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Divinity Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition

RK47

collides like two planets pulled by gravity
Patron
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
28,396
Location
Not Here
Dead State Divinity: Original Sin
On my first playthrough I didn't craft a single weapon or piece of armor, just potions sometimes. I've found that crafting weapons/armor is completely unnecessary in regards to beating the game, so feeling as if you need to upgrade your weapons every level via crafting is just a self-imposed problem. I wouldn't say it's a flaw at all.

On my first playthrough, before the EE, I also didn't craft anything, not even potions. And while I can confirm that it was completely unnecessary for most of the game, it was near-necessary for the final fight.

I played thru it with a friend, and the dragon kept wiping us over and over and over and over again, until we resorted to maximum cheese and spammed him with disease/drain/whatever scrolls at turn 1 to get him down to 1/3 hp from all the stacked max hp debuffs. Yet even after that it was STILL a lottery because the fucker would still be able to just keep rampaging with turbo AoE attacks and melt our faces.

When I raegd about this on the 'dex, I remember the first answers I got were "wait you mean you don't have 150% resistances to everything lololololo have you not been craftung OP gear?!"


On the other hand, now that the dragon got nerfed to the ground in the EE, this is no longer true. Because we played through it again with the EE, again didn't use any crafting... and this time we murdered the dragon on first try because it was so pathetic :hmmm:

.....wait. u didn't CC the final boss? that was what I did using the 3 AP touch spells and other ranged CC.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
A while back one of the ZA/UM guys asked on Twitter, which is the last game you've un-ironically enjoyed, without a protective layer of detachment?*

This is my major issue with D:OS. That ironic detachment is slathered on everywhere. It's like it doesn't want me to enjoy it for what it ostensibly is -- a straightforward chosen-one-saves-the-world romp in an obvious fantasyland theme park. The (really well executed!) rock-paper-scissors mechanics are commented on in an actual rock-paper-scissors game in dialogue. You've got voice actors hamming it up with the most outrageous accents since the French Taunter. You've got cat romances. You've got a boss named Pontius Pirate for crying out loud. You've got the whole damn thing wink-wink-nudge-nudging me so hard I'm falling off the chair. This sits right in the really uncomfortable middle ground between straight-up fantasy and full-on Guybrush Threepwood, and it's not clever enough for Guybrush Threepwood.

KNOCK IT OFF FFS IRONY IS DEAD, EARNEST IS THE NEW MOUSTACHE WAX

*my answer was Kerbal Space Program
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,377
Location
Djibouti
.....wait. u didn't CC the final boss? that was what I did using the 3 AP touch spells and other ranged CC.

of course I did, but he had resistances up the ass, which made it a lottery
 

Haplo

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Sep 14, 2016
Messages
6,113
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
I'm... bored. And I'm not sure why. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with this -- on the contrary, the combat is good, the encounters are varied, and so on and so forth. I have those little complaints like the crappy procedurally-generated leveled loot and general overabundance of everything and the incredibly frustrating spell targeting system -- a fireball is as good as useless if I can't put it where I want it, and a little tiny bump in the ground is often enough to stop me doing that -- but... I just can't get into it. I'm ticking off things from a list without really giving a shit.

Could be the wrong time or wrong frame of mind for it. Maybe I'm just burned out on this sort of thing. Or it could be that I'm not able to swallow the theme-parkness of the thing; the game isn't even pretending that the maps are anything other than challenges or puzzles made for my benefit.

Yes, the same thing happened to me. Did some trials in the desert, killed some spiders, got bored and never returned...

A while back one of the ZA/UM guys asked on Twitter, which is the last game you've un-ironically enjoyed, without a protective layer of detachment?*

This is my major issue with D:OS. That ironic detachment is slathered on everywhere. It's like it doesn't want me to enjoy it for what it ostensibly is -- a straightforward chosen-one-saves-the-world romp in an obvious fantasyland theme park. The (really well executed!) rock-paper-scissors mechanics are commented on in an actual rock-paper-scissors game in dialogue. You've got voice actors hamming it up with the most outrageous accents since the French Taunter. You've got cat romances. You've got a boss named Pontius Pirate for crying out loud. You've got the whole damn thing wink-wink-nudge-nudging me so hard I'm falling off the chair. This sits right in the really uncomfortable middle ground between straight-up fantasy and full-on Guybrush Threepwood, and it's not clever enough for Guybrush Threepwood.

KNOCK IT OFF FFS IRONY IS DEAD, EARNEST IS THE NEW MOUSTACHE WAX

I was playing with 2 Lone Wolf characters and, apart from everything being very generic and ironic and the itemization being terrible, I guess the game was just too easy with Lone Wolves. That added to the tedium.
 

Iznaliu

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 28, 2016
Messages
3,686
This is my major issue with D:OS. That ironic detachment is slathered on everywhere. It's like it doesn't want me to enjoy it for what it ostensibly is -- a straightforward chosen-one-saves-the-world romp in an obvious fantasyland theme park. The (really well executed!) rock-paper-scissors mechanics are commented on in an actual rock-paper-scissors game in dialogue. You've got voice actors hamming it up with the most outrageous accents since the French Taunter. You've got cat romances. You've got a boss named Pontius Pirate for crying out loud. You've got the whole damn thing wink-wink-nudge-nudging me so hard I'm falling off the chair. This sits right in the really uncomfortable middle ground between straight-up fantasy and full-on Guybrush Threepwood, and it's not clever enough for Guybrush Threepwood.

I actually took the story more seriously than it was probably intended to be, and it worked well enough.
 

Jezal_k23

Guest
Been playing this lately. The most irritating thing is still when someone moves SLIGHTLY out of the way when you're about to click and you end up missing it and sending your character walking all the way through a fire field to their death.
 

SniperHF

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2014
Messages
1,110
Been playing this lately. The most irritating thing is still when someone moves SLIGHTLY out of the way when you're about to click and you end up missing it and sending your character walking all the way through a fire field to their death.

StandStillWhenAttack - http://www.nexusmods.com/divinityoriginalsin/mods/75/?

There's a few different versions, ones that makes enemies stop for like 10 seconds and another that stops them completely.

I believe it still works, not my mod though.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Been exploring the systems. Am developing Opinions. Stand clear.

I don't like the character system. It's outrageously minmaxy, and I don't see any rational reason to play anything other than a caster.

Let me elaborate.

Gear is level- and stat-locked. Stat points are relatively infrequent, and stat purchase cost is always 1:1. This means that whichever build you pick, you will be pumping exactly one stat + Speed. If you don't, you'll be left behind -- you'll no longer be able to use the best gear for your level, which means you'll be a lot weaker. This gimps hybrid characters who would need to pump two stats (in addition to speed), say Strength and Intelligence for a proper "battlemage". I.e. your build options are reduced to strength-based (melee, either two-hander or sword-and-board), dex-based (archer or dagger-wielding backstabber), or int-based (caster).

Skill points are handed out pretty liberally, however, but skill cost goes up with skill level. With the actual, uh, skills, there's a shitton of them, and there's a lot of benefit in putting a single point into something that's not really a core thing for you. One point in rogue will give you invisibility and speed, one point in ranger will give you doctor, first-aid, and treat poison, one point in man-at-arms will give you that thing that lets you cancel knocked down and perhaps something else. Pretty small investment, highly useful.

All this pales into insignificance next to magic.

One: there are TONS more spells than those other abilities, and they're way more powerful. Even at Novice level, you have massively powerful AoE disables in the form of combos -- rain or a puddle + shock or freeze. You've got reliable long-range disable+damage. You've got shit like Thunder Jump and Teleport, and a little later, Charm. And... from day 1, you have summons. Pick Earth and you have summons up the wazoo. Why would you bother having a melee combatant in the party when you can just summon a level-equivalent spider/undead warrior/wolf/elemental etc? Why would you bother having a rogue when your caster can disable the enemy target at range, or materialise a spider next to it, or teleport it into range for close-range spells, or any of a ton of other options when all the rogue can do is turn fast and invisible, run to the back, stab, and hope that she got it in one?

To make this worse, a lot of the enemy challenge is built around resistances. Casters can shoot out any elemenatal type of damage they want just by swapping weapons, as wands and staves come in all flavours. Rogues and archers only do piercing. Warriors do slashing or piercing (since two-handed crushing weapons just aren't there and can't even be crafted... why?). I.e. I'm constantly in fights where my caster, with a single probably unnecessary point in wands, does more ranged weapon damage than my archer, with a crafted weapon and a shitton of points in Crossbow. Because the enemy happens to have a high Piercing resistance (or outright immunity). Which means my archer can just stand their with his thumb up his ass, unless he wants to expend his consumables which is probably unnecessary as the casters will finish the fight PDQ.

(Okay, I may have been exaggerating a tiny bit. Grenades and static cloud arrows are nice. So one archer in the party would be somewhat useful just for that + support, since Pinpoint is a Dex-locked talent. But even with that, would it be more useful than a fourth caster + fourth summon? Don't really think so. Main reason for that party would be that you want to go with the story companions -- two casters as heroes + Jahan + Bairdotr.)

This game is wearing thin. Great encounter design, good combat mechanics, very well executed, but the character building is downright poor, and the worldbuilding and writing is shamefur dispray. (And yeah it gets linear AF once out of Cyseal, the RPG equivalent of a corridor shooter. Weren't these things supposed to have choice and consequence or something?)
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Iznaliu

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 28, 2016
Messages
3,686
Been exploring the systems. Am developing Opinions. Stand clear.

I don't like the character system. It's outrageously minmaxy, and I don't see any rational reason to play anything other than a caster.

Let me elaborate.

Gear is level- and stat-locked. Stat points are relatively infrequent, and stat purchase cost is always 1:1. This means that whichever build you pick, you will be pumping exactly one stat + Speed. If you don't, you'll be left behind -- you'll no longer be able to use the best gear for your level, which means you'll be a lot weaker. This gimps hybrid characters who would need to pump two stats (in addition to speed), say Strength and Intelligence for a proper "battlemage". I.e. your build options are reduced to strength-based (melee, either two-hander or sword-and-board), dex-based (archer or dagger-wielding backstabber), or int-based (caster).

Skill points are handed out pretty liberally, however, but skill cost goes up with skill level. With the actual, uh, skills, there's a shitton of them, and there's a lot of benefit in putting a single point into something that's not really a core thing for you. One point in rogue will give you invisibility and speed, one point in ranger will give you doctor, first-aid, and treat poison, one point in man-at-arms will give you that thing that lets you cancel knocked down and perhaps something else. Pretty small investment, highly useful.

All this pales into insignificance next to magic.

One: there are TONS more spells than those other abilities, and they're way more powerful. Even at Novice level, you have massively powerful AoE disables in the form of combos -- rain or a puddle + shock or freeze. You've got reliable long-range disable+damage. You've got shit like Thunder Jump and Teleport, and a little later, Charm. And... from day 1, you have summons. Pick Earth and you have summons up the wazoo. Why would you bother having a melee combatant in the party when you can just summon a level-equivalent spider/undead warrior/wolf/elemental etc? Why would you bother having a rogue when your caster can disable the enemy target at range, or materialise a spider next to it, or teleport it into range for close-range spells, or any of a ton of other options when all the rogue can do is turn fast and invisible, run to the back, stab, and hope that she got it in one?

To make this worse, a lot of the enemy challenge is built around resistances. Casters can shoot out any elemenatal type of damage they want just by swapping weapons, as wands and staves come in all flavours. Rogues and archers only do piercing. Warriors do slashing or piercing (since two-handed crushing weapons just aren't there and can't even be crafted... why?). I.e. I'm constantly in fights where my caster, with a single probably unnecessary point in wands, does more ranged weapon damage than my archer, with a crafted weapon and a shitton of points in Crossbow. Because the enemy happens to have a high Piercing resistance (or outright immunity). Which means my archer can just stand their with his thumb up his ass, unless he wants to expend his consumables which is probably unnecessary as the casters will finish the fight PDQ.

(Okay, I may have been exaggerating a tiny bit. Grenades and static cloud arrows are nice. So one archer in the party would be somewhat useful just for that + support, since Pinpoint is a Dex-locked talent. But even with that, would it be more useful than a fourth caster + fourth summon? Don't really think so. Main reason for that party would be that you want to go with the story companions -- two casters as heroes + Jahan + Bairdotr.)

This game is wearing thin. Great encounter design, good combat mechanics, very well executed, but the character building is downright poor, and the worldbuilding and writing is shamefur dispray. (And yeah it gets linear AF once out of Cyseal, the RPG equivalent of a corridor shooter. Weren't these things supposed to have choice and consequence or something?)

This is pretty good, but I want to note that melee characters specced in Man-at-Arms can be good; if you have two casters and two men/women-at-arms, you can use one MoA as a tank and the other as a damage-dealer, while your casters keep enemies locked down with status effects. Using casters to deal damage is suboptimal as more enemies have less melee resistance than elemental resistance, and MoA abilities function as a percentage of base weapon damage, (often 200%+) while caster abilities function separately from weapons. Most importantly, casters are needed to inflict statuses, and are they are too weak to make an all-caster party viable,
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,607
A tank will always be superior to any given summon though sure, there's an advantage in having three or four of the things around. Additionally, they updated the AI somewhere along the lines so that some enemies will go after you instead of your summons.

The real overpoweredness of casters is clear once everyone's intelligence is sky high enough to make cooldowns practically non-existent (there's no way to reduce cooldowns for the "mundane" abilities). I can confirm through my own playthrough that it makes the difference between "struggling through every fight" and "breezing through every fight"
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Problem with melee dudes is movement. In most fights you'll want to take down the casters fast, and your tanks will usually take more than a turn to reach them, plus maybe deal with AOOs from their tanks. A rogue can get to them, but it's easier to disable and destroy them at range. Sure you won't have the raw damage output of a melee guy, but all that means it'll take a little longer to whittle them down, since you'll be able to keep them stunlocked for the duration.

And yeah, INT and cast times/cooldowns. Casters don't even need to pump speed as much as other classes, since pumping INT will also give you more effective actions.

Anyway, I'm trying out my theory now, with a three caster + Bairdotr party (tactician difficulty).
 

Daedalos

Arcane
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Apr 18, 2007
Messages
5,558
Location
Denmark
Surprised people haven't figured out that D:OS 1 ultimately fell flat. Yeah great encounter design and combat until it got boring, other than that, shit story, writing, C&C and so on.

I'm really hoping they do something drastic to improve it in D:OS 2, otherwise it will be just the same with better graphics and a few new combat skills and UI touchups. Eh.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
but it's easier to disable and destroy them at range

There often is other enemies in the way.

Sometimes, but casters have a ton of options for those situations too. Often you can sidestep to get LoS, you have spells that aren't affected by interposed enemies (Thunder Jump, that range freeze thing, summons), and if all else fails you can drop a smokescreen in any of a number of ways -- you won't be able to get at them, but they won't be able to get at you either.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,607
Problem with melee dudes is movement. In most fights you'll want to take down the casters fast, and your tanks will usually take more than a turn to reach them,

This is what feather drop, wildfire, and speed potions are for. :M
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Wildfire and speed potions (or a pip in rogue and Haste) don't help much, because the base movement rate per action for tanks is so low. Not like a dex-based character who can cross pretty much the entire field in three or four action points. Feather drop does work, but why bother with that when you can just disable them with a spell instead?
 

Roscoe Scaggs

Novice
Joined
May 31, 2017
Messages
42
A while back one of the ZA/UM guys asked on Twitter, which is the last game you've un-ironically enjoyed, without a protective layer of detachment?*

This is my major issue with D:OS. That ironic detachment is slathered on everywhere. It's like it doesn't want me to enjoy it for what it ostensibly is -- a straightforward chosen-one-saves-the-world romp in an obvious fantasyland theme park. The (really well executed!) rock-paper-scissors mechanics are commented on in an actual rock-paper-scissors game in dialogue. You've got voice actors hamming it up with the most outrageous accents since the French Taunter. You've got cat romances. You've got a boss named Pontius Pirate for crying out loud. You've got the whole damn thing wink-wink-nudge-nudging me so hard I'm falling off the chair. This sits right in the really uncomfortable middle ground between straight-up fantasy and full-on Guybrush Threepwood, and it's not clever enough for Guybrush Threepwood.

KNOCK IT OFF FFS IRONY IS DEAD, EARNEST IS THE NEW MOUSTACHE WAX


*my answer was Kerbal Space Program


Yep, that's our Larian! They don't really know how to be anything else.
 

Castozor

Scholar
Joined
Nov 12, 2014
Messages
151
I'm just bummed that EE didn't increase the viability of hybrids, you just don't get enough stat points to make it work I feel.
 

Jezal_k23

Guest
What happens if you skip Braccus Rex? Seems like you can and the story goes along just fine without killing him.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,607
You'll need to do it eventually for some sort of plot item/flag to go forward.

I've mentioned before how it's great that all of the bosses in D:OS are plot gates instead of area gates, since it means you can come back to them later after a few levels if they're too much.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Okay, I've been playing a bit in tactician mode, with a fighter who dipped in Aeromancy to get Thunder Jump and Teleport, plus Bull Rush.

Yeah, he can move across the battlefield now. That was a very good tip; thank you.

However, I still think his damage is kinda anaemic. I'm currently at level 5 (restarted, see), and have kitted him up as well as I'm able. Even when buffed to the gills with Bless and that one witchcraft thing and that damage stance, he takes several hits to take out squishies, and several more for more tankier types. I'm still thinking that almost all of the time, the opportunity cost for buff + buff + move + hit is bigger than if I had used those turns disabling the enemy.

It is true though that Tactician difficulty occasionally throws enemies with stupid immunities at you -- the Ghoul f.ex. was immune to all elemental damage. However, even with it, my fighter did a somewhat lackluster job: Bairdotr was doing just about as much damage at range as he was up close.

I'll prolly keep going a bit with this party, but I'm still thinking that melee types are underpowered compared to casters. I've got my main caster's Int up to 15 already which means recoveries are really low and she can just chain-use her abilities.

BTW I think Tactician difficulty is kinda dumb. I like the wider range of tricks the enemy has -- grenades, special attacks, immunities -- but I think it's really fucking stupid when it materialises enemies right next to you mid-fight.
 

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