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

Absolutely. Pretty sure all experience is party-wide, at least it’s that way in the single player. Every character in my party has identical XP.

So XP rewards don’t scale based on number of party members, since players (human or AI) can drop in and out at any time, and will inherit the party’s current amount of XP.

You still may need a fourth character as I’m guessing the game’s difficulty is tuned for four. Or just turn down to Explorer at the start until you get some gear.

That’s gonna be a bit awkward because one of you can get an npc buddy but not the other two.

Well, I did exaggerate when I said “only ever fight stuff your level.” But the design is pretty clearly for players of level X to fight monsters also of level X unless they’re deliberately seeking out a challenge. You can see that in the way the monster damage and armor formulas work. (The designers’ intention can also be guessed at from the helpful little popup that shows up when fighting above-level monsters that says you should consider fleeing…)

At least in DOS2 there is some reward for taking on higher-level combat. In DOS1, most nice gear you got from fighting battles above your level couldn’t be equipped by your underdog characters. But in DOS2 there don’t seem to be any level requirements, and the stat requirements are pretty mild.

That’s why I was hoping for a different answer :)

Lol I was talking about regular fights, on the assumption that @HumanTon was too.

It’s not the higher level combat that bothers me, it’s having to replace my equipment on 4 characters every time I level up. The stat increases on equipment are so big, starting around level 12, that you are really forced to update your equipment if you want to stay competitive. It really is beginning to be a slog. I wish they’d handled the scaling in a different way.

Is there any way to report bugs in this game? One of my recent ones that will be problematic for me, is that earth damage is vs magical armor instead of physical. All the tool tips say physical armor, but when you cast earth quake or the spikes spell, etc… it deducts from magic armor instead. I am building my party entirely around physical damage,

I have the impalement skill (I assume this is the spikes spell you’re talking about?) and I could have sworn it was deducting from physical armour.

Anyway, have you tried their official forums?

Yes, it is impalement. I says it does, but use it and watch the NPCs armor. You will see it subtracted from the magic side. At least it did for me yesterday. Again the tool-tip and description says physical, but that is not what actually happens.

I have not tried their official forums. I suppose when I go home I can make an account and then post about it. I just didn’t know if there was an in-game tool to report bugs.

Doesn’t it also deal poison damage? That bit will drain Magic Armor.

No. It does put oil on the ground though. Its also not just that spell. I know earth quake does as well. It may be all earth magic spells.

The ‘resisted by’ doesn’t apply to the damage but the effect. It puts earth magic in a weird spot. You deal magic damage, but the knockdowns and cripples are resisted by physical armor. But it is consistent; all other knockdowns are resisted by physical, and so is crippled. Not all the earth effects are resisted by physical armor; worm tremor is magic armor as are the dust spells and poisons.

It does make earth magic a bit less attractive in a magic damage build, but I think it makes it work pretty well as a complimentary skill. For example, if your party is focused on dealing physical damage and you don’t have any really focused elemental damage dealer and are only using a healer/buffer they can put a couple points into earth and pick up a knockdown, a cripple, and an acid/atrophy combo.

New video:

Necromancy spells are resisted by and damage physical armor, yet are "magic spells’. I think its a bug. If its not, its stupid have spells that use two different resistances.

It’s not really whether they may be ‘magic spells’ or not though, as in the game everything is referred to as ‘Skills’.

Skills apply Physical damage, or Elemental damage (fire, water, earth, air, poison). Physical damages physical armour, and Elemental damages magical armour.

Skills may also additionally apply a status effect (knocked down, bleeding, burning, frozen, etc). Some status effects are blocked (‘resisted’) by physical armour, some are blocked by magical armour.

Just so happens that Geomancy (which is primarily an earth/poison Elemental damage school) has a couple of skills that apply some physically-resisted status effects like knocked down and crippled. It’s not a bug, nor is it stupid.

Yeah, it’s internally consistent.

Cripple and Knockdown are resisted by Physical Armor. Full stop. Doesn’t matter what the source is.
Same goes for Silence in regards to magic (an issue often for Scoundrel is that a lot of effects end up resisted by Magic Armor).

Having fun with my cat.

Bastard Magister just shot and killed my fucking cat with an arrow, unprovoked. What the fuck? And I can’t retaliate because he and his army are higher level? My sole purpose in this game is to level up and slaughter every single Magister on this fucking island. Holy shit.

37-minute speedrun of the game:

Mostly done with Fane’s Play Dead ability to get out of fights, using warp points to bypass conflict, and Cloak and Dagger to turn invisible and run away. Lone Wolf so there’s no one else mucking up his strategy by getting caught in battles.

Reload and don’t go that way with the character the cat is following.

Also, kill every fucking magister in the game.

I’m not save-scumming on my first playthrough, otherwise I would take the first bit of your advice.