Current Events > Divinity Original Sin 2 is one of the most punishing RPGs I've ever played.

(+) Yeah! (+)

One error of positioning or attack order and you may as well restart the entire fight and backtrack half an hour of progress.

Same goes for dialogue choices. I guess this makes it a proper RPG, but it's rare to play a game where just saying the wrong thing will land you in a sudden encounter with someone seriously above your level.

Enjoying but man this is difficult and slow

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It definitely starts off harder when all your characters are fairly weak, but it eases up after Act 1 a bit, especially since you get to respec infinitely to fix your build. Definitely stick with it.

What thing to note is that the game is inherently jank, and you can definitely use that to your advantage. Try picking off individual enemies from big fights and run when you get a kill so you can reset the encounter with one less guy. Try to get everyone access to teleportation so that you can get people out of position and wail on them.

this is one of those games where level definitely makes a difference.

like, if you're one or two levels lower than your enemies, if you don't know what you're doing, they can totally wreck you.

but if you're one or two levels higher than your enemies, you have more freedom to mess up.

I'm also the type of person to save scum in these type of games, so I don't really worry about losing progress if I lose a fight/mess up.

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I don't know how anyone can play this game without save scumming tbh, it's too severe and you can't grind or anything

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I always felt like I wasn't creative enough to play D:OS2 properly. Like, the most creative I ever got was teleporting people places where they would take damage. Then I read about the ways people work circles around the combat system and it just makes my head spin.

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trompdoy is the only really "unfair" fight if you don't know what to do/have a weird build. honestly, most of the game is easy as fuck, you just need to find the best skill combinations.

@EvilMegas
@Zareth

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Summoning makes the game pretty easy. Especially if you summon them off screen, run the summon into combat, then buff the hell out of them in real time.

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I cheesed a lot of the game by using Rain (a nonlethal, non-aggro spell) to make puddles, then turning those puddles into virulent, flammable poison with Contaminate. You can use telekinesis to block paths and stuff, and as long as the enemy isn't engaging battle -- most have 2-4 movement/teleporting skills for some reason -- they just have their health eaten away. Granted, it doesn't work on everyone, or even work the whole game, but I've cheesed some bosses and/or their minions like that.

Poison is also great if you're Fane, since you're being healed while walking around in the toxic goo.

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UnholyMudcrab posted...

I always felt like I wasn't creative enough to play D:OS2 properly. Like, the most creative I ever got was teleporting people places where they would take damage. Then I read about the ways people work circles around the combat system and it just makes my head spin.

From what I read it's basically like if you're happy to cheese the combat system, and oddly this seems a genre of game where that's encouraged

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pinky0926 posted...

From what I read it's basically like if you're happy to cheese the combat system, and oddly this seems a genre of game where that's encouraged

If the game is going to bullshit me, why should i feel bad for doing the same?

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Tru tru

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Playing the first one and enjoying the heck out of it - cant wait to start 2 :D

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Level is important but so is just using every tool at your disposal. The game encourages strategy over brute force for the most part.

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Been dying to play this

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God damn I keep getting brutalised at level 4. Thought I'd be able to take out these chumps but apparently not. Time to go find some non combat quests I guess...

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D:OS2 is really difficult at early stages. You dont have all your skills and enemies do and hit hard. But, it gets easier and easier as you go on. Eventually you start one shotting things.

Summoning is super important. Every character should have a summon to double your amount of activations.

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Ok, made some serious headway tonight. I looked up a party build guide this time around (second playthrough), and realised that we had severely nerfed my team last time by having 3 physical and 1 magic.

This time we have an even 50:50 split, with a nice range of elemental, physical and buffs. Things are going more smoothly now. Moreover I have better skills that are more useful in most situations.

So I've managed to deal with most of the enemies in fort joy. Still gotta go into the fort and kill those guys though.

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If you want a tip, there's a magic (Worm Tremor?) that pins enemies to the ground and prevents teleportation for a few turns. You can also get some perk that increases status effect duration by a few turns. By the end of the game, I think I taught everyone that magic, just to deal with the constant teleportation, position switching, etc.

I've also heard the game is more fun on a Lone Wolf (MC + 1 ally only) playthrough, but I never finished mine.

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It might have changed since I played, but I remember the best party setups being 100% physical or magic damage, because of the way resistances work.
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Just got Lone Wolf and wreck havoc

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DAMN

Doing my 1st playthrough of the first one and I'm in love lol definitely reminds me alot of Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

I'm pretty stoked that Larian is handling BG3 now too.. looks exactly like Divinity lol


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RedJackson posted...

I'm pretty stoked that Larian is handling BG3 now too.. looks exactly like Divinity lol

It's a LOT of fun, but I'm terrible at it

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Bad_Mojo posted...

It's a LOT of fun, but I'm terrible at it

Did they add druids yet?

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Accolon posted...

Did they add druids yet?

I'm not sure yet, tbh. It's been awhile since I've played it.

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DuranOfForcena posted...

i really wanted to like that game, and i really tried to, but the entire time i was playing it i couldn't help but think of how it was like Baldur's Gate but inferior in basically every way.

Yeah, it definitely separated itself in the mechanics of the gameplay itself - I felt it shared more in common with OG FO

Same people made 'em so it was cool to see the introduction of magic to whatever engine they were using to mold those games. Baldur's Gate is totally different, so much so that there's a spell to sequence spells out as a magic user and the 'Time' spell that makes you say 'so this is a really, REALLY long turn' lol

I think this was the biggest factor in me saying 'man but it's so different now >:^(' in regards to BG3 tbh >_> the whole turn based thing

The group that made Pillars of Eternity would've been more interesting as a more direct 'successor' but what Divinity does is truly hella fun

Bad_Mojo posted...

It's a LOT of fun, but I'm terrible at it

Hmmm I forgot the demo was out lol

I probably won't play it until I beat OS2 though since I really am having a blast with OS1 right now with Madora and Jahan in my party <:^)


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ill yield to none

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RedJackson posted...

Hmmm I forgot the demo was out lol

It's not a demo, it's Early Access. You still have to pay for it, lol

However, there is a game called Solasta: Crown of the Magister, which DOES have a free demo to play, and also uses the 5e Rule set, but the free ones, not the "official" ones like BG3 can use.

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Oh man this is satisfying. Really sucked at this game and wanted to quit it forever, but things are going MUCH better now.

A few differences

• Before I had 3 physical and 1 mage. This was the worst possible party composition. The mage did nothing. This time we have a 50/50 split. Sure, a pure physical would be more optimised, but this is strong and flexible and is fun. Enjoying.
• Stop being a moralist and started stealing from vendors. You know, its not even so bad because most of these guys are assholes. All that aside, it's so nice to get the skill you need for nothing instead of losing 60% of your gold for it.
• We understand the importance of ARMOUR in this game now. Before I thought it was about healing vitality. No, this game is about staying status free as much as possible. Health is secondary.

Sailing through so far, at level 6 and starting act 2. Much easier already.

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I remember cheesing dragons in the Baldur's Gate games with off screen cloudkill because I can never defeat them in a fair fight.
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pinky0926 posted...

Stop being a moralist and started stealing from vendors. You know, its not even so bad because most of these guys are assholes. All that aside, it's so nice to get the skill you need for nothing instead of losing 60% of your gold for it.

I think it might have been Shotgunnova who suggested this during their playthrough topic, but when you wanna pickpocket someone, it's easier if you initiate conversation with that person with one of your party members.

and while that party member is talking to the person, swap to another character, and pickpocket them.

obviously, you can't do this too much on the same character, otherwise they'll notice, and after conversation ends, they sometimes approach you and ask if you took their stuff, but if the character they're talking to doesn't have the item(s) in their inventory, then you should be good.

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^^ Yeah that's what I've been doing! The rules seem to be that you can only pickpocket once per character per vendor, so if you use items to get thievery you can swap this between characters to steal. Further, what you can steal depends on the value of the item and your thievery level.


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Yeah, I remember doing that "bait and steal" strategy for pickpocketing. My Fane had natural lockpicks, so I just made him the skillbook thief, especially in the second act. You only get one attempt at pickpocketing each NPC, though, I think, so you had to make things count. Use your allies to make nearby NPCs look the other way (due to conversation starting), steal, then hurriedly skidaddle before the robbery victim starts looking for suspicious characters. They eventually give up, IIRC.

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