Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Latest News Patchnotes v3.0.31.292 - Meet our new AI system

Dear forum members, are you ready?

I said. ARE. YOU. READY?!

Because today we unleash AI 2.0 to the world and you had better be prepared because it's been kicking our behinds ever since we've been testing it out.

So welcome to a brave new world. If you find you are also getting your hiney kicked, don't panic. We think that's perfectly normal. But if you think this is a walk in the park, we simply have to talk to you and we'd like to know how you are still beating our system!

Seriously though: we are aware this will feel more like our hard core Tactician mode. And we need all of your feedback to be able to tweak the numbers correctly. What are you experiencing that makes it too hard? Monsters ganging up on you? Monsters controlling your party? Reactivity? Movement? Unfair advantages? Monsters have too many skills? You're not wearing any armour?

Let us know. Of course, there's more than just Super AI. Here's a (huge) changelist.

Improvements

• AI 2.0. Integrated new AI system for all enemies
• AI has received a big overhaul. In general it should be a lot smarter and have more awareness of its surroundings. This means that the AI might have gotten a bit more difficult to deal with, so don't underestimate your enemies and especially watch your positioning! Your enemies will make better use of barrels, surfaces, and combat control skills, and they’ll have better knowledge of the consequences of casting particular skills. Planning ahead is now more important than ever.
• Loot system overhaul
• Find less gear in random loot, but more gold and valuables. The idea is to get economy going and make trade more important. Uniquely hand-placed items and boss loot should feel more rewarding and rare. You HAVE to go shopping!
• Added three new arenas
• Forbidden Valley
• Enemy at the Gates
• Ravenshaw Mansion
• Added AI 2.0 to arenas
• You can now choose which starting class recruited companions should be, making it easier to compose the best-balanced party
• Removed durability from armor
• Weapon durability now only decreases when attacking objects
• Reduced AoE radius of most area spells to promote tactical gameplay
• Improved talk animation for female humans
• New melee attack animations for all races
• Improved female lizard skill animations
• Improved several item textures throughout the level
• Improved animations for several skills
• Improved list of usable items that should automatically get added to the bottom bar
• Improved Soul Jars: they now check if the player still has their Source collar before letting them absorb the soul in the jars
• Improved Burn My Eyes tooltip to include that it removes Terrified, Sleeping, Enraged
• Improved fog effects
• Updated several UI sound effects

Balancing and design changes

• Invisibility is now removed by Frozen, Petrified, Stunned, Knocked Down, Taunted, Sleeping, Wet
• Invisibility is no longer removed by all surfaces, except if they damage you
• Fortified status should now remove burning
• Poison damage no longer automatically contaminates puddles
• Wielding single wand now applies bonus from single handed ability
• Players receive their second Civil Point at level two. After that, they receive a point every four levels
• Weapon skills now show ‘chance to hit’ when hovering over a target
• All chests can now be moved and picked up, except special arena chests
• All containers that should be pick-up-able, now are (improved weight stats)
• Ground Smash now uses damage of equipped weapon
• Increased duration of Burning, Poisoned and Bleeding for most skills because these statuses no longer deal one tick of damage when applied for the first time
• Description of ‘Rested’ status now mentions that it protects from certain harmful statuses
• Added a new defensive ability, Perseverance, that allows characters to regain part of their armor after being controlled by a status
• Surfaces and clouds no longer disappear automatically. Exceptions: fire (2 turns), smoke (1 turn)
• You can no longer spot characters in sneak mode while preparing a skill
• Sneaking cones now show on all characters that can spot you, rather than just the ones that see you
• Incapacitated NPCs can no longer spot the player while the player is in sneak mode. Similarly, incapacitated players can no longer spot sneaking enemies.
• Damage statuses no longer tick damage on applying
• Set equip cost for all slots to 1 AP
• Trompdoy is now immune to poison and bleeding
• Purging Wands and Braccus Helm now give Source Disruption skill

Additions

• Added and updated visual effects:
• Elemental weapon impacts
• Several grenades and arrows
• Several skills throughout campaign and in Arena Mode
• Added and improved several sounds for skills and usable items
• Added weapon swoosh effects that scale with the level of your weapon abilities (Example: Single-handed weapons will have a bigger swoosh at single-handed level five)
• Added map marker from Delorus, after you choose to heal him
• Added new effect for Party Reflection Dialogs and stopped these dialogs from appearing during combat
• Added new type of pitchfork to weapon treasure
• Added new simple tools weapon types to weapon treasure (mallet, pickaxe, scythe, pitchfork)
• Added several journal updates for quests in Fort Joy area
• Added new necklace types to treasure generation
• Added being able to sell junk in the trade window
  
  

Bug Fixes

• Fixed random seed not being reset when loading a savegame. Happy save scumming!
• Fixed several signs that were no longer legible
• Fixed errors in status animations for male humans
• Fixed Bahara position at seeker camp. Some players were getting "can't reach" message when trying to interact with her
• Fixed incorrect reflection boost getting added to equipment
• Fixed issue with XP reward in multiplayer for "The Imprisoned Elf" quest
• Fixed blind status causing player to miss even after the status wore off
• Fixed non-weapon items not showing critical hit chance
• Fixed possible crash when unloading a level
• Fixed crash when a client player would press highlight characters button without having assigned characters
• Fixed issue with initial dialogs of Gawin and Leste
• Fixed the equipment of one of Trompdoy's illusions
• Fixed dialogs for certain characters after they had already met (example: Red Prince and Stingtail dialog)
• Fixed Gawin dying prematurely during one of his teleports
• Fixed Amyro becoming hostile if he is teleported out of his cell
• Fixed issue with resurrected characters causing arena match to end prematurely
• Fixed issue with Void Worm not spawning in the final fight of Fort Joy
• Fixed crash when player was committing a crime and then loading a savegame right after
• Fixed Gratiana's dialog if Gareth is already dead when the Seekers gather before the final fight
• Fixed hotbar positions of the button hints after reassigning keyboard shortcuts
• Fixed Gratiana's dialog if you had the Wand and had delivered the Soul Jar to her already
• Fixed issue with Gareth's dialog before the final fight. In some cases, he would not leave behind companions for the player to help during the battle
• Fixed a crash when destroying specific chests containing cloth loot
• Fixed Historian joining combat involuntarily in Fort Joy Swamps area
• Fixed the boat to escape Fort Joy still being visually present for other players after one player had already used it
• Fixed items disappearing when you left them in certain containers and tried to recover them after leaving the area
• Fixed several items not having an icon
• Fixed items getting removed from hotbar when switching from dual wield to two-handed
• Fixed Comeback Kid talent so it correctly saves the player character with 1 hp left
• Fixed Telekinesis beam effect not disappearing
• Fixed burning pigs not reacting correctly when receiving Blessed status
• Fixed multiplayer issues with Saheila quest
• Fixed being able to talk to Zaleskar's mirror after killing him
• Fixed Charmed status description
• Fixed possible infinite fire surface
• Fixed Tarlene's dialogue after you save Gareth
• Fixed issue that Source collars would not show up after getting resurrected in Arena
• Fixed necromancers not attacking after you destroy Necromancer Rask's Soul Jar
• Fixed projectiles sometimes colliding with roofs
• Fixed several incorrect imprisonment scenarios
• Fixed several issues with necromancer maze
• Fixed issue with curse status getting stuck on character after receiving it via items like Braccus' ring
• Fixed issue with starting skills not updating in character creation screen
• Fixed being able to pickpocket all loot by pressing space bar when ‘take all’ button is disabled
• Fixed smoke clouds not blocking vision anymore after loading
• Fixed gold in containers not being included in trade window, while the containers are in the player's inventory
• Fixed being able to get a Talent without meeting its requirements in the character creation screen
• Fixed Attribute bonuses from equipment so they correctly count towards requirements for equipping items
• Fixed Leadership not working on allies in multiplayer
• Fixed surface damage reflect. This should not happen anymore.
• Fixed several issues with Buddy the dog
• Fixed several minor dialogue inconsistencies in and around Fort Joy
• Fixed Voidwoken Drillworm spawning in incorrect locations

Savegame compatibility

Again, these changes are so huge, this new version is unfortunately not compatible with old savegames. However, if would like to continue your old savegames, we have made the old builds available on different Steam branches: ea_version_1 for savegames made in version 2.0.165.341 and ea_version_2 for savegames made in version 3.0.5.530 and ea_version_3 for version 3.0.15.252.

To switch to a previous build, follow these simple steps:

1. In your Steam library, right click the game Divinity: Original Sin 2 and select Properties
2. In the Properties screen, click on the tab BETAS
3. In BETAS, click the arrow to open the dropdown
4. From the dropdown, select an old "ea_version_" branch and then click Close

More?

Read more about this update on Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/larianstudios/divinity-original-sin-2/posts/1776988

Watch our Kickstarter update video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htMbzflLD5Y

Enjoy!

"Removed durability from armor"
"Weapon durability now only decreases when attacking objects"

Oh my lawd... I can finally play the game again. Larian - thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Still need to see whether (after years of posting these same UI requests on the Larian forums since the D:OS 1 alpha, lol) any of the much-needed UI improvements in the below topic have yet been implemented. But again, scrapping the unbelievably tedious and pointless durability mechanic is hugely appreciated in the meantime. Keep up the good work!

http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=593933#Post593933

Nooooo. Warlord incompatible with The Pawn ? I'm sad... Though it was overpowered.

Nope, I've got plans for tonight and you didn't warn me... Please withdraw it immediately and release it again tomorrow morning when I am

What about the blood elixir bonus vanishing? Is that fixed or not yet?

EDIT: Well obviously I'm happy to get a new version to try, thanks.

I am overjoyed to see a new patch to play as I was getting burned out on the game, but with this I am excited to play again. I am concerned though that during standard difficulty it was quite difficult to defeat some enemies as they were straight up overpowered and with more intelligent AI it worries me if their overpowered abilities combined with updated AI will make them far too difficult for the average player to defeat, though obviously I'll have to play through and find out for myself. Looks like i'll also have plenty to do to update the wikia with new information. :p

Good update nonetheless.

Excellent, I'll try this out soon. I'm almost finished migrating my hard drives to a larger one and then mirroring them.



Sounds good, assuming that merchants have more things to sell so you have an actual selection, but I am told that will be the case.




I hope there's full attribute, ability, talent and skill customization, but even if not, this is at least an improvement.



Sounds very good, as I wasn't finding myself running out of durability using weapons and armor only for attacking very often anyway.

Does this mean "Indestructible" is removed from the pool of affixes on items? It should be removed even from weapons, because it's too situational.




Helpful, combined with the change for surfaces no longer applying damage on the first tick.
Reduced AoE radius of most area spells to promote tactical gameplay[/quote]




I was pushing for this on character creation, but this is also perfectly acceptable. I approve.

All-in-all, this looks very good.

@Stabbey It doesn't let you manually change their stats, but it gives you a list of all the classes in the game and you can pick them a new one and it'll adjust to that classes stats and give them new weapons/armor accordingly.

Looks great as always. Can't wait to see if the AI really is actually smart. :P A little concerned classic difficulty will be pretty brutal for regular people, even while explorer mode might be a little too easy for those people. Will probably be rectified with Tactician mode when classic mode can be toned down slightly and tactician mode made more difficult than existing classic mode. Though honestly probably should be 4 or even 5 difficulty modes (not including an iron man mode), just to make sure there's a difficulty for everyone.

Initial impressions:
-A bit confused about making surfaces except smoke and fire permanent. Does this mean they'll stick around even after combat? I feel like this is counterproductive to the whole surface insanity problem, particularly with electric fields. IMO, they should disappear faster than already. Glad poison doesn't contaminate water anymore though.

Perseverance sounds cool. Curious about the percentage of armor regained and what a control statuses counts as (hard cc like, knockdown, stun, charm, etc?)

Yay durability gone (mostly). Yay second civ point right away. Yay companion class choice. Yay weapon swooshes.

tl;dr
Crocs not as dumb and overpowered; Getting money is much more fair and balanced now; Environmental effects not as insane feeling; being able to choose companion classes at acquisition is a game changer.

Been playing for about an hour now and I can say that my concerns about the difficulty have gone down a bit as they aren't as brutal as I had initially thought they would be, however this is for me who is someone that has been playing this game and others like it for a long time so this may still end up more difficult for other players who are newer to this type of game.

My biggest concern was the Saltwater Crocodiles as they were, pre-patch, extremely powerful and would be newbie smashers and even vet smashers at times, however I defeated them with little stress unlike before, they still spam Fossil Strike a lot but I believe that the damage from them may have been nerfed meaning they aren't as bad of a threat as before and along with that I noticed the new AI quite clearly as before this patch they'd walk through fire like idiots, but now they made a clear decision to use their turns to get around it and come at my party. A note directly on the Saltwater Crocs though, they are still a little stupid when it comes to their teleportation ability as they will teleport away and walk back to the same position which basically wastes their entire turn making it easier for players to take them down.

The change so far on items and loot is astounding, best change they've ever made, at the point I am at in the game right now I would have maybe..200-300 gold without pickpocketing NPCs, I have about 1500 right now and am able to buy whatever I need when the time comes. This change has drastically increased my enjoyment of the game and the balance of things as I can now fairly equip my characters for upcoming battles without having to worry too much about the enemy have 200 armor and my tank have 10.

I've noticed some dialogue changes also, with Migo, specifically he's more cautious and kind now as before he'd threaten to tear your head off. Obviously not a big deal for any game mechanics, but I think it makes him seem more balanced between his corrupted madness and his human desire to see his daughter.

I've found some spelling error, item errors, what you'd expect and once I've gathered enough of them I'll probably make a post or add it here with images so they can be fixed at some point.

Interesting about the drasticness of the money change. I did feel like it could be slightly more generous, but not like 5x more gold. I suppose as long as there are enough big gold sinks later in the game (like, quests that require large gold investment, ways to pay a lot of money for permanent attribute increases, and the like), and great items stay very expensive it's not so bad to give people a bit more freedom earlier on to at least gear up on greens/rares and skills. Probably more fun that way for most people, and will help deal with the more difficult AI with better gear. Maybe tactician mode can impose a gold penalty as a balancing factor.

Ouch...Really, really not sure how I feel about making EVERY silent monk attack the player if they attack even one of them, they are realllllly strong..

The rouge tag is missing from the customization screen.

I can say right now, with 100% confidence, that the Kniles the Flenser fight is extremely overpowered and nearly, if not completely unbeatable.

Kniles himself will battering ram at least 2 of your party into knockdown and proceed to either full party stun with Electric Discharge or one shot any non-tank characters with low or no armor.

The Meat Golems will two shot anything, including your tank, by hitting disease on them and hitting them for nearly 35-50 damage.

And the worst offender of the fight, Kniles will trade places with a Silent Monk and that monk will probably become damaged right away if not at some point in that fight and that will aggro every monk in the dungeon, now even though there is only 3 in that area with Kniles it really doesn't matter at that point because you WILL lose. The monks are overpowered if you have to fight more than one at a time, Kniles is...I hate his tactics but I have to say it makes sense with the new AI and is "balanced" in a sense that he knows how to use his environment, but the monks need to be made to not go aggro if enemies damage them or/and they HAVE to not be able to all go aggro if one is damaged. The golems and kniles will be manageable only if the monks are changed or if a player overlevels and overgears, comes back and nukes Kniles, otherwise they won't have much hope fighting him as the primary escape plan. I had to take the boat out as challenging Kniles was just not an option.

So after I left the camp and came back in I fought a guard and his dog only to find that Griff of all people comes over and interrogates me about an assault..on the magister guards...who keep him locked up like an animal... and I fail a prompt with him forcing me to have to fight his whole camp.

Yeah this patch was amazing, but you guys introduced a lot of things that don't make any sense and throw a lot of things out of whack.

In my previous post you can see about the monks and kniles, but here fighting the magisters and than getting into a fight with Griff over killing the magisters just doesn't make any sense and I think limits a lot of that "dnd freedom" you guys talk about, because now I'm killing the people that are keeping him prisoner and he's acting like I've killed his mother.

My biggest issue right now is how Ifan just doesn't want to backstab his ennemies. He keeps going out of the backstab zone when he's inside. That's bad.

I managed to take down Kniles pretty easily tho. Party level 4 with two hander, enchanter, rogue and ranger. Bursted down the psycho and managed to keep him cc'ed the first two turns, enough to bring him down for good. Then the golems came to my party and decided it would be a good idea to enrage everyone without attacking. It wasn't. A.I. still needs some improvements on some points.

Quaozer's post reminds me, yeah AI for some reason seems to buff the players party. Magister Calin will cast restoration on my party and the Meat Golems cast Rage on my party. I'm sure there is others too.

Jeezuz kraist. I will try this this weekends probably. Skill crafting sound super duper cool, may be I should wait some more month? Nah, need to put my eyes on you devs, so that you don't spoil the game

Were your characters healed by the opponent's Restoration? The AI should only be casting it to do damage (on a zombie characters, or one with the decaying touch status).
Rage has some negative effects that can be used offensively (dodge and resistance penalties).

Nope he was healing me, no zombie talent on any characters.

Speaking of ; what's with the enemy being clairvoyant about what abilities my characters have? Like, why do the enemies KNOW that my character's got the zombie talent? He isn't visibly rotting, or anything like that, and the talent doesn't mention a smell or anything.

AI 2.0 is a thing. I have never ever seen such a great AI. This thing correctly combines pathing, visibility and various spell effects and forecast moves. Creative Assembly :Total War, didnt achieve it. They still struggle with pathing and use skills is pathetic. Until now DOS2 is and average game, this AI will create attention. Make it scale by Int attribute. Horde of zombies which outsmart me is true horror.

With new AI enemyes could be more solid. e.g. Saltwater crocodiles dont need mindblowing set of spells. They are still animals not epic mages on the beech party, right ?

Bug report - Scoundrel and Ranger skill books say : " Damage receives bonus from Intelligence" is it correct?

95% base acc and +5% plain bonus to any crossbows is good. However make bow vs crossbow difference more - >
1. tip Bow shot provokes Attack of opportunity. Crossbow can point blank shot.
2. tip Crossbow hit kicks like a mule e.g. critical hit is a serious punch - > easy way: Apply Slow for 1 turn(better way : move target one meter back. Yes, on crit hit it could shot down a character from a tower/platform. <- I love this.)
3. tip Bow has longer range.

"Reduced AoE radius of most area spells to promote tactical gameplay"
Good. Looking forward for next AOE nerf round. Here is a first candidate - AOE Spell Cripple of Warfare. Actually its rather One target skill.

All Durability changes - nice. I like it. Be aware of NOT create unbreakable weapons. Repair hammers could be removed at all. It reduce a junk drop. Also make repair only by NPC - money sink. Broken Epic weapon - expect epic bill for repair. Maby some NPC could be considered as Items - moving statues, Sparkmaster 2.0 for example. Also attacking a petrified person should damage a weapon. At least blade weapons. That brings nice mechanic/decisions.

Attack animation by the new contact system - generaly good feeling. Some attacs are too much close. Especialy dagger attacs - models interfere each other. Backstab looks quite sexual. Use Adrenalin skill right after the back stab you get a porn. lol.

I just find a delay button. That is masterfully hidden in plain sight. Do you collect a metrics how many people use it? Maby, you could add an achievement for using it Sorry for being salty, ... delay need to be visible, right next to End turn button and in the same style(format). So the user making decision move mouse a bit left or a bit right. These two buttons work together. Same for short keys, keybinding for these two must be some keys right next each other. Home and End for example.

Green exclamation marks above head are not very highlighted. Some other colors like shiny gold or deep purple ?

Dwarf wears two handed sword in his hand not on his back like usual crap cliche. Big swords didnt has any scabbard and actually were transported in a hand or on a shoulder. Unfortunately he handles with sword properly only in fight. When casts or walk it snaps on his back. Thats awful, please fix it ! Let big sword put on the shoulder and walk, or it disappear if you must, but do not snap it on his back. That is so stupid.

Lootable "Gold pile" object. That gives so much satisfaction. In previous game I clicked thousand times on a heap of gold in the cave of Troll king. I was soooo mad I cant take it. Could you make it so, when I loot "Gold pile" it disappear ? So a player feel that he find a pile of gold and took it. Or change to somthing cheap, like small pile of rubble.

/// UPDATED

the looting is odd atm for me.

- When i drag an item from a loot stash/body to other party members , sometimes it work , sometimes it doesnt.
- Same goes for take all , sometimes it work sometimes clicking it doesnt do anything. I have to close the loot window then re-loot again for it to work.

In my opinion , it would be quicker and better by making the loots go to the current selected character . So you dont need to drag the item to Bob or r.mouse > send to > Bob when you want Bob to keep it. Its quite tedious.

Other bug ( or might be intended by devs ? )
- Some elemental Surfaces ( Oil/Fire/Ice/...etc) stay permanently after the battle is long over.


yeah , i noticed it too , actually the line "receives bonus from stat X " is based on the type of weapon you are carrying xD.

Right, all those things should be added. Also like -50 relationship to all vendors. And -100 for those who sells food or drings. No one wants to visit a food shop with a rotting corpse right?

Anyway you can do inspect by right click on a model. So the AI does the same. Its correct.

Or maybe if you take the Zombie Talent, the game automatically quits and deletes all your save files.

(Zombie is already a very bad Talent and adding more nerfs is not a good idea.)

Decaying touch ?

Obviously not or else he would have said. Even if that was the plan the AI intended, you should apply that first instead of the healing.

So ; blessed and cursed fire are both permanent. I object to this by merit of fire being the thingt hat's supposed to be temporary - other cursed or blessed surfaces should go ahead and be permanent, but the flame derivates shouldn't, I think.

As for Zombie - yeah, it's already one of the WEAKEST freakin' things, it shouldn't be that the enemies just instantly know to attack you. Especially from an in character perspective.

Similarly I like the line from the Frost Dragon when he's in human form about how his eyes are crazy because of his Spirit Sight or w/e.

Has anyone tested the use of the new talent or whatever it is, where you recover armor after being CCed?

@TraceChaos

I've put a few points into it on my tank, I haven't noticed that great of a benefit from having it, but I think you'll need at least 4 points or so before it really becomes worth having. Problem is right now normal difficulty is too hard and shreds all armor too fast and explorer is too easy where you never really need to worry about recovering it from that skill.

I just finished my run with the new patch, I like the new changes but noticed that the AI still has the old Height bonus which could be annoying in some fights when you don't think they can reach you. A good fix for that would be making Mark Target reach further, it would then also be useful.

I Don't think the difficulty was that hard to manage but I guess I have a lot of experience in the DOS games. The only thing that I found was hard is the fact that money is more important at vendors since books seem to be really expensive, after getting a few skills, as usual, the game was pretty easy to finish.

Can't wait to be able to try Tactician or honor mode.

I did not try it , my strategy is not getting hit. I usually go very offensive. I hardly put any Con points in

It seems more and more that the patch only made the early-to-mid game much harder, but once you do manage to save up the coin to buy all of the core skills for your party composition, and builds, the game still becomes rather easy. Perhaps make skill books more available (can you still create skill books with scroll + book crafting?), or maybe make them as rewards for some quests or something.

I hope we get an update with just reduced cost on all books, that alone will make this game far more enjoyable. Books should be reduced by 50%.

Yes, apparently forever.

I left an Ice surface fighting Dallis at level 5. Went back at level 7, it was still there, Walt slipped over on it and the whole camp turned aggro.

Hahahaha. "Man slips on ice. Declares war on entire city."

That is, in fact, something that needs to be fixed - if surfaces are permanent, people need to NOT aggro every time they walk into surfaces. Like, only actually attacking people should aggro them, not just them walking facefirst into a puddle of fire, or worse yet HOLY FIRE that HEALS THEM, y'know?

What needs to happen is for the town NPCs to be able to realize if they are being attacked or if they were just clumsy and walked into a surface to cause damage. This is probably a hard problem for the larians to resolve. Though ice and fire surfaces shouldn't last more then a minute outside of combat.

The idea is dumb in so many ways. This is just an example - it is similar to using ricochet and hitting someone uninvolved except this is hours later.

Ice should melt, fires burn out, clouds blow away.

It also (during a fight) makes it too easy to box people into a corner and your enemies just sit there doing nothing.

You can dump oil patches all around your enemies before a fight and they will just stand in one spot. It is a great way to block melee fighters from advancing into your group. If they do a jump attack, just teleport their ass right back and they will just stand there skipping turns until they can do Phoenix Dive again.

Also, all the source puddles are gone from the last build. You can only get source points from the soul jars.

Well, that was challenging. A second playthough on classic with the new AI and I can confirm that monsters and allies are considerably smarter.

Now, for the second act...

After completing Act I again on the most recent patch, here are a few things that come to mind:

Glitches & Inconsistencies
--------------------------------

You can avoid spending AP to pick up items during combat if you right click the items on a corpse/container and send them to a party member's inventory instead.

Ricochet is broken and only bounces to targets within 2m (not sure, but it's a REALLY small radius) from each other. It's practically unusable in this state.

There are two copies of the same Fire Source Skill: Epidemic of Fire and Infectious Flame. Both of these skills have the exact same description and effects except for their name. If you learn one it also will say that you have already learned the other if you try to use the other skill book. I wasn't able to cast these spells for further testing as I never gained any source points to test them.

Whenever enemies landed critical hits on my party, they would do LESS damage. Enemy critical hits on my party members would consistently deal 0-6 damage.

Blindness seems inconsistent in what it does. Some characters could still cast spells and skills on anything in their immediate surroundings, while others could only self target their abilities. I'm not sure what causes this, but it might be related to the type of weapon they are carrying (melee vs ranged/wand/staff).

If the player is interrupted while talking to Gareth after rescuing him, it is impossible to talk to him again and get him to go back to the Seeker Encampment. In my case, the player I was co-oping with somehow upset him (may have been a hostile surface or affliction from the fight) and interrupted him while he was talking to me. This also led to a game lock up when I tried to talk to him repeatedly (cursor was stuck as an attack cursor, could not click or interact with the UI in any way).

Personal Observations
--------------------------------

AI is smarter but tends to tunnel vision on certain party members. In my playthrough, AI would always go out of their way to target Sebille, which resulted in them often wasting their AP to reach her instead of dealing more damage/CC to the rest of my party. This meant that for certain encounters, I could keep retreating Sebille to make enemies waste their AP chasing her while the rest of my party did all the work.

The final encounter is brutally hard or incredibly easy, depending on how you can handle the first two turns. Because of this, I feel like by the time the Void Worm shows up, you have either already killed Alexander and his entourage of magisters, or he's long since killed your entire party. If the worm shows up alone, it is very easy to deal with and feels a bit underwhelming.

Detonating poison clouds does not create smoke, as it did in DOS:EE. I'm not sure if this change is intentional or not, but the Poison Cloud + Explosive Arrow combo was what carried me through Tactician Mode in DOS:EE. Sad to see it gone, but it was pretty strong. That said, it seems very difficult to create smoke clouds now.

Chain Lightning's branching radius is HUGE. For reference, in DOS:EE it had a 7.0m range; in DOSII it has a range of 13.0m. That's nearly double the spread. Even a party that's significantly spaced out will have every single member hit by it. For an ability that does massive magic armor damage, stuns, and creates static clouds, I feel like this is too much. Please, tune this ability so both enemies and the player can at least position against it. I get that source skills are supposed to be powerful and impactful, but I think they should still have their tactical applications and not be an instant "I win"/"You lose" button.

Provided you have someone with high enough Loremaster in your party, it would be nice to be able to see enemy elemental resistances without having to right-click and examine each an every enemy. Maybe place it by their health bar, or have it toggle when you hold down a button like ALT?

Suggestions
--------------------------------

Some skills feel like they have their identities mixed up or are just simply outclassed by others:

Whirlwind is a Warfare skill that has:
- AP Cost: 2 AP
- Cooldown: 3 Turns
- Situational AoE (Centered on Player, no additional range from weapon reach)
- Damage ~150% of Weapon Type (Magic/Physical Versatility)
- No additional effects

Crippling Blow is a Warfare skill that has:
- AP Cost: 2 AP
- Cooldown: 2 Turns
- Versatile AoE (Centered on Target, extended range from reach of weapon plus AoE radius)
- Damage ~170% of Weapon Type (Magic/Physical Versatility)
- Additional Cripple

From these stats alone, Crippling Blow completely outclasses Whirlwind in ALL areas. What is the niche that Crippling Blow and Whirlwind are supposed to fill? With the four friends I've played with, we all used Crippling Blow for our melee AoE nuke, and only considered the cripple as a nice side effect rather than it's main focus. Shouldn't Whirlwind excel at doing melee AoE damage considering how it's the only thing that skill can do?

Suggestion: Increase the damage on Whirlwind and lower the damage on Crippling Blow. Adjustments to the ability cooldown may also be needed. However, this may make players drop Crippling Blow entirely since the main reason it is used is for the damage. So... I propose a more radical change: Buff the Cripple status effect. (But don't forget to weigh in this status buff to the skill's power budget after making the change).

Make Cripple an effect that can be applied through armored targets. Some of these "piercing" skills exist already: most notably, oil surfaces applying slow. Cripple is a situational effect that is a relatively weak CC: it doesn't prevent a target from acting unless they have no means of mobility or ranged options (be they skills, grenades, potions, buffs, etc). There's absolutely no situation where a player or enemy would benefit from crippling a target they could knockdown instead. Knockdown is also more plentiful/accessible than Cripple currently (Battering Ram, Battle Stomp, Knockdown Arrows, etc). By making cripple pierce through armor, I think it would be an attractive, situational CC option with enough impact to contribute to rewarding, tactical opportunities.

Furthermore, the large amount of mobility skills in this game makes it incredibly easy to escape any target from melee range. You can teleport the melee attacker away or use any mobility skill (Tactical Retreat, Phoenix Dive, Battering Ram, etc) to escape and gain distance from your target. If Cripple pierced armor, it would give melee attackers/characters a way to lock down their targets without having to rely on a cheesy/passive taunt system. It would also allow warriors to assert a front line "wall" around them and also keep evasive targets in their range (or at least get their target to burn their mobility skill if they want to escape).

This operates on the assumption that there are no/very limited long ranged cripple options, as this would cause problems for balancing (rangers and permanent cripple party builds, oh no).

Similarly, I think the Bleeding status effect should apply through armor and do piercing damage so it will directly damage vitality. It would allow the bleeding status to differentiate itself from poison/burning, and also give characters with piercing abilities (rogues, rangers, necromancers) a way to whittle down vitality over time, which would compliment the piercing damage in their respective schools. Piercing damage as is feels highly situational and most of the time I would rather have physical damage in order to weaken/break through armor.

That's all I have for now. If you read this gigantic wall of text, thank you for your patience and I hope my feedback was insightful!

Wouldn't that make Crippling Blow into an overall escape skill for all classes, though? I'd probably get an extra point in Warfare for my rangers just to get Crippling Blow so that I can get rid of the melees hassling my back line.

I don't think that would be too much of a problem due of the AP cost that would incur.

Since Crippling Blow is a melee skill, you would have to un-equip your ranged weapon and equip a melee weapon to use it. It would cost a ranged character a total of 3AP, a memory slot, and a point into Warfare to use in combat.

Additionally it would cost you another 1AP the next turn to re-equip your ranged weapon, so you are wasting a total of 2AP to weapon swap on top of the 2 AP to use the skill itself.

Finesse characters are better off dipping into Scoundrel or Huntsman for Cloak and Dagger or Tactical Retreat, while Intelligence characters can just use Teleportation or Netherswap if they want to disengage melee opponents.

Oh, right, forgot you actually need a melee weapon for that.

Edit: posted this in the wrong thread.

I am growing increasingly wary of the direction the game is taking in terms of balance.

Smarter AI is great, but the more I play the more I hate the new armor system and the bonuses from ability points while they seem like they'd allow you to create fun synergies are so bland and boring that all they do is punish you for not pursuing the obvious ones.


There is zero elegance to character creation/stats system as a whole, which is both a step down from the simplicity of the original and years behind any similar games(anything D&D based, even the incredibly bland Pillars of Eternity).

How would you revamp the stats system and the armor system, @Naqel ? I agree that some changes need to happen, and changes *will* happen, but what are your thoughts?

+1 Exactly and totally my feeling.

How to fix it ?
Wearing down a saving trhrow value is nice idea but current system is plain without elegance.

- add a reflex saving throw based on dex.
- each saving throw need a base value driven by the atrribute (Int,Str,Dex)
- So each main stat will have saving throw.
- even naked character has some savings
- When a skill/spell is tested against the saving throw it use a % dice to know if it lands or not AND remove some small portion of saving throw value. Reduction should be small, so regular battle is not focused at tear down a saving throw, however Boss fight usually is about getting down saving throws.

That way you get a system where it is nearly impossible to get safe against all 3 saving throw and each archetype character has an advantage in certain way.

There is one issue wich current system tryied to solve.In DOS:EE First combat round everyone use the strongest spell. So since midgame combat is like chain-lightnin then mop-up the rest. Next battle repeat, then next battle repeat. Very funny rigth?
There should be some mechanics prevent using the strongest spell in the first round. This mechanic should be somehow flexible.
I was thinking about a "heat" value you need to build up to be able to call higher level skills. But cant get a formula which is not bold.

I'm not Naqel, but I would prefer something, that is less streamlined and more D&D like or for example more in the direction Titan Quest.

Sure, you can modify your character by putting in attribute points, but the character will also be modified by learning specific skills: if you learn warfare you character will get increased strength and constitution, ranger will give dexterity and wits, so that every skill tree will improve your stats and will not only give pretty unwhelming 'benefits' like they do now.

But this would afford another rework of the stats themselves, because the core principle is: There is no class, you can mix what ever you like.

But the stats say: If you go strength, you will suck as mage and vice versa.

That's why I don't like the actuell 'attribute' based seperation and I would prefer more classical approach in the direction of:
- strength increases all physical damage, beause if you are stronger even a rogue can thrust his dagger harder
- dexterity increasing the chance to hit with everything
- intelligence increasing all kind of magic/elemental damage
- Wits the as now but also to increase crit with everything, so also skills so even for a rogue it isn't that bad

You could also put in cross class stuff like: STR & DEX will increase Body building an therefore give higher chance to withstand physical effects while INT & CON will go in direction of Willpower effect for example.

Attributes and Skills need to be more symbiotic in my opinion.

Adding saving throws doesn't really fix anything, it just adds more rng. The game just gets to throw up its hands and decide you wasted a turn because you had bad luck. Part of the appeal of the magic and physical armor system is that it minimizes randomness.

Source points and magic armor/physical armor already discourage using your strongest abilities first, because source points are a limited resource, and magic/physical armor prevents the nastier effects of skills from taking place.

I think buffing/tweaking perseverance to be more useful to players, and giving this skill to certain enemies would be alot more inline with keeping the current direction of limiting rng.

I would like to see more skills have a few more uses outside of combat.

Strength: its mostly fine as is. increase 4% physical armor instead of 2% (i feel both players and the a.i are both a little bit too squishy). I'd like to see it also increase vitality by about 1%. increase base weapon durability, increase carrying capacity more than it already does, and increase the amount of weight you can steal during pickpocket (if it doesn't already, I haven't tested it yet).

Intellect: increase to 4% magic armor instead of 2 make it increase the base distance you can move objects with telekinesis, improve base bartering, and increase magic aoe size slightly for every point (if aoe sizes are to remain in their current state, though I would suggest a max aoe size cap if you take this route).

Finese: increase carrying capacity (less effective than strength), 1% increase to physical and magical armor, increase the max value cap of items you can steal during pickpocket, increase the max weight you can steal during pickpocket (less than strength). Decrease enemy vision cones slightly during sneak, and slightly increase sneak speed.

Constitution: increase magical and physical armor values by 2%, and increase the vitality it increases to 10%.

Memory: can't improve on perfection.

Wits: Mostly fine much like strength. increase the max value of items you can steal during pickpocket, increase, bartering discount, and decrease enemy vision cones slightly while in sneak.

I think civil points should stay separate from combat, but I do like the idea of primary attributes giving slight buffs to civil skills.

If there is one thing I totally despise about this game, it is source points required to cast a spell. Basically it makes spells you buy and learn the same as scrolls. A once use spell unless you find/buy another scroll.

We should need source points to permanently learn a spell, but not to cast it each time. UNLESS we automatically get source points back on enemies we killed.

My main concern is that later in the game we'll need to rely more on the powerful spells instead of the low level ones. Our complaints about "never enough AP" will be complaints about "never enough action points (AP) or source points (SP)". Instead of one complaint, we now get two .

I guess the reason why I didn't complain about this before was I didn't get any spells that required SP to cast until right before the final battle. Used them once and ACT 1 ended.

@Kalrakh:
When we do this (change what attributes do) we get a system like Pillars of Eternity. I think PoE had one of the better stat systems.

about source points and using the most powerful skills at the beginning:
Would it make sense that you need to build up some kind of "power meter" by using some skills and normal attacks and then you consume this power by using powerfull spells?
If it makes sense, should it be reset after each combat?

If I understand what you are saying I don't think it will be that bad. We are going to get access to the source point replenishing skills as permanent moves eventually, so I think that may alleviate your issue.

I haven't played PoE that much so far, so I can't argue much about it. But I think Titan Quest has a similar attribute system:


But I guess regarding attributes there would be hundreds of possible examples. But linking attributes also to class choices is more unique to Titan Quest, I believe. While in Titan Quest you are limited to two classes, D:OS could go here even further.


Anyway I like the idea of the need to get into some kind of 'manaflow' or 'battleheat'. High level spells don't need more action points but need you to be in the correct mindset. So that you can't start a fight with a meteor rain wiping half of the enemies from the start. After fight of course it would reset to 0 and CC could set you back.

It's not appeal when it actively makes the game less fun.
Risk management is what makes RPG's exciting, precisely because "It's XCOM, Baby!" can happen.

Without the spice of uncertainty, what you're left with is the bland grind of wearing down the relevant resistance until the remainder of the fight becomes a stun-lock breeze.

All that the current armor system achieves is cut away the fun of inflicting status effects, because by the time the enemy becomes vulnerable to them they can either be stunned to death, or killed outright.

It'd be better to have scarcely available hard-disables(lock them behind source points), than to gate them behind a system that invalidates every other effect at the same time.

Not to mention the myriad of improvement suggestions that were made, one of which I'm particularly proud of: http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=593592&page=1#top


Barring that, my point isn't that the player is weak, but rather that what they are allowed to do is complex but lacking in depth.

With the way attribute distribution and ability points are set up, there is basically jack shit actually fun things you can do, part of it likely due to the currently WIP nature of the skills available, but more broadly because the system that was meant to reward interesting synergies, instead punishes you for not taking the most obvious ones.

Then there's the fact that balance is all over the place and there's no real sense of progression or even a cohesive direction to the skills you can learn, etc.

I genuinely don't agree with you assessment of rng in rpgs, or that the armor system makes the game actively less fun. I can't stand playing xcom because of its randomness. Either you love how rng can lead to hilarious situations or you despise it for how much it can screw you on a bad day.

I disagree that the armor system cuts out the fun of inflicting statuses. For me, it enhances the experience because I know when I attempt to inflict a status I know whether or not it will actually work.

If a fight is a stun lock breeze that is not the armor system's fault necessarily, its more of the A.I's fault for not taking advantage of armor restoration skills or knowing when it should or shouldn't back off.

Not a fan of locking hard cc and other debuffs behind a sp wall.

In the current system you could just replace all the stats with 3. 'power' 'skill slots' and 'initiative'. Con is useless since its all about MA and PA, and str/fin/int is basically something you just raise with out thinking based on the kind of weapon you are using, there's really no other dynamic to it.

And due to MA and PA it makes mixing up parties to be more punishing. I feel better off going full physical with everyone having magic support skills, or full magic damage party. While 2 and 2 can work both of the 2s need to be damage focused (so the mages both want high aero even if they dont intend to use aero skills much, just to break the armor).

Random idea off the top of my head:

Remove MA, rename PA to just armor, armor now stops all kinds of direct damage, but statuses pass right through it.
Replace MA with a sort of status armor. This doesn't come on equipment, its inherent and based on your CON. Each point of CON gives you +1 status armor. (so everyone starts with 10).

Status armor prevents you from being affected by status effects that are on you, they do not prevent the effect from being applied to you. Damage over time status effects like bleed/poison/burning strip 1 status armor per turn if the target still has status armor up, walking through ground effects remove it as well even if you already have the effect applied. Hard CC things like knockdown and stun can remove more than 1 point. The exact amount that certain skills which are more direct CC skills remove can be a balancing factor of those skills.

The idea here is that attacks do damage, and everyone can focus a target down despite their damage type. Further, status effects always do something useful, because if the target still has status armor, or call it resilience or something, they help strip this from them. You can have an effect heavy skill setup and resilience will get stripped fast. Some enemies might be better to just try and kill outright, others might have lots of health but low resilience. Aoe status appliers might make sense to have a party that tries to aoe strip status and CC, or you might make a party that just ignores statuses and goes for burst damage. Many skills become useful in both situations because status effects and damage are both doing something for you party's strategy. You could even add interesting things like a talent that lowers your damage output but doubles the power of all status effects.

Because these effects are still on the target, just not affecting them as long as they still have resilience, you can do effect combos as well before the resilience is stripped.

Also make it very hard to restore resilience mid battle, so drawn out battles can see people getting more susceptible to CC and dots because they are getting worn down. This means you have to judge the situation and maybe change strategies based on fight. If you are fighting lots of things with a lot of health you may favor just starting to strip resilience as fast as possible because its going to be a protracted CC fight in the end, or alternatively you may identify that the enemy does a lot of dots that will strip your resilience, but only a certain enemy has hard CC, and so you focus on just bursting that enemy down fast before your party starts running low on resilience from all the stripping the status effects are causing. You can then use environmental hazards as part of fight balancing more dynamically. Certain positions or enemies behind considerable obstacles you might be able to just run through at cost of your resilience, the decision to do so must be made early else you end up stunned in the middle of a lava field mid way

I agree that each individual stat needs more uses, but i disagree that the armor system discourages more diverse parties (at least before this current patch. to save time assume all my responses are pre A.I 2.0). You definitely don't need half your party to be damage dealers to be successful. My mages only ever needed 1 point in areo to do anything, and that 1 point was mostly just because I like using teleport. You CAN put more points into it, but you don't NEED to put more in to be successful at removing MA. Hell you don't even need two damage dealer mages. I've had mages in my parties be just pure healing, and it was actually really effective. Your play style, build, and skill combinations mater more than point allocation alone, which in turn makes hybrids more viable early game then outright bad like they were in DOS1 and EE.

Your idea as an alternative to MA and PA system is interesting, but I'm unsure if it would a better system, or weather or not I would enjoy that system instead of the current one.

'need' is a bad argument, a game is a system with a goal and rules, the correct way to play the game is to try and achieve that goal the best way you are able to within the rules. You 'could' just meander around and be less effective, but nobody is going to say thats how you are supposed to play something like chess or football, yet they always bring that argument up when it comes to video games.

The current combat system could be summarizes as 'remove enemy actions while maximizing your own'. This means you try to do the most optimal combination of CC and outright killing so as to minimize the amount of stuff that can be done to your party over the course of the battle. Since to CC you need to break an armor first, CCing and killing both follow along the same strategy of simply loading damage and then either doing 'more damage' or 'apply a CC'. Both of these are done more efficiently with more options and more flexibility with a party that stacks the same damage type. A single support mage can indeed work in a 'physical' party just because you dont need 4 people worth of damage to handle most situations if you build and gear yourself apropriately, but that doesnt mean its optimal because:

Is that mage along for purely support skills? Anyone can get those support skills with a single point investment, you dont need a dedicated mage, everyone can be running armor of frost/fortify/haste on physical damage builds
Is that mage along for CC? It better be able to strip all the magic armor itself, first turn, but even then its better to be another physical character and just take warfare skills which also provide aoe cc but also help with killing. Your party also being physical means you can more reliably use your own CCs, and they can use their own, because its all synergystic
A fighter can take lore just as well as a mage can
Likewise in an all mage party you can just have one mage take thievery there is no inherent need to have a proper rogue.
Mages along for ranged CC? Makes sense at first, after all archers CC is more limited than warfare based character so maybe having a mage to cc stuff at range would be smart.. or you could just take 1 level of aero for teleport and teleport that archer next to the enemy melee and CC them all with warfare skills.. which is more optimal.

This is one of the issues actually, you dont need a smartymcsmartypants to ID stuff for you, anyone can take loremaster, you dont need mr sneakyjerk to pick locks, a mage can do that. In some systems you try to tic all the boxes in order to have the things you need in a well rounded adventuring party, and you end up with some characters doing different kinds of damage and maybe it doesnt all fit togeather, but its for a reason. But you can just optimize in this game to the point that these weaknessess can be built out of the party entierly, lowering the overal dynamic nature of the strategy involved. Everyone can support magic, do a single damage type, and do all the kinds of things you would traditionaly have had specialized 'skills' characters to do.

There is no way you can claim the different armor types do not encourage damage stacking. Im not being anti-magic here since i do think an all mage party would work as well, its just that currently its easier to stack warfare based characters.

Of course if each character can one-shot a single enemy, self contained, per turn, it doesnt matter which damage type they use. So ok, a party of 4 absolute offensive powerhouses can mix and match, but that throws the idea of a support mage out the window. But again, there is no reason to ever have a support mage, everyone can learn all the support skills they need with 10 int and a few point investments. The support mage is, itself, a sub optimal character that has no place in the current game becuase everyone can be their own support mage.

The issue I have with the armor system and status effects is that they're all or nothing. The game of "wear the enemy's armor down until you can stun them" plays out the same way over and over again and it's boring. It lacks nuance.

Some possibilities that I think would be more fun:

-Armor does not prevent status, but reduces the likelihood that they take effect. Everyone is always at risk of being stunned, but someone with lots of armor is safer than someone with no armor. Even with no armor, there is a chance to resist being stunned. Relevant attributes might also be checked.

-Armor does not prevent status, but mitigates the severity of the effect. Everyone gets stunned regardless of their armor, but someone with lots of armor loses 1 AP their next turn and someone with no armor loses their entire next two turns. Again, relevant attributes might be checked.

-Hard CC effects are replaced with effects that have more variety. I like Nagel's suggestions, linked below.



-Knowing a skill/spell (and each combat point in the relevant area) should increase your chance of dodging it. A seasoned fighter should be able to recognize when an opponent is about to Battering Ram them and have an opportunity to get out of the way (and maybe counterattack).

The feeling of each school is the same. AOE all day long.
You could start balancing when your corner stones are on place, but now they are still missing. A specification of each school is not here.

BTW : Your ideas of soft cc are good. I was thinking similar. Current skill set has too many hard cc. There should be focus for fun cc like Mute spells, Cripple char so he cant execute skills, pinned by arrow so he cant walk(but can skill/spell), push or pull enemy a meter away get them to proper floor, proper blind, ... so many fun things. Disable a character for a round is stupid.

Well, tehe AI fights better, that's for sure.

But every battle becomes and inferno, as everyone is throwing AOE attacks everywhere.
There are next to no bad guys who just swing a sword, everyone is throwing grenades, and spewing fire.

Even crocodiles can teleport and throw spells.
Can't they just be tough, and really bitey?

Erm, I recall the crocs in previous versions could always teleport around and cast spells.

I haven't been able to try much of the new version other than bumbling around and trying different things.

found a glitch, on an armor at the very begining.

There are a lot of those labeling bugs in the game currently, pretty sure it should be pretty easy to solve imo. An example being a purple leather armor with a name <Missing Name>, that dropped from the chest next to the waterfall in the first area.

It's only one crocodile that can teleport, it's the one with the teleport glove. (quest item)

Even tough is kind of a rule breaker, it's the only one who can teleport himself.

Something like that.
Maby when you spill blood, yours or others, then a Heat source meter goes up.
Such a rule is somewhat plain, it force still the same combat process. Good is that process is from down to top. However some variations is needed.

- idea of variables
-- if one side has an advatage in power, then it can use higher spells. That means, when you meet a weak encounter, an alone wolf you can smash him by metero shower in first round. However if you meet a pack of dire wolf then powers are balanced you need to build up power source meter first.

I have seen games which have the mechanic where as you deal damage or take damage, a certain meter goes up, and once it is maxed, you are able to use a super move.

In theory, such a mechanic could be applied to Source skills, so that they are unavailable at the start of combat until the participants - both enemy and allied alike - deal and take enough damage to power up their Source skills

But those games are almost entirely JRPG's, and I don't remember a lot of western RPG's using mechanics like that. I have a hard time believing that Larian would warm up to that idea, especially since it conflicts with the other methods of gaining Source from the now-removed pools, to Soul Jars, to Source Vampirism.

That reminds me a bit of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which is a rather nice little game that I really enjoyed. Not everyone's cup of tea, though. Perhaps a more mainstream (and contemporary) example is Fallout 4 with its critical meter, which gradually fills up as damage is dealt. I think that actually works reasonably well and may be suited to D:OS2, though it's hard to say how well it would actually translate into a turn-based game with multiple PCs.

Not sure I like the heat idea - what is it about being in combat for a while that suddenly makes you able to use source?

What if source powers just take way more AP because you have to spend some time concentrating/preparing? Right now, there's a 6 AP max; you could increase the max to 8, but the 2 additional AP can only be used for source skills/spells. Then make source skills take 8 AP. If you use any non-source skill while AP 7/8 are charged, you lose those charges. So, you could skip your first turn entirely and then use a source skill on your second turn (assuming you are still around) or you can forgo the source skill and use regular skills to try to interrupt/kill an enemy who is preparing a source skill.

You might also want to make it so that source skills can't be used outside of combat to avoid people initiating combat with chain lightning, but that could go either way.

Also a bug that was in the last patch, forgot to mention it, but if your caught with out your sorce collar on they will send you to jail. if ya break out and see them again, they send you right back. but if you persuade them that your not gonna do anything and win, they will turn around and try to send you right back to jail as if the persuasion did nothing. can someone check to see if the bug is still there?