Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General suggestion: reduce prices on low level skill books

when i make a new character robbing the first town blind is not even an option. it is required. if i do not steal and sell everything that is not bolted down then i cannot afford to get low level skill books.

to me, that just seems wrong. if you want to be a thief that is cool, but choosing to not steal things should not result in you turning level 4 and still unable to afford even 1 single skill book.

at higher levels it resolves itself, but in cysael you have one option: steal everything or be a gimp.

Or maybe the Source Hunters should have some money at the start, enough to buy at least 2-3 spellbooks each. I mean they are Source hunters with a profession. Why should they be forced to start the investigation with ZERO money in their pockets?

Nope, this is as it should be. Being good guy have its price. You want your hands clean? You're going to be poor. Every good RPG is about choices. You can live with knowledge that some family will die from hunger, because you've robbed them, or you can decide to not steal from them, but instead suffer hunger yourself. I hate games when rewards for being good and bad are always the same. Virtue is its own reward.

It does seem stealing is a little too easy and the best way to obtain the majority of the cash you're getting.

But who's to say that the righteous/good path is equally easy or hard?
As you said it resolves itself at higher levels (way to much money anyway) and having a roleplaying disadvantage doesn't stike me as completely unreasonable.

I completely disagree with OP. I am playing people that never steal - and yes I was a bit starved for skill books in the beginning, but who says you need them immediately? For me it was something I saved money for at cool when I bought it. In real life you don't get everything immediately either?

I'm not voting one way or the other, but there is a fine line here between opting to be poor and dealing with something that is poorly designed.

Remove all items that can be "stolen" from the maps and let everyone rely on the current random loot system for whatever remains. Are you satisfied with the level of character progression that is possible at that point? If not, you have a problem that needs fixing.

Unless this game is seeking to be a poverty simulator, you don't design theft to be a necessity. You design it to be a perk. A means to make money beyond the norm - but the norm itself needs to be adequate to play the game with.

Sure, you can also go with "pacifist" playthrough, without killing any sentient beings, and whine about "poor design". Because when you only kill mindless monsters, you clearly won't have enough XP to finish the game. Hell, wait, even with enough XP, you couldn't do it, because many bosses in this game are sentient beings, and you need to kill them to progress further. Why they didn't give you the option to just avoid fighting with them by talking?! When it is obvious that "unless this game is seeking to be a psycho mass murderer simulator, you don't design slaughtering humans and other sentient beings to be a necessity"


I'm sorry, life is brutal. Sometimes you need to kill, or be killed. And sometimes you need to decide, if getting your desired skillbok is worth stealing from some innocent people. Tough choices, this is what good RPGs are about.

No, a more accurate comparison to my point would be to not provide players with enough XP to keep pace with the content *unless they murder every single character they meet, including non-hostile townsfolk*. Unless your game is built around the entire theme of evil and murder, that's a poor design that needs fixing.

And that is why I said:

"Remove all items that can be "stolen" from the maps and let everyone rely on the current random loot system for whatever remains. Are you satisfied with the level of character progression that is possible at that point? If not, you have a problem that needs fixing. Unless this game is seeking to be a poverty simulator, you don't design theft to be a necessity. You design it to be a perk. A means to make money beyond the norm - but the norm itself needs to be adequate to play the game with."

This is an old, common argument that was brought up many times in alpha/beta, and the "good RPG" argument doesn't fly. Because it's tied to another old, common argument - that the NPCs are dumb as a doornail and stealing is way too easy to get away with. You can't play the "real life" or "simulation" card in this discussion because these NPCs should be smart enough to realize that ever since the Source Hunters came to town, everything that wasn't bolted to a surface went missing. And nobody raises an eyebrow when you show up with the stolen merchandise and start selling it to a vendor.. even the same vendor you stole it from! No hits to your reputation, nobody investigating you, nobody following you around as you "browse" their shops. It is literally free money laying around everywhere.

The problem is there are players who want to try and "role-play" good characters (even though there are no rewards for doing so) and not steal everything, but the pricing of items seems to be balanced around the idea that you can and will steal. And all that combined is completely fail as far as "what good RPGs are about".

I don't have a problem with stealing being lucrative, but the risks need to match the rewards, and that is currently not the case as there's plenty to gain and literally nothing to risk that can't be fixed with a save-game reload. At the same time, the game needs to be properly balanced for everyone else.

I can only speak for myself, but I've never had a problem with character progression at that point. I normally *don't* steal anything unless it's specifically required for a quest objective (the mortician's journal; 'evidence' against Esmerelda, etc), or even loot the in-town barrels and crates that are free to take things from. Despite that, I haven't had a cash shortage.

Granted, I'm also not trying to buy every single skill book the moment I see it alongside everything else that might theoretically be useful (tools, ingredients, full gear outfits, etc); I may buy one or two cheap level 1 skill books along with a magnifying glass, but that's about it.

At that point, you don't really need to steal anything to get started - there's enough stuff lying around before reaching and just beyond Cyseal (as well as in the tunnel beneath), and none of it involves theft.

If you just have to fully upgrade everything on every character as soon as you arrive, then yes, you'll probably have to resort to stealing, but that's a play style choice, not a necessity.

Obviously that's going to depend on "luck" with RNG loot, which is another topic that gets debated heavily. With that setup, we can (unfortunately) never predict how much funding a player will have to work with by any particular point in the game. That makes party resources very tricky to balance.

I mean, I just opened a chest today that had three legendary items in it. Two of them are weapons, and they are twice as powerful as the weapons my party is currently using., and their collective gold value represents more money than I've acquired since starting my adventure.

They are literally "game changers". To test, I saved and reloaded, and the next time I checked the chest I received two blue magic items, a rat tail, and a mushroom. Those are two very directions the game can go resulting in two very different experiences.

I completed the whole game on normal difficulty with having only TWO unique items during my whole playthrough. It's not like you really need the "best" stuff. The game is pretty doable with just common stuff you can get everywhere without much luck, even if you don't steal much/anything...

The whole discussion about "luck" is imo highly laughable because it implies that you can only win this game if you get tons of cool stuff. But that's not true. You can win the game and beat every enemy with almost every half decent item and even if you don't optimize your character to the maximum. I personally quite wasted some ability points. It's really not a big issue. The game gets easier along the way anyway.

That was also how I was coming at it. I wasn't dealing with RNG (or chest scumming) as a make or break part of what I described above. The gear I was working with in each case was white-quality pieces with maybe one or two blue or green items between the entire party (and if I had those, they probably came from the Ishmaeshell chest). And that was with the starting active skills plus 1-2 books between the whole party.

You just don't need a whole lot of stuff to get started in this game. Serial kleptomania for the sake of starting with lots of stuff is a valid choice, but it's just that - a choice, not a requirement.

The only tough choices I remember so far (having not finished even the first area) have been the fish thief and the two entertainers. But mostly stealing from NPCs is not a tough choice at all, because honestly, they just don't care. They don't eat, they don't use their money on anything, they don't do anything at all, they don't care if they made enough profit today to eat tomorrow and so on. They don't feel like people; they're just NPCs.

Well, I wasn't trying to imply you can only "win" with RNG itemization luck, only that it can cause two players to have very different experiences with how much money there is to be made (and thus how necessary theft feels).

The ease of the game post-Cyseal seems to be a common complaint many have raised, so whether or not things would continue to work well had the difficulty been balanced better remains to be seen.

I agree

Two players having very different experiences with how much money there is to be made is a part of the Rogue-like experience. It is perfectly normal for this genre.

You're reading that out of context. I was referring to "how much money there is to be made" via non-theft, as someone commented that there was "plenty". And that has nothing to do with the "rogue-like experience" - which is entirely non-rogue-like, by the way, unless you truly believe stealing is this easy and people are that oblivious to theft happening around them and loss of property occurring with each player visit.

So, did you murder everyone in Cyseal after you finished quests in this area? It is free XP after all, and if they don't feel like people, who cares?


And if they don't care - why don't steal from them? You should have no moral qualms. If that's true, there is absolutely no need to add more possibilities to get gold without stealing.

So:

Either they feel like people, and you feel bad about hurting them - so not hurting them and missing lot of gold and xp but feeling good about yourself, or hurting them and getting a lot of gold and xp but feeling like crap, is a tough choice. In which case everything is ok, and this whole argument is stupid.

Or they don't feel like people and there is no logical reason to not take their stuff, so devs shouldn't care if player can amass enough wealth to buy skillbooks etc. without stealing. In which case, this whole argument is stupid.

So, to summarize: this whole argument is stupid. Period.

I just have one of my characters steal everything, so I"m 50% virtuous.

Wrong on both accounts.

I don't kill them because I want to see their stories. I'm really hoping the game isn't just a linear walk through the areas, which unfortunately your comment makes it sound like. Second, I don't seem to need that experience or that cash. Robbing all that's nailed down sounds really tedious and for no gain. I'm already hauling around more equipment than I can count and that I have no use for, because there's nothing to buy. I mean yeah sure, there probably is some good stuff to buy, but I haven't bothered looking because I haven't needed to.

So again, no, to me the game hasn't really presented any hard choices so far. Not to engage in even more tedium is a really simple choice.