros]

Doesn't that require there to be water in advance, or can you usually cast rain before the battle begins?

Basically every caster? Necromancer and Hydrosophist obviously, poison seems good for undeads unless it's set on fire, but oil, fire and I guess electrified water all seem pretty awkward.

I can't speak for Sporeegg but my hydrophist's first turn usually goes something like
rain (3 ap left and makes enemies take more water damage and easier to freeze)
walk to puddle (still 3 ap)
adrenaline (5 ap)
ice fan (3 ap left),
hail (1 ap left),
global cooling. Everything is frozen, enemies that aren't stunned have a chance to slip.

When they unfreeze I'll hit them with aero spells. The first one will electrify the water and give me that bonus too.

[Aotrs Commander]

My team would usually just sidle up to just out of combat initiation range and then liberally coat every surface with water and/or blood before wading in.



Also, if you get all OCD about picking up oil barrels (that oil-barrel maker you find? I blized everywhere for empty barrels and used magic pockets to load the Lady Vengeance's rear room four-high, most of which I never used) you can have some enormous fun occasionally with TK (I didn't spend any points, but like the first game, I carefulyl squirreled away a set of items to swap to for certain skills).

[Spore]

The... lack... of romance options...?

I mean, I was using Lohse on my playthrough and there was... sex with Fane... *thousand yard stare* and I'm pretty sure Red Prince was an option which I didn't explore (in addition to Sebille's actual romance) and, frankly, Fane got the most action throughout the game, which was... Slightly disturbing.

I mean, I sort of got the impression that at least Ifann might have been an option, and I would be surprised if Beast was excluded (no, a check indicates all origin characters are options for anyone) and so, I'm not sure how "you can literally romance anyone in the party" can qualify as... a lack of options...?

Also, fair warning? If all the...culminations... are like the one I played through, D:OS2 manages to be way more explict than, say Witcher 3, without the least bit of nudity.

So Fane is hust Shädman* confirmed?

*Said artist is known for having a sekelton man avatar and drawing lewd pics of anything. I do not hold responsibility for emotional damage caused by googling anything linked to him

[avensis]

I like RPGs and turn-based fights, but I have never been able to hang on to this game. I would prefer to control only my character during the fighting.
Every time I play, I leave a part and I always stop at the same places 2 hours later. There is a lot of interesting things in this game, unfortunately it does not hang on me.

[Ninjaman]

I like RPGs and turn-based fights, but I have never been able to hang on to this game. I would prefer to control only my character during the fighting.
And have your allies controlled by the computer? That sounds dreadful.