Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Help/Tips/Tricks few beginner questions

so, new player starting this game but im hoping to get few things clarified first.

1. What sort of build a battlemage should do. Ive read little bit about them and seen suggestions for both melee-based ones and caster based ones. Is the caster based one basically just wizard with heavy armor? What about the melee-based, im little confused about the attributes, is it something like max STR, around 10 INT with bonuses and rest CON and SPD? Im hoping people would suggest on attributes, talents and abilities. How well do hybrids work anyway, do they need alot of help from gear? Do you have to do alot of saving/loading for gear for it to work?

2. What talents would work for pure casters, seems Glass Cannon,Know-It-All,Far-out Man and Picture of Health atleast seem good, anything else? Does Know-It-All raise the max INT by 1, so you can later take 16 max or should you take it later when you have max INT so it raises the cap that way?

3. Ive heard that max amount of Attributes you can get at max level is 15, does that include the 5 points when you create your character or are those 5 points separate from the 15 you get at level ups?

Thanks for answers, will ask more if anything comes to mind

1. I'd suggest trying it and seeing. My Jahan at the moment has no points in strength but I would consider him somewhat a 'battlemage' as he has ridiculous CON and survivability (become air, shield, elemental absorption, water of life, and both the electric and water touch spells along with vampiric touch).

2. You can take KIA whenever you want, and you can get to 15 base +1 KIA. Well for a 'pure' caster I wouldn't take Picture Of Health (and also wouldn't worry about CON). I've avoided Glass Cannon completely because it seems a little broken (as in overpowered, not unfunctional). My 'pure' mage survives by not getting attacked (other things in the way/enemies cannot act due to CC) and has maybe 6 base CON.

3. Max for any stat is increasing its base (starts at 5) to 15. Some things give additions on top of this (like Know-It-All). I'm not sure how politician works, if it reduces after your base or from it.

1. Well my battlemage was close combat one hand + shield. I used fire only with him. Made him resistant to fire, then rush to enemies, cast fireball or self immolation. I put points into INT and STR, then CON and SPD. End game stats were like 15STR, 14INT, 14CON, 12SPD. Gear helps a lot. I had about 3 STR, 2INT, some CON and SPD/PER. I never save/load for gear.

2. I had Glass Cannon, Know it all, Far out man, the one where I was immune to stun,weather effects,stand your ground. Know it all raise INT by 1, dont know if it raise max int, as I never hit the max.

3.Dont know about that. My Madora had 19 in STR I think. My main caster had 17 in INT. But last time I played was 2 weeks ago, so the numbers are not exact.

I will ask some NB question too.

It is possible to play without melee character? How can i do it? I know that summon will help because NPC like summons but if will have ranger...

I still do not understand tenebrium. So, after some point i will be finding tenebrium weapons only? An they will be better than my crafted weapon?

So i do not need to add points to my weapons skills?

1. The best way to make a battle mage without worrying about getting killed is to start as a (pure) man at arms then just breach out to fire and earth.

2.Depends on what difficulty you are playing (also if you are a Lone Wolf or not) , casters get that staring ranged attack that does damage based on the equipped staff (aka you don't care for the extra Ap cost from level diff.)Glass Cannon helps a lot and transforming terrain before the battle is great.

3.You should try to max out your primary stat (mainly for gear req.)but in late game you will most likely get at least +10 bonuses from gear , know that elemental resistances are important as well since you can always get healed by them without spending AP.


I think so but I don't recommend it ; If you do then get Charm and lots of magic scrolls (mainly for boss fights).


You will always find normal weapons in the game, tenebrium is just like any other element in the game witch means that you can enchant your gear with the tenebrium stat (be it damage or ress.).
The only diff is that tenebrium weapons have their own "class" so if you use a 1h tenebriunm sword you will not get the extra benefit from the single handed wpns you will get it from the one called tenebrium weapons instead.

I think i might have worded that third question little bit wrong, i tried to ask that how many attribute POINTS you get from leveling up when you reach max level(which is suppose to be 15) and are the starting points included in those 15 or are they separate(meaning total points would be 20 then)

thanks for all answers so far

There is no level cap my characters were level 23 at the end of the game , the stats can only be invested in as long as their base score is lower then 15 (this means that you can only invest 10 points on one stat).

Elerian, you can do pretty much anything you want.

The only problem to overcome is damage mitigation. You can do that either by using summons as meatshields, preventing the enemy from acting or reducing their AP allotment (maybe by forcing them to move around terrain hazards or teleporting them away from you), or making the enemy dead. I think it's quite difficult to find a setup in this game that won't work to be fair. The early levels are slightly more difficult than later ones, but if you use the tools at hand most of the fights are easily won.

Also, rangers have access (if you swap weapons) to 2 separate charm skills on long cooldown, and also charming arrows. Charm is by far and away the most powerful method of crowd control. If you were planning on having a party of just rangers however, I'd suggest scouring the vendors for special arrow components at every level.

As far as I'm aware (haven't got much further than that yet) you continue to find normal weapons and also start finding T weapons.

Decide if you want to do Melee or just be a Mage Tank. Start with 8 Str and 8 Int (with Know-It-All). The best battlemages are Aerotheurge (most powerful) or Pyromancy (lots of fun blowing everything up). If you want to focus on melee, raise Strength and leave Intelligence alone. If you want to focus on casting, raise Intelligence and leave Strength alone.
Lone Wolf, Glass Cannon, Know-It-All, Far-Out-Man, Elemental Affinity(unless you are Aerotheurge). Swift Footed is surprisingly handy along with Walk in Shadows and Fast Track if you want to pick up a tiny splash of Scoundrel.Yes, absolutely. One of the strongest combos in the game is a Ranger + Mage. There are lots of ways to do it, but I would recommend you shoot for a 5 Aerotheurge/1 Hydrosophist Mage and 5 Expert Marksman/1 Hydrosophist Ranger.
Tenebrium weapons are inferior to Legendaries enhanced with Tenebrium bars. But either way, the moment you enhance a weapon with Tenebrium Bars it stops using your mundane weapon skills and uses your Tenebrium skill.

But you can win the game without putting anything into any weapon skills at all.

Thanks.

And what about crafting? If will play with 2 character (lone wolf) i will not have points for blacksmithing to 5.

Will i find similar weapons like best from crafting and etc?

I like small party. So it will be rogue / mage
I hope that summon will be good as tank and with rogue i will do big damage via backstab to bosses.

You can raise Blacksmithing to Base 3 and rely on Blacksmithing gear to push you up to 5. You could also get Scientist to give you another boost. For example:

1: Lone Wolf
1: Scientist
5: Glass Cannon
7: Quickdraw
11: Guerrilla or Bully.

Or you could just live without Scientist and pick up Bully at level 1 for easier combats. Rangers already need lots of talents, and Blacksmithing/Crafting is most convenient on them.
If the RNG gods are with you, you will find better items than you can craft. If not, then crafting makes up the difference.
If you go with a Rogue, I really recommend Aerotheurge over Pyromancer for your mage. Stunning makes for easy 100% backstabs. Summons go down pretty fast because they have poor defense, but any attacks they take are attacks you are not taking! Win/win.

You can put a total of 3 ability points in blacksmithing (i.e. get blacksmithing to 3), with the pragmatic trait and +2 bonus from equipment, for 5 blacksmithing, which is all you need I believe.

A summon will be good as a tank for a short duration, depending on the summoned creature (air elemental e.g. is very squishy). And rogue can also get two charm skills (again, charm is the best crowd control by far and away).

Optimally, you'll be able to prevent most enemies from attacking. Scoundrel gets a lot of CC itself (stun, trip, charm (x2 with marksman), blind). Should work well unless you go pure fire with the mage (all other magic schools have 'stun' type effects, but fire has none I'm aware of, except from killing things).

Oh sorry, of course pragmatic doesn't affect blacksmithing, just crafting, so 6 points total.

Hydrosophist can also be really fun with a Rogue, but the synergy is not as great as with an Aerotheurge because frozen enemies get an armor boost. But better healing and covering the map in ice is always a plus.

Thanks for info!
It is my first play so i will leave lone wolves and try classic party.
Rogue, mage, warrior, mage should be good.
Should i take glass cannon for rogue and mage? (more AP)
- I wanted to play archer for the first time. But when i tried it it was not good as i expected. I know that skeletons have resistances against arrows.. So, backstab should be good. With high sneak i hope, that i will be able to sneak behind enemy before combat

came up with one more question so decided to reuse my old topic instead of starting new one.

I read from some topics that certain quests can give more or less exp depending on the solution you do the quest with. And ive even verified this myself now, getting more or less exp based on how i do the quest.

What im curious about is that given that this game has limited exp, how much do these exp ranges affect your maximum level? If you for example always picked the solution that gives least exp throughout the game, what lvl would you end up as? Do you always reach lvl 20 no matter what you choose? Ive heard that some people have gotten lvl 22 or lvl 23 as their max level, do these people play the game in some specific way, always taking the solution that gives them maximum exp possible?

Thank you for all the answers.

Someone on here completed the game at level 13. Most people will complete the game around 17-20 if they miss a bunch of stuff. 22 if they poke their nose into every nook and cranny.

It used to be lower than that, but some quests were not giving non-combat "Charisma" experience when they should have been in earlier patches.

You can expect to miss maybe 1 single level if you still check every nook but make choices that reward less experience.

Also you stop getting attribute / skill / talent points past level 20, and vendors only sell items scaled up to level 20. The game will still get easier at higher level than that (+% CC, +% to hit etc.) and you can craft higher level items, but your build will already be finalised.