Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Too much non-combat when you reach Cyseal?

As I've said before maybe night time battle against shady people or if you sent the fish thief to jail his friends break him out and you can stumble across them at a remote area or less populated area of Cyseal.

As the only thrice Champion of the Petanque Annual Championship the Duke is at a lose.
Some goblins have stolen the Dukes Petanque set and scattered the balls in the towns sewers.
It's imperative to collect them as the annual Petanque championship is being held over the weekend.
Without his prized balls glistening in the sun the towns folk gossip about the repercussions.

Viola fits in with Original Sin humour.

Indeed ^^ But it might be hard not to piss everyone around, as the areas of damages of spells are not visibles when you cast. But you're right, it is something that can be fun.

I can't think of anyplace earlier to add something in town, but if you want an in-town fight, maybe a fight by a couple black cultists (disguised as Legionairres until combat starts) show up after (main quest spoilers)

I don't like random battles. Maybe some minidungons/quest ("please clean my cellar!") to learn how to figth, but if the area is clean, they should stay clean.

I like the town quests! You can collect exp for the hard figths in the area around the city.

The only thing I wonder about: You can't look in anyonce book, but you can burn down a door with fireballs near the legionares.

And I dont like this Arhu-Cat! How to sneak, if a cat is watching you?

I'am looking forward to the final Version with german translation. I think my english ist to bad to understand all this little larian goodies hidden in town. making soup with hammer and tomato is much better then killing myself with my own fireballs in battle.

I actually like quiet towns, where you can just do your quests without constantly being encoutered by enemies. If you want a fight you can just go out of town. It's just that the important dialogs should have sound in my opinion, I don't know if this is doable.

how about duelling some soldiers in the camp? no real mortal combat, of course.
also, when the day/night cycle has been implemented, how about some nightly quests that include some "bad guys" (burglars e.g.) which can be fought, if chosen so.

I don't think anyone is asking for "random" battles (certainly no more "random" than the completely not-random encounters outside the city gates. We're only asking for a battle or two to take place within the city, during the course of the investigation - to both improve pacing and amp up the difficulty of said investigation.

Let's be honest, the heroes manage to make some pretty significant headway on the murder mystery with zero effort beyond repeatedly walking between locations. Adding a little challenge (e.g. a cultist ambush) in there wouldn't hurt.

We've had a few updates so far which have required us to restart our campaigns. I have to honestly wonder how many of the longer-term players are still reading the investigation dialogue (which, don't get me wrong, is a wonderful read), or are they just clicking through it as quickly as possible to get to the adventuring part outside the city walls. I suspect most are doing the latter, particularly if this is your third or so trip through the game. A "stop and smell the roses" point placed about halfway through the in-city investigation can help with that.

The story problem is that the cultists should be perfectly happy to let Esmeralda take the fall - at least, right up until Esmeralda points you at someone who is actually in the cult. But by then, the investigation is mostly done and it's not long until there are mandatory battles.

To be honest, and I appreciate I might be in the minority, I've actually enjoyed running around Cyseal more than fighting random creatures outside.

It's a fantastic proving ground for players who want to try a different approach than the traditional "ugg bash thump" routine that we usually get in RPG's, and considering the time you actually spend there, there's blessedly few "obvious" fed ex quests. Sure there's still a bit of to and fro, but you don't feel like its an arbitrary "run here, get 'x' take it to npc 'y'"

I was actually pretty gutted to find that I'd exhausted all the options in town and had to head outside and hit things in order to continue.

Sneaking about, finding clever ways to distract people whilst I liberate them of their goodies, and just chatting and exploring have been great fun. I didn't set out to play the thief but I'm pleased to say I've unlocked pretty much every locked door I could find without resorting to combat, and the only doors I'm still working on are either protected by magic locks or very difficult to distract guards.

I completely agree. I'm sure that Larian will be adjusting the balance, but I also found that it hit a long boring patch too early. There's only so much repetitive chat and barrel opening that you can do before it starts to pall. Personally, I don't mind whether it's fights or interesting plot advancement, but it's good if there's something a bit meatier to keep the mood going. Others will of course disagree.

General Aureus(sp?) literally gives you 3 quests to go help out his men within 5 minutes of getting into the town.

There's no need to pour random and meaningless engagements into the murder quest when there's a whole world filled with enemies that you've been invited to take on.

The problem with that particular piece of advice was detailed back on page 1, I believe.

There is an abandoned house and several rooms i couldn't enter, but i would either bash in the door or use phoenix dive. I found a 165 dmg axe, so I can bash in doors in several seconds. The problem to me is that the quest log sometimes is like: 'we met the entertainer'. WTF am I supposed to do lol? Or find the staff, maybe a Condor at the harbor knows more and then he's like 'I don't know'. But yeah, i guess it's alpha, I'll check the which quests are solvable topic, maybe I'm just dumb.

The quest text is quite weird. Some of the unsolved quests don't actually feel like quests. It's just something that happens that has no apparent follow up, but it's still shown in the quest log? Okay.

This is one of the main core ideas of DOS for the quest systems. Originally, as far as i remember, there weren't planned actual "classic" quests, just journal entries. I assume due to Kickstater the idea shifted towards a bit more classic approach since apparently people want to see it again instead of trying something new. But game still follows the same concept - no apparent quests. It was mentioned few times in interview and KS updates.

I'd say it would definitely be worthwhile to separate what are journal entries and what are obviously quests.

If nothing else, then to make it clearer for new players. Nothing like being frustrated over unclear instructions to ruin the flow of a game for me.

If you need an instructions regarding HOW you will the play rather than game mechanics - is it even worth to play the game? What kind of shallow experience will it be.

I'm sorry, what do you mean?

You have quests such as

"Aureus informed you of some legionnaires he sent to the church, but could not tell you anymore".

That's pretty obvious, without telling you how to play. Go find the church, find the legionnaires, find out what they learnt.

Then you have nonsense like

"Bertia claims she lost a sheep".

Ok. So? Why is that a quest? Hell, I found a sheep, that was lost and mauled. I went to talk to her (even had the sheep carcasse with me) and there was no prompt for it? Why is that in my quest menu?

It's clearly a journal entry. Not a quest.

Similar to

"What's-her-name told you her brother Tom went to join the Fantastic Five".

Cool story. Why is it a quest? It's just a journal note. (I spoke to the recruiter dude about Tom, and he told me where he went. Why didn't my quest update? Why didn't I get a dialogue option with what's-her-name telling her where her bro is?). It's not a quest. It's just a note.

As opposed to both the Jake's Killer quest, and the "Did Esmerelda do it?" quest. Both of which update as you find information, and give you an idea of what to do.

As for "being told how to play". Well yeah, it kind of is needed, given how restricting the gameplay is. (Not a complaint about the game, just a reality). If it were up to me, I'd have gotten the information out of Esmerelda on my own grounds, a lot quicker, but I don't have that option.

I'd have asked Bertia more about her sheep, I'd have grilled the recriuter about Tom, and informed what's-her-name. That the game doesn't let you do such simple things means it does need to do a little bit of pointing, to make up for how little you can interact with the world.

And I still feel that things that are just journal updates should stay in a journal, until you uncover enough information for them to be a quest.

You can actually track down the quest that Tom was sent on... plus you can also do more regarding Bertia and the sheep. So yeah... If you'd paid attention and didn't need your hand held so much then you might have less to complain about... Just my two cents.