Larian Studios Forums Beyond Divinity (English) Help/Tips/Tricks Act II: Hero Not Aggressive? Game Strategy?

Why isn't my main character, Chuck, as aggressive in battles as the Death Knight? They are both melee fighters BUT Chuck just stands there and doesn't even draw his weapon while the Death Knight is sometimes trouble to slow down--he runs off after a baddie and usually it is dead before I have a chance to click on the baddie and get Chuck moving.

When I right click on both character icons I get a list of things that include showing Normal in orange and (*)Aggressive is grayed-out?

I'd like the Hero to be as aggressive as the DK or at least both acting the same.

Please comment on the following strategy:
Lockpick and trap skills are worthless skill point wasters?

Shields aren't worth the skill points either?

Same with Durability, Identify, and Repair. BF is to convenient not to use all the time for all of these skills.

When you find a one or two-handed weapon that does significantly more damage then a different weapon skill then recover the skill points and skill-up with the better weapon?

Same with slashing/crushing/piercing if they need to change?

How far should you build up a skill and to what extent, i.e. damage, accuracy, durability (looks worthless), critical hits, and deathblow?

Is anyone doing anything with magic or missles or is this pretty much a hack and slash game for most first time, Very Easy players like myself?

Is anyone using Wizard and/or Survival skills to great advantage?

Currently I have put all my skill points on melee one handed and thieving poison and we are unbeatable so far--start of Act II. Asside from not being warm blooded the Summoning Doll is used as a Mule only.

Thanks for the thoughts. I'm picking up what look like some good two-handed weaponry and thinking it might be time soon to switch to them.

The leading char is under your command - even in aggressive mode - if you switch to the DK, you will see "Chuck" is running into peril <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

Lockpick and trap skills are worthless skill point wasters => [color:"yellow"]Lockpick is broken, I found trap skills nice to play around with, but only Bosje seems to have explored them thoroughly, he likes spikes IIRC [/color]

About weapons => each to her/his own choice. My DK is 2-hander, I waited until I had this skill, my char archer - only survival skills are pickpocket, detect traps. Only mage skill was Shaman hammer in Act 2 - a very good mage spell to stun/paralyze enemies or in some cases even kill them, lvl 4 was sufficient.

Later on (for end battle) I took the Craftsmanship sharpen weapon and increased my sneak modus.

In the aftergame BF I changed my archer from bow to 2-hand slashing. So far I found better axes and 2-hander swords than other weapons.

When it comes to switching => if I have enough money, I do it. It's fun to experiment.

How far should you build up a skill and to what extent, i.e. damage, accuracy, durability (looks worthless), critical hits, and deathblow? => [color:"yellow"] durability was quite good for my shadow bow, but in all other cases I neglected this and chose the other skills for bow. For my 2-hand DK I maxed out acc, critical hit, deathblow afterwards. [/color]

your question about the shields was mostly answered in your other post "Act I: Melee Point of View & Shield Effects? "
obviously people will play differently, but as far as i'm concerned the best way to go is singlehanded WITH shield.
(read down in the post) shields

the only one that really doesn't seem to make sense is simply going singlehanded.

That of course is what both Chuch and the DK are doing effectively. I hope this changes.

chuck, you DO understand why i said that - yes???

Traps rule, they are actually a very good way to make melee characters defeat enemies without getting up close.

They're especially handy in battlefields, I usually place some scorpion traps in a fog-of-war area with a lot of enemies. Then I place some spike traps around the doors, let my hero peek inside to lure the enemies into their doom and my scorpions and spikes take care of the majority.

My hardcore games would be a lot harder without traps <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

i just run around the place so that every one follows and when their close zap 25 lightning bolts come crashing down or a few hammer depends an how strong they are <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />.

but i'm thinking of exploring the wonderful world of traps. Wich ones are good?

xd

Spikes, explosive, scorpion (more fun than good, has no area of effect) and trailbomb are the ones i used often.

can you place those instant death spikes? I would feel so good to get revenge on someone with those, they always kill me the one time i didn't save for a while.

xd

No, but if you put like 5 points into them all enemies running into spike trap will die, it's very powerful <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Yes, I do, and I think by the end of today I will convert over to w/shield or two-handed since some of the battles are starting to tax our health potions a little more then I like to see on a regular basis. This is a sign that we might not be quite up to snuff.

I wish I could get my friend back into the game. She hates pixel hunting and hack & slash when magic development should be just as affective to develop and use. No one seems to be talking much about Wizard skills though. Actually, I'd like to be able to do BOTH--maybe some Wizard offensive spells instead of an arrow. But, so far neither seem to be very advantageous--arrows or fireballs--when you can rush the baddies and take care of matters first hand before much if any damage is done. And, I gather a shield would help block incoming missiles even more.

Thanks.

I found that my DK would often die from a spiked trap but the hero wouldn't so I would run just the hero to "clear" the spikes and then proceed with both. Now that we are lvl 17 we could start thinking about alternate skills besides melee I suppose. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/think.gif" alt="" />

The DK is a real pain in the butt and if the Divinity programmers wanted to do something real slick for Divinity 3 (:rofl:) they should figure out a way to keep the party working together and STOP them from running off after baddies they see when the strategy is to get one's attention and back off to avoid a SWARM of 'em to deal with all at once. I've had to replay several battles because of this idiot DK and I've played other CRPGs where the party behaves and others where it doesn't. IMHO, this should be an obvious battle strategy to build into any game. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/memad.gif" alt="" />

Why can't they get it right? The controlled party member stands there waiting for you to tell it what to fight--and once his foe is killed he stands there and waits for you to tell him where to go next--while the uncontrolled party member goes efficiently from baddie to baddie to baddie that are in sight. Heck, I've had to either go chasing after him hoping we don't get into trouble over it OR I keep clicking and clicking and moving him back until he doesn't see the baddie and we can regroup. Very bad... Still <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/memad.gif" alt="" /> but in spite of this the party is doing just fine and has all of Act II mapped out and visited. Now, I just have to clear up a dozen quests. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ROFL.gif" alt="" />

There IS a way to do this. Just right click on your DK and set him to "normal" instead of aggressive. From the game manual:
"You may also change this character's stance (peace or combat), as well as assign him an AI-script. This stands for "artificial intelligince", which means you will allow the program control your charcter for you in combat. Setting the AI to "Normal" will disable any AI and your character will not even budge until you command him so. Setting the AI to "Aggressive" will result in your character attacking anything in sight".
This does NOT work for your selected char (with the gold box) because he is considered to be directly under the player's control. If you select both your chars (gold and silver chars) and have them perform an action, they'll both do this until result is achieved (they are at the place they were running to or the targeted enemy is dead), and afterwards the guy with the silver box will go back to his AI setting and the one with the gold box does nothing until you tell him to.

Ahhh...MUCH better--perfect. The problem is/was that, because (*)Aggressive was grayed out and I couldn't click on it I kept clicking on Normal which was making the DK aggressive AND maybe he was stuck somewhere...but in any case now, part way through Act II, he, for the first time isn't aggressive and waits for me to direct. I think the aggressive, normal button registration is backwards and that was confusing me.

Thanks. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />