Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition

Pyros

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Hmm sounds like a major bug? Waypoints don't disapear(besides specific ones as part of the story). Not sure about entering Luculla, have you finished the quest? I haven't tried going there before finishing so not sure if you can but assume you can, which would also point to bugs. Do you have previous saves? The autosaves especially are like checkpoints but don't happen very often so you can generally go back a decent bit through them. Also recommend increasing quicksaves to 25 so you can go back to a previous point if you fuck something up, it's in the options.
 

Rime

<Donor>
2,638
1,613
Put about three hours into it so far. One hour was just reading skills/spells/traits/etc.

Two hours was stealing EVERYTHING in town via Invisibility.

Going with a character that is focusing on Geomancy (For a pet) and Witchcraft for that yummy +50% Damage buff and the other being a Thief focusing on Backstabs/Dexterity.

I figure we will get other party members later, right? Because if not, I should drop either Geomancy or Witchcraft for Priestly powers so I can heal easier.
 

bloodyStool_sl

shitlord
9
0
Just get Hydro and the 2 heal regen spells. Might be more but I only had 2 of them - on both my casters. Never really had a problem. Man at arms has some cure wounds spell that heals a shit ton as well.

Edit: You have the option of adding 2 additional party members.
 

Citz

Silver Squire
180
8
Anyone Co-op this at all? Wife and I might give this a shot if the Co-op is decent...
Yup, I'm 25 hours in with a friend on a co-op play. We handle 2 characters each. It's pretty great.

There are still a few syncing bugs when using teleport/featherfall/charge spell. Well, any movement based spells. It doesn't happen that often though.
 

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
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Put about three hours into it so far. One hour was just reading skills/spells/traits/etc.

Two hours was stealing EVERYTHING in town via Invisibility.

Going with a character that is focusing on Geomancy (For a pet) and Witchcraft for that yummy +50% Damage buff and the other being a Thief focusing on Backstabs/Dexterity.

I figure we will get other party members later, right? Because if not, I should drop either Geomancy or Witchcraft for Priestly powers so I can heal easier.
You get the other members very quickly, in the first town. Generally you're going to want to put 1pt in every school or so to get basic shit, 1pt hydro for the minor heal and rain is great, can get rain on another mage though, but having multiple heals is nice and you can get Slow Current instead which is a great debuff. 1pt air for Teleport and Blitz Bolt, 1pt Fire for Wildfire(not necessary if you plan on going glass cannon talent) and for Flare to light shit up.

I found earth to be kinda meh overall, it has good low level spells, like up to 2 points in geomancy, but after that it's pretty garbage, the witchcraft pet is better than all the earth pets(wolf is good against ice mobs though and spider is good until you hit lvl 10 for the witchcraft 2nd pet that's the one that doesn't suck, bloodswarm and earth elem are pretty garbage). 2pt geomancy gets you spider, fortify, bless, earth shield, boulder bash which are easily the 5 strongest earth spells you get. Main issue is most of the damage spells are poison based instead of earth based, and poison is like fucking crap, so many mobs are just immune to it and even when they're not it doesn't do great damage unless you combine it with fire(which many mobs are also immune to, finding mobs not immune to either so you can combo is annoying).

Air, Fire and Witchcraft are the best magic trees, Hydro is alright the lategame shit is actually pretty good but getting there you don't get much of interesting stuff and Earth scales poorly, wish it had another earth nuke around lvl 10 or 13. If you get multiple mages you might as well get everything for every situation though. Aoe bless and aoe curse from earth are still ok spells.
 

Caliane

Avatar of War Slayer
14,611
10,103
Many schools are 1 point wonders.
hydro you can 1 point in, and get 2 heals, and rain. for example.
Witch 1 point, and get resurrect, +50% damage boost.
Scoundrel 1 point and get invis and charm.
marksman 1 point and get tactical retreat.
Man of arms 1 point and get the big heal.
Air for tornado/teleport.
Earth for spider summon.
 

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
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Actually yes and no, you need the correct amount of stats to have 100% success on spells(for example need 8int or 8dex for the level 1 spells otherwise you sometimes fail them) and using something that's higher skill level than 4 with 1pt increases the AP cost by 2 per "tier" which in many cases makes it not worth using, for example no point in using rez spell if you don't have the requirements since it costs way more AP than using a scroll. The charm for example from Scoundrel being decently high skill level means you have a terrible chance to charm without a high amount of dex and it's gonna cost 8AP, plus it's melee range. It's nice if you're an archer and vice versa if you're a rogue you can use marksman, but it's otherwise awful for every other classes. Similarily, spells are pretty crappy if you don't invest in int and the correct school, and warrior stuff if you don't invest in str. The actual level 1 stuff has fairly low requirement though so you can do alright but anything that's over skill level 4 is gonna behave poorly and is probably not worth the 1skill point. Strong regenerate(the 2nd hydro heal) is a tier3 ability, it would cost 8AP at 1pt hydro which is atrocious and you need 10int to get the base effect so at say 6int you'd get a 40% penalty to it, hardly worth casting vs drinking potions and what not.

The system is fairly well done to prevent everyone to spec into everything and get all the good skills. Mages can definitely spec into every schools and should, and Rogue/Archer can swap stuff and Warriors kinda get fucked, but cross specing main stat stuff becomes in general fairly poor. Having the rogue invis with 5dex gives you 70% chance to invis, do you really want to use AP on something that might not even work? Meh. Eventually if you abuse the books and shit you can actually reach the stats requirements for a lot of stuff but it's a pretty poor deal early on and if you don't exploit the skill books vendor every level(which I'd say is mistake, probably intended to be one time only but eh) you'll never get enough stat points to really do that well.
 

Elerion

N00b
735
46
I had a miserable time with this the first 3-4 hours. I'm a chronic min/maxer, and having 200 choices available from the get go just makes me go numb trying to figure out what to play. In the D&D games I knew the system and what my choices meant, but I was blind here.

I spent 1-2 hours in character creation googling what the fuck shit did, and then quit the game in disgust 3 times in the first hour because some random conversation option gave a character a trait that was completely worthless for them. That trait system still pisses me off and pigeon holes me into choosing certain quest routes not to gimp my characters, but I've "solved" it now by quicksaving before every conversation and then loading if I get the "wrong" tendency (for the ones I care about) or the rock/paper/scissors outcome isn't what I want. Still, stupid system.

Once I got out of Cyseal and could focus on exploring and fighting, the game became a hell of a lot better. Saves/loads are further between and most choices are easier now that all characters are clearly defined. I've been enjoying it a lot. I'm up to ~25 hours or so and making some progress in the second major area. I love Larian's humor too.

The difficulty has dropped significantly, making fights more fun as I can gung-ho a bit more and play tactically instead of having to prepare a minefield of elemental effects before pulling 3 zombies. Elemental effects in general are way too powerful in the first few hours, before you and enemies have gained the abilities to counter them effectively. The best fights in the game are those that are thrown at you without giving you a chance to prepare the perfect battlefield first.

TLDR; Great game, once it gets rolling.
 

Tenks

Bronze Knight of the Realm
14,163
606
I don't know if I'd obsess over min/max. I just kind of made whatever characters (thief/knight) and pick whatever conversation option makes me sound like the biggest asshole. I didn't look anything up online and just kind of specced them how I felt. Game still isn't really that hard.
 

Zaphid

Trakanon Raider
5,862
294
I feel like it's one of those games that are better if you don't google anything and just roll with whatever happens.

Reading how people call Pet Pal a shitty talent because it didn't account for enough experience points over the whole playthrough makes my head hurt.
 

Elerion

N00b
735
46
Pet Pal is a great talent, it adds fun content to the game.

Conversation options that randomly give/remove skills for dubious reasons (Oh, so this time choosing the religious answer was "bold" instead of "spiritual" and I lost 1 stealth from my rogue?) or force you down certain quest paths if you don't want to lose the traits adds nothing to the game. I want NPCs to react to my choices, not get "+/- 1 gooder" for guessing which option the game wants me to choose.

Alignment systems in every game since Baldur's Gate have been stupid. I applaud Larian for trying something new, but I hate what they ended up with.

I wouldn't mind it as much if the trait stats were less build specific. A point added or removed to Sneaking, Crafting or Leadership can be absolutely meaningless or very important depending on your character. Loremaster will probably be the same later in the game if items require 5 to identify.
 

Tenks

Bronze Knight of the Realm
14,163
606
Pet Pal is also good if you aren't furiously reading a walkthrough because the animals generally give you hints on how to complete various quests
 

Zaphid

Trakanon Raider
5,862
294
Finally killed Evelyn, leveled up, Lone Wolf looked interesting, dropped both of my companions and my last save is before the fight. THIS. FUCKING. GAME.
 

cyrusreij

Trakanon Raider
1,714
576
Sadly I have no interest in a second playthrough after the 60+ hours I dropped on the first, even though I completely skipped out on three trees. My guy was tank MoA, my girl was Earth/Witch, then Jahan and Madora. Never had a single point in Scoundrel/Marksman/Fire. And to respond to Pyros about Earth, yeah their nukes are balls cause for some reason Earth damage barely exists in the game. Earthquake is really cool but you need to do a combo like Invis, Unchain party member, then earthquake in the middle of enemies for it to be worthwhile though.
 

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
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Yeah don't like Earthquake, the fact it knocks down your team sucks, you can get around it by using like Lightnign Strike to position far away right from the start and invis, but still felt meh and damage is less than stellar. Earth has pretty useful summons but to be honest since I have a warrior in my current playthrough, I haven't bothered summoning a pet since like lvl 12 or so, I only barely used the cool witchcraft summon before I stopped, shit's just not worth the AP, the damage it does is pitiful(I mean it does ok damage over 4-5turns, but I end most fights in 3rounds or so).

Earth scales poorly but has some of the best low level spells out of any school, Boulder Bash has a 1turn cooldown once you have enough int so you can aoe knockdown a ton of shit to control stuff early on, Bless is basically necessary on warriors/archers if you want to maximize damage(rogues get the backstab bonus, if you have the right trait), Fortify I haven't used much but it can be useful early game, later 65armor barely makes a difference and Earth Shield is the earliest shield you get which makes it the strongest at absorbing damage since it gets a higher % from int and shields are fucking crazy good to not get raped by large mobs if you're not CCing. But overall Earth is best left at 2, aoe curse and aoe bless are kinda alright but not really that useful(you generally run 2mages when doing 4man groups and 1mage when doing 2man groups so one bless on each mage is enough since spells don't miss and curse is like meh whatever, better use mass slow or mass weakness or just kill shit).

Funny enough, Witchcraft gets the best single target nuke, after having the worst damage spell for most of the game. Vampiric Touch I guess around lvl 10 or 13 whichever it was is alright, does decent damage but the range requirement makes it not so good, however Death Punch is retarded damage, it one shots bosses with proper buffs/debuffs. For aoes, meteor shower(fire) and chain lightning(air) are the best I've found. Ice damage spells are mostly garbage but Mass Slow is a great spell(especially if you have Bully on your physical chars since that's an aoe 50%dmg increased debuff on top of the massive AP reduction) and the stronger heals are pretty nice lategame.

Lategame though, other than Death Punch, no spell really does as much damage as a buffed rogue or warrior. My warrior often whirlwind/dust devil for 3.5k crits(with a 30% crit chance or whatever it's at) and Flurry for like 6k+ depending on crits and shit, it's pretty fucking crazy. Does need to spend the starting turn setting up stuff instead of actually doing anything though but yeah mages do fade out quite a bit dmg wise, still great for control/support and their damage is still decent, just pretty far behind.