Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Hotfix 3.0.33.118 - Economy now suck

oh common.
just completed the game for another time.
1) until you get out of Fort Joy grab anything from everywhere and sell it to anyone
2) you don't need to steal anything, I didn't have bartender skill also
3) when I met first undead on the bridge outside Fort Joy (near teleport point) I had about 4000+ golds, and only now I could upgrade some items in my gear and buy few new skill books
4) same with Gareth: until the last battle you collects up to 8000 gold and spend it in Seekers camp for the last upgrade. of course, I bought some gear before last battle also, and still I had a lot of money for the last upgrade
5) btw why do you need to buy ALL the books in the game? you have memory slots and it's slightly limited, source skills useless until source points almost disappeared from the game. you'd better think about HOW TO SPEND wisely, instead of 'how to get some gold to spend it on useless shit'

Good, that was a stupid design choice for the beginning of an epic RPG

It's not that atypical to start at the bottom. Skyrim for example does the same and I think The Reckoning or how the game is called.

Yeah, all of TES was like that. I actually liked scraping together the random crap I could find in the early parts of, say, Oblivion and Morrowind where even useless rubbish like inkpots were still worth a few pennies and made it feel really worthwhile when you could finally buy something decent (especially playing with one of the overhaul mods, so there were few conveniently levelled enemies for you to just take stuff from).


Kingdoms of Amalur? It's so long since I've played that I can't really remember, but probably. Sad that there'll only ever be one of it.

If I remember right you got kind of killed and thrown into a massgrave, where you resurrected and yes was a fun game. Turning from a maggot into a god can be feel quite good, but in the D:OS2 everything is so dumbed down, that there is hardly any feelable progress.

Kingdoms of Amalur:Reckoning.

Yeah, amazing rpg that had unfortunate timing to be released the same time frame as Skyrim which accelerated its "flop" as a game and caused the studio to go under.

If you didn't know this already it was actually a prototype for an open world mmorpg they were working on code named Project Copernicus. There is some videos and concept art that are out there and are incredible to look at. It truly is one of those depressing moments in gaming where an amazing game gets killed before it has a chance to rise to the throne it deserved.


Also guys don't forget we are still months away from the actual release, they want to fiddle with mechanics and how things feel so don't expect some amazing progression feels right now. I have faith that they will get it right in the end, just gotta have patience.

OK, I admit that now you swim in money.
I am lv7 and I can afford almost everything I like, even though I never steal and I never give items for free to make them like me. All I have is a char who uses all bartering item I find.
It really feels a bit strange for a prison where items are supposed to be rare.

I still think, things were a bit too expensive before the last patch.
I do not know what is the best spot between "you need to take everything you can possibly take and maybe even steal just to get a skill book" and "you can efford whatever you like without caring about money".

Personally? Everything SHOULD be too expensive in this early section.

Once you escape from the island and start to roll in the gold it should feel liberating as if you are finally free!

Well... ok to an extent.

As I said, there are far to many merchants for an isolated prison island. Perhaps there should be a few people, that sell stuff. But only a few stuff and really specific stuff. Somethings you perhaps only get sold if you do them a favor or you get it as a quest reward at the end. But before all, the merchants should not get new stuff at every level up and at every full hour gametime. This just breaks the whole immersion. Merchants can get back to normal, after you escaped and you are back in the freeworld, but on this island it is just odd.

Of course fights would need quite a nerf in a more dire situation with less good equipment at your disposal.

This. I don't think it's about pricing, but about the volume of items available. I want characters to have to make do with limited options. You shouldn't be able to get the second level skill/spell books inside the fort; maybe not even all of the level 1 skills are available without having to jump through some hoops. Finding the Seekers should open up your world a bit, but things should feel constrained until you get off the island.

I suspect Tactician mode will amp up the economy stinginess up to around where it was before the hotfix, based on Larian's comments. The fact is, most people who just want a semi-challenging experience aren't that interested in a brutal economy. People looking for genuine difficulty will probably get pricier items and less gold drops in tactician mode.

At the current state it not only denies immersion which more casual players do not really care about perhaps, but it also denies any kind of progres/growth feeling, if pretty every skill is available and learnable from the start. The only thing that will change are numbers: more damage, more amor, more HP.

It's not about wanting more difficulty for me - I will probably never play tactician mode. It feels wrong to be in a prison that should be a place of scarcity (and where most of the available items should probably be considered contraband) but where you can get just about anything you want right away (I'm thinking about skill books more than items, but there are a ton of items, too). It makes the world less believable and less interesting if all places are essentially the same (is every town/community going to have exactly one merchant with all of the skill books for each ability school?). I want it to feel like a huge breakthrough when you finally get out of the prison - right now it just seems like more of the same.

I certainly would love Fort Joy merchants to only sell one copy of each skill book and not restock it on level up. Also +1 to not selling level 2 skills. Gawin selling teleporter book and still telling me to go fight crocodiles is the worst offender.

Also the story treats making it to seekers camp as something great, finally there are people who can help you. But they really offer nothing new. I can go to Fort Joy and buy the same stuff from mercants there just for a lesser price. Quite funny actually how prisoners magically get better equipment than magisters. Also prisoners selling source skills and magisters being fine with that.

Suggestion: for the seekers camp to feel like a real upgrade and to make merchants less immersion breaking, Fort Joy merchants should be limited. They shouldn't sell skills above level 1 and they shouldn't sell gear above level 4.

Another suggestion to prevent the player from taking the same op combination (haste, adrenaline, teleport, rage) on every hero. Skill books should never restock. Only one adrenaline per merchant, no more builds being essentially the same.

It's mainly in the created differences, instead of evening it out.
Both story as well as gameplay.

Settingwise it's quite a joke, that you are supposed as a complete newbie (ingame) to wipe out a whole division of a well geared, established order of manhunters... ofc that results in the need of compensation, by either better equip or cheesy strategies.
But in that constellation the magisters should be way out of reach, at least level 10-15 imho. So their power is bolstered by ingame aspects as well, and you then don't fight them in the open, but really just try to escape.
Doesn't mean you can't later come back and give em a whack if you really have the urge to...
You know, the "Gothic"-formula.

Gameplaywise it's the hefty difference between the various aspects and especially exploits (that are exploits right now, but could be changed to not be). Killing merchants without any reasonable consequence, same goes for stealing and so on. There needs to be more consequences, especially ingame, like people not trading with these characters, more "security" guards, and so on, making the game at least that much harder in other fields it makes it overly easier in the first place.
Also the imbalance in the skillsets, like the again too strong melee part.
It continues with the really easily exploitable fleeing mechanic, or the (sry Larian) still really predictable AI plus the situation it simply can't handle.
Just killed the drillworm at level 3 (and it's most probably possible with level 2 if one avoids more xp)... How? Ever blessed a smoke cloud? Let's just say it's too true to be good... (pun intended)

And for the "now you don't need to learn to manage" argument: That thought is made too simple. Not everything is the same. For example necromancy right now needs a lot more skills to be viable, than for example melee. You can't lump that together.

@snap
Erm, yeah... You're this, you're that... you're so badass! ... Feelin better now? ^^

That sure sound like a fun way to start a game, just grinding your face into a wall for 2 hours

That's why it should be not 'just' expensive. Either it should not be available or only under certain conditions.

adding onto that the game loses the "makeshift" aspect of weapons after you see the huge amount of them available through vendors.

It isn't available to you if you don't have the gold to buy it.

What's the difference between a book you don't have the gold to buy, a book the vendor doesn't sell and a book you cannot use because of your level?

They are all unavailable to you, the only difference is that one of these situations is healthy for the economy because there are things being sold you can only buy if you spend a lot of time and efforts into acquiring it.
If you are able to buy everything a vendor can sell, there is no gold management to be done. If you are able to buy items you cannot even use, there is simply no economy at that point.

The difference depends on the story situation:

- Are you on the market in a big city? Of course you will be able to buy pretty everything as long you have gold.

- Are you in a prison on an isolated island? How the hell are those merchant prisoners and seekers getting all their stuff?

Making everything just more expensive would make economy more dire but in no way make immerssion more believable.