Various Thoughts

For one reason or another I decided to finally see what all the fuss was about regarding Original Sin II‘s “Definitive Edition” update (having never bothered to play Original Sin‘s Definitive Edition).

As it turns out it’s nothing but a glorified balance patch, the kind a game like, say, Grim Dawn releases regularly without any sort of fanfare. Which isn’t to say it’s worthless, since the changes are welcome enough even if they don’t actually affect how the game plays in any way, but the re-branding is pretty misleading.

I ended up playing through on Honor mode using a group of Steam Guide builds:
Necromancer (insanely powerful)
Elemental Conjurer (summons are always good, but lacks finishing power)
Fire Fury (weakest link, garbage against a single target)
Ranger (great at eliminating single targets)

That was actually my second attempt, as the first used an Elemental Archer instead of a Ranger and died during the Lost & Found quest because I had forgotten the game’s cardinal rule: Never, ever, fight fair. Fittingly, toward the end of this successful run I switched over to a barrelmancy strategy to guarantee I’d get all the ending achievements.

Now I think I’ll play through it again to try out some Fextralife builds that look interesting and grab a bunch of miscellaneous achievements I’m still missing (not on Honor mode though… I’m quite through with that).

Eh. Much like the prequel it stays pretty much the same from beginning to end. If the gameplay of the first two acts doesn’t grab you, then the concluding two will be something of a slog. It is commendable that there are several callbacks to your earlier quest choices though.

An addendum to the earlier list of things to be aware of:

• Lucky Charm loses its usefulness the moment you start out-leveling the areas you’re exploring.
• Try to only sell equipment to non-equipment vendors.
  • This makes it far easier to browse the new vendor re-stocks.
• Immediately after getting off the boat in Act II, head straight for the northern graveyard entrance.
  • Tarquin’s quest has some sort of built-in timer that can cause it to become missable.
• Get Spirit Vision as soon as possible (first main quest off the boat) and keep it active at all times.
• Many quests have obtuse solutions, so be prepared to look up answers.
• If you complete the majority of the quests, and don’t kill off the various neutral characters, expect to reach level 21 in Act IV.
• Expect your quest journal to be a mess, as objectives can and will update out of order.

There’s honestly not much to say about the sequel to Divinity: Original Sin. At this point, having escaped the first island and explored a bit around the first town, apart from the size of the areas it comes across as essentially just a refinement of the previous game.

Which while certainly not a bad thing does make you wonder why it was ‘in dev’ for so long. Some things to take note of:

• Once off the first island, at about level 8, you’ll gain access to a repeatable and completely free respec option.
• Due to the ally-enemy-ally turn ordering, only one character needs high Initiative.
• Lucky Charm is extremely good.
• Polymorph is more effective for mages than going above 3/5 in the specific elemental schools (if the bonus point is added to Intelligence).
• When using Thievery, it’s more efficient to buy a bunch of items and then steal the gold rather than directly stealing the items.
• There is no highlight key for interactable objects, like containers, so you’ll be doing a lot of manual scanning for stuff to click on.
• Don’t play above Classic difficulty unless you know exactly what you’re doing.
• Unless you notably out-level your opponents do not fight them ‘fairly’.
  • Most ambushes will engage a character in conversation first, use this opportunity to have the other characters set up death traps or teleport the speaker far away from its allies.
• Unless you’re going with a pure-physical or pure-magic party, make sure all characters have some method of dealing with both physical and magical armor.
  • The existence of Evasive Aura makes going pure-physical dangerous.
• Movable/interactable objects (including doors) do not block line of sight.
• Useful, searchable, crafting guide: www.irodemine.com/divinity2/divinity2.php.

Take Kingdoms of Amalur‘s general look/feel, mix in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic‘s environmental interactivity, add in a Black Isle game’s combat system… and you’ll get something resembling Divinity: Original Sin. As long as you don’t mind turn-based RPGs, this is a remarkably sizable and in-depth game to spend some time with.

A few quick bits of information:

• After finding 7 Star/Blood stones you’ll unlock a character who can respec your PCs for 1000 gold. Respecing completely wipes your Skills.
• That NPC can also convert your unused Trait points to Ability points at a 1:10 ratio, and unused Ability points to Attribute points at a 5:1 ratio.
• Due to the above, don’t add any Traits that give raw Ability/Attribute points to your PCs.
• At a certain point in the game basic weapon skills (One/Two Handed, Bow/Crossbow) get wholly replaced by the Tenebrium skill. While it is possible to miss getting this skill, there’s both a quest and a book just lying around that teaches it.
• Don’t bother with Craft/Blacksmith on your PCs; hire an NPC to do that.
• An NPC can also take care of Lockpicking, in the relatively few situations you can’t find a key for a specific lock.
• Pick up the Pet Pal Trait for one of your PCs at character creation. More experience is always good.
• The character on the right during character creation is considered the ‘Main’ character and will usually be the one talked to in a few situations where the dialog is automatically started.
• Don’t put points in Sneak unless you plan to max it out for use in combat; the Scoundrel/Air Magic Invisibility spells are far better for stealing with.
• Assuming you steal/loot everything lying around (and you should be), there shouldn’t be any need to put points in Barter.
• Don’t put Charisma on Hirelings; NPCs won’t talk to them.
• Merchant inventories are randomized the first time you talk to them after their inventory has been spawned/respawned.
• Merchant inventories are respawned every time your PCs level up.
• Sold items never disappear from the person you sold them to (unless that person dies due to plot-related reasons).
• Potential enemies that allow a dialog check to prevent them from becoming hostile can often be traded with, and killing someone you’ve traded items to will cause them to drop all of those items.
• Summon spells are very good as distractions (and elementals are great as tanks in specific situations), so try to make sure everyone has one.
• Marksmen should be making frequent use of specialty arrows.
• Unlock scrolls are the only things that can usually open magically locked doors/chests (they have a purple lock VFX on them).
• There are at least four static Unlock scrolls (two of which require high Perception to find). Crafting Witchcraft scrolls has a chance of creating more (use someone with a Craft Rank of 2 for the best probability).
• I’ve found 6 such locks so far, though one of those can be unlocked by a nearby NPC and the Key for another drops from an optional mini-boss much later in the game.
• If you have a high Perception (11+) there isn’t much need to buy any Secrets (the map items) except maybe the ‘Secrets of the Stars’ ones.
• When choosing the order to unlock the elemental rooms in your Homestead, note that Fire sells Melee Tomes, Air sells Scoundrel Tomes, Frost sells Marksman Tomes, and Earth sells Witchcraft Tomes.
• Figuring out where to go next after entering the 2nd main map can be difficult; you should be trying to deactivate the Barrier. Talking to the Mushrooms hints at one method while talking to Zixzax hints at the other.