(From here, which is better formatted:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m_MfBlhnVbHDmLbHByDlQnuEyCq2gKGUskJQ2XosUvo/edit?usp=sharing )
Divinity: Original Sin II Low-Spoiler Beginner Advice
-DISABLE STEAM CLOUD SAVES! Doing so prevents D:OSII from getting confused as to which saves are ‘real.’ Disabling Steam Cloud saves prevents data corruption and loss! To disable, open Steam’s game library, select Divinity: Original Sin II, right-click it, choose Properties, click the UPDATES tab on the top, then click the box beside Enable Steam Cloud synchronization for Divinity: Original Sin II.
-Bedrolls are wonderful! You may need only one, but I advise giving one to each party member.
-Physical armor (grey bar) and magic armor (blue bar) block most status effects. Thus, when facing foes, you usually need to remove their grey bar to affect them with physical crowd control like Taunt or Chicken OR deplete their magic armor (blue bar) to affect them with spell CC like Stun or Shock.
-Piercing damage ignores armor.
-Thievery is very useful, but requires setup. Each party member can steal only once per NPC, and your stealing limit depends entirely on your Thievery skill.
-Save often and in multiple 'hard'/manual slots! Autosave and quicksave alone are likely too little for you. Besides, you can name your hard saves.-Starting a game on Honour or Tactician Mode means you can't change the difficulty mid-game.
-Experiment with mechanics by making a buncha temp characters for the first area. Determine what you like.
-Story characters (Fane, Sebille, Beast, etc.) get personal quests and character-specific dialog and voiceovers. You can choose all aspects of your main character (stats, skills, etc.) at character creation.
-You can eventually freely respec all characters in your party.
-Each party member with Thievery can steal from each NPC only ONCE - EVER. The amount you can steal depends entirely on your Thievery stat.
-When you have more than 1 party member (to a maximum of 4), you can click and drag the portraits on the left side to rearrange their order and to break and make chains. Each chain is a group, and each character, theoretically, can act independently in a separate space, yet affect all in the game.
-Summoned totems and incarnates from the Summoning skill tree take on the characteristics of the surface onto which they were summoned. For example, summoning a totem onto plain ground gets you a wood totem that does physical damage while summoning an incarnate onto a patch of fire makes it a fire incarnate with Fireball that does magical fire damage. (Each type of incarnate has an extra skill or two compared to a basic incarnate depending on the environment onto which it was summoned.) The types of environmental summons are:
....-Basic (summon onto plain ground)
....-Blood (summon onto blood)
....-Electricity (summon onto electrified blood or water)
....-Fire (summon onto fire)
....-Oil (summon onto oil)
....-Poison (summon onto poison)
....-Water (summon onto water or ice)
-Initiative works in a round robin style. The unit (ally or enemy) with the highest initiative goes first, then the unit with the highest initiative from the other team (enemy if allies went first and vice versa) goes first, then the unit from the first team with the second-highest initiative goes, then the unit from the second team with the second-highest initiative goes, and so on. If one side has more units than the the other, the side with fewer units stops adding its side’s units to the list. For example, team A (the party) has 5 units and team B (foes) has 3 units. If the party goes first, the starting initiative order would be ABABABAA.
-Delaying your turn puts you at the end of the round’s initiative order. This may be useful to let others approach you or otherwise act before you.
-You can use most skills out of combat. You can, for example, cast spells or attack things to strike first, thereby starting a fight.
