Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Use more elements than Captain Planet!

OK I am still in the Fort and have a similar issue as others. No matter where I go and who I talk to the game turns violent. I have a bunch of open quests I have no idea how to close as I seem to somehow always end up killing people. I am a bit annoyed that there seems to be no way to get past certain points without violence. It is so bad that I started saving before talking to anyone and that slows the game down tremendously. Not so happy about this. I guess I should not worry too much and just roll with it? It is just contrary to my preferred “talk out of conlict” approach in RPG.

Some of the origin stories force you into situations that you might not want to be in. I imagine a playthrough with non-origin characters would be a bit more flexible.

The whole quest system I agree is borked. No real way to tell where you are on a quest, what to do next, or even when you complete something, in many cases. The game also does a terrible job of even hinting that certain events or actions might have rather unrecoverable consequences.

That being said, the game is freakin’ great. Addictive and fun, and at Classic level at least I like the challenge of the combat. Only level 6 though.

BTW, if anyone offers you real estate on the starter island, don’t buy it. That place sucks.

This is absolutely true. In fact, some of the bad outcomes happen if you just have a specific character in your party.

The first time I encountered the card sharks I talked my way through it (with a bit of luck). I have a feeling though that there aren’t a lot of dialog solutions in the fort. After I got out of the fort there seemed like there were a few more opportunities and even more in Act 2.

However, the persuasion checks seem to be quite difficult, at least if you’re trying to pass them solely based on your stats. I do want to try a more social way the next time through but at this point at level 10 I believe I’ve only passed 3 persuasion checks total (with nothing invested in persuasion). So you are definitely going to have to invest to have a chance.

And then I think you might run into the problem of lack of xp/loot. I cannot possibly get enough money right now and I always feel like I’m a level behind. I’d be way behind if I hadn’t gone back to kill all the magisters. I think I need to wrap my head around the crafting system as I’m toting around something like 80 pounds worth of crafting ingredients as I’ve been hoarding not wanting to waste anything that might make skill books down the line.

Sebille loves murder.

Also Persuasion checks without the skill will almost always fail in my experience.

Anything other than books is fairly safe to sell. Rez scrolls take life/water essence and paper iirc.

Everything else you can sell fairly safely or craft into something that you can probably sell for even more if you don’t need it.

I can’t figure out why they have source skills but give you hardly any source to use them. That kind of sucks from a design standpoint. Making source a rare resource just means I’m going to treat it like a rare potion. I save it for a rainy day and thus my source skills never actually get used. I forget they’re even there. Great game and I love it but this is a head scratcher, at least for me.

Trying to pin down what bugs me about the way the Divinity games work, and i think it’s the way they expect you to poke in every box, every room, every NPC, every corner, every piece of the map. This is just so… different than American RPGs which more or less create a giant world but leave it as optional fluff. Unless you really want to poke around everyone’s homes in Whiterun in Skyrim, you kinda don’t really have to at all. And, actually, most of the time, there’s nothing interesting there. It’s like DOS games are built around an assumption of OCD level micromanagement - of course you’re going to open every box, ask every NPC to trade, poke in every corner of the map, and min max your character perfectly. Isn’t that why you play games?

In DOS2 if i don’t ask every single NPC in the fort to trade i’m going to miss vital equipment or spells or skills. But worse the distribution of this stuff appears totally random - and it’s that, that weird randomness in the distribution of stuff, that’s taken me a while to wrap my head around. In other games there’s a certain logic to who has what. In DOS2, at least so far, this is not true. Random NPCs have vital spellbooks but important NPCs have nothing to trade. Prisoners have more money than guards but leaders of gangs have nothing worth trading for. So i can’t rely on world building to inform me on what to look for or what to do. It really does seem to expect me to OCD my way through the game - carry buckets around, replay the same battle two or three times, ect.

Yeah, but it’s not so different from the way American RPGs used to be. In many ways this is an old school RPG with a shiny new engine. It’s actually a lot like an evolved version of the 2002 Divine Divinity game.

How far in are you? Act 2 implies that you’ll be developing far more source abilities but I’m not sure if it ever reaches the point where you can start using them on a pretty regular basis or not. I’m really hoping it starts to open up after the middle of Act 2. (Act 2 in my mind being the next major urban area)

I’m still in Act 1 and just got the “bless spell” in Dark Cavern.

The limiter on use of Source abilities is the “source points” mechanism. I think in beta they had a spell you could get in Act 2 that allowed you to refill your source points but they removed the spell in the release version. I feel that was probably a bad decision.

So far, I haven’t run into a lot of issues with the Source points being restricted. Most of the time, the places where you absolutely need to use them have a convenient source of Source (heh) nearby. The key is to stop thinking of them as general use spells that the game artificially limits, and start thinking of them as ultimate story powers. It’s counter-intuitive for longtime RPG players because the “bless spell” is usually a low-level buff that you fire off almost as an automatic reflex. In this game, Bless is mostly used to unlock story bits and disinfect corrupted items via a cleansing.

I don’t know, it seems to me that the source spells that the origin characters all start the game with are pretty weak spells and not ultimate powers at all. I can’t really see the purpose of even having them.

I have a 2 hand axe that grants a source ability that’s fairly underwhelming. I used it by mistake once and never will again. It’s not worth the loss of a point so why stick it on a unique like that if it won’t ever be used?

Well, I’m probably not wording what I mean correctly. It’s just that I see a lot (not just here) comments that the Source powers are too limited by the points and too weak relative to the regular spells and abilities. That seems to be misunderstanding their use. They’re not meant to be used like normal spells. They’re basically a mechanism for story gating.

Spoiler for one of the earliest Source uses:

The only real solution that I’m aware of for the pigs on fire in the swamp is to use the Source Bless power. It’s a low level, blah power, but it’s the only way to solve that quest in a positive way. Thankfully, there are multiple puddles of Source just lying around near the pigs.

The thing that confuses RPG vets is that in other games, Bless is a minor buff you use at the start of every battle. Not so in this game. There are multiple (and better) spells that do what Bless does in other games.

If you read the reddit thread, it’s bugged and sometimes (rarely? Never?) he doesn’t appear.

See, but I think a lot of them are indeed meant to be used frequently and have nothing at all to do with story gating. The source skills attached to weapons and gear are most certainly meant to be used frequently in combat.

What I think has happened is that throughout the EA period they had a spell to restore source points. They decided to remove it at the last second before release but never did go back through all the items that they had added these source abilities to in order remove them because they no longer made sense. That would have been a lot of work so I think they just decided ‘good enough’.

In re Source stuff, Ifan’s wolf source ability is actually pretty damn useful. I both like and dislike their handling of Source. On the one hand it is refreshing not to be able to spam something like that, but OTOH they make such a big deal of it (“Oh noes, Sourcerors going to kill us all!”) that the actual abilities are kinda underwhelming.

Could be. I don’t have any insight into how they designed it in EA.

So far though, it just hasn’t been an issue for me. I mostly ignore Source powers until I’m completely stumped or there’s a big hint “SOURCE POWER THIS” for to follow.

So we went to the Arena, and after we vanquished the 4 against us, we fought each other to “get to the one” bu then after that fight, they still say they’ll keep searching for the one.

We just said fuck it & killed them all. It was a surprising easy fight. Not sure that was the correct path, but it worked. For future playthoughs, is there a way to successfully “become the one” or is this is an inside joke?

The Arena was another quest I “failed” when starting Act 2. Bugged or I can’t read the quest designer’s mind?