Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Curious Zombie Mechanics

I wanted to do a solo run with the Zombie talent. I figured I wanted to have as many sources of poison damage as possible as it is the only form of healing I have, so I went Geo/Pyro with the dual poison wands.

At Lvl 4 I took Elemental Affinity and right now I have 17 Int and 14 Memory.

I am amazed that this has been by far been the easiest solo run I've done so far. Most fights were a steamroll, but the ones that weren't had something strange happen...

When fighting a group of 3-4 enemies, after getting the first kill, the AI would run away in fear. This was astonishing to watch. I literally had to chase down multiple enemies from the same fight running away from me in different directions. Sometimes, the AI would just stand there and waste its turn entirely.

Has this happened to anyone?

I've seen the AI do funny things but not this consistently. Is it possible this has something to do with the Zombie talent? The AI seems to be aware I have it because they cast healing spells on me to do dmg. I haven't tested it, but it seems like the AI starts going crazy once it feels it's lost the advantage.

Did you take 1 point in Necro for the Blood Rain/Contaminate combo?

Jokes aside,I think Larian may have focused too much on building encounters based around non zombies. In my playthrough I had yet to encounter enemies which used abilities from Polymorph line and damaging abilities from Hydrosophist line.

Also I think we could use some more tech abilities vs this particular talent line,because early levels in D:OS 1 I had similarly good results with Death Knight (zombie warrior) and Necromancer combo (random Geo/Hidro caster).

I think Larian should start working on a Turn Undead spell....maybe make it a Cleric exclusive (learning requirements 1 point in Necro and 1 in Hydro)

There sometimes seems to be an issue with the AI which lets enemies run away as if they are feared, making fights strangely easy, even if you are not a zombie.

I did a quick playtest with a Necromancer/Polymorph hibrid made from a reptile cleric base and it turns out that Decaying Touch also messes with the healing done to undead from poison sources (test dumy used was the fresly burried corpse on the beach).

If I could just find some arena matches to test Decaying Touch vs healing from necro and mosquito swarm I could better determine the value of this skill in PvP and in future mob compositions.

Decaying touch turns every kind of healing into damage, so it should work that way?

I believe and hope that Decaying touch, as it is right now is working as intended.

Interesting. It has only happened to me in this run. I suppose it must be a bug but I wonder what triggers it.

It could be that the mobs you encountered simply do not posses skills that are able to outdamage your self healing. I know there are certain specialized mobs in the game like the frogs within the seer's cave which are imune to poison and only have poison related abilities.

On the other hand Larian maybe simply needs to teach the AI how to beat this particular build you are using,case in which Larian may need to examine your save file's battle log and full build (which you could probably list here).

We had for example one of those crocodiles running away for no reason. ^^

This happened to me with the crocs, the patrolman and the dog, the magisters guarding the palace, the magisters fighting Cork, and the skeletons by the Shrieker and the dog.



Interestingly enough, the frogs simply never used their corrosive acid and just hit me with physical/poison basic attack, but they do about twice as much physical as poison. They actually didn't run away from me.

In the situations where this has happened (the ones listed above) the behavior basically starts happening after I manage to zone myself off with elemental surfaces. Typically I focus melee down first and make them run around a maze of fire to get to me, while separating myself as much as possible from the ranged enemies. After one or two melee enemies are down, the ranged enemies go into panic mode. Maybe they'll attack me once, and then once I set them on fire and poison them, they start running away and from that point on they never attack me again, they just continue running. So, at first I thought this had to do with zombie, but I think it has to do with the AI having so many conditions on them and the DPS I put out. the funny thing is that I'm fairly certain they could've killed me by doing basic attacks. In many situations I had no Physical armor. Also, the healing from Zombie isn't that great, to be honest. (By the way, I was fighting those mobs under-leveled by 1 or at same level, never above)

My build is nothing spectacular:

Talents: Zombie, Elemental Affinity
Combat Abilities: Geo: 3 , Pyro: 2
Attributes: Int: 17, Mem: 14

Skills: Haste, Fossil Strike, Ignition, Contamination, Bleed Fire, Fireball, Spontaneous Combustion, Magical Poison Dart, Fortify, Teleport (gloves), Dragon's Blaze (racial).

For weapons I am still using a starter wand and the wand the big turtle drops in the beginning.

Let's see if this keeps on happening later in the game...I'll keep it posted. And by the way, how would I access battle logs from save files?

Zombie Witch is fun to play with, it's just that when the poison catch's fire, you're all messed up....lol but was fun for the few experience I had....