Larian Studios Forums Divinity II The Dragon Knight Saga / Flames of Vengeance (English) Divinity II - The Dragon Knight Saga Armour sets - what's so good about them?

I have several parts of various armour sets, but they don't seem that good so i don't actually use them, I use a mixture of peices that give better stats.

Is there some sort of bonus attatched to whole sets/part sets, if so what is it.

Also I am missing one pice of the Scorpion set, the leggings, which I see listed at a trader on Sentinel Island. But sentinel Island no longer seems to be available due to poison, so how do I get hold of them? And i am a dual weapon wielder, and the scorpion sword is two-handed, so does that mean not using this sword reduces the bonuses associated with wearing the set?

Cummulative bonus is always greater.
Also, I'mn ot sure about DKS, but if you play ED -try to discover/pick up them as late as possible on highest possible level (because stats are varying according to your level).

IMO armour sets are pretty much predetermined for certain builds. If you have a mix-up build like a dual wielding battle mage or something like that, you're not going to take full advantage of them. Though these sets can be pretty useful early on because of two reasons- two enchantment slots and skill boost that they provide. But some unique items which are not part of any set also provide skill boost (Amdusias' helm is one fine example) and once you get your hands on elder/epic level armours you can replace those predefined sets. Early in the game I found the Aleroth defenders set to be somewhat useful, even for dual wielding set-up. Another thing I've discovered that sets are meant to be used as a whole, the more you add pieces the more their individual power grows. So either put on the whole set to get most out of them or use none if you have better or equal alternatives. I was using blood echelon for a while but it requires to hold on to the shield so ditched it for a custom set-up. I like the looks of that armour which Captain Luis used to wear but unfortunately didn't find it in elder or better variant.

Sets and bonus stats (based on how many pieces of the set you have equipped) are listed in Lancet's Dragon Knight Saga FAQ/Guide. There is no way you can get the scorpion leggings (short of reloading a save before taking over the battle tower), but there are more sets as you progress in the game.

I used the full Mining Guild set (available in the Steam version and the North American Xbox release) from level 16 to 27, replacing everything when I could use the Bow of Orobas after getting to level 28. I checked out other sets in the game, but stuck with my collection of mostly random equipment (after the beginning of the game no random bow came close to the unique ones available).

I have to say I'm not impressed with the Scorpion leggings situation. I seem to remember comming across them at the trader at the camp, but at the time i had serious problems with inventory management and didn't see any reason to decide whether to buy them or not there and then.

I can't see how you could possibly know that they would become unavailable after you take the battle tower.

aside from the cumulative bonus, some of them look darned good.
I ran with whatever was best until i got the Blood Echeon gear, ran that until i got the gear from the Battle-towers; ran that through Ego Draconis, then in Flames of Vengeance- got the Order of the Scorpion armor.

it's too hard resisting the temptation not to use the armor sets-- since they are static: you know what you'll get outta them. getting random loot from chests, hoping for the best [often gettin' crap]- is just too sporadic.

I can't see how you could possibly know that they would become unavailable after you take the battle tower.

You are given a warning before entering the summoning chamber. Even if you don't think traders could be impacted, it is at least an obvious place for a save, and a relatively painless reload once you discover that the island gets gassed and the only NPC left outside there is the one who wanted the loot from the boat in a tree.
Besides, nobody gets everything on the first playthrough, anyway (unless they follow a detailed walkthrough).

To be fair to him, the warning was about Broken Valley not Sentinel Islands as far as I can recall. But one can only assume the inevitable fate of both game Zones once he/she realizes that Divinity II is not an open ended/sand-boxed game and follows a rather arcade pattern. Once you reach a new high, new areas/scenarios become available rendering the old ones unreachable. Farglow is lost once you get to Broken Valley, Broken Valley and Sentinel Isles are out of reach (mostly) after receiving Battle Tower. Only Orobus Fjords remain accessible (at least to a certain point) throughout the game and even then it will become unavailable once you enter Hall of echos. It's a game where it's pretty easy to lose on lots of things which is definitely a annoying experience but on the flip side you don't need everything to complete the game and get lots of fun.

... and that is the warning I heeded, i went back and finished a couple of things, but it did not occur to me to do the same for Sentinel Island, quite the reverse since I assumed it would be my domain now.

I can see why Broken Valley quests become dead since Damian invades it and it has to be reset, but I can see no good reason why the same should be true of Sentinel Island and certainly not without a warning to that effect since an important component of a key armour set is there. Bad design IMHO.

The game does not seem sure if it is sand box or linear. It plays very sand box except where it suddenly does't and sometimes the sand box element doesn't seem to work that well.

Example: I hit Keara's FF first (simply 'cos it was marked on the map which I took as some sort of hint) at level 25 i think. I had a week's worth of hard and exiting fighting there, it was the highlight of my game, epic, and i was getting 2300 XP per kill to start so I advanced I think from 25 to 31 in that one extended battle.

However once I'd done that all the other FF, invaded Broken Valley, everywhere became very easy and a bit boring. I was getting only about 80-130 XP per kill which at that level hardly touches the sides.

I'm just doing the Broken Valley Mine now before going to what i imagine is the finale at HoE and finally I've got a bit of oppositision since Keara's.

I am not a fan of auto-leveling monsters to the player level, I use Obsidian's mod for Oblivion for example, but i do think the player should be encouraged to attempt main quest line areas in roughly ascending order of difficulty. This is normally done by having the main quest split up into a lot more stages. Here in DKS there is just one main quest per main area, and this is arguably a design flaw.

Keara's is one of the toughest so if you take it head on at anything under L29/30, you sure have to put lots of strategic elements in your game. That marking on your map was not a hint AFAIK, rather a quest marker. I think the position of the FFs should be your guide here, easy ones are located close proximity from where you start in OF and the further ones tend to be tougher. The first one you can spot is Stone's hence should be the easiest. How I made up my list to hit was simply by entering each one to measure the levels of the enemy. So I entered stone's FF and cleared most of it, went back to BV to take down the Aerial threats and ballistas only to return to finish off Stone. BTW I'm playing in Hard for some time now (since Zagan made me reload at least five time!!). And I'll save demon lord Ba'al, the vanquisher of LL, for later and hope he would prove to be worthy adversary.

About the sand box elements I got the same feeling. Sometimes the game seems to loose its tracks a bit and depends heavily on leaner aspects and that hurts the otherwise immersive experience. But still it is a fantastic game and one of those seemingly rare titles where strategy is still a big part of the game-play.

There is definitely a minor issue with Orobas Fjords in that inevitably you will over-level if you try and do everything. Still though, doing everything should put you at about level 35, which is the level of the lowest enemies in Flames of Vengeance.

Flying Fortresses are really dangerous to enter before the mid-twenties, but clearing your first one will almost certainly give you a whole bunch of levels. Doing Stone's (the "easiest") at level 26 took me to level 30.