Larian Studios Forums Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis (English) Help/Tips/Tricks Mindreading

Dude, is mindreading really worth the loss of XP?? I've heard mention of equipment and quests that can only be found through mindreading, but this game is so damn hard, using up XP slows down level progression. With no enemy respawning (at least not in the beginning) I need all the level ups I can get!! Hearing more opinions would be great, Raze, how do you remember all this stuff???

I'd say once you are lvl 4-6, it's really worth the loss of XP.
You not only can gain equipment and quests, but also skill points, or character points.

As Melianos said, you can get stat or skill points by mind reading, as well as access to additional loot. The loot usually isn't that big a deal, but I mindread pretty liberally and didn't have a problem leveling. Once you get up a few levels, the amount of experience needed for mindreading isn't much compared to the amount needed to level.

Extra Skill Points/Stat Points/Dragon Skill Points (Spoilers)


Do you have the creature yet? You can find the item you need west of Lovis' tower and then south (though a straight line approach would not be the easiest way to get there; check the map). I found a ranger head much more helpful than a warrior head at the start of the fjords, and later switched to a mage head.

West of Lovis tower and then north will bring you to the enchanter, where you can boost the damage of weapons (with enchantment slots) and add/change enchantments on armour and jewelry (by now enchantment slots should be relatively common on equipment). I was lucky enough to find a level 10 Healing Aura enchantment in the enchanter's cellar (worth the mindread on that one) with a bit of reloading, and adding a couple enchantments to jewelry helped (though there are not many malachite gems available early in the game). For armour I generally added Life Line, unless I needed help with resistances.

For melee combat, along with your weapon expertise of choice, you'll probably want to get Bleed up to level 10 (you can raise the level caps after you get the battle tower), and early to mid game a bow comes in handy even without investing in any ranger skills.

Character Optimization


The experience from quests are fixed, so it helps to delay solving them, so you get more experience from combat (quest equipment rewards can also get better at higher levels).
It helps to do any mindreading early, so you pay off the experience debt at a lower level, when monster kills give more experience.

Hang on to items with a Wisdom bonus, and you can get a little extra experience turning in quests. For combat I'm not sure if the Wisdom bonus is a huge benefit, considering at least part of the bonus would be canceled out by leveling faster and reducing the experience for some opponents.


If I don't remember stuff explicitly, I just need to recall enough of a previous discussion to find the topic again with a forum search.

It does not matter much because of how experience works. The higher your level, the less XP enemies give. Therefore if you do all your mind reading before killing things then the loss will be minimized.

In general to get the most XP:
[Up Mind Reading Skill] -> Mind Read -> Kill Things -> [Up the Wisdom Skill] -> Turn in Quests
(things in brackets only apply if you decide to do them at that point, for mind read the first rank gives a bigger reduction that the later levels... or at least the very next level after it)

I never bothered increasing the mindreading skill. IMO skill points are better utilized elsewhere. I used equipment with Wisdom bonuses the first half of the game (from about level 13), and later put some skill points into it, but probably wouldn't bother doing so again (just keep equipment with Wisdom bonuses for turning in quests).

Lots of great info, thanks guys.

mindread is usefull if the NPC is a quest giver, but early in the game is not wise to spend points on it beause the dept you get you will make up for it later in the game as you reach the orobas Fjords. when you are there then it will be wise to invest some points on it because the price will be much higer from there on (3500XP) for example

and remember that reading minds gives you new dialog option(s) to end a quest