Divinity: Original Sin II: Always put nails in your shoes.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Divinity: Original Sin II: Always put nails in your shoes.

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

So looking around fort joys ghetto and beaches, am I correct in imagining that the elves cannibalize to get memories thing is gonna get at least as much mileage as pet pal?

# ¿ Sep 26, 2016 15:45

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 07:04

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

Hawgh posted:

I'm not sure I remember this correctly, but Dragon Commander ends with you killing off all your crazy siblings, then piling up all the murdertech and bashing it into tiny little pieces so the world won't continue a cycle of technology-fueled genocidal violence.

I believe Maxos clarifies that all of the technology from dragon commander was based on information extracted from the mind of the greater demon Corvos, and after a bit of reflection Maxos decided the industrial revolution it sparked was probably some kind of dark mechanation. Might explain how it arranged for whatever the hell was going on in the third act of that game.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2016 05:44

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

Okay, so I've wrapped up the first act(?) that's available on EA, and I have to say the last encounter is a surprisingly saucy affair on explorer mode. Possibly didn't help that I seem to have missed about 2 levels worth of experience somehow. Did I miss Dallis somewhere? I kind of thought she'd be the last hurdle to getting off the island rather then the bishop himself, though that might be a placeholder encounter maybe?

# ¿ Oct 5, 2016 03:09

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

I haven't played for a few months, when did they make chugging soul jars the only way to get source? The hoarding instinct was bad enough before I got a hard limit of 5 points.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 18:02

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

I mean I never found whips to be a visually satisfying weapon but as long as we're balrogging it up(for starters) I guess it's cool.

Still waiting on the playable skeletons though.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2017 01:57

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

Decided to give the demo another go to try out the new bells and whistles they put in, and the Red Princes fop levels seem to have spiked.

# ¿ May 25, 2017 23:05

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

I think it's neat.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2017 23:27

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

So, what does poison resistance do in the context of an undead character? Buffing your poison/health conversion or maybe just flipping it and becoming healing damage Resistance.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2017 16:16

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

It is worth noting that each origin character has their own special source skill relating to their backstory and quirks while the custom characters all share the same source skill.

The custom skill gives your character another turn so to be fair it's probably the most useful in general.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2017 00:01

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

Prism posted:

Do they have access to those when you recruit them or does only the 'primary' character get a source skill?

They all get one, their personal one and the odd dozen you can have anyone learn from skill books. The problem is that they all require source points to use and those a fairly limited resource, at least as fair as the early access goes, and that triggers a fairly bad hoarding instinct.

I think they said that was just an EA thing and they'd be a bit more abundant in the release product though.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2017 02:46

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

Jastiger posted:

I'm legit super excited for this to come out. I'm all antsy.

Same, I've been aching for this since last September and that's even after playing through the EA like three times and using cheat engine to mess with my levels to see how all the armor sets look on all the races and gah I just love this stuff.

I am going to make a pretty lizard lady who will minor in wizard and major in warfare.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2017 02:53

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

Every animal in act 1 at the very least is worth talking to if only because of how adorable or what a prick they are. In terms of mechanical benefit right off the top of my head you can get the best merchant in the act and a lock pick when you might really need one.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2017 18:43

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

Golden Goat posted:

You could always just work together on personal quests. Personal quests are a neat idea but it feels like they should reward other players a bit if they help.

It's a coop driven game but don't worry about splitting the party too much, you don't split the party in D&D mainly cause it's a mess for the GM to manage that. Myself and the BF split up for chunks of the game since I was the main crafter and he just robbed the town a lot.

Are the pyramids in the game or an equivalent? Splitting up was less stressful because if one of us got in a fight we could always port over.

Yeah the pyramids are in there but you get them a lot further in then in past games, like at the rear end end of EA content.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2017 12:59

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

Rainuwastaken posted:

Do you still gain zero experience for kills made while you're dead? Because trying to squeeze every drop of exp out of the first game was an exercise in utmost caution.

Stabbey_the_Clown posted:

One big change from D:OS 1 is that dead teammates get full XP from kills in combat now. In D:OS 1, to ensure they got their share of the limited amount of XP available, you would need to resurrect them, which meant having a lot of AP saved to use the scroll, AND a way to immediately heal them, because resurrection leaves them with not much health, so they'll fall right back down if an enemy breathes in their direction.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2017 17:06

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

Section Z posted:

Low magic setting is usually code for writers or GMs that want to have magic for their plot points and enemies on demand but don't like the protagonists or players being able to to anything they don't like. The lore usually talks up how rare or vanishing magic is between the plot still revolving around magic use.

Divinity's take on that tagline seems to be "Well, if all these evil wizards are still running around it makes no sense for the players to not have that too right?" which on it's own is worth admiring as a concept, even if it does seem the end result can be fiddly.

Now I'm imagining some guy trying to do a Conan the Barbarian game, realize the place is loving lousy with sorcerers and demons, and says "Well if that kind of magic is still all over the place, that means it's not the rare magic therefore okay for players".

The divinity games have the average fantasy baddie ambitions like claiming the powers of the gods or learning how to turn into a gently caress off dragon or claiming dominion over the world and then making that something your trying to do, usually in service of saving the day but still.

Although I guess in the first original sin didn't particularly bother with that.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2017 02:03

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

The thing about the elves is that their armor aesthetic is lovely leaf clothes that leave you mostly naked even when your wearing plate so I don't think I could really get into playing one.

I remember fairly early in this things development that they were saying everything was fairly poo poo out in the world and racial relations were strained, so playing a Dwarf would get you the stink eye in a human town but the dwarf ghetto below ground would welcome you with open arms and try to enlist you in their schemes to bring down the tall man. I wonder if much of that kinda thing is still in.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2017 05:02

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

Rainuwastaken posted:

The trick to melee combat in the first game was to go two-handed. I did that in my last playthrough (with friends using the 4 player mod), and I was a steel-clad engine of destruction. Sword and board sacrifices a ton of damage for durability you don't need.

Due to the way armor works in the sequel I don't know how the dynamic between melee styles works now, but my time in the EA version showed that standard fighting worked just fine. I had a melee fighterguy, an archer, a summoning healer support, and the classic earth/fire wizardbomb. Archetypes are strong and you can trust them to be reliable, but you can also make some bizarre superhybrids or exploit game mechanics to do stuff in a sort of challenge run.

The game is challenging, but the people saying "just drop a barrel full of grenades on a guy" style stuff are for when you do content out of order, or try to punch way above your weight class. I wandered into a cave that was clearly barricaded and figured eh, gently caress it. Smashed through and got torn to shreds by toads way above my level. Came back later with more experience and they were no problem, but I probably could have also brained my way through if I really had to.

Cheese is not remotely required on the medium difficulty, as long as your party isn't four naked wizards hell-bent on punching everything they come across.

Two handed is the superstar of melee and in all my passes of EA content I think they probably do the best damage period, the damage on big weapons spikes way harder then magic. My casters can do healing, teleport fools and do a lot of surfaces but status effects and thus CC don't land unless you've already busted their magic or physical armor and every point of the warfare skill you have increases the amount of damage you do to physical.

The Warfare skill category has Phoenix Dive, Huntsman has Tactical Retreat and Scoundrel has Cloak and dagger and important thing about these skills is that they are all teleports with different side effects and only cost 1 ap. This means no one the field is really out of reach, and generally wizards have low physical armor so you can get right into their health and start putting poo poo like Knock Down on them.

Be a warrior, rock greatswords, wreck nerds.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2017 23:08

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

Prism posted:

I do love two-handed swords, but don't scoundrel abilities usually require knives? Though a lightly armoured barbarian running around and dirty fighting with a greatsword sounds hilarious, I didn't expect it to let me.

Only the damage skills in scoundrel seem to need a knife, the utilities are fair game for anyone though. So disappearing in a poof of smoke, levitating and adrenaline rush are fine.

# ¿ Sep 11, 2017 01:01

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

Section Z posted:

Yeah I figured I might as well look at the character creation screen but... Uh, are we really only given one Talent to start with?

"Okay, you can either take Opportunist or whatever a specific talent is needed for your class to even do it's job... Or Pet pal."
"...Why can't I start with both?"

I'm also not seeing either one man army, or lone wolf on the list. Do they gate that to a later level so you can't have it when you start the game without a full party to hide behind, or something? Because I do see tooltips at least mention one man army, like how Glass Cannon is incompatible.

Yeah I think you got to hit level 8 before OMA is even accessible. In single player at any rate I fully intend to just cheat engine a drat trait point in for pet pal if they haven't gotten any less frugal with the things.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 01:39

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

Section Z posted:

Knight is pure Warfare, and puts that stray point into Two-handed. Rogue is pure scoundrel, and puts his stray point into dual wield. Because I guess the idea is "Maybe if my job is to stab things, learn to use a weapon"? compared to Fighters and Rangers skipping weapon school for magic buffs.

While on the subject of "Why would you ever start with sword skills for your class that wants to use a sword ? ", does this game gate your ability to actually hold weapons or put on pants? Or is it gated by levels, or please god "not at all enjoy finding good gear early."

I am to be fair, currently considering "So, what if. Edgelord Warfare/Necromancy?" If Inquisitor does 2/3 warfare that by default despite INT and Staff focus (That I'm getting mixed messages on) hopefully doing it with more than a bathrobe and fancy stick works out.

But it still feels off kilter how using your weapons is so incredibly back seat, that taking a weapon skill to start is doing it wrong Like, BOTH archery presets skip the ranged weapons skill, when you'd expect shooting stuff with a bow would be harder to do compared to winging it with a blunt object. Though that would certainly be much less of a concern if literally the only thing weapon skill dictated was a flat buff, rather than "Please insert dual wield 4 or stay with rusty bread knife"

The primary benefit of increasing a weapon style is 5% to your damage a point and a better crit chance, there are levels to equipment but if you somehow come by something above your weight class it docks your accuracy according to the difference rather then not letting you use it.

No I don't know how that works with armor or jewelry or what have you.

Caidin fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Sep 13, 2017

# ¿ Sep 13, 2017 01:35

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

Khagan posted:

Well you can't inflict statuses on anyone if their magic armor is up and I think physical armor just reduces incoming phys dmg.

Physical armor has it's own set of status it prevents, like knock down, cripple or petrify.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2017 16:23

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Someone mentioned that Pet Pal unlocks an Act 1 vendor -- who/where?

What you want is in the swamps outside of fort joy, There is a bunch of flaming pigs, use bless on at least one or two of them and they the fire will go out, don't worry there's like 4 source pools littered about they look like puddles full of stars. Next go over to where the dragons chained up and look around for a pig, use pet pal character to talk to them and tell them to go to amelidas shrine. If you talked to the big head and cryed with it the pool will be blessed and you can tell the pig to get in the water, thus turning them back into a human and they become a merchant with some great poo poo on sale.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2017 20:44

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

So how does rune crafting work? because all the guides I can find say combining two small runes should make a medium and so on and that isn't working.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2017 22:29

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

The long national crisis is over, Beast can in fact get his hat back.

If you ever stop at a certain temple of Duna you can't really miss, be sure to have him poke about the first sarcophagus you see...

# ¿ Sep 18, 2017 06:44

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

The tone of this game is pretty mercurial which is typical of a divinity I suppose, but in general it feels like this game is a bit meaner then D:OS 1. The fights are harder, with some solid kicks to the teeth scattered about in act 2. The baddies are still a bunch of sneering cultists obvious villains, but something the context of the central crisis makes it feel a bit more raw? It helps that the voidwoken feels substantially more apocalyptic the void dragons Big Ominousness Hole.

Oh, and you can just kinda wander into a quest result where the game strips pet pal off you, that was dick.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2017 13:22

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

Perhaps a hamster posted:

Wait what, can you elaborate? Don't mind spoilers, just don't wanna lose my Pet Pal as D:OS is just not right without it.

So in your central quest for act 2 you have to find some master sorcerers to learn their ways in order to raise your source point capacity to 3. With the magister drag net the only ones around are a bunch of stone cold sketchy types. One of your options you can stumble across is a lizard named Hannig, who'll teach you by sucking the life force out all the animals near her hiding spot, an act so profoundly critter unfriendly you lose your Disney princess powers.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2017 14:34

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

theDOWmustflow posted:

When you guys are referring to multiple Source points, do you mean re-filling, or getting more Source capacity?

Your central goal in act 2 is maxing out your source capacity to 3, and with relative ease right off you get access to a big jug of source that can dump infinite pools. It's nice.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2017 17:58

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

Beat the game! The ending and last boss fight was... something.

I'm getting the impression that Larian isn't particularly interested in continuity from game to game.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2017 23:55

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

Rookersh posted:

For those that have beaten the game, does it actually go into detail on what/who the gods actually are?.

Cause that seems like it'd be pretty big series wise.

So the gods are eternals, fane's race, that betrayed the rest by siphoning source out of a gigantic barrier that surrounds the universe or maybe just Rivilion I'm not really sure. But doing this destabilized the barrier and let the void in, and the other eternals were taken by it or banished by the seven or something and became the voidwoken.

The gods then created the mortal races in their image as a sustainable herd of things to leech source off of so they could hold back the void from eating the world. If they had any greater motivations for this poo poo other a naked power grab and self preservation and ego I have no idea.

I'm not really sure what that makes Arstarte from OS 1 or the great chaos god thing that Daimian has the soul of, and for that matter I don't know if ego draconis is even canon anymore.

# ¿ Sep 21, 2017 16:39

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

sassassin posted:

Anyone else find it hard to leave the girls behind on replay?

They're the only ones who are victims in their own story: passive actors who haven't in some way chosen to be where they are. Leaving them to die is incredibly cruel.

Ifan is a contract killer on a job, Beast is a rebel pirate constantly up to no good, and Red is a spoiled brat consorting with demons who wants to rule the world. They made their own beds.

Fane is psyched to die so no harm there.

Sebille's recruitment conversation has her threating to stab you in the neck and that's rather hard to role play around for me, plus elves look dumb.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2017 15:19

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

I just found a interesting piece of writing early in act 2 that I felt like sharing.

Hanging on the gallows just outside of Driftwood is a lizard in magisters clothes that I thought would have a neat ghost to talk to, and you step into her memories and find out she was lovers with Borris, a guard at Fort Joy you may have met because Iban had some business with him or maybe you had some choice words about his friends opinions on cats. But when Alexander was murdered by certain parties Borris and the rest of the magisters act likes it's her fault and ostracize her, with Borris leaving for his new post at Fort Joy without saying a word to her and she then gets hanged for trying to help out some sorcerers later.

Some of the prompts to have the memory budge along has your character remembering meeting and/or killing Borris and Alexander but concealing that from the ghost as you prod her along.

:thunk:

# ¿ Sep 25, 2017 04:30

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

Malek posted:

Not in Arx it isn't...

Yes it actually still is, go to hall of echos in your waypoint tab.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2017 14:20

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

frajaq posted:

was the black cat important? a random jerk magister shoot an arrow at it for no reason

when I'm lvl'd up I'm coming back and murdering everyone

If you get it out of the fort it'll become a utility summon for however it was following and drop perhaps the only Bellegar reference in the game.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2017 01:59

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

I beat BG2 and Throne, but I never actually played the first one enough to get to uh, Baldur's Gate. So I guess I'm down to see what's up with that town but having played about 8 or 9 sessions of 5E with friends I can't say I'm exactly enthused with the edition even if I really like Larians output.

# ¿ May 31, 2019 22:57

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

My first playthrough was a lizard lady because I thought they looked pretty cool, and frankly I was annoyed there wasn't any sort of special interactions anywhere for a custom PC AND they took time warp away from them to give to Fane.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2019 21:40

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

I've never done Ifan but I hear he actually ties in pretty closely with the Divine Order business so that's something. I found the Red Prince to be delightful enough but dealing with his aristocratic ego may not be for everyone and frankly while I like Beast his subplot is fairly sparse in comparison to others.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2019 04:03

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 07:04

Caidin: Oct 29, 2011

Bring back the Divinity X-com

# ¿ Feb 19, 2024 16:19

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