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Divinity: Original Sin 2 |OT| Dragons & Dungeon Mastering
- Thread starter Plumpbiscuit
- Start date
texhnolyze
Banned
Yeah, it's essential indeed. To add, make sure that you put pet pal on your highest persuasion character.
Even if your MC doesn't take Pet Pal, Ifan is right there. No excuse! He's also human, and they have the best racial abilities imo.
Pancakes
hot, steaming, as melted butter slips into the cracks, drizzled with sticky sweet syrup OH GOD
First game was a slog, there is denying this. Coming from someone who has over 200 hours in OG and EE combined. This game is not like that with the exception of Act 4. It's a huge improvement.
180 hours in and I agree with all of this.
loganclaws
Plane Escape Torment
How?? I'm 73 hours in and still on the first island! Playing on tactician.
Metroidvania
People called Romanes they go the house?
balance/mods to watch for said:
These 3 definitely stick out to me as areas for improvement, for sure.
The civil skills especially, as seeing as one character specializes in lucky charm, another in persuasion, etc...
That, and a non-cheat engine speed/run hack would be aces.
texhnolyze
Banned
Is there a runes vendor in Act 4?
I'm running out of masterwork runes with all of these socketed uniques.
I'm running out of masterwork runes with all of these socketed uniques.
Ryzaki009
Member
Agreed especially on the
Final Fight. To make it worse I had eaten every single of of his adds souls. I thought I'd be rewarded for perma killing them earlier but instead they just show up in the final battle with absolutely no explanation. That was garbage. It's like they rushed the 4th chapter and it shows. Hopefully they'll get around to giving it the same love and attention the first 3 chapters got because it was a shame for the quality to take such a steep hit in that final stretch. Still love the game tho.
And yeah mages got dunked on. It's sad. Lol you think that ending is weird pick refusing to become Divine thinking one of your companions will step up but instead he comes out of nowhere and is like "hahahaha I'm in control now." Like um...huh? I didn't realize we were on a timer? And the fps drops in the city were *shudders* that said I heard some people mentioning the fps drops were related to how many saves you had. I removed a lot of my saves and a lot of the drops went away but that's just another issue. Why is it lagging just because I have a lot of saves? I don't mind the inventory management that much but it could be cleaner. Fuck everything about that hotbar though. Why everything needs to go on it is beyond me. I complained about that in Early Access so it's not like Larian was unaware of that being an issue. Why that was in the game on release baffles me. That said no to nerfing ranger. Leave my OP class alone.
And yeah mages got dunked on. It's sad. Lol you think that ending is weird pick refusing to become Divine thinking one of your companions will step up but instead he comes out of nowhere and is like "hahahaha I'm in control now." Like um...huh? I didn't realize we were on a timer? And the fps drops in the city were *shudders* that said I heard some people mentioning the fps drops were related to how many saves you had. I removed a lot of my saves and a lot of the drops went away but that's just another issue. Why is it lagging just because I have a lot of saves? I don't mind the inventory management that much but it could be cleaner. Fuck everything about that hotbar though. Why everything needs to go on it is beyond me. I complained about that in Early Access so it's not like Larian was unaware of that being an issue. Why that was in the game on release baffles me. That said no to nerfing ranger. Leave my OP class alone.
Primethius
Banned
It's much better. I found the writing in 1 to be quite boring. The main story wasn't that interesting and nor were the sidequests.
Here, the writing is just better across the board. Plus, everything feels like a dense collection of smaller stories tied together which makes flowing from one story to the next or skipping some side stories all together feel much better.
It also helps that they reduced the sheer amount of text they threw at you in dialogue, which was just a snooze to read in the first game. Just paragraph after paragraph of who gives a shit, just stop talking already.
I'm just a bit into Act 2 and honestly, DOS2 is a straight improvement over the first one so far. There's not a single change I've encountered so far that I like less. And it shows.
I grew tired of DOS1 after the first real boss. I'm 70 hours in DOS2 and am only getting more interested.
Reivaxe
Member
Prototype Viktor
Member
i straight up wanted to quit the game (and end up doing it for 3 days) b/c of the quest Running Like Clockwork
Pancakes
hot, steaming, as melted butter slips into the cracks, drizzled with sticky sweet syrup OH GOD
How would you compare the story to say other RPG heavyweights like Witcher 3, Planescape: Torment, Mass Effect, Dragon Age: Origins and Pillars of Eternity? Pillars in particular, while it may have had a gem of a story behind the clutter, I was bogged down by the purple prose and overflowing text. That wasn't the reason I stopped playing it (blame that on the constant combat with trash mobs) but if there was some great story there, it wasn't good enough to keep me playing in spite of my problems with the combat.
Ryzaki009
Member
Yeah that quest becomes so much easier once you realize you can lockpick the doors after the first one.
texhnolyze
Banned
Act 4 quest: Old Means Gold
How do I give the antiques to the NPC? Apparently, I need to sell them to her, but it's just not working. I think I remember a similar quest turn in system in Act 2 and it didn't work either. It's a dumb mechanic, why don't they just let us give the item to the quest givers as usual?
How do I give the antiques to the NPC? Apparently, I need to sell them to her, but it's just not working. I think I remember a similar quest turn in system in Act 2 and it didn't work either. It's a dumb mechanic, why don't they just let us give the item to the quest givers as usual?
Stiler
Member
Well I'm only in act 2, have about 65 or so hours invested but so far I'd put it:
Torment
Witcher 3
Mass Effect 1/2
Divinity OS2
DA:O
Pillars
Mass Effect 3
What really helps it is the writing and the great voice work. Every single npc is voiced, even the animals you can talk to. It's all good voice work as well, it really helps sell the characters you meet and the stories.
The overall story seems more connected as well, not as all over the place or anything. You know your main story and where to go but can still branch off and find a lot of hidden quests and characters to meet.
One thing the game has, even above The Witcher, is how "open" it is in terms of choices and how you can accomplish your objectives.
Early on you are tasked with escaping a place, there's not one, not two, but over 6+ ways to do this, all at your choosing and how you want to do it.
Pancakes
hot, steaming, as melted butter slips into the cracks, drizzled with sticky sweet syrup OH GOD
Act 4 has a lot of broken/unfinished stuff like that. The mechanic worked fine for me but you have to make sure you're selling all 3 things she wants.
Had my first interesting game crash. Was doing a fight in act 2 where necrofire rules the world. I found a small pocket of normal fire and blessed it then retreated to said point. The game began to chug like crazy when my last character got to that point. Before I finished my turn i saw a wave of necrofire come from the opposite side of the map. This necrofire washed over my little blessed bastion and turned it into a sad time. So i click end turn as i'm out of stuff i want to do and it sits there on that character for another 40 seconds then a wave of holy fire comes out of nowhere and all the necrofire is gone. This back and forth goes on for about 10 minutes of doing turns and makes basically no sense at all then the game eventually crashed.
texhnolyze
Banned
She wouldn't even buy anything from me, including the 3 things she requested. Oh well.
Yeah, the game definitely should've axed act 3 and split the essential narrative content between acts 2 and 4. It would've taken a whole bunch of rejiggering, but the unfortunate truth is that 4 acts just ended up being a bit too much to handle.
I do think that they'll get everything ironed out for the inevitable Enhanced Edition, but that's not much use for all of us who played/are playing now.
Prototype Viktor
Member
lol there's images of skulls in the fires in act 3 that i noticed, not sure if it's in all the game
stick with destiny and snes for now, game has quite a lot of bugs. better play the game after its been patched up enough
Prototype Viktor
Member
fuu got a small annoying bug, my MC is at full hp but the game doesn't register it as full, only shows 99% so i can't benefit from Hothead
Sanctuary
Member
I really dislike how the game keeps two or even three of your party members out of combat once combat starts if you separated them, and when you move them within range, they effectively get pushed to the back of the bus before getting a turn. The distance in which this shit happens seems 100% random too.
Spell damage is fine. The armor system + resists is the problem. There's no "physical resist" other than accuracy, which is pretty much a non factor anyway. The main issue is that damaging spells are primarily AoE and there are very few single target damage dealing spells. Area of effect spells almost always do lower damage for a single target, but of course more if you have two or more hit by them. In this game, without liberal use of Teleport, at least half of the time you're not going to hit more than a single enemy at once. Despite the round robin styled turn order (until the game cheats because you happened to kill an enemy, which then magically allows another enemy to be bumped up and go again before your upcoming turn), Teleport can be abused in a group of four offensive casters to blow everyone up at once. Other than Arrow Storm, Rangers are primarily single target. Ricochet can hit up to three targets, but usually it's only ever going to hit two, and Barrage is almost always going to be used on a single target. In a mixed group, they mostly take out priority targets one at a time. In a group with 3-4 Rangers, it becomes somewhat of a joke, but that's actually true of any group comprised of the same four armor stripping types.
Except for Warriors of course, who for whatever reason keep having praises of Valhalla sung about them as though they are monsters compared to everyone else. Dunno what game the rest of you are playing, but they are only "okay" until extremely late into the game. Meanwhile, Rogues can take out any non boss from around level 6 and beyond at the start. Warriors have nothing like Backlash > Rupture Tendons > Chicken, and Rogues can Battle Stomp enemies to the ground somewhat similarly. Because of the same problem offensive casters have hitting more than one target at a time without Teleport (aside from a bunch of slowed melee anyway), the Warrior is effectively a single target damage dealer when not using Battle Stomp too, and until their crit chance is way up there, they are way worse Scoundrels. Enrage isn't the answer either, because that's two AP blown just for one attack that's a guaranteed crit. Unless of course you stockpile AP before taking any actions... The only reason to use one (rather, the reason to not use 4x of the same physical class) is because of itemization. Unless you want to constantly vendor hop, it's not easy having four of the same class equivalently geared, especially weapon wise. Offensive casters don't suffer the issue as much because they scale more from Intelligence and their schools than they do their weapons, aside from grabbing those with 10% or more crit chance.
The inventory was complete shit in the previous game, but at least you could put all of the crafting garbage to use. In this game, not so much. 90% of what you collect may as well instantly be sold for how lame the crafting is here. I can't compare it to the original release of D:OS, but compared to EE, it's a literal ghost town of usefulness, and I don't know why this would be improved in the inevitable EE version of this game, considering they already had a huge base to work from with the previous game.
Summoning doesn't need a nerf either. Really, it doesn't unless you're playing a party of four Summoners because of the way the Incarnate's spell damage works, and only for the first two turns. For physical attacks it's only good, but not really great and comparably weak to what the rest of your party can do from level 12 on up. It's just a very durable distraction, but it gets eclipsed scaling wise, even at rank 15+. Bone Widow is way overrated too (you have to cast Frost Armor on it, or it's nothing but CC bait). The best thing about it is that it has a low investment and hits relatively hard even at base for only three AP. The actual best summons for pure damage is the Artillery Plant. Against non undead anyway. Summoning was really weak in the EA, which is why they buffed it to the current level.
Your "wolf guy" thing threw me off. I guess I can see what you are saying now, but it seemed more like you were talking about Ifran, not
Ifran's contact.
Sentenza
Member
I rarely attempt to exploit that trick, but a couple of times I tried it I also noticed that in this sequel sometimes moving your other party members when the leader is doing a typical "pre-fight talk" can trigger an immediate start for the fight and skip the dialogue entirely.
Finally escaped Fort Joy after 17 hours of playtime.
One question regarding an unmarked side-quest: An NPC gives a hint to Lohse to search for
and then says: "Whatever happens from there is up to you".
I've defeated
and gotten the item. I realise I can create a special potion with it, but is that all there is to it? Or can Lohse do something else special that nobody else is able to?
One question regarding an unmarked side-quest: An NPC gives a hint to Lohse to search for
a Black Rose
I've defeated
the witch in the cave
Sygma
Member
A'ight reached act 3, 39 hours clocked in
Had some bugs in Act 2 (
) and some unfortunate moments (hide and seek / finder's keeper or whatever the name is) but yeah, globally its freaking good
Totally amazed at the amount of work done
Had some bugs in Act 2 (
couldn't finish Grebb's quest because it never picked up on my toon actually smoking the 2nd mix, didn't manage to finish Three altars either because it just stopped after I killed the scarecrow. Then a bunch of quests basically telling me to go to Arx didn't get an end either ? but they didn't port over to act 3 so dunno
Totally amazed at the amount of work done
Sygma
Member
Not sure what your question means ?
You are not going to get a story on par with Planescape or even Witcher 3, but it does a good job at keeping you engaged, I guess. But honestly I think the story's strongest aspect is how you can approach various situations and NPC in so many different ways and the good amount of reactivity.
I'm kinda partial to Larian's writing because I like that the game and the companions don't drown you in exposition and every important NPC isn't an excuse to dump some lore.
Fane
knows the guy from the sarcophagus you find in the mine and provides quite a plot twist + dump.
Sygma
Member
Ha, no idea. Story went on "normally" with the rest of the crew.
I gave the game another chance, this time just playing on Explorer and don't caring that it's probably not the indended hardcore way bla bla bla.
Enjoying it a lot more now, and I feel like I'm getting grips for the elemental combat.
Also, I'm very impressed with the writing in this game. Normally, a lot of dialogue in CRPGs go over my head in terms of name dropping, gods, lore, factions etc. I just can't keep track of who's who and all that. In this game, it's very easy to follow, and it makes me more involved.
Enjoying it a lot more now, and I feel like I'm getting grips for the elemental combat.
Also, I'm very impressed with the writing in this game. Normally, a lot of dialogue in CRPGs go over my head in terms of name dropping, gods, lore, factions etc. I just can't keep track of who's who and all that. In this game, it's very easy to follow, and it makes me more involved.
Lanrutcon
Member
Nah, it's not an issue because of how the chapters are structured.Chapter 2 has a shitload of traders. Like, waaaay too many. Keeping multiple characters of the same build geared was super easy. Meanwhile, chapter 3 and 4 were so short and had so much skippable combat that I ended up wearing 75% of my chapter 2 gear in the final fight of the game.
Also for running multiple Rangers specifically: pretty sure the "uber" artifact weapons in act 4 are in static locations. So you always know that in Chapter 4 you get the 3 slot mega crossbow from X and the 3 slot mega bow from Y, and the the difference between the two is minor.
On Scoundrels vs 2H: can't really comment. Never ran a 2H melee build, and my Scoundrel got dropped half way through Chapter 2 for a second Ranger. Not once did I ever regret that move, let me tell you.
johancruijff
Banned
So i'm in between act 1 and 2
Is pumping points in leadership and retribution worth it?
I was thinking about going with retri for my tank even if the taunt skill still have to deplete the armor to work...
Also civil abilities
Loremaster,persuasion,thievery and lucky charm to max? I can see the case for bartering, but the others looks meaningless
on the boat, and from what i understand this is where you choose the companions for the rest of the game and you have the possibility to respec with the green mirror.
Is pumping points in leadership and retribution worth it?
I was thinking about going with retri for my tank even if the taunt skill still have to deplete the armor to work...
Also civil abilities
Loremaster,persuasion,thievery and lucky charm to max? I can see the case for bartering, but the others looks meaningless
Persuasion is good for your main character, it's used in tons of situations.
Thievery is one of the best abilities in the game.
Lucky charm is good to get extra loot to sell, but don't expect good gears from it.
Loremaster is needed to identity items.
Just split these abilities between the four characters in your party.
Lanrutcon
Member
Yes. Turn off shadows, respec everyone, turn em back on. No dots.
Sygma
Member
Honestly the combat doesn't even begin until you're about halfway in act 2. Until then you re in a lengthy tutorial. And when you ll reach it you ll probably enjoy it so much more
Well the game virtually has an infinite amount of replayability because of game master mode alone so, go enjoy with your friends ?
One thing bugging me out is the kill count in this game. And I'm not talking about actions of your character but overall. I get it that it's the adult, dark version of the first one but yeah even GoT compared to it is child's play, lol.
I actually found playing with friends to be detrimental to my enjoyment in this game.
It's just way too chaotic in terms of story/conversations. I don't want to miss out on pieces of dialogue and I found it a weird fit to play such a text-heavy game with multiple people.
I'll give it another shot once I finished the game once.
It's just way too chaotic in terms of story/conversations. I don't want to miss out on pieces of dialogue and I found it a weird fit to play such a text-heavy game with multiple people.
I'll give it another shot once I finished the game once.
Just to add a counterpoint to this.
- I found persuasion to not be needed at all. Sure you can avoid some fights and solve some quests in a easier way due to being able to convince the NPCs of whatever you want but I found that missing out on the EXP from the avoided fights is not worth it at all in the long run and you can convince most NPCs anyway by giving them some item or gold.
- Thievery is excellent while in Fort Joy. After that it's a nice thing to have but it's importance gets significantly lower the longer you play.
- Lucky charm was broken, now it's not as broken but it's still a great way to get gear. FYI, the gear you find is tied to the zone you proc lucky charm at, so if you proc in a level 10 zone you get level 10-ish (9/10/11) gear, if you proc in a level 16 zone you get level 16-ish (15/16/17) gear, no matter what level your character is.
- Loremaster is needed to avoid consuming identifying glasses. You can skip it as long as you have these items to identify your drops or are willing to pay the vendors to do it for you. Overall, I like to have it on my mage.
Sygma
Member
If you play without rangers, armor drain skills are mandatory. They completely change the game once you realise it
Then again if you play with 2h you'll most likely one shot everything with a crit hit from lvl 15 and onward
Dragon1893
Member
Man, the game's depth is really hitting me now, so many ways to go about things.
I've unlocked a ton of different ways to get into the fort.
Just redid the fight in Fort Joy's dungeon and having a few pieces of better gear made such a huge difference.
This time I also triggered a conversation with one of the enemies after the fight because Fane was alive this time.
I've unlocked a ton of different ways to get into the fort.
Just redid the fight in Fort Joy's dungeon and having a few pieces of better gear made such a huge difference.
This time I also triggered a conversation with one of the enemies after the fight because Fane was alive this time.
Sygma
Member
Yeah its really really amazing. I'm not sure how other studios will manage to top this game anytime soon but it seems highly unlikely when you have so much done right without a single dlc or expansion or w/e bullshit
Well the game virtually has an infinite amount of replayability because of game master mode alone so, go enjoy with your friends ?
dat money doe