Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Questions about Features from the Kickstarter.

I've got a bunch of questions, I know Larian's really busy, but I can't think of a better way to do this, so I've got a bunch of hopefully thoughtful questions that haven't been asked before:


1) Companions can and will have different affinity/affection levels for the two main characters. In multiplayer, does each player control one Companion? What if Player Roderick controls Companion A, but A has a better relationship with Player Scarlett?


2)One disadvantage of schedules is if you’re waiting for a specific NPC. Many single-player RPG’s handle this by letting you sleep and/or wait until a specified hour. What about co-op play? How would a rest function work if two players disagreed on wanting to rest OR couldn’t, because one was in combat?

Possible Idea: Maybe if (in a non-combat situation in multiplayer), when someone wants to rest, the other player can agree or disagree. If they disagree, there’s a Charm/Intimidate/Reason argument that has no effect on the relationship between the pair, it only determines who wins the rest argument. Not a great solution, especially since a sleep-wanting loser might just keep spamming the rest option until they win a roll.


3) Will there be an extra feature to the journal that will let you look up an approximate schedule for a specific NPC?


4) Your update mentioning why you might want to hire Henchmen in addition to Companions is that you might run into situations where you’d like to swap out an unsuitable guy for someone else. Will you actually be able to swap party members in combat?


5) Can we find the Message in a Bottle and use the Kickstarter potion once each time we start a new game, or only once?


6) We’ll be able to safely store things in containers for later retrieval, right? I suspect it’ll take a while before the Stronghold is available. I'll just assume yes, because Divine Divinity worked that way.


7) One level makes a big difference in how well you can handle an enemy, but currently, level is obscured unless you have enough Int. So without enough Int, how can you know that it’s time to run from a fight?

Possible Idea: Have the monster’s name colour-coded when you mouse over them.

Green: Target is 4+ levels below you.
Blue: Target is 2 or 3 levels below you
White: Target is your level, +/- 1
Orange/Yellow: Target is 2 or 3 levels above you.
Red: Target is 4+ levels above you.

There could be an option in the menu to use symbols instead for colour-blind people. (Like a dash, arrowhead, full arrow for "about equal", "slightly higher/lower", "much higher/lower")


8) There were 5.5 extra Bellegar encounters at the ending of the Kickstarter campaign, but the next few days bumped that up to over 6,000. Will there be a 6th encounter?

I can think of an easier way to solve this problem. Larian can build the NPC schedules in a way that the NPC will always be somewhere at any given time.

For example: NPC Paul is a vendor that works on the market from 6AM to 11AM, when he goes to his house (or to a tavern) to lunch. At 13PM he goes back to his store in the market and stay there until 6PM, when he closes his shop and go to the tavern. There he stays until 22PM and then he goes to his house to sleep until 6AM from the next day and so, start again his schedule.

Doing this way, you wont need to "wait" for a specific time to meet a NPC, you just need to know where he is at the given time.

I think this could be really fun, more than just "sleep" to pass time. Plus, this "system" opens room for a multitude of different NPC reactions, depending on the situation that you encounter him.

There are many interesting questions, and I don't have any answers to them, but...

2) Basically what Jhonrock said

5) I'm so fed up with those "handholding" colour systems, as seen in DAO and Amalur, I don't want any info about that at all. I just want to base my decisions on what I see and hear on the screen before me, as well as on a hunch from me being a fairly seasoned CRPGer, It's so meta-gamey and superfluous. That's just my personal opinion, though. I sense a toggle suggestion coming...

Knowing where an NPC is at any given time is good. That's not my issue. My issue is "what if I want to trade/hand in a quest, but I made it to town a minute too late and and he's locked his house and gone to bed"? That's when a rest function would be useful.

The problem is how would that work in co-op?



As long as there's a really clear indication from the start if I should run from combat or not, that's fine. If the only way to know if I've strayed too far is that one of my party has just been one-shot-killed by an enemy, that's a problem.

Colour-coding their names is one way to deal with that. Another way is to always have the enemy level visible regardless of your Intelligence score. Maybe a toggle option could work for such indicators.

Yep, a rest function would be very handy. And wouldn't it be cool if resting was individual pc based? Then you get to awaken your buddy if needs be, or you can go on a break-n-enter raid at night, while Mr Sleepyhead drowses through the dark hours.

I'm fine with getting one-shot, but I get your point. There's one thing getting one-shot by a boulder thrown by a stone giant, quite another to succumb from one swift kobold stab in broad daylight. Preferably, we would get a toggle for showing or not showing level too. I mean, in PnP, this convo would be absurd:
GM: "You see three shady characters up ahead."
Player: "Interesting. What level are they?"
GM: "Level 8-10."
Player: "Well, that's good news."
PC, suddenly in character again: "Charge, my brave fellows!"

If monsters don't level you will *know* how tough they are the second time you encounter one. At least that's how I see it

In multiplayer, does each player control one Companion?

Most likely. That's the way it works with henchmen.


Will you actually be able to swap party members in combat?

Unlikely. I think that example was more if you were about to enter the Skeleton Cave of Doom and had an archer henchmen, you might want to swap out with one who was better with crushing damage, or if you started exploring an area with a lot of fire elementals, you could swap a fire specialized mage for water.


5) Can we find the Message in a Bottle and use the Kickstarter potion once each time we start a new game, or only once?

Wouldn't it have to be available each new game? Otherwise it would suck if someone got 10 minutes into the game and decided to start over with different character builds.


without enough Int, how can you know that it’s time to run from a fight?

If you can see the level of opponents at or below your level with the base intelligence, then you know any opponent who's level you can not see is a higher level.

You do realize that it's not workable in co-operative play for one player run around while the other one is sleeping.



Yes, that's most likely the case, but it leads to an interesting wrinkle as I mentioned, if your chosen companion doesn't get along with you, but with the other character.




That makes sense.




That also makes sense, I guess I was a bit confused by some of the language which (if I remember right) said that after drinking the KS potion, each time the game starts up after that there's an special effect.




Oh, is THAT how it works? If your base Intelligence is only good to see enemies about your current level, then that's fine. I thought it worked so that your base Intelligence was only good to see enemies up to about level 2, and you'd need more points in Int to see level 3+ enemies.

I would vote for a system in which you can turn off "level" indications of enemies.....personally, I would rather learn it the "hard way". Or how about a certain character trait which let you assess the strength of an enemy but only by a small "text message" an not contantly on screen with a different colours or numbers? Just a message like "This orc chief looks pretty powerful. It might be a tough decision to fight him." if you click on an enemy and use the skill (which could also have limited uses a day/until resting).

I'm worried about that too, i like to try different builds before picking one and i don't want to loose the potion before having the change to use it

Lol, of course the message will be available for every campaign game you start....

That was speculation (hence the 'if'), but a reasonable way to implement monster identification. It would be silly to have to boost your intelligence in order to see anything about creatures you've fought a few dozen times already. If not directly based on level, then the number of encounters could be used to determine if you see the opponent's level, with a bonus from intelligence.

Raze, I really like your idea it makes great use of Int. It's a bit like Spellcraft in D&D IIRC. The higher Spellcraft your character had, the better it got recognizing which spells were used by an opponent. Still, like LordCrash said, I'd prefer to have the option of turning off outright level indications and learn the hard way.

What does this potion actually do? (Never searched for it.)

The effect has not been described, other than that it "...will do several things to the game showing you how much we appreciate your support. (Potion will not affect the game balance.)"

that could just aswell mean that Roderick suddenly wears a Borat Suit. o_O

Crap, the secret's out!

Yeah, but it's a pink Borat suit, not a green one....

Aaah! I swear these weresheep have a spy in the office!

I think we're forgetting about the names of the creatures. If you're level 1 and run into an "Elite Chief Lord of Death", you know it's a bad (awesome) idea to try and fight it.

I really don't need the game to tell me an opponent is stronger than me when i've fought him (and obviously died) a few dozen times already.