Larian Studios Forums Beyond Divinity (English) Help/Tips/Tricks How about some skills help for beginners?

I read in various posts about skills that completely fail to function, skills that do not work very well, skills that are so good they are almost overpowering.

However, even with a search I couldn't find info on the critical issue of skills gathered together in any one thread. (please just send me there if there is already a good thread of this kind.)

Looking in this post for skills that people consider worthless (either because they do not work as indicated (assuming patch 1.42), or just not worthwhile) and skills that are really valuable.

Thanks for any help.

Bad picks:
Picklock
Identify(*)
Repair(*)
Wisdom
Luck
Embellish
Recover arrows
Feign death
Act 1 spells
Make potion
Combine
Any weapon skill not augmenting your favourite weapon.
Trapdetection(+)
Trapdisarming(+)
(^)The entire summoning doll line

(*) Why bother when you can just jump to a Battlefield repair/ID when ever you feel like it (and then rob all the money you just spend by pickpocketing the poor merchant)
(+) You don't have a suicide doll (or 3) for nothing
(^) Although I am/was tempted to spend a few points in the increase level skill so that I could get a bunch of mules by spending all stat points in strength.

Must haves:
Pickpocket
Once you find your favourite weapon any specialisations in that.
Skills in a backup weapon incase your target is immume to a certain type of attack.
Post level 1 spells

shiled blocking is one of the best skills at lvl 10 u hardly get hurt at all even if u have low armour and evasion

Sweet man. That's the kind ot skills round-up I was looking for too. It will help when I start over soon. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" />

Just a note to add: while you have more than enough money to identify and repair everything on the Battlefield, that may change in future patches. For now, ignoring those skills is fine. In the future, well...stay tuned. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

well for me Luck is a "must have", take a look to the description <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

Sharpen's a world crusher; it almost doubles the damage on a weapon for each level you have in it -- at a cost of +6 or so agility requirement per level. An excellent utility skill.

Definately watch out for 1H vs 1H + Shield; the two are completely similar skills, but as soon as you slap on a shield, all proficiency points you spent in 1H are cancelled. Hopefully, garbage like this gets addressed in a patch...

Question about luck?

Does your luck determine the chance to find better items when you enter the zone, or when you open a container. It would seem that it would be when you enter a zone and the zone items are generated, and if that is true then putting on all your +luck items when you enter a zone, then switching back to your regular gear is a good thing.

everytime the game generate an item, it check the luck

ok, so it is actually when you open a container (including monster drops). Makes sense.

There are plenty of luck boosting items throughout the game, so I would not say the skill was all that useful. Certainly not when you will gain so few skill points over the course of the game. Don't forget, some skill levels go up to 10 and you will have around 40 skill points per character by the end of the game. You are really ideally building a couple of highly specialised units.

Also, do NOT rely on having the Battlefields available. In some acts they are buggy, and impossible to leave if you enter at the wrong place - thus, unusable in those areas. For that reason Repair is a useful skill to have.

Extract is very useful, because it allows you to manufacture potions providing you have the right Alchemy Plants - and there are plenty of those in the game!

Combine is useful if you have a Mage character in the mix, useless if you have two fighters or any other combo where regenerating Mana & HP together is not required.

Anything that will help you make or find arrows is useless. You will find literally thousands of them throughout the game, probably tens of thousands.

As a Mage - pick one major spell, and then stick with it. You won't have the skill points available to deal enormous damage with several at once.

Never be afraid to trash a skill that proves useless and start over.

Lock Picking never works on anything you need it to, so is useless. Wisdom takes skill points for minimal benefits. Summoning Dolls skills are a complete waste of time.

If your Warrior has Sharpen, Death Blow, Improved Accuracy & Damage on his weapon of choice, he will kill nearly anything in a couple of hits. All are good skills to have.

Putting one point in the wizard healing spell for each character is a good idea. In the unlikely event you run low on potions, it will help conserve them.

Hope this helps <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Replying to give this a bump, because I am sure there is lot more to be said about the topic.

Let me add some specific questions:

Is convert arrows worth it for an archer?

Are their weapon skills more valuable than others--i.e. choose improved accuracy, improved damge, improved critial hits, improved deathblow, improved reload (ranged weapons), improved durability, etc. Concentrate on one or two, or balance them out?

What about spells? One or two, which ones, to the max? A range of spells with different damage? Which ones are best?

Come on, I know some of you have views about these issues and I am curious to hear them.

I never bothered with Improved Durability on anything, as the Repair skill covers everything. To me, it seems redundant.

Not sure Convert Arrows is worth having either, as the sheer amount and variety of arrows you will find should be satisfactory to any archer.

On convert arrows, gather alot of normal arrows conserve some skillpoints then plug them all into convert arrows and convert your normal arrows. As has already been mentioned you can get tens of thousands of arrows also if you buy them. by conveting them you can make an ammasing amount of money and then you can unlearn the skill again untill the day you feel you have enough arrows to do it again. So from a purely financial perspective it is a good skill to learn

And about luck, well for those of us who are just dying to get better and better gear it is an absolut must. I do not know how big the effect of an extra 15 luck is but I am addicted to that skill so I only hope it really helps ha ha

Luck can get to 30 (that is 10 levels)
Trying out how good luck works at the moment, left act 1 with 86 luck <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />, am now in act two with 109 luck <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ouch.gif" alt="" /> (and an item or two that can still be replaced to get at least another 10 points extra). Just remember there ain't such a thing as overkill <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/evilgrin1.gif" alt="" />

It doesn't seem to affect the number of items you find in containers. It also seems to be a who is leading type of skill. When my hero leads I just don't get anything smaller then a medium potion out of a container and now with the upgrade to over 100 I expect to only find the large potions. But when I put the deathknight in charge and he unfogs a container that container tends to hold small potions.

It also seems to affect the amount of gold found. The difference between getting 100+ gold from a place or 'just' 40 is striking.

I thought this would be a useful skill too. But do you need a particular skill level before you can extract potions? I have a skill level of 4 but still can't extract even a minor potion! Am I missing something?

You need 7 different coloured plants => have you got them? If so, the char with the alchemy skill should be leading or in single mode and have them in his/her inventory. Then right click on a bunch - select size - a new pane pops up => select potion.

At lvl 4 you should be able to extract large and even permanent potions - if you have the holy water (in 1.42 it can be used only once for this). But lvl 3 is sufficient for creating large potions.

Some observations regarding skills.

Fireball, horribly poor, because you end burning yourself with it.

Lightning storm, the UBER masskilling spell, max it to 10 points. None of the other attack spells compare to it.

Elder Fire, seems good, but lightning storm hits targets much better.

Ive noticed that a lot of things seems to be pretty weak to crushing, crushing is especially good for act 1. And i think in later acts its still good. Slashing seems to be whats most resisted by critters.

imo you have far too few skillpoints in this game that follows the same skillpoint model as divdiv, where skills could go up to 5 ranks, and you could find skillbooks for many things, or being taught. Here, to max a single weapon proficiency, you need a staggering 50 pts.

As an added note on the 'Combine' Skill, virtually any type of potion you try to combine with a Mana potion will give you a Restoration potion <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> Or at least that's the way it worked for me <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Edit: I was wrong. Only Stamina + Mana and Health + Mana give you Restoration potions.