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

We try to. We have one problem member who keeps rushing ahead, failing all the persuasion checks and then having me try again after a load.

It’s challenging for sure. I can’t imagine how a PUG would work at all. On the other hand, once wer’re out of town like places, it works a lot better, puzzles and hidden things are found nicely with three minds looking for them, and battle strategy actually works pretty well. We’ve done very well on all the battles so far that seem to have given others trouble.

Another plus, I figure he plays like a 13 year old despite being my age, so I figure when my nephews start playing games I will enjoy, I’ll be prepared for their nonsense.

I have not had a problem with masterwork runes improving weapon damage. Its not displayed as a separate damage type, it is just added to the base damage of the weapon. IE: if the top stat of a weapon is 100 physical, after slotting it might be 120. Its not displayed like 100 + 20.

I’ve encountered a bug:
When you have items giving you civic bonuses and you go to respec at the mirror, the item bonus is included when assessing the “limit”.

ie I am level 14 and want to spend 5 points on thieving. My belt & gloves give me +2. Now when I respec I can only add 3 to thieving and it reaches its limit of 5 and stops. The remaining 2 points I can spend on sneaking or something.
Now if I remove the belt & gloves BEFORE respeccing, I can add the full 5 points to thieving, and afterwards add the gear and i have a total of 7 now.

Hope that makes sense?

(should I report this somewhere btw?)

Makes perfect sense; it should probably be reported at larian.com forums. I would think that a bug like that would be widely reported though, unless it’s specific to your hardware somehow.

I also seem to remember reading something about not being able to apply points in the mirror to the lone wolf maximum if you took that talent, you had to just assign to the max, then exit the mirror and you could apply the rest so it sounds like they’ve got a few things to work out with the mirror.

You can just save the two points and add them outside the respec mirror too.

I was listening to some of the Knights of Honor songs still on my playlist after all these years, and got to wondering whatever happened to the composer Glorian. His music was way too awesome for him to just disappear from the field.

Turns out he composed the music for D:OS2 after their previous composer sadly passed away! Just when I thought I couldn’t love this game and Larian any more.

So I was just started act two and…

I snuck up on some Magisters and nuked them. But then I go into town and I find out that I am now working with the Magisters?? Am I supposed to be working with them against the dwarves? I know Lothar is a dirty no good dwarf but it strikes me is weird that I now seem to be all buddy buddy with the Magisters after spending the whole first act killing them. Or am I just stringing them along for the ‘ol doublecross?

On an unrelated note, Siri absolutely sucks at dictating these types of posts. She does not understand the vocabulary of my fantasy world!

Charlatan, I haven’t finished Act 2, but I’m pretty sure it’s the latter of your two options.

You will Kill all the magisters eventually - but at a time of your choosing.

For shits and giggles, attack the one in Driftwood square. I’m not going to spoil it, but things may occur that you’re not expecting.

In other unrelated news, I think I’ve gotten most of the quests on Nameless Isle except for Arena and hall of Echoes. I’m heading over to the Arena to check it out, but overall I’d say Nameless Isle has been a lot easier than the other areas, but not by much. I think I’m about 1 level above where the game expects me to be because I’m OCD and have tried to find everything, but intentially skipped a few things where the requirements were just too fiddly & time consumming (the season hero thing for one I skipped).

I’m kind of worried because I just hit level 18 & I see a lot of people saying you need to be level 20 when you hit hall of echoes and I don’t know how the arena is going to get me two levels. Or I’m missing out on some content that I can’t find.

I was level 20 when I finished the game on Classic, so unless you’re on tactician I don’t see why you’d need to be 20 now.

Ugh, what an end to the nameless isle. Those fights took forever, over an hour in real time.

I hadn’t thought about it until you mentioned it, but that does seem to be a theme as the game goes on. There are fewer fights, but some of them definitely take a while to complete. Depending on just how completionist you are you’ve got a few more drawn out encounters ahead before the end.

Sort of stalled out on the island where all the temples are. Will go back to it, sure, but just sort of needed a break.

I wouldn’t mind a fight per se, but when you start giving turns to fireballs raining down from the sky, it just unnecessarily delays the round.

There was another fight - against the vendors that aren’t in the tree, and there was a magician that took 30-40 seconds to complete his turn. He typically went invisible and you could hear it drinking potions, but it was really irritating waiting for an AI to complete its turn.

You guys know you can alt-tab out of the game and it will help running, right? I did that for every enemy turn during the last third of the game.

So in the 4th act, and I’m spending more time thinking about what I would like to have in a future playthrough than finishing this up lol.

Note: I have no idea whether I can distribute the points like this or which order I’d go in, but I basically want to keep anyone from having zero magic/physical armor to keep other bad things from happening to them

Then I want conjuring everywhere because you want hits happening all the time. Movement typically costs too much AP, so having two ranged movements is very helpful.

Fortify: Geo 1
-> Phys arm replen, get rid of diseased!

Mend Metal: Geo 2
-> Phys arm replen

Armor of frost: Hydro 1
-> Magic Arm replen

Cleanse wounds: Hydro 1, Warfare 1
-> heal, get rid of diseased!

Tactical Retreat: Huntsman 2
-> Move!

Living on the edge: Necro 2
-> don’t die

Raise Bone Widow: Necro 2
-> More damage

Forced Exchange: Poly 3
-> Swap vitality with target character. If you’re living on the edge, great way to completely annihilate a big character.

Teleportation: Aero 2
-> Either bring someone closer or remove someone from area for a few turns

Netherswap: Aero 2
-> Great way to split a group of characters and bring one in close

Peace of Mind: Pyro 1
-> Get rid of Mad & blinded!

Rupture Tendons: Scoundrel 2
-> the gift that keeps on giving

Conjure Incarnate: Summon 1
-> More damage

Rallying Cry: Summon 2
-> Great heal & Magic armor replen

Power Infusion: Summon 2
-> Give incarnate knockdown

Battle Stomp: Warfare 1
-> Knockdown

Battering Ram: Warfare 1
-> Knockdown

Phoenix Dive: Warfare 2
-> Move!

Backlash and (whatever the Shadowstep equivalent ability is called), Scoundrel 1 and 2 required, respectively also fit into this pattern of mobility. Also, everyone should have a shield. Everyone. The restore shields skill is huge in some fights and the fat boost to both physical and magical armor from a shield really helps.

Here’s how I am running now and how I will roll if I try the game again:

Main Character(Fain): Summoning and Leadership. Summoning b/c as you say, multiple actors is good, especially on the main who sometimes ends up doing stuff solo or at least in front. Leadership b/c the passive buffs are pretty good and the main char is usually front and center.

Melee Character(Beast): Scoundrel and Warfare. Scoundrel for Backlash and Shadowstep skills and for passive backstabbery. Warfare for Phoenix Dive, Battering Ram, Battle Stomp and Whirlwind. Use the movement skills to get into position, use backstabs to strip the physical armor and then Ram/Stomp for knockdowns.

Support Character(Lohse): Aerothurge and Hydrosophist. Aerothurge provides the teleportation and Nether Swap abilities, plus some useful shock/blind attacks. Hydrosohist provides Restoration, healing, armor of frost, Soothing Cold, and Favorable Winds. Favorable Winds combines nicely with Lohse’s inherent Encourage to give everyone a speed and stat bump and then Lohse restores hp and magic armor as needed, plinking away with shock attacks opportunistically.

Boom Magic Character(Sebille): Geomancer and Pyromancer. Geomancer provides a couple of good ranged AOE attacks which set the stage with pools of gooey oil for the fire, and also provides Fortify and Mend Metal for physical armor replenishment. Pyro is for Fireball, fire-arrow thing, fire-whip thing, and Haste. I often put my Haste on Beast so that he can stompify more frequently.

That’s a setup that works for me through deep into Act 2. We’ll see how it goes as I approach end-game.

Backlash is great as is cloak and dagger for scoundrel. Good catch. I agree with the shields - I’m using them on my wizard and knight, but not my rogue as I use backlash + a few hits to eliminate their armor & then stomp to put them on the ground. My rogue is what is doing the damage - but you’re right in that b/c she (sebille) doesn’t have a shield, she’s almost always the one the enemy focuses on. My ranged archer is using a 2-handed crossbow for damage dealing.

Which is why living on the edge & forced exchange can be so helpful!

Earthquake is another skill that is nice to have that I neglected. the thing is you need to get physical armor off and that is where summoning incarnates / bone widows can be so great.

My son did a restart & went with 4 mages all with summon = 10 and he’s finding it pretty much a cakewalk through act 3 because everything just dies with those level 10 incarnates.

Hmm, it occurs to me that one super cheeseball strat would be a variation on your son’s strat. Everyone focuses mainly on Summoning to 10, but with a couple of points in an elemental skill so as to be able to select any surface you want for incarnates and totems, and also to get access to the basic elemental buffs, heals and damage spells. Even though a melee character is strong, an incarnate with Power Infusion can do most of what a melee can (without the mobility, but then the incarnates can be cast where you want). That may in fact be super cheesy…

Yeah, the summoner 10, 1-2 in all elements thing is stupidly strong. And the incarnates do have movement skills as well with warp infusion and power infusion so they’ve got quite a bit of mobility as well. Warp infusion does come fairly late in the game though.