Look guys there is people that is telling everyone that has a genuine concern with Tactician difficulty that the game is ok and everything is fine, we are just "baddies" that need to "git gud"...

The reality is that this people are exploting the game by abusing system like thievery... some guy claims he left Fort Joy with 30k worth of gold and he could have even left with more.

This people are not playing the game in a "normal" way, most people don't rely on this type of exploits or unbalanced mechanics to play thus we can't claim the game is ok based on what this people are telling.

It is clear that there is something wrong with Tactician specially if you need to resort to this exploits to go through it.

Look, don't get me wrong, if those guys enjoy doing that then i don't care, i just don't want to be forced to do the same to finish the game, it is game breaking and breaks immersion and at that point may aswell just use cheats like infinite health and damage, whatever. Just think about the people that play the game normally and don't abuse the game mechanics like this.

Damn, what kind of guy would do such a thing?!

I agree with you. The game should not be balanced around very specific skills like thievery, however:

You definitely don't need to do stuff like that to get through Tactician mode.

Me and a friend play. 2 chars each. We are in Act4 now, so I can't speak for end game.
So far we have stolen one item, just to see how it works.
We make our build up as we go, none of us have read up on skills, builds, story or anything. We have never waited to refresh shops (not that it would be a point, we can't afford much)
We just started the game and play.
Some fights are hard. We have struggled with a few, but most we just came back to later after gaining a level.
It should be hard, as it is currently the highest difficulty in the game, so it's good that we have to try more than once on fights :P
If we had restarted now, with our knowledge of builds and tactics, we'd have a breeze, I am sure.

You don't have to abuse anything, at least not in the first 4 acts

As a final comment, I'd like to point out that calling people who use the games different mechanics "EXPLOITERS" in caps no less, is not constructive. If you think that stealing is too strong, then point that out instead.

Stuff like this is also an exploit, they are not "tactics":

I'm on your track for the first, but not sure about the second. Setting everything ablaze to make it harder to reach you is kind of part of the game. Magic armor makes fire much weaker than it was in the first game. My issue is more, that pure oil seems to be much more effective in prefenting enemies from acting.

I have no idea what is going on with those pictures and no idea how it's relevant for a discussion about thievery being exploitive :P

I guess it's about using the map layout and items to block entrances?
If you don't like to do that, don't do it. It's not needed

And again, I agree with you.
It should not be balanced around having to "break the game", but right now, I don't think it is.

If the oil trick is actually useful from Act 1 to Act 3, I would accept is as an exploit but it isn't worth using starting from Act 2 because all the strong enemies explode on death or just gain free immunity from slow with all the perma flight.

And enemies start to have a bunch of leap again.

So anything, I feel like their level designed balanced the enemies and the map design thinking people will use it.

umm remind me how entrapping opponents in places and part of things to where they cannot get out or have a hard tiume dealing with things NOT being tactical? I mean if it was me I would of probably did the same. I mean fire is beast and the coffins are a good Idea. Just because YOU dont like it doesnt mean its an exploit. how is putting coffins around an enemy so they cant move an exploit? Its simply using what your given in a creative way, you know the very definition of being tactical? using things to your advantage? and whats wrong with pick pocketing everything and selling it back? your just calling things you dont like as exploits. exploiting is using something that breaks the game to get ahead such as glitches. NOT using the game's mechanics themselves . learn the difference. and if your not good enough to play tactition which is supposed to be very hard. then maybe you do need to improve. As much as I dislike the 'git gud' statement and hate the saying as it is. but if your bitching about the difficulty of a difficult setting them maybe you SHOULD better yourself before speaking out. There's a lot thios game needs to fix. such as when you click an attack liker a smell to hit an enemy and the character runs instead My POINT in this rant is. dont go calling using game machanics and smart and maybe abusive use of items as exploiting. thats like saying your mom exploits your dad for his money just because he works

Is the 4 coffin trick actually work? because nearly every fight i did 80% of enemy force will have phoenix dive - blink- backstab blink - frog leap - neither swap, mean they will always has blink-like ability.

Are you guys even playing on the same (tactician) mode as i do?

My definition for exploit is pretty simple: Would such a tactic work in a more reality based thinking?

Barricading a door, so enemies have a hard time getting through: Yes, surely -> legit
Trapping someone between 4 knee high coffins?: Hardly -> Game mechanic exploit

Stealing stuff from a trader and selling it back to him: hardly -> exploit

Creating a huge see of fire, so they will lose armor passing through?: Sure thing
Creating a huge sea of oil because oil penetrates armor making them unable to do shit: Hardly, because they just should be able to set the oil on fire.

Might be slightly OT, but I'd just like to point out that thievery is not, in itself, exploitative. You can use it to exploit, true -- like almost anything, by the way --, but you can actually RP in this RPG (novel idea, I know ^^). If you have the staple thief in the party and don't give everybody else, i.e. warriors and wizards etc. who would not normally be skilled at, or even interested in, thiefy stuff, +thievery gear, don't use throw-away hirelings, etc., then thieving is anything but OP, imo.

Look closer.

Are they bodyblocked by a chandelier or what?

Not a chandelier but yeah something like that, they can't do anything while i am destroying them with my ranged characters that shot through the door.

That fight is so stupidly hard on Tactician that this was the only way i could kill this cunts.

It does look like the person TKed a huge object to prevent movement and then set the area on fire. Of course the object is taking damage every round from the fire as well.

It's like the idea of lighting a room on fire and blocking the door. Or pinning someone under a table and lighting the area on fire.

In both cases, unless the target can move the table or has another escape ... they're toast. Literally.

Of course once enemies start having teleport like spells this tactic goes out the window.

They need a visible target or something to teleport or to charge all you need to do is stay back.

Nothing new under the sun here as politicians do things like this in real-life on a daily basis.

I'm not using any of those "exploits," and am having no problems with Tactician. It is hard but doable. You aren't building your characters good enough to win.

(Hint: You need multiple Glass Cannons (or Lone Wolves) on Tactician)

I would consider such specific requirements a problem in itself.

You don't need any of that. From how the game scales, the most important thing is the gears unless you're a mage then it becomes "Chain Lighting" and "Meteor Shower unlocked".

The scaling from level 9 to 15 on gears is already huge, you get like 20-25% more damage per level if you always upgrade your gears. On level 17-20, this jumps even higher and so does your magic damage especially with skills like Meteor Shower that does multiple hit, or stuffs like Chain Lighting or Epidemic of Fire that will chain over and over until there's only one target left or it runs out of hit.

Even a subpar build will deal good damage if they have the highest level weapon available. It's one way to keep the player from just going from one area to another without exploring at all. The amount of legendaries/divine/unique left all over the map is almsot good enough to keep people geared without buying and if they use thievery/magic charm, they just get those even faster (too fast tbh. I'm trying out magic charm and that thing proc every 15 minutes or something)

THIS i hate it but some fights are just to OP to use anything other than cheese and i will say it again i blame the simple base stats. lower them by 25% on some encounters im not talking EVERYTHING and let the elitist git gud players go on the 1 save game mode so they can git even gudder. i want to use tactics not high numbers at the moment its basicly oh my healer/enchanter got stunned gameover kind of playstyle and i hate it.

The game got degraded from an RPG to an Min-Max-Festival via giganormous numbers in higher levels, because that is the only kind of progress is can now deliver: bigger numbers.

We are actively avoiding any overpowered combos or exploit, and we still find tactician mode too easy. Don't speak for all of us please.

It is kind of why I say the mode is too easy and too hard.

Once you know the "trick" the difficulty melts away revealing how busted it is the entire time.

If you don't know the "trick" then the overbuffed stats and damage will simply beat you down because those basic strategies only work against enemies of equal strength.

/facepalm

Not only that but add to the armor bloat the fact that initiative/wits are dogshit and yeah, have fun.

I blame the gear scaling. A level 20 Divine shield gives 1394/1951 magic/physical armor. A level 21 Divine shield gives 1806/2528

The 30% stat increase is a bit much and enemies, even + 50% stat, can barely compete with legendary gear. Divine= ggwp and you get that from merchant every hour or a piece from running around with Lucky Charm every 10-15 minutes.

A full set tank mage has like 6k magic armor and enemies deal like 500 a hit with magic. Ha.

Armor strikes again! I am having the sneaking suspicion that armor might not make the cut for the next game.

Yeah but not everyone is exploiting the game like you, some of us like to have a fair challenge and not cheese the game to make a point in a game.

Apparently just buying gears from merchant and using thievery only when it's maxed and gears are ready.

Ha, if you think thievery make people too rich, go try magic charm now.

Unless putting points into magic charm is an exploit as well.

What trick?
We simply use crafting and thievery on our rogue, then we do each combat as it is intended by making use of the environment, picking targets according to our strengths, deciding who or what to disable first etc. Thats what makes this game and the last fun, the fact that no combat is the same every scenario requires different situational abilities, the fact that you would suggest to have it otherwise is really sad to me because that is what I enjoy the most about this game.

On the bright side, enemies are smart now and just use cursed ice which goes through armor and freeze you.

Or piercing damage.

The grenade they throw are too weak though. 300-400 piercing damage doesn't do much when you have 7k health from the free cons on those items.

The fight is as good as over though if your magic shield breaks because they all abuse charm grenade and mind dominate so you might as well consider your magic shield your health instead.

Armor is your health, that is the core issue of the armor system. As soon as your armors are gone, you are mostly permanent CCd anyway, therefore making Health itself pretty pointless.

The last fight actually make use of health because enemies no longer perma CC, just perma debuff with DoT so hard you need to heal and perma mend/soothing with your custom char dome to survive.

I disagree completely, as my easiest run through Tactician is with 3 Glass Cannons.

Enemies do so much damage on Tactician that armor is an afterthought, your best bet is stacking evasive skills on multiple characters (Evasive Aura, Uncanny Evasion, Chameleon Cloak, Smoke Clouds etc)

I fight in the dome pretty much always.

Love the dome.

tac·ti·cian
takˈtiSH(ə)n/
noun
noun: tactician; plural noun: tacticians

a person who uses a carefully planned strategy to achieve a specific end.
"a brilliant political tactician"

Yeah grat tactics are shown in images in this post.

pfff

You really don't have to use any of the stuff shown in those pictures to beat Tactician difficulty.
We haven't done any of that (and no stealing either) and we still do fine.
You keep referring to those pictures, and that is really not a good argument imo, because again: You really don't have to use tactics like that

What those pictures say is that the AI could be better at times, not that Tactician is borked. This issue is present on all difficulties

While I agree that Wits could benefit from a rework - to me it's in a very awkward place right now

I also agree that the difficulty isn't without faults, but to have a real discussion about it, it doesn't help us at all to be overdramatic.

We really need to separate between the two meanings of exploit
- "make full use of and derive benefit from (a resource)" - Casting a heal on an undead enemy
- "make use of (a situation) in a way considered unfair or underhand" - blocking the AI so they lock up and don't fight back
That is two very different ways of using the word. (What is what is also subjective, my examples are just my view)

I think most of us agree that we want more tactical depth and not having to rely on cheese or fringe skills (like mass thieving)

The selling point for Tactician in D:OS1 one, was not only to be harder but also fights to be different. If the difficulty is mainly achieved through bloated chance, that can be hardly said.

In D:OS1 there often were more and more special enemies in fights like the lightning zombies in the fight outside of the doors, making a fighter fresh and harder. There were also often speciel 'enemie' that just supported with an aura.

But in D:OS2 there seems to be heardly anything new to fight, only some skill and perhaps one or another aura?

Zherot, on a scale of 1 to extremely mad, how mad are you when you look upon my peasant massacres for gear and XP?
https://imgur.com/a/39gCY

Oh look... its Papa Thrash

Hello Papa Thrash, do you think your puny spells can do anything but delay your inevitable demise to 4 beefed up heroes?

https://imgur.com/a/TtPMF

Me thinks you're gonna get a trashing.

Mmmm juicy loots.

Yeah, I'm having serious issues with Tactician mode. I ONLY ever played Tactician mode in D:OS1, and I had a ton of fun with it. It was challenging but never felt impossible. It certainly never required a bunch of metagaming and minmaxing and tricks and exploits in order to even pass one key battle.

After leveling up just right to beat the turtles, crocs, and frogs, now I'm stuck on the Houndmaster, who seems utterly impossible unless I can squeeze just enough XP out of... something, to hit level 4. Apparently, from what I've read, I should just go back and exploit some quests and murder a bunch of NPC's. How nice. Now I fully understand why Obsidian had no XP for kills in Pillars of Eternity.

At least put some "re-spec" potions or something in Fort Joy so we can reset and re-level our party better without restarting the whole game (which I've done several times now)... Or just, you know, make the fights ever so slightly less impossible.

Well, that's my 2 cents. I'm off to change my terrible rogue into a summoner and try again...

Saber-scorpion,

Do you want to know the answer to getting through 1-4 pretty quickly?

That one is actually outdated btw and there are better tricks now especially with some bugfix here and there along with the tutorial exp bonus.

Must have Petpal

-Do tutorial until everyone gets knocked out
-Kill the magister in the first room you woke up. Doesn't matter anyway
-Go up and come back down to help everyone then finish the tutorial

-Get the Red prince (always, best husbando material. Actually, you can ignore this step but I recommend it or you're a heathen.)
-Get to town. On the way, collect a Yarrow flower
-Do the part with Ifan protecting the elf
-Recruit people
-Go talk to the weeping mother and do her quest
-Climb up the ladder, talk to Magister, accept her quest to find Migo
-Climb back down, walk past Gawain, he will give you a quest for teleporter glove. Just accept the quest for now
-Watch the guy arguing with lizard dude that gets stabbed. Kill the guy for hurting the master race. You can trigger this with ease with The Red Prince dialogue

-If playing with the Red Prince, get attacked, another free kill.
-Talk to the women npc and tell her about your experience and get her to talk about her family and son. Listen to her. She will give you a restoration scroll. Do this on everyone for 4x restoration scroll.
-Go to the kitchen and enter the hatch to discover the arena of the one. Leave instead of doing fight. Just unlocking area for exp.
-Go to doctor leste with a guy about to die. USe the restoration scroll on him. This gives you EXP.
-Walk past the cave near the doctor. You will see Migo. Give him the Yarrow flower. He will give you a ring with restoration.
-USe the ring and take turn heaing the same guy doctor Leste is treating again. You will get exp for each person healing him. The ring will allow you to save the scroll.
-Talk with the dog to learn about Emmie and get a key.

-Go to the cave the elves are hiding in. Do hide and seek with the kid to get to Withermoore secret location.
-Accept the quest, go back to the shrine in town to get into prison.
-Sneak to grab the key at the houndmaster part and return to the large door in the middle
-The room near the stair going up is the source hound room. TAlk to the dog and mention buddy and how he misses Emmie.
-Go inside the room with houndmaster crossbow (Super strong Ranged weapon get), talk to the dog, grab the key and persuade it to live on.
-continue to do Withermoore quest and complete it.
-With the bow, Teleporter croc are very easy. Kill them. Get the glove.
-Return to the first waypoint with the kids by himself, teleport up the broken stair case and get to the hidden area with the sword (strong warfare weapon get). Grab the Curio chest at the end for more magical gear.
-Return to prison, the inner left cell (across the one with the decaying elf) is another secret room giving you a necklace and free exp
-Return to the elf cave and go in deeper. There's a spot you can teleport up for more exp.

You should have enough weapon and exp to really do anything you want by then with little to no combat, just running around talking for an hour or so and you can beat anything outside magistrate bosses and the large grup in front of the gate with ease.

This kind of pathing is something anyone planning to play Tactician should know as the game pretty much hope you know what you are doing now the moment you play on that mode.

I honestly don't understand how you can genuinely have such a fit and be this sincere about it when you are being utterly rediculous.

Don't play tactitian if you don't want to minmax.
Also don't ruin our fun complaining on here to make the game easier for everyone else who do like the challenge - like what the hell is wrong with you?!

I do just fine so far. My toons sometimes die, so I have to run and try again. A lot of encounters I got wiped and had to retry 10 times before I learned to use that oil barrel propperly and beat them with my last man standing. That's exactly the beauty of it. If you don't struggle, you won't learn - that's what tactician should be about.

Go find a mod that fixes your trouble instead of ruining my fun. That would be a smart and healthy thing to do.

edit:

Thanks for the update elezzard, I was too lazy to retype it and also wanted to give credit where it is due.

If I'm not bored, I can also do the current location for nearly every act 2 traders and which one to always visit to get proper legendaries and divines. This way, no one can complain the merchants aren't selling what they want for their chars.

Shame the game ending really leave me as salty as the ocean with the lack of option to make love with the romance partner one last time and my energy fade away as quickly as the screen fade to black after pressing the escape button to skip the credit.

If you kill Hannag, you get an Ashen Idol of Rebirth btw.

You can then use that to gank Jahan.

Very much enjoying scorched earth tactics on Act 2.

Holy hell, Jahan gives 150k XP.

Against Jahan, I got my air resist to 100% and spaced everyone apart.

If he can't kill you with chain lightning, he will use something like Oil to a laser ray. If spaced well and have a squishy with low fire resist, he will just teleport behind that one squishy char and use the laser, only killing 1 target so there's no need to also drink fire potion.

Arrow storm to a knock down pretty much destroys him after that (please nerf).

I felt bad though because he was a really nice guy so I reloaded and just avoided turning in the quest since I accepted the demon because the guy was a lizard.

All of you people who think it is too hard HAVE AN OPTION currently. You can go play Classic. For those of us who love a hard challenge, WE HAVE NO OTHER OPTIONS. If you guys get them to nerf tactician, we're screwed!

IF TACTICIAN IS TOO HARD FOR YOU, PLAY CLASSIC MODE!

And another one who is missing the point, go play somewhere else, git gud kid.

I did classic playthrough and now go tactician and after having classic playthrough experience, it's really not a big deal. I finished Joy pretty easily with a band of 4 - summoner, tank, enchanter, ranger.

Of course if you charge into shit with all party stacked you get obliterated 80% of the time, but if you take decent positions before a fight, preferrably with height advantage and use tank as a bait for them to toss all their nukes at, while ranger and incarnate murder their softies - it's becoming just fine.

Like Kniles fight, was actually easier than in classic for me this time because unlike first time where I was like "lulz wut do I do?" facetanking him for Rhalic knows what reason, I took ramps with my casters/ranger for insane range and damage boost and sent tank and incarnate to CC and delay him, so I basically killed him before he even had a chance to act, no idea what was that joke in picture before, it's totally unnecessary.

Same with the void dude in the middle of the marsh, it totally murdered my ass in classic... in Tactician I simply took high ground across the wooden bridge, spilled some oil on you have there and my ranger and summoner just nuked all the melee guys trying to pass that bridge slowed from oil and with those out of the way it becomes a whole lot easier.


Now considering that in Classic in Arx I reached a level of party power where I was just about unkillable I have no doubt that Tactician will be manageable and reasonably challenging as it should be.


I do think that if I would not do classic before, I'd get my ass handed to me, but I pretty much avoid all the mistakes and have knowledge of how things work from a get go and it's pretty big there.

Kind of sad DOS2 have the same problems as DOS1, the 2nd half of the game becomes ridiculous easy as you acquired OP skills and gears.

I agree. Please do not nerf tactician.

The amount of freedom in DOS2 comes at a price, which is that you can use your environment to "exploit" the game. I absolutely do not think that approaching the game like it is shown in those screenshots is at all necessary to play tactician successfully.

If you don't like Tactician mode, go play classic. Get a mod that increases classic difficulty and you're good to go.

As long as Lone Wolf exists, beating tactician\honor is a joke

The only problem with Tactician right now is that it is far too easy thanks to the incredibly poorly thought out armor system that trivializes all combat.

To suggest that any problem exists that would require Tactician to be toned down is laughable.

Pisses me off that I have to intentionally gimp my characters to find a challenge while playing on Tactician.

Step 1: Rain of arrows
Step 2: Win & collect loot & XP

Seriously though - Just a side thought - the OP admitted to using "exploits" (tactics) and is actively telling the devs not to listen to people who use the very same "exploits" he is complaining that he has to use to win.

TLDR:
Don't listen to OP because he exploits.

i think using tricks is more fun than just stacking up damage. key act 1 encounters seem to be specifically designed by the devs for tricks, and judging by the amount of systems they implemented to support it, it's clearly what they wanted. i'd like more fights that are nigh unwinnable unless you use the environment, like lure someone into a trap etc.

What nonsense did I just read?
You call game perks and talents - exploits?
How can you think of this before?
In the game, theft and trade are just created for this.
You can also choose persuasion or secrecy, and avoid many battles.

If you basically do not want to use the game features - it's just your decision. You can generally pass the game on the first level, without learning skills and talents.

But this is not a normal game. A normal game is just the use of everything that you can.

And, for the moment, this game is very easy on tactics.

The game is not fine, it should be harder. My hope is to see a difficulty level between tactician and honour mode that is more challenging.



Thievery is not exploiting the game. This is a role-playing game. Think of it as being on the show, "Survivor" and add in sourcery. Your fighting to survive and to become the next divine. It's a bit of everyone against everyone. You choose how you respond to that environment.

Your basically choosing your own fantasy here. Act in accordance to your chosen fantasy. What would you do to go from a collared prisoner with a stained shirt to being the next divine?

EX: One role-playing scenario could be playing the "good guys". No stealing, no random killings, helping everyone you can. A second, separate role-playing scenario could be playing a sneaky assassin who robs everyone blind and murders anyone who is a b*tch to them.

With a party of 4, you could even do several combos of personalities. Why would you want to limit the role-playing experience by taking options out of the game?



There is no normal in DOS2. There is one objective, you becoming the next divine. The journey is up to you, you decide how your journey will play out.



Larian developed this game as a journey that you choose to build. They give you the environment, the dialogue, the quests, they even let you mod the game and play game master mode. If your not enjoying this game, then it's not because of the game they designed, it's because of how your choosing to play it.

huh? whats wrong with killing peasants?
when I leave the area and have no intention to return I kill everyone not important to me. including shops and bystanders. even if they give me nothing.
I even killed every origin except those in my party in Act1, to remove the temptation of hiring them.

Isn't that slightly, y'know... gratuitous? I'm the sort who tends to get upset if I can't keep people alive, even if they're just some random nobody who was rude to me.

Okay, admittedly except for the male bosmer in Oblivion, but I still didn't go out of my way to pwn them.

People of driftwood really deserve to die for the ridiculous of dissing they give to the glorious lizard master race.

I have a hard time understanding why this thread was even created in the first place. It's a singleplayer or coop experience. If some players want to exploit the game, what does it matter to you anyway? They don't take the edge over you like if it was in an MMO or something. So why bother so much?

The rules are made by Larian and it's up to every player to decide which ones they want to exploit or not. They paid to play a game the way they want. There is no issue here whatsoever.

Divinity games are designed around creating what's called "emergent gameplay." Larian has always designed sandboxy RPGs; that's their bread-and-butter. If you don't like that other players are using creative solutions that you restrict yourself from using, that's your fault. Learn to take pride in your own accomplishments rather than assessing your performance relative to others.

Not really... See my post and Baardvark's post in this thread. If anything, Lucky Charm has been buffed.