Combat is really about stunlocking enemies if you are able. First of all target the casters and remove their lowest armour value, either magic or physical. Then there are various skills which can stun lock them for a while once this armour is removed. Skills such as charm or charm arrows, turn them into a chicken, petrify, etc.
This is a good way of dealing with battles that you feel underpowered for.
My other biggest tip is go for the trait ASAP that lets you resurrect at full health, this makes the penalty of death a lot less intrusive as long as you have lots of resurrections scrolls.
This is a great tip. I go for stunning and knockdowns when possible, but holy shit, some of these battles could have culled one or two opponents and been perfect. I’m also not a fan of games with a huge amount of character choice, but then only have a few optimal character choices that actually make gameplay viable.
I also see the tip about picking pockets to get better spells. This also appears to be a design flaw. I was a backer of this game, and it’s not terrible, but I was hoping they would have made the second iteration of this series a bit less punishing than the first game. I understand that game design is the art of controlling a player’s frustration, but DOS2 just went a little overboard in beating the hell out of the players.
Some people feel that they have “beaten the system” by stealing and enjoy it tremendously. Lots of previous games in the wider genre can have the entire economic side bypassed by a little strategic theft. (especially the Morrowind/Skyrim family IIRC). DOS2 seems to have adapted to this by assuming that everyone steals and designing their game around the assumption that everyone indulges in their annoying fiddly and unchallenging theft mechanic.
I’m obviously far in the minority, but I don’t feel this game is that difficult other than a couple specific fights. Some of the boss fights are tricky until you’ve learned them (which is how I feel boss fights should be), and there’s one or two optional fights in each act that are nasty. I need those fights because they’re the only fights in the game that let me test my builds and see if they actually work.
As for stealing, I don’t enjoy it and it’s not needed if you use the other economy tools. Get a character with high barter. Donate a bit of gold or make trades in the vendors favor to raise their disposition. With high barter and 100 disposition with the vendor you can now sell the stuff you either found with lucky charm or created via crafting for good money.
Use a bow, magic, or throw-away weapons to break down doors and open chests. There will be a couple chests you can’t get in to, that’s fine with me; it makes thievery feel like it was worth putting points in to. Just like I don’t get some quests if I don’t take Pet Pal and miss some stuff without persuasion.
By the end of act 1 you can have enough lockpicks to get you through the entire game with dozens to spare, sell the rest. You can make hundreds of poison, water, and slowdown arrows. Craft weapons to sell. Trade stuff for skill books rather than stealing them, it works fine.
You just can’t get every skill book immediately at level 2, but then which RPGs give you all your skills an hour into the game? Gotta have that constant drip or I’ll get bored and not finish unless your story is spectacular.
Are you playing the same game? Did you play on Easy? Because this is so not true. I cleared every nook and cranny of Fort Joy, got the Tyrant set, did every quest, and when I got to the mainland I was out classed big time. All that gear is worthless as soon as you out level it.
Also effect arrows, and effects in general, are kind of shitty with the armor system in place. You need to destroy their armor before they’ll be subjected to any effect that makes them miss their turn. Even then, the AI is good enough to gang up and target your weakest character first, killing them before they can act (sup Ifan and Lohse) so your highest DPS character is often dead before their turn causing a reload.
Maybe I’m too old for this shit, but the game is either too hard or I’ve completely missed a giant section of the game because my party is level 12 and I can’t find a single fight with anything below level 13, and there’s at least 8 enemies. Also fuck those necrofire slimes, that fight might be impossible. I beat my head against it for 3 hours last night with my level 12 group, because that’s the lowest level fight I can find. If I go over the bridge to the north to the sawmill the enemies are level 15. I’ve cleared out everything else.
It has been a while as I’ve been focusing on Act 1 lately (keep getting distracted by new games and build ideas) and am just about to hit Act 2 with the newest party, but as I recall you are currently at the hardest part of the game. If I remember rightly I had to really explore for xp before level 13 doing everything to find encounters I could handle.
I do feel like that one section of the game around levels 11-12 could probably have used one more encounter, but I’ll look at it more closely this time through.
First playthrough was normal, the rest have been Tactician or honour. Still haven’t finished Honour but I have high hopes for the current group.
Your highest DPS should have invested in enough wits points that they’re going first. Ifan goes first in every combat for me, targets a mage and knocks out their armor with the first shot and uses a knockdown arrow with the second if he can’t just finish them off (only in serious fights, knockdown arrows are rare enough not to waste and I buy them every time I see them at a vendor). It sounds like you need to work on positioning to me; scout around and find a good spot to engage from. They shouldn’t be able to reach you and take you out the first turn.
I was talking more about their use as vendor trash; easy to make and worth a fair amount of coin especially for the early stages of the game when you might need it most.
I am, however, planning my next party build around using them and I think it’ll work fine. Use the torturer talent and the damaging ones will bypass armor and I suspect I can do enough damage I won’t have to worry about the non-damaging ones.
Original Sin 2 has one of the deeper discounts on Steam that I’ve seen (-33%), in case anyone’s been waiting (like me). I’m still going to hold out as my time just became much more limited again. Will it be cheaper come xmas?
publishers are putting stuff on sale BEFORE black friday…its happening everywhere…times, they are hard…blizzard/activision shares DROPPED like a rock after earnings…bad guidance
let them come to you…digital products never go bad…unlike food
Finally got to the last battle on this thing. And…I’m not even sure I’m going to finish it, because the last battle is a PITA and features one of the things I really hate, which is forced conversations/cutscenes that prevent me from setting up my party the way I want them, and thus positions them very unfavorably with nothing I can do about it.
Well, yes, but initiative does’t play out that way, for my party. I don’t get to go first, in this fight, because it’s set up that way, and when I do get to go the best I can do is teleport one person away and them move, leaving the other two to be pretty much sauteed before they can go. And even if I can cheese a way out of it, it’s still terrible design IMO. Not to mention that the dialog is meaningless as you really only have two options (at least, for me) even though the text implies more than that. All in all, I hate final battles anyhow as there is zero payoff, and this one doesn’t change my mind.
I don’t understand why devs can’t design end-game combat in RPGs that is simply a tougher version of the exact same style and setup as the many previous dozens of hours had you practicing and perfecting. It should be about putting everything you’ve learned, everything you’ve gained, towards this ultimate confrontation. Why else invest all that time? Changing it up in the end isn’t satisfying at all and it’s no wonder games end on a down note.
The journey is always better than the destination, and that’s just sad.
I just beat the final battle, like 5 minutes ago. I managed to sort of cheese it with Sebille, by exploiting Adrenaline, Flesh Sacrifice, and Skin Graft.
Basically I buffed her up with haste, clear mind, and a strength buff before the fight and triggered the dialog. After soaking Lucien’s initial attack she went next, and I did Backslash, Rupture Tendons, then a combination of the skills I mentioned with attacks to break down Vredemans armor, and ended it with Chicken Claw. Then on Vredeman’s turn he ran around as a bleeding chicken and killed himself, triggering the next phase of the fight.
If you give her an Idol of Rebirth and she dies, she’ll respawn with all those skills refreshed. Then you do the combo again on Braccus Rex. Ez win.
I want to take a moment to talk about how great this game was. I finished it over the weekend, and it’s still in my head, days later. My save game says I put 93 hours into it, and with all the reloads and backtracks its probably closer to 100. I want to replay it with the characters I didn’t use, Fane and Beast, to see how their stories play out. I want to try making different choices to see how it impacts the game later. I want to try to get the rare achievements.
This is the best RPG I’ve ever played. The last game that sucked me in like this was Baldur’s Gate 2, and I think DOS2 is even better. Kudos to the Larian team for making this happen, it’s really rare nowadays to see a game like this that’s made with heart and soul and for the fans. No corners cut, no lootboxes or DLC, no Doritos promotions, no corporate interference, just a great experience end to end.
Sounds interesting, I loved Drakensang the River of TIme and even enjoyed Demonicon so it’s cool to see it set in the same universe. Would like to see it in action.
Looks like this new campaign is out today? That is amazing. I wonder if it has new/different mechanics? When I get done writing this damn brief I am heading home to check it out! I may post here with impressions later but … it is free!
Two things: It is not perfectly clear you can play without a GM. I will check on this later. And it does appear to have two modes for mechanics: Divinity style and I guess Dark Eye.
Well I am sry all. I thought the new campaign that was added for free was a potential single player campaign set I the Dark Eye universe. But unless I am wrong it looks to be some gm tools for playing with others. (game master). I may wrong (and I wish I was).
