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Divinity: Original Sin |OT| Sandbox RPG. Co-Op friendly. Bread.

Wow this thread is still shit! Shocking!!!111 Back to weresheep hunting...

Good luck!

I'm getting my ass handed to me at lvl 5 on hard difficulty. Doesn't help that undead are completely immune to nearly all witch spell. Struggling to clear
the lighthouse
at the moment, I might have switch to normal difficulty for a while. I'd probably have a much easier time if I had a fire mage in my party

If you have a spellcaster of any kind, you only need to get a Fire Staff. That will let you take advantage of most fiery opportunities!

Flame on, and all that.
 

huxley00

Member
It took me a long time to accept that the game wants you to cheese battles. It makes some of them overly difficult, hoping that you'll use unconventional tactics. For those having trouble with battles, be sure to make use of the pyramids. For instance
Braccus Rex
Toss one pyramid out the door, start the battle and regroup outside the door, making a nice pinch point for the enemy. You can tell they intended to use this design as they made the door HUGE so that oversized enemies can fit through it without issue.

Don't feel bad about being "cheap", use whatever tools they give you to fight a battle, thats how they want people to play.
 

Instro

Member
It took me a long time to accept that the game wants you to cheese battles. It makes some of them overly difficult, hoping that you'll use unconventional tactics. For those having trouble with battles, be sure to make use of the pyramids. For instance
Braccus Rex
Toss one pyramid out the door, start the battle and regroup outside the door, making a nice pinch point for the enemy. You can tell they intended to use this design as they made the door HUGE so that oversized enemies can fit through it without issue.

Don't feel bad about being "cheap", use whatever tools they give you to fight a battle, thats how they want people to play.

I just walled my team up on the right side with vases for that fight. He was unable to cast that initial spell since he was blocked and had to get by the wall. But yeah I think the intent is pretty clear for players to set up the battlefield to their advantage whenever possible
 

Sentenza

Member
It took me a long time to accept that the game wants you to cheese battles. It makes some of them overly difficult, hoping that you'll use unconventional tactics. For those having trouble with battles, be sure to make use of the pyramids. For instance
Braccus Rex
Toss one pyramid out the door, start the battle and regroup outside the door, making a nice pinch point for the enemy. You can tell they intended to use this design as they made the door HUGE so that oversized enemies can fit through it without issue.

Don't feel bad about being "cheap", use whatever tools they give you to fight a battle, thats how they want people to play.
Well, happy it worked for you but I want to dismiss the claim that using your system is a necessity.
I beaten that fight without using the door as a bottleneck, and in fact starting the fight in the middle of the big room.

On the other hand, I cheesed the game myself to some extent, simply positioning each one of my party members where it pleased me while the main character was talking with Braccus Rex.
Turned out that a fire elemental was more than enough to deal with the poisonous guy very easily and that killing the big two headed elemental quickly made the rest of the fight a piece of cake.
 

Zakalwe

Banned
Well, happy it worked for you but I want to dismiss the claim that using your system is a necessity.
I beaten that fight without using the door as a bottleneck, and in fact starting the fight in the middle of the big room.

On the other hand, I cheesed the game myself to some extent, simply positioning each one of my party members where it pleased me while the main character was talking with Braccus Rex.
Turned out that a fire elemental was more than enough to deal with the poisonous guy very easily and that killing the big two headed elemental quickly made the rest of the fight a piece of cake.

None of these things are cheesing. They're using the mechanics as intended to create a tactial advantage.

Cheesing would be stacking 20 barrels next to a boss and blowing them up, or building cage of containers around the spot you knwo an enemy will be summoned so it is forced to skip its turn.
 

Brakke

Banned
Huh I've never used the pyramids for combat--Rex is my next encounter. Inventory management is such a nightmare I always forgot I have them... They aren't particularly useful outside of combat either since the warp portals are pretty common. I guess if you wanted to pop out to town right before fighting E or something, where you want to fast return to inside a dungeon.
 

Zakalwe

Banned
Huh I've never used the pyramids for combat--Rex is my next encounter. Inventory management is such a nightmare I always forgot I have them... They aren't particularly useful outside of combat either since the warp portals are pretty common. I guess if you wanted to pop out to town right before fighting E or something, where you want to fast return to inside a dungeon.

Put em on your hot bars! Good to both on separate characters.

There are quite a few places I've used them effectively in and outside of combat.
 

Durante

Member
None of these things are cheesing. They're using the mechanics as intended to create a tactical advantage.
Yeah, I agree. There is a lot that this game allows and even expects you to do in terms of positioning and preparation, but just because you couldn't do that in other games doesn't mean that it's cheesing.
 
Yeah, I agree. There is a lot that this game allows and even expects you to do in terms of positioning and preparation, but just because you couldn't do that in other games doesn't mean that it's cheesing.
There's something so satisfying about caterpillaring ~ a half dozen oil barrels into the midst of a group of enemies that's kicked your ass in open confrontation and taking care of all of them without taking any damage to your characters...

859B6344CFA0A942E4ED5376AF663DC876FC3276


BDEAE9F1A733834FEA76A77373328B196102AD33


DA58E472199BFFC8F35269DA34FB55EDBAEC6A38
 

Pancakes

hot, steaming, as melted butter slips into the cracks, drizzled with sticky sweet syrup OH GOD
The pyramids and high telekineses are great for cheesing some of the puzzles and unobtainable chests.
 

Carcetti

Member
Wow this thread. As a huge Baldur's Gate fan and a longtime roleplayer I have no trouble admitting that Divinity has better combat than Infinity Engine games. Realtime D&D conversion was great but not perfect, and other games (gold boxes, Beholders) did some parts of D&D combat clearly better than them.
 

Sentenza

Member
Wow this thread. As a huge Baldur's Gate fan and a longtime roleplayer I have no trouble admitting that Divinity has better combat than Infinity Engine games. Realtime D&D conversion was great but not perfect, and other games (gold boxes, Beholders) did some parts of D&D combat clearly better than them.
Ok?
But that wasn't what we were arguing about, so I'm not sure why you introduced your opinion in this way.
 
Quick question about the church and also the end of time.

Just wrecked the cultists on the top floor and I am underground in front of a forcefield. Should I have encountered the item to open it up by now or is it somewhere else? Also random question do I need to use bloodstones to open up the end of time areas like a previous poster mentioned? I havent used anything but have already unlocked the hall of heroes and the bedroom-esque area with the blue demon.
 

huxley00

Member
Well, happy it worked for you but I want to dismiss the claim that using your system is a necessity.
I beaten that fight without using the door as a bottleneck, and in fact starting the fight in the middle of the big room.

On the other hand, I cheesed the game myself to some extent, simply positioning each one of my party members where it pleased me while the main character was talking with Braccus Rex.
Turned out that a fire elemental was more than enough to deal with the poisonous guy very easily and that killing the big two headed elemental quickly made the rest of the fight a piece of cake.

Yeah, that another string on the same guitar, but I agree.
 
Beat the game: Spoiler free thoughts and things I would like to see improved for a sequel:

+ The combat system is AMAZING, leave it as it is for a sequel
+ Spells and the whole element thing were pretty good, they should improve on that foundation.
+ Story was interesting and good to follow. Sidequests were mostly fun.
+ Pretty polished, I ran into a few bugs but nothing major
+ This is my GOTY so far and one of the best RPGs of the last years, but still I have some criticism:

- Sidequests could use some tuning, most storys revolved around love and betrayal, or at least that was my overall feeling....I would like to see more different stories next time
- Riddles - most of the riddles were easy and the ones that weren't easy sucked because it mostly involved finding tiny switches and getting to the right spot with perception. Especially during the end-game these dungeons got tedious and were not fun for me. I hope these tiny switches and perception based riddles are gone in a sequel.
- Better loot. I didn't mind the randomness about it, but I didn't feel that much of progress during the game, except in the Weapons for my Melee-Heroes. Everything else were minor upgrades. I want to see bigger upgrades.
 

Carcetti

Member
But let's address few random points:
1- "magic immunity" as a whole doesn't exist in D&D as a concept. You may have creatures that are immune at a specific type of magic, immune to spells of a specific tier (i.e levels 1-to-3 spells) and so on.

Demiliches actually have a special ability called 'Magic Immunity' which makes them immune to all supernatural spells and abilities except Shatter, Dispel Evil and Holy Smite, but technically correct. Beholder's Central Eye and Antimagic Fields also suppress also magic except Deities and Artefacts while in the radius.
 

nbthedude

Member
Yeah, I agree. There is a lot that this game allows and even expects you to do in terms of positioning and preparation, but just because you couldn't do that in other games doesn't mean that it's cheesing.

If the game didn't want you to employ pre-fight strategies then it would just make all the fight encounters closed off systems like the vast majority of other RPGs.
 

Moonstone

Member
What do you think: Should the game support a turnbased mode outside of the combat?

Some chars died after the combat, because I couldn't heal them fast enough and they were on fire or poisened or I walked them into elemental effects. My reaction skills are pretty bad, that's why I like turnbased games. On the other hand this would lead to endless prebuffing before each fight. I miss this feature often.
 

Noaloha

Member
Some chars died after the combat, because I couldn't heal them fast enough and they were on fire or poisened or I walked them into elemental effects.
Oh man you should have seen it pre-release. The potency of burning and, to a lesser extent, poison damage was rather crazy. Gods forbid you end a fight with any of those status effects on you.
 
What do you think: Should the game support a turnbased mode outside of the combat?

Some chars died after the combat, because I couldn't heal them fast enough and they were on fire or poisened or I walked them into elemental effects. My reaction skills are pretty bad, that's why I like turnbased games. On the other hand this would lead to endless prebuffing before each fight. I miss this feature often.

I think it would open up encounters to a great deal more abuse or outright exploitation than is currently allowed. Caching AP would be standard, of course, and so would laying out hazardous gauntlets for the enemies to run to reach your party. And before it is asked, the current combat system is actually designed expressly to prevent this sort of behaviour, since it will kick you out of combat mode and heal the enemy if you're engaging them from too great a distance.

So, while it can be annoying sometimes, I don't think it's a good idea to allow player-controlled combat states.
 
Has anyone else made a new game, with one of the new AI personalities for your partner, and had that AI disappear entirely after resuming a save state?
 

Shouta

Member
I was thinking about how to get this one chest in town when I realized how I could do it thanks to this thread. banderas.gif

Anyway, I got up to level 9 with a full party yesterday but on a whim decided restart with two chars on hard both with lone wolf. Definitely more of a challenge but thanks to my level 9 group, I know how to deal with encounters now.

It's a helluva challenge taking on 10 enemies a few levels above you with just two chars, lol. But damn is it satisfying using all the environmental stuff. Midnight Oil and Flare is amazing with pre-battle prep.

You definitely have to put a little thought into how each char should be setup though because you only have two to control.
 

DMiz

Member
Some chars died after the combat, because I couldn't heal them fast enough and they were on fire or poisened or I walked them into elemental effects. My reaction skills are pretty bad, that's why I like turnbased games. On the other hand this would lead to endless prebuffing before each fight. I miss this feature often.

Is it just me, or after the recent patch, do some status effects just seem to suddenly 'resolve' at the end of combat?

Sometimes, at the end of an encounter, I'll just see the damage condition seemingly dog-pile the affected characters until the timer runs out... It's not even a question of whether or not I have time to heal them since I can't control anybody until this procs.
 

mkenyon

Banned
Anyway, I got up to level 9 with a full party yesterday but on a whim decided restart with two chars on hard both with lone wolf. Definitely more of a challenge but thanks to my level 9 group, I know how to deal with encounters now.
My friend and I are about to do exactly this.

This game is a lot of fun, the combat system and character creation allow for some really clutch plays in battle. However, now that a party of 4 has all the tools in their toolbelt, it's starting to feel a bit easy. Once the battles are easy, I'm just not sure if the game would have pull anymore.
 

Shouta

Member
My friend and I are about to do exactly this.

This game is a lot of fun, the combat system and character creation allow for some really clutch plays in battle. However, now that a party of 4 has all the tools in their toolbelt, it's starting to feel a bit easy. Once the battles are easy, I'm just not sure if the game would have pull anymore.

It's definitely gonna be a little tougher later on than with 4 people, I bet. That much is obvious from having two fewer chars. But the environmental stuff really helps a lot.

What I'm doing early on is relying on that to get through the big bad encounters. There's a cave with like 10 undead enemies guarding it and what I did was skirt the outside of their detection range and kept dropping puddles of oil on the ground. Enough to totally cover the walk way. i initiate combat and then light it all on fire. So whatever enemies want to run at me, they have to do it over through the smoke and burning. If they don't die from the fire, I smack'em dead with my weapons.

The AI is smart though, they'll try to avoid that as much as possible, by going for the edges. In some cases, the enemies just ran the opposite direction to try and go around to reach me. More oil and fire for them though. =P
 

Zalusithix

Member
Whelp, guess what made its way across the ocean today?
TvEt0JY.jpg


Not only is it a great collectors edition, but since the steam keys included in the physical package differ from the ones from Larian Vault, I'll have more copies to give away on the Steam thread!
 

BPoole

Member
Whelp, guess what made its way across the ocean today?


Not only is it a great collectors edition, but since the steam keys included in the physical package differ from the ones from Larian Vault, I'll have more copies to give away on the Steam thread!

What is in those smaller boxes on the left? Playing cards?
 

mkenyon

Banned
It's definitely gonna be a little tougher later on than with 4 people, I bet. That much is obvious from having two fewer chars. But the environmental stuff really helps a lot.

What I'm doing early on is relying on that to get through the big bad encounters. There's a cave with like 10 undead enemies guarding it and what I did was skirt the outside of their detection range and kept dropping puddles of oil on the ground. Enough to totally cover the walk way. i initiate combat and then light it all on fire. So whatever enemies want to run at me, they have to do it over through the smoke and burning. If they don't die from the fire, I smack'em dead with my weapons.

The AI is smart though, they'll try to avoid that as much as possible, by going for the edges. In some cases, the enemies just ran the opposite direction to try and go around to reach me. More oil and fire for them though. =P
Midnight Oil + Fire is the cornerstone to almost all of my encounters.

As a result, that big nasty fire demon boss thingie was the most insanely hard and long battle we've done. I think it took us almost an hour.
 

Shouta

Member
Midnight Oil + Fire is the cornerstone to almost all of my encounters.

As a result, that big nasty fire demon boss thingie was the most insanely hard and long battle we've done. I think it took us almost an hour.

Rain is your friend. Oh god, Rain is so good.
 

Mejilan

Running off of Custom Firmware
Was surprised by a nice package from Belgium today. Isn't it nice when a Kickstarter goes so right?
 

mkenyon

Banned
Rain is your friend. Oh god, Rain is so good.
Yeah, basically combo'd that with shocking arrows and freezing arrows (we dropped our Hydro/Aeo mage to make room for my friend's little brother, he wanted to play a pew pew ranger).

But still, it took so frickin long. In the best way possible though. It wasn't like an artificial bullet sponge level of difficulty, it was that the fight constantly presented new things to deal with while hitting the high HP thing. Awesome stuff.
 

tm24

Member
So a weapon having tenebrium completely overrides other weapon specialization and just uses tenebrium as the modifier?
 

epmode

Member
All of them. The rules should be the same, right?

I guess I just want to know if ap usage and cooldown are greatly improved at level 5.

High level skills require more points in the associated ability or you pay an AP penalty every time you use it. If you're only interested in the low level skills, leave the ability at one point. I did this with my fire/earth guy since I thought it would be useful to have Rain and that minor heal. It was!
 
I am like this close to pulling the trigger on this game. The only thing holding me back is whether or not the storyline is any good. Like something that makes me want to keep coming back to find out more.

I am pretty much sold on the gameplay and all the RPG elements, but after I come back from work, I literally want to lose myself in another world with a story that I actually care about. Was just curious if you guys felt that it had that kind of pull.
 

Brakke

Banned
I am like this close to pulling the trigger on this game. The only thing holding me back is whether or not the storyline is any good. Like something that makes me want to keep coming back to find out more.

I am pretty much sold on the gameplay and all the RPG elements, but after I come back from work, I literally want to lose myself in another world with a story that I actually care about. Was just curious if you guys felt that it had that kind of pull.

Well I'm through the first area and a third of the way to the level cap. So far the premise is "an ancient evil has awakened!!" And the story is "here's some evil lieutenants you should kill!!".
 
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