Divinity: Original Sin 2: Larian doesn't know what 'original' means

[Cazero]

Pickpocketing seems to be either "steal and book it out of dodge multiple screens away, preferably while having someone talking to the victim" or "don't bother." Is this an accurate assessment?

You can also get rid of the evidence. For example, if you steal skill books you can learn the skills immediately and the search won't give you up.
Worst case scenario, steal only the gold. It will be merged in the pile of gold you already have.

[huttj509]

Another thing...

So I have a rogue-type (backstabby goodness), a fighter (might weave in some necromancy for self healing, or I hear polymorph's good for melee str types), a water/air caster, and an earth/fire caster.

It really showed in a fight against one guy, but omg splash damage. I think my fire wands were also trying to ignite my melee combatants, and all the magic was doing ground effects, etc.

How do I avoid friendly fire...or friendly poison...

[factotum]

I personally don't worry too much about friendly fire. Standing in fire doesn't actually do much damage, especially if your magic armour is still up, while your enemies will take a lot more damage by trying to move through the fire to reach you. If you can avoid hitting other party members then great, but don't obsess over it.

[Anteros]

You can also get rid of the evidence. For example, if you steal skill books you can learn the skills immediately and the search won't give you up.
Worst case scenario, steal only the gold. It will be merged in the pile of gold you already have.

I have definitely been attacked at least once so far when I didn't even have any stolen items in my inventory.

a fighter (might weave in some necromancy for self healing,

Just FYI but I tried this and found it largely worthless. Typically if you're down to your HP instead of your shields then that character is CCed out of the fight anyway.

Anyway, I typically try to avoid friendly fire by focusing my 2 melee guys and my 2 magic guys on different targets. It's usually better to have them split focus so you can strip an armor type from multiple enemies anyway.

[Rynjin]

I have definitely been attacked at least once so far when I didn't even have any stolen items in my inventory.

Did you try talking your way out of things? People get hostile if you lie or refuse a search, but if you submit to the search and they find nothing you're cool.

[Anteros]

Did you try talking your way out of things? People get hostile if you lie or refuse a search, but if you submit to the search and they find nothing you're cool.

No I submitted to the search. It was at the start of the game, and I picked up a book on the ship on accident so I dropped it immediately and submitted to the search. They didn't find anything but said I was still suspicious and gave me a persuasion check that I failed.

[Anteros]

So another day another bug. This one is a doozy. Any time I inflict a status effect on an enemy it's going onto one of my characters as well. They don't even have to be anywhere near each other or sharing a puddle or anything either. Pretty ridiculous.

Also...sightlines. Does the computer even use them? I can't count the number of times it has hit me with something that should require sight at the end of their turn, and then on my turn when I go to shoot them back there's no vision. The line-of-sight system as a whole in this game seems pretty wonky most of the time. I'd like to know how it works because there's nothing more frustrating than positioning a character where they should have a clear shot at the enemy and being told they are being blocked by some invisible object. Especially when the computer can seemingly shoot right through them.

[factotum]

Are you sure that second one isn't a range thing? The range of many spells and arrows depends on the relative height between you and the enemy--if you're shooting upwards then you have a shorter range, while shooting downwards increases your range. So, someone standing above you can hit you with a ranged attack when you potentially can't hit them back.

Also, you need to move your aiming point around slightly--it's often possible to get a shot on an enemy which would hit an object if you're aiming at one part of them, but which gets through if you're aiming at another part. Works better with larger enemies, of course, but even on human-sized ones I've had situations like that.

[Anteros]

Are you sure that second one isn't a range thing? The range of many spells and arrows depends on the relative height between you and the enemy--if you're shooting upwards then you have a shorter range, while shooting downwards increases your range. So, someone standing above you can hit you with a ranged attack when you potentially can't hit them back.

Also, you need to move your aiming point around slightly--it's often possible to get a shot on an enemy which would hit an object if you're aiming at one part of them, but which gets through if you're aiming at another part. Works better with larger enemies, of course, but even on human-sized ones I've had situations like that.

I've had it happen when I had the high ground. Get attacked and when I go to attack back it has that whole portion greyed out because it's "blocked". Not the biggest deal in the world, I'd just like to know why it happens.

[factotum]

Smoke or steam obscuring your view? That's the only other thing I can think of that causes weird stuff like that.

[Keltest]

Smoke or steam obscuring your view? That's the only other thing I can think of that causes weird stuff like that.

Obscuration typically works both ways.

However, ive found a lot of the time what theyre actually doing is targeting something like, say, a corpse, that actually is in their sight range, and letting the AoE hit you when they normally couldn't. Pay attention to who, exactly, it says theyre targeting.

[Chen]

I've had it happen when I had the high ground. Get attacked and when I go to attack back it has that whole portion greyed out because it's "blocked". Not the biggest deal in the world, I'd just like to know why it happens.

Was it the same kind of attack?

Some attacks are directly lines (Fireball), some are arcs (searing daggers) and some just directly occur (Buffs, Healing, Impalement). Each have different restrictions on how they can be used. You can be in a situation where an obstacle prevents the direct lines but not the arcs. And the last ones where the effect just occurs don't seem to have restrictions except LOS and range.

[Sholos]

Also the computer absolutely cheats and has perfect knowledge of where sightlines are at all times. It's a little bit frustrating sometimes.

[huttj509]

Remember kids, save early, save often.

I got past a major capstone fight, was wandering round a ship, and wound up dying. Thought I had quicksaved before the death. Nope. My quicksave was *before* the capstone fight. I lost bout 2 hours of gameplay. Game didn't even autosave on the ship in the new chapter.

[Chen]

Some spoilers for the end of the Nameless isle but with a pretty annoying bug

Spoiler

Show

So after the Dallis screws you out of your divinity, there's a fight where there are these eruptions that create insta-kill lava. I beat this the first time but it seems some of the lava carried back to the ship and killed Lohse. But the big problem was that it interrupted the scripted return dialog and it messed up some scripting which allows the romance plots to continue. It just dumps you back into the next chapter without any of the proper end of chapter scripting. Something to keep and eye out for. Also, loot the big guy before fleeing the collapsing temple because its super worth it (only one person needs to touch the beacon to leave so its easy enough to avoid the lava).

[factotum]

Completed the entire game last night, and I'm glad to report that the tradition of crappy final boss fights has been carried over from the first game. Took me four attempts to win, and then I was dropped straight into a conversation where I had to pick what to do next, with no real indication of what the options *mean*--so I picked what I thought was the appropriate one for my character, and got the bad ending. And now, if I want to try the *other* conversation option, I have to do that boss fight again, because the developers didn't think that having an autosave right after that boss fight and before making the momentous final choice was necessary.

Oh, and of course the forced conversation option also made it impossible for me to rez Lohse, who died just before the fight ended...

[Chen]

I'm pretty sure you can save during fights. Quicksave right before you win.

[Rynjin]

Also you can save during conversations. And any other time, really.

[Anteros]

I'm pretty sure you can save during fights. Quicksave right before you win.

Yup. I normally avoid saving during fights in tactical games because it's basically cheating. This game is buggy enough and frustrating enough with some of their designs that it's practically necessary though. I only use the saves if I get screwed by a bug or something like Factotum's post happens though.

[factotum]

I'm pretty sure you can save during fights. Quicksave right before you win.

The problem is, it wasn't my turn when I won. Several of my characters had "lose your next turn" status effects and the one character you have to beat to win the fight died from DoTs after I'd been unable to do anything for 30 seconds or so. Admittedly, it didn't occur to me to switch to another character during the conversation and see if they could rez Lohse and/or save the game--that sometimes works, right?

I still think they should have had the fight end, and then require you to initiate conversation yourself to proceed to the next step, not force you into a conversation whether you want it or not.

[Chen]

I still think they should have had the fight end, and then require you to initiate conversation yourself to proceed to the next step, not force you into a conversation whether you want it or not.

Oh I'm in complete agreement here. It's especially annoying when they talk to your non-persuasive character instead of your main one and its a non-repeatable conversation. I just posted that as a potential workaround for the moment.

There's mod that makes all the civil abilities into auras which is fantastic. Can't link it here since I'm at work but check out the Nexus or Steam workshop for it. It helps a ton in terms of QoL.

[Anteros]

Oh I'm in complete agreement here. It's especially annoying when they talk to your non-persuasive character instead of your main one and its a non-repeatable conversation. I just posted that as a potential workaround for the moment.

There's mod that makes all the civil abilities into auras which is fantastic. Can't link it here since I'm at work but check out the Nexus or Steam workshop for it. It helps a ton in terms of QoL.

Sounds fantastic, but does it work with existing saves or do I have to restart?

[Chen]

Sounds fantastic, but does it work with existing saves or do I have to restart?

I think it adds items you can buy at various merchants to produce the effects. I think they're present in each chapter (assuming you didn't kill said merchant I guess).

[Anteros]

So, the game has slowly gotten worse and worse as I've progressed and is now completely unplayable. Very frustrating since I'm well within the recommended performance specs for the game. After some Googling of the issue, it appears to be a very common problem that only gets worse as the game progresses. Considering I'm only in act 2 and I'm experiencing 30 seconds of freezing/lag for every 10 seconds of gameplay I'm feeling a little ripped off.

[factotum]

Odd, I never had any regular freezing or lag spikes? I would often get a thing where the game would freeze for upwards of 30 seconds after quicksaving, but it would always come back and be fine again until the next quicksave. And my machine is *garbage* by today's standards--it's an Athlon 860K quad-core CPU, GeForce 750Ti graphics and 8Gb of RAM, I'm pretty sure even an XBox Scorpio or Playstation Pro could out-perform it.

[Anteros]

I guess it's an issue with certain hardware configurations. They're "aware" of it and supposedly going to release a performance patch to fix the issue at some point in the future. I'm not exactly holding my breath, but I guess it's better than nothing.

Pretty ridiculous that I can run games like Inquisition or Witcher on decent settings with no hiccups, but a game that hardly looks much better than Baldur's Gate is unplayable on even the lowest settings.

[Anteros]

Well, after hours of troubleshooting I finally got it to work. All it took was putting every single setting to the lowest possible option, manually disabling texture streaming in the config file....and lowering the resolution to 500X700. At this point the game literally looks worse than the original Baldur's Gate and it still has 10 minute load screens with lag any time an ability is used. Also, when you lower the resolution the sound crackles constantly for some reason.

Their tech support basically just says "we're aware of the problem and planning a performance patch in the future". I'm actually impressed with their professionalism and response time, but without any more information than "hey your game might be playable one day if we get around to it" I'm honestly pretty upset. Doesn't help that I put in 80 hours at the hospital this week and spent the entire time looking forward to today when I could relax and play.

Oh well, I'm done with my pointless venting for now. I will say that if anyone reading this is considering buying the game I wouldn't risk it unless your system is well above the stated minimum system requirements.

[factotum]

Oh well, I'm done with my pointless venting for now. I will say that if anyone reading this is considering buying the game I wouldn't risk it unless your system is well above the stated minimum system requirements.

Again, though, I have a really, really poor PC and it works fine for me? It must be specific combinations of hardware that do it, not having a low spec machine. (Unless your machine spec is even lower than mine, and I seriously doubt that!).

[Anteros]

Again, though, I have a really, really poor PC and it works fine for me? It must be specific combinations of hardware that do it, not having a low spec machine. (Unless your machine spec is even lower than mine, and I seriously doubt that!).

No you don't. At least not within the context of the advertised requirements for this game. Your system is something like double the advertised requirements.

OS: Windows 7 64-bit.
CPU: Intel Core i5-650 3.2 GHz or AMD APU A10-6700T 2.5 GHz.
RAM: 4GB System Memory.
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti or AMD Radeon HD 6770.
DX: DirectX 11.
HDD: 25 GB Free Hard Drive Space.

Your rig outperforms mine by a significant margin. Now, I understand that it's time to upgrade my computer...but when I spend money on a product that is advertised to work with my system specs, I expect it to actually work. I don't think that's unreasonable. This is such a common issue that they actually have a sticky dealing with it on their official forums. They are obviously aware that the game's requirements are higher than they advertise...so why haven't they either fixed it, or changed the listed requirements? There's really no excuse.

[factotum]

Oh, OK, didn't realise your PC was that bad, sorry. While it doesn't excuse the practice of lowballing specs, I've been so used to interpreting the "recommended" specs as the minimum specs for years now that I barely pay attention to the "minimum" specs, and my PC doesn't actually quite meet the recommended ones for this game (I'm short on the graphics card and the CPU isn't quite where it should be either).

In other news, I am doing something with this game that I pretty much never do--that is, going in to a second playthrough almost immediately after finishing the first. There were skills I never really looked at first time through, and I never got to see Beast or Sebille's storylines--plus there was the whole "picked the wrong answer" at the end. This time I have a custom main character who's concentrating on being a summoner, Beast as a fighter (Warfare/Necromancy), Sebille as a Rogue with some Polymorph skills and Lohse again as the healer and teleporter. Not sure how well things will go at the higher levels without that handy Geomancy for repairing physical armour, but the buffed Incarnate both deals and takes a *lot* of damage even at level 7, where I am now. Dimensional Bolt, not so much--may need to dip into another magic school once Summoning hits level 10 and I get my Incarnate Champion.