Larian Studios Forums Beyond Divinity (English) General Melee Skill Befuddlement.

I admit it, the skills system compared to Divine Divinity absolutely baffles me.

I have a character who likes to use daggers with a shield. At first I put a bunch of points into Melee Specialties - One-Handed - Piercing. But then I found someone who taught me the same skill, but with a shield. So is the first skill not used at all if I'm using a shield?

I've got a bunch of swords that seem to do elemental damage exclusively. Water, fire, etc. The Stingers. What skill is suggested for those?

Is there a spell like Burning Wall in DD? I was SO all about Burning Wall.

Any help appreciated. It's getting to the point where I don't know how to spend my points anymore, as I'm not sure if they'll have any effect.

IH, 2H, and 1H with shield are all separate skills, so if you put points into 1H, those won't help if you use a shield or a 2H weapon. Then you have to decide whether to develop slashing, piercing, crushing, shadow, or bone damage. Each of those is a separate skill tree. So if you like daggers, then you would use 1H piercing. The manual discusses this on page 43, Warrior Melee Specialties.

This seems overly complicated to me, however. I would have preferred it if the 1H skill applied to *all* damage types, although maybe 1H piercing could be a 4th specialty IMO. That way if you develop 1H, you would be just as effective with a bone or shadow weapon as a slashing weapon....but that is not the way it works... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/disagree.gif" alt="" />

It is not really a big problem. If one day you find the weapon of your dreams then you just unlearn and put skill points into what ever is suitable for that weapon. The game really has alot of flexibility in skill selection.