Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks How to get decent gear/money WITHOUT Lucky Charm?

I'm just asking if there is a way to reasonably get decent gear or the money to buy gear if one didn't take Lucky Charm.

It became apparent that I drastically needed some more upgrades when I entered a fight at level 10 with a level 11 opponent and had my mage one-shot killed for 400+ damage by a bone troll, and my fighter got killed shortly afterwards (and he regularly loses all his magic armor with the first attack).

I'm level 11 now and have wandered all over, even poking my heads into some areas long enough to realize that they were level 13+. I've done most things in Driftwood except the Arena and the Fish processing place.

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Stealing won't do it because you can only steal from a merchant once per character level, and I dislike the idea if using the mirror to respec everyone into thieves 4 times and using mercenaries to infinitely steal from merchants.

Bartering 4 isn't cutting it either.

If Lucky Charm is the only way, it might mean that eventually I'll have no choice but to restart Act 2 from the beginning.

EDIT: I guess my blind spot is that after years of RPG's, I am highly reluctant to "downgrade" from a piece of gear with lots of stats to one which has NO stats but a lot of armor.

Cheat engine, to cut straight through the gold cost BS of constant regearing. Don't even bother with bartering or theft, just give yourself a million gold to get rid of a large part of the gearing headache.

As for ingame 'legit' ways to deal with it, without 4 person theft speccing, 1 member lucky and 1 member barter is pretty much it. Though if you have already done most everything in DW, you've lost a lot of potential loot.

I'm going to try the zero scaling mod after I finish this playthrough, and see if it fixes this regearing nonsense without messing something else up. I hope it works well, I'd like to have the option of using unique items at the end of the game without being numerically crippled.

Eh I had 1 thief char, 1 barter char and zero lucky charm. I didn't do any respec shenanigans and I have a stupid amount of money (over 300k) at level 19. I was also buying minimum 3 new weapons every other level and then every level for a couple of my guys.

Suggestion:
Raise the attitude (with your Barter character!) of the merchants in Duskwood by giving them money or items. Give them about 100g and figure out how much attitude that is, then give the rest to hit 100. I screwed up and did this really late, so I could have had even more money. I suggest you sell to the merchants that don't sell gear (the two skill book ones, the fish guy assuming he has money, I think the matron of the undertavern, there are probably more). That way when you check the merchants that do sell gear it doesn't get clogged with your old stuff.

* Raising attitude costs more depending on the level of the merchant. The ones in duskwood are pretty cheap, I think something like 2000g for 100 attitude. The earlier you do it the more you'll make buying/selling from them. Later in the game merchants will be more expensive, but of course you should have more money then as well.

If you get 100 attitude with the armor merchant in Driftwood as soon as you arrive, and keep to selling/buying from him exclusively, still focus on getting level 5 barter, and you'll notice an even further drastic change in prices. 100 attitude will only cost like 1000 gold with that NPC - and that will get you like 33% off items and get you that much more when you sell. It's kinda crazy how much attitude value will adjust prices. You'll have achieved ROI and then some on your first big vendor dump in act 2, possibly even on your first big purchase.

I also loot literally everything. Not just thieving, but I pick literally everything up that isn't welded to the environment, even tainted fish. They're stackable, hardly weigh anything, and even though only sell for 1/2 gold, that's a few hundred more gold as soon as you get to act 2.

There are a few spots in and around Paradise Downs that, even though the Magisters are level 13, the fights are still doable at level 11 and you'll get quite a bit of level 13 gear from it which is nice not having to upgrade for another 3 levels. Just avoid that damn scarecrow group until later unless you can keep the main one CC'd or very far away from your group as you wreck his adds. They are weak AF without his aura/buffs. I was able to do this early on with a few teleport scrolls and just kept him all the way down the hill far away from the battle.

I have been using the bribe-for-attitude thing (the amount seems more like 600 up to 1000 for 100 attitude).

Unfortunately, I only have roughly 11,000 gold, and even with my 4 Barter merchant purchasing from a 100 attitude vendor, it's still very pricey, and while I might be able to squeeze out enough for several upgrades now, what'll happen in another level or two when I'll need another major upgrade and have no more reserves of materials to sell?

Looking at the inventory more carefully, it seems that buying plain equipment might not be the best plan either. I mean the primary armor type goes up by a lot, but the secondary armor type barely budges.

Even gear with 5 levels of difference, for STR-type gear, the magic armor difference between a level 6 and a level 11 item goes up by about 5. Which won't really help since the enemies do the same thing I do and focus down the weakest armor type.

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I guess I'll go spend half an hour (or more) picking up dead fish, and reading a crafting guide so I can make use of all the materials I've picked up and ignored until now.

EDIT: I didn't count, but I got between 100-214 fish, and they sold for about 214 gold. I didn't bribe the fish merchant to 100 attitude because that would have more than eaten up any of the fish profits.

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I'm a bit skeptical about my chances at handling level 13 enemies at level 11, since the Wedding Ring quest featuring Voidwoken which were 1-2 levels BELOW ME ended in a party wipe. Things like party members getting one-shot from full prompted this thread.

My first playthrough I did not take either, until Arx where I specced thieving on one character and I did fine, granted it was classic, but still.

Your problem is that you pick fights way out of your league it seems, even equipped that quest you mentioned with ring would be tough as level 11 vs level 13 voidwalken there. But... why? You really should not be doing that one at that point and certainly not wearing rags.


Other than that, basic equipment from vendor is all you really NEED, if you are still using level 6-7ish stuff at level 11 you will feel the pain and at some point simply having more armor/magic armor is just better than that outdated piece that gives you attribute/skill boosts.

There are exceptions, of course, but in general if you get to the point where you get oneshot, then you got to pick up some armor there - +2 Strength and +1 Warfare on that outdated piece won't help you when you are dead, but extra hundred armors can help you survive and kill the shit.

Plain stuff from vendor is not terribly expensive, you should be able to afford to refresh yourself once every odd level supplementing stuff you get from quests and chests.

That's wrong. I've had enough experience that I avoid engaging in combat with enemies which are 2 level or more above me.

One fight which gave me trouble was with some enemies only one level higher than I was (11 vs 10). That area was the lowest level enemies I had encountered up until that point. After I got wrecked, I left and continued searching for another way forward. That got me to level 11. I eventually found the way through to some level 10 encounters.




The enemies were level 9 and 10, they were not 13. It was an ambush and the enemies were not there until the fight started, so I couldn't have known what level they were until they appeared. You might be thinking of a different encounter.




I've just replaced most of my gear with level appropriate stuff. I won't be able to do that again anytime soon, though.




I'm down to about 4000 gold. I guess I'll just have to see if that will be enough to let me continue.

You mentioned having Thievery so that shouldn't even be an issues as long as you steal with thievery gear.

Just get thievery glove and use the Thievery top you bought from Seeker camp (i think it's from the seeker camp) and thievery belt.

That's more than enough money because Act 2 has like, 40-50 people you can still from that has vendor gold. Even if you exclude the market place, Using level 8 Thievery (5+glove+top+belt) is already 800k something from act 2 stealing fund.

Don't just steal from vendor. You will be surprised how many ordinary hidden npc have tons of gold in an isolated place as if they are meant to be pickpocketed.

Also, go do the unique weapon quest in the fishery, or do the tavern stuffs and so on first. The town has tons of hidden quests then you can go for the Dwarf cave afterward. Just the fishery void fight should give you enough exp to go to 12 something. The dog with petpal will mention this and talk about how the basement smell weird.

I don't know anything about a Thievery top, maybe I missed it, but I did steal some +2 Thievery gloves off of a dwarf who scammed me, so I can have probably 7 Thievery.

I was actually right at exactly that point in the fishery. The fight went quite well with my extra armor, although it was only 37% of a level.

With the money from selling the enemy drops rewards from that and the lost ring quest, I got back up to about 12,000 gold again. I even found a skillbook which was not useless, shocker of shockers.

So it seems like I can postpone my gold worries for later.

I think the thief chest is off Papa Thrash.

Try messing around with spirit vision then. A few quests can be completed easily from just running around to give you a few level up and just avoid instant trigger combat.

The Voidling chicken quest can be ended easily by running around to the northwest until you find the papa which gives you tons of loots. (Don't forget to spirit vision for the mama)

Or finding the sick chicken and use fire on it for easy exp.

There's also the 3-altar although one is locked behind a boss so just get 2 of them for easy exp.

Act 2 really just repeat Act 1 pathing, annoying until you get all the gears. Once you figure out the easy exp quests, that's a major advantage.

If you really can't get a thievery top anymore (It is mentioned that it might actually be from papa thrash), just focus on the legendary weapon every 2 level or so in Act 2 from specific npc (Lute girl, Paladins, Dude in the inn and the black guy in the trade market). It's only after 16 should you really update it every level because of the existence of divine gear but it's not that mandatory with 3-source being unlocked and breaking the game until Act 3.