Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Thank you! Undocumented Difficulty Increase

I've been pretty vocal over the last year on getting more difficulty out of the game. I have a close group of friends that really enjoy beating this game over and over while optimizing our strategies and builds. We turned to mods when the tactician difficulty fell short of providing the challenge we looked for but we always encouraged Larian to look at some of the more overpowered spells/strategies and bring them back.

The Definitive edition has addressed A LOT of these issues and as my group is moving into the 3rd act I felt compelled to share some of the undocumented changes that we were very happy with.

1. Spider Form Nerf

Changed to 0 AP cast and 2 ap per web with web available every 2 turns. This spell has become the height of cheese as the webs work 100% of the time through armor. But what made them really broken was that you could apply every turn and keep the enemies completely stuck. Now you have to either devote 2 people to it or cycle other CC in there.

2. Bouncing Shield Nerf

This has long been an overpowered ability that as a result of the overall armor reduction (scaling on shields) has become a lot more reasonable. Additionally the armor of masterwork rune in shield was nerfed which brings this total down a bit more too. I still use the skill and consider it really good but it was actually nice to see it brought down. It is now IMO a well balanced and great feeling ability.

3. Critical Hit Values Nerf (weapons/runes)

The amount of crit you could get was rather absurd. We've noticed singled handed weapons can't get 10% anymore (7% now) and the infamous Flame Rune has lost a few percent at each increment. Other options might open up now. This was a healthy move for balance away from just pure crit diving setups.

4. Gold Value Decrease

As mentioned in the patch notes a lot of unique weapons have had their gold selling values decreased. This is especially apparent in act 2 where a lot of the unique weapons sold for crazy amounts. Keeping gold available down a bit helps the balance and makes decision making more relevant for purchases. We also noticed gold values of normal items seem a bit lower too although this may be a result of the reduced armor values on them.

5. Undertavern merchant Fix

We affectionately call him "Rocky" and we always noticed he had a very large inventory and would keep double gold value. This has been fixed with DE and he is now a normal merchant. We were happy to see this fix come through because his inventory was definitely overpowered.

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This is a really great start to preserving a nice balance and feel to the tactician mode. Ideally you want to identify outliers that forced optimal game play through very specific setups. By bringing down the outliers it helps create a more diverse experience where many different competing strategies can come up.

I'll add to this list as we discover any other changes we liked (i'm sure i left off a bunch already) but as it stands we are giving Larian a 10/10 for the DE. As a group we are very happy with the direction you guys went with these fixes and we are already theorycrafting new options that have opened up for us!

Well! Nice to hear some positive feedback for a change.

Though I wish they had done at least a bit more about the Talents.

I appreciate this feedback, personally. Not sure when I'll be diving back into the game for real, so if you'd keep this post updated with your future discoveries, that would be great.