Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback The stealth issue

Being able to sneak while fighting is a great thing, however it leads to two situations:
- Hit / sneak / hit / sneak and get away with most battles. That's a cheese, although the only thing to make it possible to beat the first act with only one character.
- Some ennemy abilities somehow just know where our character is. Phoenix dive, the teleportation from the crocodile (although this was just dumb, teleporting back and forth around me while not breaking my stealth), most aoe spells in fact. This leads either to fighting from afar (where they don't see us) or trying to take down those priority targets to win the battle.

The second, the auto-targeting of invisible characters, is clearly a bad thing. How would they know ? That's not the solution to the sneak cheese.

The first needs a bit of polish. The AI should for example at least move to the last location the character was seen, forcing some movement and thoughts about how the ennemy would move without detecting us - although we would probably need to be more mobile (either more movement/AP or more movement spells that don't break stealth).

If they had some way of programming a "possible range from last known position" and had the ai pick a random target location in that possible range, I think it'd be pretty neat. Possibly limit it to making the calculation only if they saw the stealth character in the last round.

Enemies should just look aound, if someone disappears ^^ Sneaking keeps you only invisible, if you are outside of sight cones.

Not exactly the focus of the thread, but I'd like to take another chance about begging developers to implement some proper stealth animation in this sequel, instead of sticking to the comic relief bush/rock disguise thing.

Looking around would probably kill the sneaking mechanism though, the NPC would just have to do a 360° to uncover our character.

I agree that the "possible range from last seen position" seems like a good idea. However it would mean going even further while stealthed, which means more AP for movement, which means less AP for hitting ... Which means probably buffing stealth attacks ?

And yeah, throwing an AOE at the last seen position seems much better than instantaneously divining the sneaking character's location to launch that AOE...

Honestly I don't think 'sneaking' should be possible as a viable in combat tactic if you are in the middle of the field. Perhaps if you are a sharpshooter on high ground, but not in the middle of the mess. For such things there would be invisibility.

It also would be mostly enough, if enemies would just turn into his last seen direction to check there.

That's my thoughts aswell. You shouldn't be able to "Sneak" while already engaged in combat. Using invisibility is fine, but the concept of sneaking in combat makes no sense, when the enemies are already aware of your presence.

You can clearly see how broken this mechanic can be when you watch tee's play-through as a solo ranger. I'm all for being able to clear the game with only 1 character, but being able to sneak-attack-sneak-attack-etc is pretty stupid.

That's a fair enough opinion, but in that case, Guerrilla and Speedcreeper will have to be be deleted and the two skills (so far) which give bonuses while sneaking will need to be rebalanced in that case.

Yeah this game follows D&D thinking, stop trying to apply logic

Ah yes, I forgot.

Well then, apply any of the suggestions above so that enemies either look for the sneaking character, or blast the spot he was in with AOEs. So that at least you need to move after sneaking.

I'm pretty sure you can't sneak in D&D while standing behind an enemy.

You can, and can even hide in plain sight once good enough.

Fun > realism

Yes you see stealth during combat is completely unrealistic and is never done in real life.

Right Guerilla fighters? Right Snipers?

Stealth during combat isn't unrealistic... Just going "I am sneaking" while being directly observed without anything intervening is unrealistic.

As for "Sneaking while behind someone", not only can you... But realistically... you also can. You are clearly there, you are just being extra sneaky so the opponent cannot lay a beat on you as easily.

Stealth and "Can be caught" are not mutually exclusive. As well "Stealth" and "Know you are there" are not mutually exclusive.

Again, welcome to D&D,.

Also last I checked its a magic spell that makes you literally disappear, so yes, they can disappear into thin air

Not quite, that is not how it works in dnd. At least not until Epic levels but that is broken anyhow.

"Hide in Plain Sight" isn't the ability to hide while being observed. It is the ability to hide without cover.

Divinity has Invisibility too, so they have this kind of magic.


If you attacked someone from behind and then disappear, he at least should turn around and look for you. That enemies don't do that, is the unrealistic part.

After this last update, what were your feeling about stealth ? Did something meaningfully change ?

I have yet to face ennemies that have the "I know you're there" skills to see if something changed (the broken thing), but it seems we can still hide in plain sight and the AI won't do anything.