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

[Seerow]

So I am still at the beginning of this game, roughly 4 hours deep. Looking for some general advice that can be provided with minimal story spoilers.

Specifically, build/system advice, and anything I need to make sure I do to avoid screwing myself later.

Spoiler: Spoilers for some part of the way through Act 1

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For example I poked around earlier in the thread and saw a note that you need to have some Wit to be able to get certain things. How much Wit should I invest in? Do I need it on my main character, or can it be on any character?

Besides that, what sort of stat skill spread should I be investing in? Is it better to hyper specialize or mix points around? Are there certain thresholds I need to hit early then start branching out? Are there skills that if I don't find/buy by a certain point in the game I will never get them? Will I ever reach a point in the game where buying each skill I come across is trivial?

I found out for the section I am in now I can only recruit 4 characters, even though there are more recruitable characters than that in the area. Will I get all of the characters later, or am I effectively picking my final party during this section of the game?

Most recently I got a quest reward that lets me take my collar off. I did a quick save on a separate file then did it, and am now in a position where I either kill all Magisters on site or get thrown in the dungeon. Have I messed myself up in a major way doing this, or is this inevitable? I also note that despite taking off the collar, I still have no idea what "Source" is (I actually spent the first several combats thinking all special abilities were Source, and used nothing but basic attacks assuming they were unavailable), so taking it off seems to have caused nothing but trouble. Mind, I don't mind just killing all of the Magisters... but in doing so am I cutting off side quests and other things I could be doing, or is this just the inevitable outcome of the Island? I am okay with spoilers on this if needed

Thank you for any help you are able to offer!

[huttj509]

So I am still at the beginning of this game, roughly 4 hours deep. Looking for some general advice that can be provided with minimal story spoilers.

Specifically, build/system advice, and anything I need to make sure I do to avoid screwing myself later.

Spoiler: Spoilers for some part of the way through Act 1

Show

For example I poked around earlier in the thread and saw a note that you need to have some Wit to be able to get certain things. How much Wit should I invest in? Do I need it on my main character, or can it be on any character?

Besides that, what sort of stat skill spread should I be investing in? Is it better to hyper specialize or mix points around? Are there certain thresholds I need to hit early then start branching out? Are there skills that if I don't find/buy by a certain point in the game I will never get them? Will I ever reach a point in the game where buying each skill I come across is trivial?

I found out for the section I am in now I can only recruit 4 characters, even though there are more recruitable characters than that in the area. Will I get all of the characters later, or am I effectively picking my final party during this section of the game?

Most recently I got a quest reward that lets me take my collar off. I did a quick save on a separate file then did it, and am now in a position where I either kill all Magisters on site or get thrown in the dungeon. Have I messed myself up in a major way doing this, or is this inevitable? I also note that despite taking off the collar, I still have no idea what "Source" is (I actually spent the first several combats thinking all special abilities were Source, and used nothing but basic attacks assuming they were unavailable), so taking it off seems to have caused nothing but trouble. Mind, I don't mind just killing all of the Magisters... but in doing so am I cutting off side quests and other things I could be doing, or is this just the inevitable outcome of the Island? I am okay with spoilers on this if needed

Thank you for any help you are able to offer!

First off, Source is like "supermagic" stuff. To start with, each character only has 1 ability that uses it. That's what's locked by the collar. Source that a character has absorbed is indicated by little ovals below the portraits that light up blue when full (I don't think you can really absorb any until after you get past Fort Joy, but still on that island).

[factotum]

So I am still at the beginning of this game, roughly 4 hours deep. Looking for some general advice that can be provided with minimal story spoilers.

To go through your points in order:

Wit is mainly required as a means of spotting hidden items, but it's by no means vital--I didn't invest a single point in it until Act 3 or thereabouts in my first playthrough, and I only started doing it then because of the increased Initiative (not critical chance, as I said before I edited this!) it also provides. Anything that's hidden in Fort Joy is spottable with the base wit 10, AFAIK.

Skills--I would generally go for at most two main skill schools for each character, and if you can arrange it that those skills both use the same base stat, so much the better! You should concentrate on Constitution and the base stat(s) for your skills--Cons is ridiculously powerful, at higher levels every point in it can give you *hundreds* of life. Also note some schools are complementary--for instance, Geomancer and Pyromancer works well together, because Geomancer can lay oil fields down which the Pyromancer then sets on fire. As for the individual spells or skills you can use within each school, you can learn as many of them as you like but you can only *memorise* a limited number--how many depends on your level and your Memory stat. See the Skills panel (K key by default) for more info.

You can only ever have four characters, yes. Your last chance to change your party up is on the ship after leaving Fort Joy, but note that *all* the characters have personal story bits they need to do on Fort Joy, and knowing what those are is kind of hard without reading spoilers, so you're best off picking your favourite ones and keeping them for the whole game--you have the best chance of doing their personal story missions that way.

There is *one* quest I can think of that requires the Magisters to be alive:

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Magister Yarrow on the fort walls wants you to find the sourcerer Migo. However, I don't know if she turns hostile like the other Magisters do when you've got no collar.

Also note that the Magisters turning hostile is guaranteed in the long run, because that will happen if you go back into the Fort after once escaping it even if you still have your collar, and there may well be reasons you'll be doing that (e.g. finishing off quests).

[Cozzer]

Taking away the collar should probably be the very last thing you do in the camp, before going on with the game. If you completed the arena, you're probably strong enough to survive, but it's more fun to do the other sidequests first.

About attributes... I usually choose one primary, one secondary and one tertiary for each characters, depending on his build. Memory is very useful for mages, or characters who specialize in two/three schools. You should have one high-Wits character (probably your rogue), but you don't really need more than that. Also, remember that defensive magic (healing, armor restoring, and so on) and Summoning are not dependant on Intelligence. If you build a purely support caster, forget Int and go with Con or Finesse.

[Anteros]

So I am still at the beginning of this game, roughly 4 hours deep. Looking for some general advice that can be provided with minimal story spoilers.

Specifically, build/system advice, and anything I need to make sure I do to avoid screwing myself later.

Spoiler: Spoilers for some part of the way through Act 1

Show

For example I poked around earlier in the thread and saw a note that you need to have some Wit to be able to get certain things. How much Wit should I invest in? Do I need it on my main character, or can it be on any character?

Besides that, what sort of stat skill spread should I be investing in? Is it better to hyper specialize or mix points around? Are there certain thresholds I need to hit early then start branching out? Are there skills that if I don't find/buy by a certain point in the game I will never get them? Will I ever reach a point in the game where buying each skill I come across is trivial?

I found out for the section I am in now I can only recruit 4 characters, even though there are more recruitable characters than that in the area. Will I get all of the characters later, or am I effectively picking my final party during this section of the game?

Most recently I got a quest reward that lets me take my collar off. I did a quick save on a separate file then did it, and am now in a position where I either kill all Magisters on site or get thrown in the dungeon. Have I messed myself up in a major way doing this, or is this inevitable? I also note that despite taking off the collar, I still have no idea what "Source" is (I actually spent the first several combats thinking all special abilities were Source, and used nothing but basic attacks assuming they were unavailable), so taking it off seems to have caused nothing but trouble. Mind, I don't mind just killing all of the Magisters... but in doing so am I cutting off side quests and other things I could be doing, or is this just the inevitable outcome of the Island? I am okay with spoilers on this if needed

Thank you for any help you are able to offer!

Wits is the worst stat in the game by a large margin. Ostensibly it raises your initiative in combat...but the game forces you to take turns with the enemy no matter how heavily your initiative outweighs theirs. As a damage stat it is outperformed by every other primary damage stat in the game. Would you rather have a chance to crit for double damage, or would you rather always do double damage with a chance to crit for even more damage? It's a no-brainer. The only real use for wits is finding hidden treasures. It's not true that you can spot anything in Fort Joy with 10 wits though. It's like 16 or something if you want to find every single thing. I pumped wits on my first character before I realized how bad it was. Don't worry about your build though...you can respec when you leave the island.

I can only think of one side quest in Fort Joy that requires the magisters to be alive, and you get the rewards for it if you kill them, so it's not the biggest deal in the world. You could always do it with a character who still has their collar before you kill them if you want to maximize your exp. I ended up killing them all simply because it was annoying to constantly be thrown in the dungeon.

[factotum]

Wits is the worst stat in the game by a large margin. Ostensibly it raises your initiative in combat...but the game forces you to take turns with the enemy no matter how heavily your initiative outweighs theirs.

Initiative just alters where you go in the turn sequence, not how many turns you get, and going first can still be useful. Not as useful as some other things, admittedly, but useful enough to pay attention to.

[mangosta71]

Ifan's story includes talking to one of the magisters by the gate at one point. I missed out on that conversation because I got my collar removed before I discovered that.

[Chen]

Initiative just alters where you go in the turn sequence, not how many turns you get, and going first can still be useful. Not as useful as some other things, admittedly, but useful enough to pay attention to.

Yeah but you still alternate turns with the enemy until there aren't enough left (or vice versa).

If I have two chars, 100 init on one and 99 on another, fighting enemies who all have 20 init the order will be:

100 init char - 20 init enemy - 99 init char - all remaining enemies.

You want enough wits to find things and ensure you get the first action in combat. Max one characters needs high init and thus wits.

[factotum]

Ifan's story includes talking to one of the magisters by the gate at one point. I missed out on that conversation because I got my collar removed before I discovered that.

Isn't there a letter in Ifan's inventory right at the beginning of the game telling you that you have to speak to that guy?

[Keltest]

Isn't there a letter in Ifan's inventory right at the beginning of the game telling you that you have to speak to that guy?

yeah, and I think he drops a note for Ifan if you kill him, too.

[Anteros]

Oh yeah. I forgot about that one. That's also the area with the guy who shoots your cat, so be careful of the cat if you're doing that quest.

[factotum]

OK, word of advice to the developers of this game: having a questline where you lose every scrap of equipment off one of your characters, without any real way to get it back, and no way in advance to know this is what will happen, is cobblers. Do not do this. I eventually had to roll back to my last save about half an hour earlier.

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I'm talking about the quest Love Has a Price, where you shack up with a lizard prostitute in Driftwood only to find it was all a trap and they're stealing all your gear. The problem is, your character is naked at this point, your other characters are not in the room for hopefully obvious reasons, so you don't have a lot of choice as to what to do. I tried to fight, but got killed in short order--my other characters then came in, killed the two bad guys who hadn't run off and rezzed me, but I was still just as naked. You can find your gear on a table in Lohar's room, but he won't let you take it if you ask him about it, and if you steal it you end up in another fight--which is a bit of a problem if you haven't done all Lohar's quests.

[Chen]

Hmm I didn't have that issue

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I used the teleporter pyramids and my team arrived in the room. After killing the thugs my gear was in some container in there (hence the team arriving when using the pyramids).

[factotum]

Oh, it's easy to get round it if you know it's going to happen and set things up accordingly, which is exactly what I did second time through:

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I made sure the room key was in the inventory of a secondary party member, switched to him and brought them all inside as soon as the fight started.

Problem is, if you DON'T know it's going to happen and aren't lucky enough to have equipment set up just so, you're hosed. (At the moment my teleporter pyramids are in the hands of Lohse (who has the teleport skill) and Beast (since he's pretty tanky and can easily survive getting teleported), so she can teleport him somewhere and then teleport the rest of the party to him).

[Chen]

My point was more that my gear was in the room and I was able to get it back without much issue. I'm not sure what makes it so you "lose" your gear the way you described.

[factotum]

My point was more that my gear was in the room and I was able to get it back without much issue. I'm not sure what makes it so you "lose" your gear the way you described.

You were able to retrieve it in the middle of a fight while wearing no armour and carrying no weapons? Did it actually let you equip it once you had it?

[Chen]

You were able to retrieve it in the middle of a fight while wearing no armour and carrying no weapons? Did it actually let you equip it once you had it?

It cost AP to pick up and to equip. If I recall I only bothered equipping my weapon but even then it didn't matter since I had the rest of my party there anyways. I'm not sure you can actually equip armor while in combat. You definitely can equip weapons though.

[Cozzer]

The best way to deal with that situation, IMHO, is by using the pyramids (you should already have two by then, one of them in the bag of the naked character and the other in the hands of someone else). Once the rest of the party gets there, you just win the fight (which is pretty easy, especially if your unequipped character is a mage) and take back your things.

[factotum]

Which goes back to what I already said--that's a fine solution, *if you know what's going to happen*. Oh, and it occurs to me that I didn't know where my equipment was the first time through this either--I only found that out by looking it up on the wiki after failing the first time. It just seems to be an "unless you're lucky you're reverting to a previous save" situation.

[huttj509]

The best way to deal with that situation, IMHO, is by using the pyramids (you should already have two by then, one of them in the bag of the naked character and the other in the hands of someone else). Once the rest of the party gets there, you just win the fight (which is pretty easy, especially if your unequipped character is a mage) and take back your things.

Well, yes, but if you don't know what's coming, and the other pyramid happens to not be in that character's bag, and you took the key into the room...

Yes, if you know the fight's coming, and prepare for it, it doesn't come out of nowhere and screw you.

[Anteros]

The game just kinda loves throwing you into situations where you're punished for not re-loading with future knowledge of the events in general. It's really not that different from having to re-load because you accidentally wandered into a high level fight with no warning and got destroyed...or accidentally made an important NPC hostile with some innocuous line of dialogue.

That's the problem with making a game "old school" or whatever. A lot of these types of design decisions were phased out of games for good reason. Sure, it's technically more difficult, but it's not the satisfying kind of difficulty.

[Chen]

I just tried this again and you can actually just pay the initial thugs too to get your stuff back. I also tried fighting naked with a lone wolf but I still died. However when I went to Lohar I just picked my stuff back up, it wasn't red. I had already done the quest to let the dwarves out of the basement (though not the whole Mordus part) so maybe that did it? That quest has zero combat in it so you could do it naked and get your gear back that way too.

[Seerow]

Thanks everyone for the early game tips. I'll be playing some more this weekend, and it will definitely help a lot.

One thing that if it did get answered, I may have missed: Are there missable skills in the game? Or will I eventually be able to find all skills at trainers/vendors and be able to reliably come back and get them?

The game just kinda loves throwing you into situations where you're punished for not re-loading with future knowledge of the events in general. It's really not that different from having to re-load because you accidentally wandered into a high level fight with no warning and got destroyed...or accidentally made an important NPC hostile with some innocuous line of dialogue.

That's the problem with making a game "old school" or whatever. A lot of these types of design decisions were phased out of games for good reason. Sure, it's technically more difficult, but it's not the satisfying kind of difficulty.

Hrm... I am curious, how does everyone feel this style of difficulty differs from Dark Souls?

After all, in Dark Souls you wander into fights and situations you aren't prepared for, and die. Frequently. It's the hallmark of the game. You then get sent back to the start of the area, and get to attempt it again. Most people seem to love it explicitly because of this learning curve, as you die, start over, get better, push further, and eventually master the zone.

It seems to me like Divinity's difficulty curve is emulating something similar, except you can save anywhere rather than having preset bonfires.

[Keltest]

Thanks everyone for the early game tips. I'll be playing some more this weekend, and it will definitely help a lot.

One thing that if it did get answered, I may have missed: Are there missable skills in the game? Or will I eventually be able to find all skills at trainers/vendors and be able to reliably come back and get them?

I believe that annoying Curse spell that everyone and their cat can hurl at you can only be obtained in a specific manner in one area of the game, but other than that I'm not aware of any skills that can be missed. The plot skills are the only other ones I know of that you *have* to quest for, and the plot wont advance without getting those, so you cant actually miss them.

[Chen]

The game just kinda loves throwing you into situations where you're punished for not re-loading with future knowledge of the events in general. It's really not that different from having to re-load because you accidentally wandered into a high level fight with no warning and got destroyed...or accidentally made an important NPC hostile with some innocuous line of dialogue.

That's the problem with making a game "old school" or whatever. A lot of these types of design decisions were phased out of games for good reason. Sure, it's technically more difficult, but it's not the satisfying kind of difficulty.

Having areas that outlevel you is a huge dividing issue. Some people love level scaling and others feel it's awful. Personally I like a static world with various difficulties based on area. I like feeling that I can just plow through some content if I outlevel it, whereas I can get crushed (or have a very challenging fight) if I go somewhere ahead of where I'm supposed to. Like running down to the Enclave area in Fallout 2 and getting some Power armor to crush the early game with, if you manage to sneak your way through and not get gibbed by the Enclave you're stealing from.

[factotum]

Oh, I like static levels in the opposition as well. Level scaling just renders the entire point of an RPG moot, which to my mind is to get kerbstomped by an enemy, grind up a couple of levels, then come back and get your revenge (maniacal laughing optional).

Speaking of which, you remember I said earlier that the second fight in the Driftwood arena seemed rather easy?

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I think I was just so stupidly overlevelled for it--I was about level 13 at the time I did it--that I killed the champion before the Voidwoken had a chance to escape from its cage. I did the fight at level 10 this time, so was a bit surprised when that particular plot development happened!

[Anteros]

Having areas that outlevel you is a huge dividing issue. Some people love level scaling and others feel it's awful. Personally I like a static world with various difficulties based on area. I like feeling that I can just plow through some content if I outlevel it, whereas I can get crushed (or have a very challenging fight) if I go somewhere ahead of where I'm supposed to. Like running down to the Enclave area in Fallout 2 and getting some Power armor to crush the early game with, if you manage to sneak your way through and not get gibbed by the Enclave you're stealing from.

I like static levels in areas as well. If you wander off the beaten path it should be more dangerous and more rewarding. The problem with Divinity is that there is no beaten path. There's often no indication of where you should go next at all. You're left to wander in an open sandbox with no direction, and a single wrong turn will take you from the area you're supposed to be in to progress the plot to an area with mobs that are nearly twice your level. There's often no way to know which area is which other than saving and re-loading when you wander into a bad fight.

[huttj509]

I like static levels in areas as well. If you wander off the beaten path it should be more dangerous and more rewarding. The problem with Divinity is that there is no beaten path. There's often no indication of where you should go next at all. You're left to wander in an open sandbox with no direction, and a single wrong turn will take you from the area you're supposed to be in to progress the plot to an area with mobs that are nearly twice your level. There's often no way to know which area is which other than saving and re-loading when you wander into a bad fight.

Or "oh, a scarecrow." NOPE

[Keltest]

Or "oh, a scarecrow." NOPE

TBF, I think that has more to do with it being highly possible to be underleveled coming out of Fort Joy than it is the encounter being overleveled.

[Thomas Cardew]

TBF, I think that has more to do with it being highly possible to be underleveled coming out of Fort Joy than it is the encounter being overleveled.

Party comp has a lot to do with it as well. Very low physical armor and high magic armor means a decent archer and/or melee will have a much easier time than a group of mages.