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Divinity: Original Sin 2 |OT| Dragons & Dungeon Mastering

Pancakes

hot, steaming, as melted butter slips into the cracks, drizzled with sticky sweet syrup OH GOD
Well, that's that folks. Now they have no choice but to put in lootboxes.

Congratulations, Larian!

Let's add some PoE item glows and foot steps :D.

pls no Larian, I can't go through another Bioware again

I seem to have completely cheesed the Act 1 Boss.
Staying near the gate and then fleeing from combat when the Drillworm comes causes all the Seekers to join, man its a funny clusterfuck of like 20 people taking turns.

I wanted more really large scale fights like the one you described. I personally find them super fun.
 

QFNS

Unconfirmed Member
Seeing this game be a huge success is so great. They put in so much work to D:OS1 and D:OS1 EE and this payoff has got to feel good. The game is fantastic so far, I think about it all the time when not playing. That's a clear sign of an amazing game.
 

Pancakes

hot, steaming, as melted butter slips into the cracks, drizzled with sticky sweet syrup OH GOD
Act 4
That part with the cursed revenants and the necrofire is complete bullshit

Everyone agrees, better to just stealth/TP past it into the next area. It's not worth the hassle.
 

Artdayne

Member
Everyone agrees, better to just stealth/TP past it into the next area. It's not worth the hassle.

Do you mean into the next area with the Red Prince quest? While clearing that area out definitely is a pain, I think the payoff of the Red Prince quest is worth it.
 

Arkanius

Member
I have a difficult relation with Tactics mode.
It was frustratingly hard at the beginning, impossible even.
I had to resort to cheese, cries, and salt.

It starts to ease up when you reach level 5. Or I'm getting better. Not sure.
 

Helznicht

Member
I had a weird event happen yesterday. I was playing with my daughter over LAN. After I loaded the save, I set the connection options to multiplayer and LAN only so it would show up on her lan list to join. After playing about an hour, it popped up "Player Joined" in the middle of a fight. Player was named TEST and took over one of our NPCs (Red Prince). This player didn't take any actions as I sat there confused. About 20 seconds later he disconnected and control over red went back to me.

Next game session I am going to check on our 3rd PC if my game shows up on the server list even though I am LAN only.
 

ZiZ

Member
Does this game have a lot of missable quests/rewards? from what I've gathered you can't complete all the character quests in one playthrough (because you can only play with 4 characters and at some point in the game you can't swap the other main characters in). Are there places where I won't be able to return?

Also, is it possible to grind? If I miss a lot of quests and end up under-leveled, would it be possible to go someplace and grind? do mobs respawn?
 
Does this game have a lot of missable quests/rewards? from what I've gathered you can't complete all the character quests in one playthrough (because you can only play with 4 characters and at some point in the game you can't swap the other main characters in). Are there places where I won't be able to return?

Also, is it possible to grind? If I miss a lot of quests and end up under-leveled, would it be possible to go someplace and grind? do mobs respawn?

There's a lot of stuff that's missable due to how choices affects outcomes. You'll often have to pick between 2 things and obviously whatever you don't pick is "missed".

You can't go back to previous acts, so you want to clear everything before you proceed. There's warnings when you're about to proceed to the next act.

No grinding, no respawns, there's a finite amount of xp in the game. Maximizing quests and then killing everyone yields the most xp, although you don't need to do that to be overleveled, just doing every quest you come across is enough, there's more than needed.
 

Ploid 3.0

Member
The two different shield types just makes me want to either go physical, or magic. Physical seem better because of melee CC, and auto attack from melee and ranger being physical.

What were the two different shields supposed to accomplish anyway? I think the normal chance to resist a spell or physical knockdown is better. Dice roll type rpg stuff. This way just feels like I'm working out how to best get to CC ready on enemies in the shortest amount of time possible.
 

ZiZ

Member
There's a lot of stuff that's missable due to how choices affects outcomes. You'll often have to pick between 2 things and obviously whatever you don't pick is "missed".

You can't go back to previous acts, so you want to clear everything before you proceed. There's warnings when you're about to proceed to the next act.

No grinding, no respawns, there's a finite amount of xp in the game. Maximizing quests and then killing everyone yields the most xp, although you don't need to do that to be overleveled, just doing every quest you come across is enough, there's more than needed.

thanks for the answer.

I forgot to ask how easy is it to respec?
 

Anoregon

The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
Man these beetles spamming coagulated spit during this witch fight in act 1 is some god damn bullshit
 
thanks for the answer.

I forgot to ask how easy is it to respec?

You can respec at any time entirely once you're in act2. Before that you can't, but you probably don't really need to, it's hard to really ruin a character, you can just grab whatever skills you like pretty easily.
 

Burt

Member
Yup, double Lone Wolf mage/summoners is the shit. 6 totems, 6 AP, shields get even better, double stat points, and putting 1 point into a skill and getting 2 makes me giddy.
 

Arulan

Member
I never heard a success story in fighting the Houndmaster in that large room he's in. Use one of the prison cells and create a choke point. Have one speedy character (or a summon) aggro the boss then pull them all the way to the room where the rest of your party can wail on them.

I just recently did the Houndmaster fight on Tactician at level 3:

I teleported my ranger and spellcaster to the room with the skeletons and sneaked my way onto the platform on the left side. I was barely able to sneak Fane (Polymorph/Necromancer/Warfare) onto the right platform within striking range of the ranger up there. My sword and shield character stayed hidden near the center of the room. I used restoration on the interrogated prisoner to revive him to assist me. I was also able to teleport the left-side ranger off into the fray and burn a few of them. I mostly focused on the Houndmaster to get rid of his summon. Fane's gear was pretty mediocre and he had some trouble once he lost his physical armor. I had to use a revive. It was a challenging fight. I was curious to see how other people had approached him and looked back a few pages.
 

Sanctuary

Member
Yeah, ranger is clearly the best sustained damage, but I don't think spell casters are super weak, especially since burst is very useful because you can cc enemies earlier. I think rogue is in a much worse spot than spell casters.

For versatility maybe, but for doing a single job well? Not at all. The biggest downside is that it's similar to a Ranger except as you said doesn't get the high ground bonus. Plus it has to waste more AP to move around the map. The upside is Rupture Tendons, Chicken, Battle Stomp and Medusa Head. It's certainly better than a strength based melee, and the only caster that is about as good would be a crit focused Pyromancer, especially once Meteor Shower becomes available. Once you hit level 17 - 18 though, physical damage in general starts eclipsing anything spell damage can do thanks to the insane itemization scaling.

Larian has a lot of balancing to do before the inevitable console release.

Oh 2h fighters scale extremely well and come with a lot of cc on top of huge dmg
Not especially. It's just a gear thing, and all physical classes reap the benefits. The order of power for them is Ranger > Rogue >>> Warrior. Rogues can use many of the same skills a Warrior can because they aren't weapon dependent, yet a Warrior cannot use many of the same skills as a Rogue, because they require a dagger. The skills primarily scale off of your weapon damage too, not a specific stat either, despite how it may initially appear when reading a skill.

IMO "Warriors" in this game are a trap. They don't actually "tank" anything, because Taunt is infinitely worse than Chicken unless you have multiple huge enemies (which almost never happens) and the Incarnate does a better job at both taunting and staying alive than what a party character can. The single best damage per AP skills a Warrior has are Bouncing Shield and Battle Stomp, neither of which are exclusive, although one obviously requires a shield (which then lowers your overall damage unless there are multiple enemies, but it's great on a disabler/buffer/occasional nuker caster).

Finesse armors are usually a balance between physical and magical, meaning they are way less prone to taking elemental effects or being CCd like a STR/CON build and aside from enemy Ranger types aren't nearly as susceptible to taking physical damage until everyone and their sick dog ends up with Phoenix Dive.

Currently playing Ranger, Ranger, Summoner/Ranger and a Rogue (Fane is probably the best at this thanks to having an extra "invisibility" over anyone else). It's pretty broken.

edit: Best Rogue is still probably an Elf, but if you're already using them for Rangers...
 
Did someone say that letting Act 2 spoiler
Magister Reimond
live causes bugs later in the game? Seems really hard to get through without killing him.
 
Did someone say that letting Act 2 spoiler
Magister Reimond
live causes bugs later in the game? Seems really hard to get through without killing him.

There are too many magisters in this game I couldn't keep up with remembering which one is which. However, most of them are dead in my game. Which quest is that?
 
There are too many magisters in this game I couldn't keep up with remembering which one is which. However, most of them are dead in my game. Which quest is that?

Dark Deeds in the Black Pits. Reimond is the white magister you meet at the docks when first arriving in Driftwood. Later you find him in the Black Pits executing members of the Black Ring. Pretty sure someone in the thread earlier said that some later bugs cropped up due to killing him but it seemed almost impossible to complete that quest and leave him alive.
 

z1ggy

Member
Did someone say that letting Act 2 spoiler
Magister Reimond
live causes bugs later in the game? Seems really hard to get through without killing him.

I just used teleport on him in a spot where it was far from the door close to his ship, then i called oil so he couldnt move too far away. 3 turns later and he was dead.
 
Dark Deeds in the Black Pits. Reimond is the white magister you meet at the docks when first arriving in Driftwood. Later you find him in the Black Pits executing members of the Black Ring. Pretty sure someone in the thread earlier said that some later bugs cropped up due to killing him but it seemed almost impossible to complete that quest and leave him alive.

Is he the magister who's standung near the wall that's supposed to be destroyed? I think I killed him, because by destroying the wall, the entire magisters there becomes hostile. I successfully convinced him when I first entered the room, but I couldn't find a way to destroy the wall without aggroing them.
 
I explored about a third of the island outside of Ft. Joy today. My party is holding up well, with a ranger and a summoner papering over some suboptimal choices on my part:

-I spec'd Beast as a wizard, with two points in pyro, but then killed the pyro vendor before buying or stealing a single book off him. I also got the aero instructor killed before raiding his stock. I have yet to find replacement instructors.

-I put no thought into companions' initial classes, not realizing I wouldn't be able to distribute their skill points from scratch. So I'm behind where I would like to be on thievery and persuasion, for example. I understand I'll be able to respec eventually, but it's getting frustrating as I begin to see how large Act One actually is.

Anyway, I love the game so far and hope I'll be able to dedicate more than an hour to it later this week.
 
The STR/INT/CON, Hydro, 1H Shield, Warfare Paladin build is officially a dud.

Have to start over :(

Ditch the INT and focus on STR with a bit of CON.

My cleric/paladin is now a damage dealer with a two-handed axe.

No need to cast magic, just heal/cure/buff when necessary, they're not affected by INT.
 

Burt

Member
The STR/INT/CON, Hydro, 1H Shield, Warfare Paladin build is officially a dud.

Have to start over :(

How far along are you? Tactician? Lone Wolf? You get to respec for free after Act 1, and it's pretty hard to ruin yourself beyond use early on.

That being said, yeah, that build sounds a little spread out for optimal early goings.
 
Had a fun fight with
Houndmaster
today.

ended up funneling two melee people to the corridor. One of the archers was forced to give up her height advantage and come down. Jokes on her I spawned an incarnate in that room. Cut to literal comedic chase scene where she kept running away from my incarnate, literally made worthless for the rest of the combat. Other one insisted on having high ground, which only let her attack my main conjurer. You'd think that would be bad, but despite being a mage, my lizard girl is surprisingly good at keeping a single archer busy, while receiving little meaningful damage. two melee guys had to deal with my entire 4 team group, which, they put up a decent fight against, but alas, they had no chance with sucha disavantage. In the meantime, my incarnate dealt with the first archer and started nibbling on second one, with my team soon coming in and finishing the job.
Funny how battles start feeling impossible, but then you rapidly find out that you are more than capable of winning
 

Nekrono

Member
I could use some help building up a coherent party as far as roles/classes go.

So far I'm thinking I want the following:

Red Prince: Fighter/Something else(not sure what).
Sebille: Rogue/Summoner or Polymorph
Lohse: Caster/Cleric
Fane: Ranger/Necromancer

However I have no idea if that wold work or if it makes sense really, I'm new to the game/series but I do know that I kinda want to have a Necromancer and a Summoner, they kinda look cool, Polymorph sounds potentially cool as well but I dunno.

Any help is appreciated.
 

Renekton

Member
Ditch the INT and focus on STR with a bit of CON.

My cleric/paladin is now a damage dealer with a two-handed axe.

No need to cast magic, just heal/cure/buff when necessary, they're not affected by INT.
How far along are you? Tactician? Lone Wolf? You get to respec for free after Act 1, and it's pretty hard to ruin yourself beyond use early on.

That being said, yeah, that build sounds a little spread out for optimal early goings.
Thanks a lot friends. Yeah I haven't finished Act 1, maybe will truck along for the respec.

1H shield tank is pretty bad. Enemies just eat the low damage attacks of opportunity to beeline to the squishies anyways.
 

sadblob

Member
Act 4
MBHYW7n.png

I'm not Lohse and she's not even in my party.

Somewhat disappointed with Act 4. I feel like it ruins a little all that was good before.
 

UberLevi

Member
Anyone else got an Aero Warfare hybrid on their team? We've got Beast as our tank and Battle Stomp, Battering Ram, Nether Swap, and Teleportation give him a lot of control on the battlefield as well as a solid mix of magic and physical options. I splashed into Hydro a little bit for Armor of Frost and Restoration and he's a great support. The dude just simply does not die.
 
Thanks a lot friends. Yeah I haven't finished Act 1, maybe will truck along for the respec.

1H shield tank is pretty bad. Enemies just eat the low damage attacks of opportunity to beeline to the squishies anyways.

I see. I thought you've progressed quite further ahead.

But yeah, tanks aren't that great in early game. You need to give them as much disable skills as possible so they can actually control the battle.

Anyone else got an Aero Warfare hybrid on their team? We've got Beast as our tank and Battle Stomp, Battering Ram, Nether Swap, and Teleportation give him a lot of control on the battlefield as well as a solid mix of magic and physical options. I splashed into Hydro a little bit for Armor of Frost and Restoration and he's a great support. The dude just simply does not die.

Yeah, that's pretty much my Beast.
 

Wadiwasi

Banned
The STR/INT/CON, Hydro, 1H Shield, Warfare Paladin build is officially a dud.

Have to start over :(


Try out a STR/CON - 1h Shield, Warfare tank with a 1 point in Hydro and a couple in Geo. 1 in Hydro will give you some needed healing and magic armor buffing spells, while Geo can give you ways to buff physical armor, heal undead, and do damage based on your armor. Once you start getting bigger that damage really adds up.
 
Never played a divinity game before and wanted to try something different so i bought this. They talk alot in this game its nice to see that even the minor npcs have voice acting tho. Really hoping to dig into this game this upcoming weekend.
 

Azlan

Member
Hi! I am about to start Divinity 2. I am thinking of playing Beast as a warfare/polymorph to start and maybe adding Necromancy down the road. What polymorph ability would you guys recommend starting with? Tentacle Lash or Bull Horns to go with Battle Stomp and Battering Ram?
 
Hi! I am about to start Divinity 2. I am thinking of playing Beast as a warfare/polymorph to start and maybe adding Necromancy down the road. What polymorph ability would you guys recommend starting with? Tentacle Lash or Bull Horns to go with Battle Stomp and Battering Ram?

Tentacle Lash deals immense ranged physical damage and adds atrophy. It's so reliable I always have it on my Red Prince tank.
 

sadblob

Member
I'm about to enter the last part of the game (
the cathedral
). Just did the final mission for the Red Prince storyline. I also have as companions Fane, Ifan and Sebille but in Act 4 I haven't found anything related to them. The last thing I got in the journal for each are:

Fane:
He was shaken by the meeting with Aenera, then he pledged to fight with me, and lastly he refused the God King.

Ifan:
He Killed Alexandar, thinks divinity is bad and rejected a contract, he wants a clean life from now on.

Sebille:
I killed the Shadow Prince and made her the new Mother. Last log says she wants to end slavery everywhere.

So, did I miss something to advance the quests? Is there more to do in what's left of the game?
 

Sothpaw

Member
Question before I start the game (couldn't find on Google): Can/will companions leave the party permanently? I am thinking about playing as Beast and I always like to plan balanced parties before I play party based crpgs.
 

Vamphuntr

Member
I'm about to enter the last part of the game (
the cathedral
). Just did the final mission for the Red Prince storyline. I also have as companions Fane, Ifan and Sebille but in Act 4 I haven't found anything related to them. The last thing I got in the journal for each are:

Fane:
He was shaken by the meeting with Aenera, then he pledged to fight with me, and lastly he refused the God King.

Ifan:
He Killed Alexandar, thinks divinity is bad and rejected a contract, he wants a clean life from now on.

Sebille:
I killed the Shadow Prince and made her the new Mother. Last log says she wants to end slavery everywhere.

So, did I miss something to advance the quests? Is there more to do in what's left of the game?


Probably? When you complete a companion questline you get a steam achievement for it. I sure did get one for Lohse. Not sure what to do for the rest as Ifan, Sebille and Fane seems to be bugged in my game or I have no idea what to do.

They better add a blessed rain spell in a patch. The cursed revenant mechanic is no fun. Even worse when cursed fire is hidden in wall or some stuff. Bad design.
 
Question before I start the game (couldn't find on Google): Can/will companions leave the party permanently? I am thinking about playing as Beast and I always like to plan balanced parties before I play party based crpgs.

Actually, yes. You can switch your party as you wish on the first Act. However, you need to decide which companions will you bring forward before the end of it. Regarding party composition, you can change each companion's basic class when you recruit them, and later you will also be able to respec everyone at the start of the second Act.
 

Sanctuary

Member
Great. Thank you for the recommendation. Here goes it.

Are you going two-handed and sword and shield? The offensive abilities do more damage with a two-handed weapon. The benefits of a shield are for quite a bit more survivability (and a pretty good ranged attack), but they kind of just stand around not really helping all that much stripping armor most of the time. If you're going to focus on Warfare/Polymorph then you will definitely want to pick up Wings for mobility at rank 2. Chameleon is also not a terrible choice for those "oh shit" moments, or for just when you want to sneak up behind a caster and flatten them, or move up to a group to Battle Stomp. Enemies aren't going to really be focusing on you most of the time anyway, so it doesn't matter if you're invisible or not as far as "tanking" goes, since that doesn't really exist in this game.
 

Sothpaw

Member
Actually, yes. You can switch your party as you wish on the first Act. However, you need to decide which companions will you bring forward before the end of it. Regarding party composition, you can change each companion's basic class when you recruit them, and later you will also be able to respec everyone at the start of the second Act.

That's fine with me because I always stick to my team in these games once I've chosen (I never switch party members in and out). I was more getting at asking whether or not certain party members will not get along and therefore leave me permanently.
But I take it from your answer that this will not happen, given that you need to decide which companions to bring forward?
 
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