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

This was the first thing I did, once I found the option. Makes it a lot easier to navigate.

Went back to my Driftwood-area party and made more progress. Some good fights, and they seem to be capable enough for the moment. But man, the game sure has gotchas. Stray too close to some characters, bam! Instant party wipe. Lolwut?

I’d love it if the camera kept evolving between games. An RTS type camera where you can zoom out to see the map and zoom back in to a different area would be ideal. The graphics are detailed enough that it could offer more of an over the shoulder view too. I think Spellforce offered options like that in days of yore.

I can tolerate the camera, though I wish like you said it was a bit more sophisticated; sometimes the game’s geometry makes the camera swing and bob and do all sorts of odd things that don’t help much. I really wish we could highlight friends and foes with highlights that actually contrasted with the never-ending pools of necrofire. It’s really hard to figure out where things are sometimes. Also, targeting is wonky when things are near each other. A voidthing near a void portal in the corner of a wall? Good luck targeting what you want.

That being said, the sheer variety of the crap you can do is astounding. Teleporting enemies never gets old.

[quote=“BloodyBattleBrain, post:697, topic:77360, full:true”]
Back to playing this, but there’s one thing that is really irritating me. When you complete a quest, you get a choice of reward, but there’s no way to check your (or your companions’) items to make an informed decision. That’s just annoying.[/quote]

Completely agree. Reminds me of events that pop up in TW games which hijack the screen making it impossible for me to look at the map, or my armies, or anything. To be honest this annoyance applies to any game with events that pop up which take away my ability to look at everything I need to in order to make an informed decision.

P.S. No idea how I jacked up the quote, but you get the picture, haha

The combat highlights seem okay, the bright red and blue outlines that you can toggle on and off?
And you can target using the character portraits, makes it a lot easier.

I just ran into a really annoying bug in a battle in the Blackpits. I’m supposed to save a guy on top on the gallows there from some Magisters for a source quest. There’s also a bunch of oil voidspawn causing fires everywhere. I had no trouble until this stupid War Owl suddenly materializes out of nowhere and starts attacking the guy I’m trying to save. So kill the owl right? No, it’s invulnerable to all damage. If you examine the owl it says it has no resistances to anything and it has a tiny amount of health and does small damage but nothing, and I mean nothing, damages it at all.

This is obviously a bug and it means I can’t complete the battle and therefore the quest because it just goes on forever. Sigh, I guess I’m going to have to go back to Wreckers cave to get my first Source upgrade and leave this for a patch. I’m level 13 and still only have one source point. It’s getting a bit frustrating trying to upgrade source.

Ok, think I’m going to start this weekend, some quick questions. Are the Origin characters worth playing over a Custom character i.e. worthwhile extra story quests etc? Also, how much of a setback is going with an undead character?

The red outlines get absorbed in the constant necrofire, which seems to be everywhere, all the time. I do use the circles, too, which sort of helps, but the colors are a problem for me.

Targeting your own characters via portrait works; can you target enemies that way, using the portraits at the top of the screen? I’ll have to try and see if that works, because any time targetable things are too close to each other it becomes difficult to target the one you want. The camera/environment interaction makes this doubly hard in places.

All relatively minor quibbles though.

Yep, sure can. :)

If you want to target an enemy this way as the recipient of a standard attack, you need to activate the ‘basic attack’ skill though (or hold ctrl), otherwise left-clicking the portrait selects the enemy.

I’d say it’s definitely worth it to start with an Origin character. You’re not locked into any class and you can respec at any point, so why not? More story!

As much as I like the game, some of the battles and puzzles in Act 4 are terrible. As in someone should be slapped repeatedly for creating this kind of bunk

Not to spoil it too much but there are no fewer than three fights or areas that are poorly designed. The spoiler tags seem to not work, so I put it in summary form.

Consulate in Arx

The first is with some always-resurrecting cursed fire revenants in the Consulate in Arx. The problem is that they respawn in cursed fire. Which they cast. The only way to get rid of this is with bless + water/blood. But they spawn it faster than you can get rid of it. Parts of the cursed fire that you cannot get to because it is stuck in the wall. So these things are neigh impossible to defeat. Worse, this is the area for the Red Lizard quest so you have to get through this. Hint for anyone who encounters this area - there is a gate that you can teleport through where you will not aggro the fire revenants. You can continue the quest without having to beat these impossible foes.

Tomb Puzzle

The pipe puzzle under the tomb is the kind of puzzle that someone simply should never put in a game outside Myst. Simply awful. I went online and got the solution.

Room of Death

Then the battle shortly thereafter is awful. Getting turned into cows for 4-6 turns is something that should never happen. Just vampire the trap bastards down before leaving the upper level to solve the puzzle.

Final Battle

Finally, the last battle was neigh-impossible. It took me two hours just to get past the first part, only to find there was a 2nd part that was far harder. After seeing my party repeatedly killed in two turns after turning down the difficulty to the easiest level, I finally downloaded a trainer with infinite health. Go online and you will find an enormous amount of complaints about the final battle’s difficulty. I will save the trainer so that if I decide to replay the game I can just cheat my way through this. I have no desire to ever attempt that again.

Yeah, I didn’t even bother looking it up. Fuck that crazyness.

Some of the puzzles are annoying, or worse. Then again, some times it’s pretty cool to get around an obstacle by creative means, like teleports, sneaking, sneaking then teleporting, etc.

The game certainly lets you–forces you–to sort of figure out what to do next on a big scale, too. You might have a few general ideas, but I find myself wandering around sort of in pursuit of the vaguely written quest stuff, only to bounce of encounters clearly too tough for me, and then end up in encounters that are too weak for me. And then of course there are the battles of the nigh-endless spawns, or the "gotcha’ one-shots, or the…you get the drift.

Overall, though, I still like it quite a bit, largely because of the variety.

If the room of death is what I think it is, I rather enjoyed that one. I haven’t finished yet so it may be some other room but it seems appropriate. The consulate I did end up having to flee from, but I may have figured out what I need to do. If the solution is what I think it is, then that is indeed annoying.

The other two I haven’t reached yet because I got distracted starting a more magically oriented party and a lone wolf dual summoner party which I’m going to try running in Honour mode. First game in ages where I actually looked at the achievement list and figured maybe I’ll try for completion because I’m enjoying it so much I’m going to replay anyway. Why not give the top difficulty a shot? I think it’ll be doable, but the fight vs the crocs was very close. I think if I make it to summoner 10 it might not even be that tough though. The early game, a bit riskier.

This part drives me crazy. The game is designed on the principle that you should only ever fight stuff exactly your level. Then it refuses to tell you where the stuff that’s your level is, resulting in huge amounts of aimless wandering looking for a quest you can actually complete.

This could be easily solved by just putting a level for each quest in the quest journal (and breaking up quests that span multiple levels into several parts in the journal.) Then you could look at your journal and say, ah, I should be going here but not there.

But nope, they don’t do that because it’s too metagamey. Never mind all the other metagamey stuff they’re perfectly happy to endorse, like letting you cheese teleportation puzzles by trading objects through the inventory system, or abusing waypoints, etc. etc.

In the first one, if you did everything you would be high enough level to make the final battle easy. Is that not an option in this one?

I don’t think I agree with this.

I don’t know how to put spoiler tags here, so spoiler:

I just arrived in Driftwood, and liberated Meistr Siva, and my lvl 9 party was immediately set upon by 3 Magisters, a dog and a silent watcher.

I won, mostly because I had Medusa’s Head, which is wonderful. I had also unlocked a source skill for Huntsman, that summons a giant Plant that does some pretty good damage.

So, outnumbered ad outgunned and I won, and quite easily too.

So, no, I don’t think you’re supposed to fight stuff “at your level”.

Get back to us when you attempt Alice or a similar boss at -2 or -3 levels :)

The bosses are definitely tough when underleveled, but some (including Alice) I think I can do now with smart equipment choices and consumable use. That said, I sure won’t be trying it on my honour playthrough.

But the regular fights out in the open can be beaten with careful positioning, tactics and perhaps a bit of luck. Just never start one with your group all bunched up as the overleveled opponent is going to get to go first and will aoe you down to almost nothing before you even get a turn.

I want to play this with two other friends, each controlling one character. Is it even feasible on classic? Would we get more experience since we are dividing by 3? We are not great players so maybe one is us will need to control 2 characters.