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Rather than hijack and variously sidetrack another topic and to prevent a whole bunch of quietly sleeping threads coming back to life, I figured I'd start a new one to contain the likelihood that I may have a whole bunch of questions and pontification.

My first random bit of pontification is about performance: I noticed that BD runs very much slower than DD does, and once the fps drops under about 30 the movement speed starts to noticeably be in slow-motion which is unpleasant, as is the mouse-lag. I did read about it a bit elsewhere which suggested reducing the Windows memory usage to 2GB (I use Windows 7 64-bit, for the record). I've done this and yay it works, but is there a less inconvenient way of going about it? XP compatibility mode did nothing useful and I've heard that CPU affinity doesn't help either. The mouse-lag is mostly but not entirely fixed, and it would be nice if it could go away altogether. I'm not a fast, competitive gamer but I do get motion sickness easily and a laggy mouse is the sort of thing that may trigger it.

Another compatibility issue seems to regard aspect ratio: if I run it in my monitor's native 16:10 mode, zoom no longer works and some of the buttons in the menus are misplaced, or rather the button is misaligned with the clickable area on the screen. Running in 4:3 aspect fixes these problems (and my monitor will respect the correct aspect). I'd prefer to use 16:10, but am I correct in assuming that it doesn't quite work properly and there's no fix other than to use 4:3?

The other thing is that I've learnt a bit more about character builds after playing DD and though I'm still probably little better than a novice at understanding the intricacies, I can see that my character is less than ideal. Having said that, she seems to mostly be doing okay. I can't really face doing the prison level again so I'm not keen to start over, but if I continue using a non-ideal build am I saving up problems for myself like I did in DD or should I be okay?

And are there any interesting mods or utilities for it? The item editor in DD was a handy thing to have, for instance, not least for minor cheats like adding charm slots to nice bits of equipment.


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Did you try without the memory restriction after getting out of the first level? A couple people only had performance issues there, with the steam vent effect. Others have had this caused by anti-virus of firewall programs.
This is a little random, but maybe try the 4GB Patch to increase the amount of virtual memory that the game (or any 32 bit application) can access in 64 bit versions of Windows.

Try 1280x800. Zooming is only available in the resolutions where the width matches resolutions that the original disk version supported (ie in 1280x960 the text was a little too small on my monitor at the time, so I played at 1152x864, with a config file edit, and that disabled zooming; 1280x800 on my newer monitor in the download version of BD can zoom, though).

You should be able to adjust your build as you play; skills can be unlearned, and there aren't any stats that are useless to have a few points in.
The topic Killing Fergus has some early build advice, though you are past that point.
Alternately, check out the math appendix of the Beyond Divinity Strategy Guide.


There is no save editor for BD, just the manual Hex editing - gold, experience, stat/skill points
or Actiontrip.com's Beyond Divinity Cheats to start a new game with stronger characters.

For you cheaters out there (The Duplication Trick)

armory trick in act 1

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As ever, thanks for the comprehensive response!

I did a little experimentation but couldn't avoid the slow-downs other than by restricting the amount of memory Windows uses at boot: and it's a workable solution as long as I remember to change it back! Assuming it doesn't automatically reset. I haven't noticed a precise pattern to the slow-downs but I am still getting then in Act II.

It seems that the good news is that it's more difficult to make a mess of my build than it was in DD! It's actually interesting to see how many new ideas and changes were implemented in BD that we still see in D:OS. One of the main reasons I was wondering is because I'd contemplated retraining to use a sword, which turned out to be a huge liability for my mage in DD, though as it's turned out, the bows are so much more effective in BD that I can probably continue to be a ranger-type character quite happily.

I'll work my way through the guides as I play, as I did in DD: thanks for digging out the links for me. smile

Oh, and while reading a bit about the Divinity timeline (and is it correct that Aleroth grew from the healers' village we saw in DD to the city in ED in just 82 years? That said, IRL 82 years is plenty for the same thing to happen IRL and for a city to feel like it's always been there so I don't know why I'm surprised) I think I may have inadvertently managed a massive spoiler for myself:

is it true that my handy death-knight is Damian?


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Yes, some people didn't like the 6 stats, but it allows more flexibility, and a lot more viable builds. Even just for warriors, DD builds tended to all end up 2 parts strength, 2 parts agility and 1 part constitution. In BD people have used high strength / low agility characters, etc, that were very different than what I found worked best with my playstyle.

If you lead with the other character, an archer set to aggressive (right click on portrait) is handy for attacking opponents as soon as they come into range (sometimes acting as an early warning system if you stop to do something in your inventory, etc).

I can neither confirm nor deny rumours about the Death Knight.
But if you really want to know...
yes.

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I never thought about that! Which I should've done because I'd often switch between my two main characters in D:OS depending on the situation (in fact I'd often do the same in Dragon Age, now that I think about it: it was fun playing through bits of Origins as Dog). It also makes sense to play as Mr Deathknight as he has a significantly better carrying capacity to lug around all the stuff I want to sell.

I also realised while reading through the timeline that I totally forgot about Dragon Commander again. Shame I can't play as a female character in that one, though they all seem to end up being referred to as their male counterpart by the game's lore anyway...


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You can summon a doll, load it up with stuff to sell later and unsummon it (resummon before trading). The act 1 doll can equip a crossbow (the only one that can use a ranged weapon), so it doesn't even matter if it becomes over encumbered, and can not move. It is handy to have one doll that can move though, to set off proximity based traps (dolls can not open trapped containers, or use stairs, etc).

The DK doesn't need strength for equipment requirements (armour class based on level), so can make a good bow archer (focus more on agility and speed). I played a DK warrior, though, with a hero crossbow user for most of the time after the first act (switched back to a bow quite late in the game), and didn't have any trouble different tactics or equipment upgrades couldn't help with.
Actually, I started in the disk version when special arrows weren't as easy to come by, so ended up hoarding them. Playing again, I would switch to using power arrows much sooner (splitting arrows are quite useful in certain situations, especially if you can set up a crossfire with the act 1 doll against groups of opponents in confined quarters, but I didn't bother swapping other arrows to match opponents' weaknesses).

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I'd never even thought about either of those things! I very rarely use summons and didn't even do so very much in DKS (as with my dog in DA:O, I called him Dave; both were called Dave and both had a rather obscene habit of urinating on random stuff. Hmm.) but it sounds like something I really need to explore further.

And I'm not sure why I hadn't considered using the DK as a ranged fighter: I guess I just have this ingrained expectation that a DK's approach to any situation is "hit it until it dies", which suggests an enthusiasm for mêlée and nothing else. Which is obviously wrong.

Well I'm still aimlessly wandering around the imp world and not seeing the pointer for wherever the alchemist is hiding, so it's about time I looked at one of those guides you linked to...


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The dolls in BD don't have any idle animations, that I recall, and don't wander around outside of your control.
Another handy thing summoning dolls are useful for is eliminating roofs when exploring a settlement in act 3. If a character is inside a building roofs are not displayed, so after you've checked out the architecture, leaving a summoning doll standing inside somewhere makes it easier to explore with your main characters.

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Still haven't used the dolls yet, but I'll bear them in mind when I get to Act III, which I think I'm about to: hopefully I'll remember what I'm supposed to be doing!

I've finally finished the questline of the imp village, although I did need the occasional nudge in the right direction as a few bits were non-obvious, at least to me. I'm hoping that the next bit is a bit less barren and lava-ridden: listening to that imp complaining about Rivellon and its "rivers of water", indeed.

Also, voice-spotting: possibly soundalikes, but I thought that the necromancer sounds remarkably like GoT's Ramsey Bolton, and the woman in the pub (er... Lady Moreena) sounds a lot like The Elder Scrolls' "Dunmer Woman" (or Linda Kenyon, to give her an actual name). Dunno if it is her, though.


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