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Hi, I'm currently playing Divine Divinity, planning to start Beyond Divinity next. I'd like some advice about the difficulty/tuning for Beyond Divinity.

For context: I finished Original Sin 2 in the highest difficulty, and enjoyed it. I play most games in the highest difficulty. I'm playing Divine Divinity in Hard difficulty as a melee warrior, and it's... not fun. The one-shotting boss type enemies are not interesting. I have seen post after post after post talking about how "you should just use the scorpion traps", or "just use a bow", or "just use magic", but being that this is a single character RPG, I expect a melee build to be minimally viable in hard difficulty.

Now, that said, I am almost finished with the game playing only melee (no bows/ranged attacks used or built for). It's not impossible. It's taken a lot of avoiding boss enemies and coming back for them later, and using some amount of "cheese" like polymorph (which frankly is OP). It's just not enjoyable; the majority of the game is really good and balanced, and I love that I have to play tactically, but when an unremarkable zombie one shots me in an area where all enemies were doing maybe 1/10th to 1/8th of my health per hit, that is not my idea of fun.

With that said: what is the difficulty in Beyond Divinity like? Likewise for Divinity 2 if that's okay to ask here. I'm wondering whether there are certain builds I should just flat-out avoid, or if the difficulty tuning is more in line with what Larian achieved in Original Sin 2.

Update: Part 3, Chapter 24 is now published.

BG3.5 - Hellraisers (Fanfiction)
Baldur's Gate 3.5: Hellraisers - an original fanfic story that is a sequel to Baldur's Gate 3 Fanfic: The Afflicted. It picks up immediately after the events of Baldur's Gate 3 as characters from the previous fanfic - Fiovay, Kai, Aelun, Vlyn, and the other members of their party - travel to Avernus. Their quest is to save Karlach but also to hopefully find and rescue Darson, Aelun's father, from the clutches of Demogorgon.

Here is the link to the blog site: https://baldursgate3hellraisers.blogspot.com/2025/10/baldurs-gate-35-hellraisers.html

Probably no surprise on my end: AD&D 2nd Edition, Revised and Expanded, with all Player's and DM's Option books, tweaked with a number of house rules.

A friend introduced me to AD&D with the Mystara campaign setting and I started being a DM with the second Forgotten Realms campaign setting box. We've been playing since the mid-90s. What I like most about late 2e, is the vastness of compatible rulebooks and lore. I can use books from 1e through 2e P.O. That's more than twenty years of releases, 1977 to 1999. 1e converts with minor tweaks, so you can do it on the fly. However, I'm afraid that when I die and want to turn away from the light, Gary Gygax's Amnizu lawyer will show up and say "Not so fast, buddy. Didn't the rules clearly say 'no magic shops?' Guards, arrest him!" Yes, all the bad rep for tedious maths, cryptic tables and endless browsing in multiple books is justified. But, we probably modified every rule that didn't fit our style of play, and the ongoing campaign of course also changed the worlds we play in. These days, the group is still based in Waterdeep, but we're also using Planescape, Greyhawk, Spelljammer, Mystara and Ravenloft resources in almost every campaign.

When 3e came out, we had all hoped for a modernisation of the existing rules, not a complete cut. We actually adapted 3e Saving Throws in happy anticipation when they were introduced in a magazine ahead of the release. We simply didn't expect WotC to break the rules, the continuity and the style of playing like that. When I was done reading through the new books, at first I thought I was missing something. TSR was often antagonised, and rightly so, for spreading rules across three books you had to buy. But this was different. After trying to convert, or rather "re-imagine" three important NPCs, I realised that we would not be able to continue our campaign with the new rules. No working combat system, most spells were transmutations all of a sudden, and FR had lots of pretty silly retcons that couldn't be explained - not to mention what they did to the cosmology. The wizard and fighter could maybe have switched to playing rhythm guitar and triangle in the henchmen band away from danger, but the Ranger was just completely broken. We would have lost compatibility with my existing collection of rulebooks and all the campaigns based on them. WotC also broke the continuity with the race of one PC not even available in early 3e. We therefore voted against a new start and I've been developing the world myself since then. With almost every TSR release available as PDF and several Fandom pages, all the browsing and planning has actually become fun instead of the drag it used to be. No regrets!

The original 2 games were made by different developers in a different engine. So no wonder it would be different.

You're better off comparing the UI to other Larian games... Which aren't a whole lot better.

Of course, some parts of the UI also suffers due to facilitating Consoles. While there are some differences between PC and Console UI's, there is a lot of things that are shared. Which, always causes them to be clunky on PC because it has to work for controllers with limited numbers of buttons to interact with things. Notably, because of the shared release of the game on PC and Console (Compared to prior Larian titles that were released on PC first and then later a Console port was made after the fact. Meaning the original game was entirely built with PC in mind)


I honestly have no idea what you're referring to by "Graphics designer"


I'm pretty sure there are settings and keybinds to have the camera follow your character. I know I explicitly turned them off because I'm used to playing CRPG's where moving the camera independently of characters is normal (And often better for actually moving, especially long distances, clicking to move directly on a location far away > constantly clicking to move to locations a few feet away until you reach that far away destination)


At a guess, I'd assume that this is in part due to their auto-pathing mechanics. Where party members will do things like jump across gaps or even jump up/down elevations to follow your party leader. Which probably doesn't vibe well with the more traditional formation pathing.

This sort of thing also wasn't in Divinity titles so you spent more time manually teleporting party members across every gap you encountered. (Which was helpfully mitigated with the teleportation pyramids)


BG3 has the largest button on the UI being the "Enter Turn-based Mode" which is functionally a pause. It also has a keybind associated with it. This is actually better than a pause in many respects because it allows you to actually interact with the game in the turn based mode, meaning other NPC's are frozen in place and any timers (Such as temporary buffs) also don't tick down.

I think there are also settings for auto-turn based toggles. But I can't recall as I never desired to use them (As someone who also turned off most auto-pause interactions in older CRPG's since I found it more annoying than useful in most cases)


This is just a side effect of using the same button (Mouse clicks) for both movement and interaction. Alongside a somewhat janky container interface.

Meaning that a misinput (Either by mistake or due to janky interface) can lead to a character command. This happens to be a staple issue plaguing literally every "Click to move" game that ever existed (With the more commen thing being loot based ARPG's like Diablo where you can accidentally click on an enemy or item on the floor instead of moving or vice versa). Which is why it boggles my mind that this form of input is continually made instead of being replaced by many, much better systems (Like WASD movement - Which is actually what Console uses in lieu of click to move)

Meanwhile, this interaction when done intentionally, is fine. Most of the time I don't click to close a container and simply walk away from it, reducing the number of inputs I make.

Of course, containers and inventory definitely could use a spruce up in terms of design. I'm just thankful that it doesn't use the awful Tetris inventory of old but that's about the only positive there is. (And don't get me started on the horrendous trader UI... Which has not improved from Original Sin titles where it was also garbage)


Most likely a lack of resources put into the system and instead devoted elsewhere.

The entirety of the UI design in BG3 very much feels like it was worked on up to the point where "It technically works" and then it was left alone. No refinement or polish, just the bare minimum to function (Which in some cases required a patch... Literally Bard's expertise needed to be patched to actually be changed, by default you literally couldn't change it at all. Made all the more ironic given that Rogue's Expertise always worked fine)

Where all these resources were put instead? I cannot say.

Not sure what Ragnarok is refering to ? Maybe a problem of the past ?

My hotbar doesnt change on Laezel, who is my current Eldritch Knight Thrower.

Karlach as Monk is pretty powerful, but Monk as a class is too rest dependent, and I prefer to never use Soul Coins - there are only 19 in the game anyway, so its a very finite resource.

---

Shadowbart: Throwers are of course warriors who throw.

All Thrower builds use of course Tavern Brawler and its a good pick for using Elixiers of Giant Strength, too.

Eldritch Knight can throw their bound weapon and its automatically returning, so thats a natural choice. Since you get TWO instead of one extra attacks on Fighter 11, most people play this class pure or take just a single level of Rogue for Expertise in Athletics.

Open Hand Monks will take Tavern Brawler naturally anyway, since it boosts their damage and the reliability of their damage to silly levels, so thats too a natural choice, but unless they have a returning weapon, they will have to carry big heaps of weapons with the throw property. Typically one will play Open Hand Monk 9 / Thief 3 for the extra offhand.

Finally there is Berserker. Berserker 5 / Thief 3 / Some Fighter 4 is the typical build. I would probably go for Eldritch Knight again, so any weapon can be made returning AND one can Disguise Self into Dwarf for using the Dwarf Thrower. Of course some people have this ugly helmet to Disguise Self and dont have to pick up EK for that.

I mean... Nothing stops you from multi-classing Rogue to get the exact same tools as your Barbarian build to do that exact thing.

Not that you need it, since you can reduce everything to 0 easily enough anyway (If it even hits you because Shield reactions)

Barbarian is an easy tank, because you can get a bunch of resistances level 3 with Bear Heart - Which can combo with stuff like Stallion or a popular choice is going Moon Druid to get Bear (And later Owlbear) form while Raging for extra health from the form plus all the resistances from Rage.

But Abjuration Wizard with Heavy Armour Mastery is the best tank, due to having the best mitigation (Especially if you hoard up magical items that grant uses of Abjuration spells for free Ward charges), especially when using Warding Bond to provide the resistances. Taking literally 0 damage from almost everything. It's just a little trickier because it doesn't come online properly until after Grymforge as Adamantine Plate is the first available heavy armour with damage reduction.

Not that such min-maxed things are necessary in the game, especially when you can have characters fully devoted to dealing damage that still are pretty tanky due to high AC's and utility spells (Shield, Counterspell, Darkness etc)

Has anyone done the faith-leap trial recently ? My Shadowheart is standing in front of the final podium where the umbral gem should be. (No cheating, just walked all the way up there) but climbing on the podium blinds her and there's no umbral gem. Jumping on the podium kills her. Stepping east west or souh to try another entry point kills her.

I'm doing a shadowheart origin run, so I wanted to do this extremely stressful and annoying trial anyway. (I did it a couple of times long ago, but it was such a fun-killer that on subsequent PT's I only got the gem from Yurgir, avoideded the trials and used knock to open the door)

I don't have knock now but I'll cheat another way because as far as I can tell, this trial's broken.

I recently beat the game on Honor Mode for the 4th time, but with the level 13-20 mod, but I also ran the D&D PHB 2024 (now D&D 5.5E mod), and the mod that increases the number of enemies in encounters, and the random new encounters in the wild, along with the AIO equipment randomizer mod. (Along with a few appearance mods for your TAV).

I was level 18 as a party by end game, I didnt run the increased XP. The final fight was still hard, and the fight with Rapheal was a real challenge even at 17 at that time.

I tried it, and darkness over the portal does indeed prevent arrow fire. The shadow cursed enemies now fire at the party instead of the portal, but at least the party is less easy to hit and can cure themselves. And so this way, we managed to "hold our position" until the timer ran out. Thanks a lot. So we continue the Lvl 6 run.

Sorry to hear that it's still slow on your side, I would reach out to the support team here: https://larian.com/support/baldur-s-gate-3#modal (if you havent yet!) and let them know the platform you're playing in, so they can take a look.

Hello!

I've just sent you a DM about this!

Should be able to. The very onset of the dialogue upon approaching involves the Goblins asking you to give torturing a go.

So long as you don't do any of the checks to make the Goblins go away, you should have a chance to give it a go, and if successful, will grant that inspiration.

Do note that as a Drow (Or while disguised as one) you do not get the option to torture, you instead send the Goblins away without any ability checks.