Larian Studios Forums Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis (English) Help/Tips/Tricks Character Optimization

I've been playing the game for a week now, and wanted to start a thread to share character optimization tips for this awesome game.

A few disclaimers: you might find some spoilers in there, english is not my native language so please forgive the mistakes you are bound to find, and finally I haven't finished the game yet so I might be missing some end-game insights.

Here we go:

Stats

• Vitality:
  
  Each points raises your hps by 7. Since you also get hp each time you get a new level this stat is important at early on, but has diminishing returns later, even more so because you can find equipments that boosts your hps by large amounts.
• Spirit:
  
  Same mechanism as Vitality, but for mana.
• Strength:
  
  Each points boosts your melee damage by 0.5%, Strong Body by 1, Melee Resistance by 1, hp regen by 0.006%.
  
  Strong Body is used to resist dots (poison, bleed, etc..) but they do low damage anyway, and resist polymorphism which is kinda useless since it wears off as soon as you get it (that means very quickly :P).
  
  All in all, this is the least useful stat (see note about damage types), I use it only to meet equipment requirements.
• Dexterity:
  
  Each points boosts your ranged damage by 0.5%, Heightened Reflexes by 1, Ranged Resistance by 1.
  
  Could be useful for ranged-only characters, but I'm reserving my judgement till I do some testing on how Heightened Reflexes works.
  
  For others just put points there to meet equipment requirement.
• Intelligence:
  
  Each points boosts your magic damage by 1%, Indomitable Will by 1, Magic Resistance by 1, mana regen by 0.006%.
  
  Indomitable Will helps you resist stun, fear, etc... quite important since if one of those lands while you're low on hp, that means a quick trip to the savegame loading screen :P

Note about damage types:
Melee damage means the non-magical portion of damage of a melee weapon. Same for ranged.
Magical damage is the damage inflicted by spells, *and* the magical damage of weapons.
You can find a lot of weapons that have 90% of their damage as magical, so in my opinion that makes intelligence the superior stat for offense: it has double the effect (+1%/point vs +0.5%/point), and raises melee, ranged and spell dps, while dex/str only raise one.

Resistances

The resistance points from your stats and equipment are converted into a reduction % of incoming damage.
I haven't figured out what the formula is, but I'm interested if anyone knows

Personally I ended up focusing on ranged/magic resistance. Melee damage can also be mitigated using evade, and I find melee types easy to deal with using smart pulling, kiting, and the dps you can dish out at close range.

Skills

Dragon Slayer

• Expert XXX:
  
  A must for melee fighters, since it increase both physical and magical damage, and also increase all skill damage linked to that weapon (ex: it boosts thousand cuts).
  
  Unarmed, One Armed, Sword and Shield: useless.
  Two Handed: +10% damage/point.
  Dual Wield: starts out well with some hefty +25% on the off hand, but once you spend enough for your off hand to reach the damage of the main hand, it averages out at a disappointing +3%/point.
  
  Note on weapons:
  After doing some averages, it appears a two hander does about 1.65 times more damage than a one hander of the same level.
  By factoring in the expert skill, we get:
  - at rank 1:
  +5%/-50% for dual wield, +5% for 2h
  = x1.55 damage for dual wield, and x1.73 for 2h
  - at rank 10:
  +34%/+34% for dual wield, +95% for 2h
  = x2.68 for dual wield, x3.22 for 2h
  
  Conclusion: if you don't want to invest into melee, you may go for dual wield since 1h have lower stat requirements, gives you twice the enchantment/charm slots, and dps that is only slightly lower than 2h (at rank 1). If you're focusing on melee, go 2h, no questions asked :P
• Mind Reading/Wisdom:
  
  You're basically exchanging skill points for more exp. In the case of mind reading it's not really worth it unless you're trying to mind read everything that moves.
  For wisdom I'd say definitely one point... but you can find a necklace early on that boosts wisdom by 2, so...
• Open locks:
  
  Skill points for more loot.
  You'll have to keep investing in this skill for it to be useful, as the level of locks go up.
  I ended up regretting the single point I put there, but if you can't stand the sight of an unlockable chest, go for it :P
• Stowing: without it you may struggle a bit early on with your inventory management, but it becomes useless when you get your battle tower.

Ranger Skills:

• Poison/Exploding arrow: low damage, that is not increased by either dexterity or intelligence. I'd avoid it (go for splitting arrows if you need AE).
• Evil Surpise: nice for boss fights, though I always forget to use it :P
• Ranger Strength: +5% ranged damage/points. Note that it only increases physical damage unlike Expert XXX that works on both physical and magical. So good only for dex rangers.
• Ranger Stealth:
  
  With 2 points in there, you can get into bow range of a mob without being detected. But the thing is: even after you fire, only the mob you fired upon will aggro.
  That means you're assured to single pull all mobs in the game, even if they're in a pack of 10 or more; well unless they're dropped on top of you like in a boss fight.
  With more than 2 points, you extends your range of invisibility so that you can single pull mobs beyond the enemy's front line, like that pesky healer hiding behind his friends..
  All in all a very powerful skill, to the point of making the game a bit too easy.
• Stunning Arrows: with enough points in there you can lockup a mob during most of the fight while you tear it down. Too bad most bosses are immune.
• Potion use: for the moment potions restore enough hp/mana as it is, may be useful later on.
• Splitting Arrows:
  
  Now we have a winner!
  Its intended use as an AE tool works well and scales, unlike exploding arrow.
  What makes it awesome is that at point blank range your target will be hit by all of your arrows! Since you get 1 additional arrow per point it's awesome dps.
  And to top it off, it's only on a 5s cooldown..
  Well worth it even for a pure melee, that will use it when thousand cuts is on cooldown :p
• Evade: a point there is required since you immediately get +10%; after that it's only +2%/point. Note that it only works on melee hits.
• Way of the ranger:
  
  The bonus only applies to physical damage, so it's good only for a dex ranger. To boost magic ranged damage, invest in Way of the Battlemage.
  The melee damage penalty applies only to physical damage too, so if your main source of damage is magical (ranged or melee) you can get a +50 heightened reflexes boost for a single point (if you're willing to say goodbye to your melee resistance).

Warrior skills

• Whirlwind:
  
  Only melee AE tool known to slayers, and it does its job. More that one point is not advised here as the added damage is pathetic, and the knockdown chance is only +3%/point.
  This skill is also incredibly useful to break crates/jar stacked together. It's really a pain to select each one to check its content, but a whirlwind later you don't have to worry about it anymore, and look! there was a chest hidden behind :P
• Charge Attack:
  
  Very useful strategical tool.
  Lets you quickly move around the battlefield to clean up the lone mage/archer, while escaping the few melees that surrounded you a few moments ago.
  A point is a must.
• Jump attack: the damage is weak. With enough points could be used to do some (manaless) crowd control with the knockdown effect, but it's not very efficient.
• Death Attack: handy on bosses, but useless on regular mobs.
• Defense: nice resistance boosts, also with enough points you won't get any melee penalty.
• Battle Rage: only boosts your physical damage, so only good if you are a str warrior.
• Life Leech: starts out too low to be usefull, but at rank 13 you get 34% chance to leech 46% of your damage. On average you're healing 15% of the damage you deal.. not bad.
• Bleeding cut: the added damage is too low to be useful.
• Regenerate: if you have low str, a single point here will get you a decent regeneration rate. If you need more, go for the heal spell (or ghost) instead.
• Thousands cuts:
  
  The bread and butter of the warrior.
  Launches 6 very fast strikes, for massive damage. Plus it seems that your target is unable to retaliate while the strikes are landing.
  The only downside is the 15 seconds cooldown. A point is a must, the more the merrier..
• Death Blow: increases your crit strike change, what's not to like?
• Reflect Damage:
  
  Passive skill, works even on ranged attacks... sounds awesome on paper.
  But the problem is that your opponents have low dps but high hp compared to you. Meaning that even with some heavy points investment in this skill the reflected damage stays low.
  Might be useful for a character specialised on damage shield (through equipment), and high survivability.

Mage skills:

• Direct damage spells:
  
  All in all I'm not a big fan of those spells.
  You'll have to keep investing points for the damage to scale, and you become very dependent on mana.
  Only magic missile is usable as a main weapon (1s cooldown), but the damage is only on par with a bow (that does not require a such heavy investment). The others are on a 15s cooldown and the damage is not even remotly close to what you get from thousand cuts or splitting arrows.
• Mana Usage: can help you solve your mana problems if mana drain is not enough.
• Mana Drain: very very useful if you melee a lot. But usually a point is enough.
• Confusion:
  
  Very nice if you sling spells a lot. It 'procs' on each individual projectile of a spell, so it occurs more than the percentage may indicate.
  Also a nice combo even if you don't use spells: the magic damage shield enchantment (the one that launches a white ball when you get hit) is considered a spell, so it works with Confusion and your opponents may get stunned just by attacking you :P
• Polymorphism: only true crowd control spell that works on all mobs independently of their level. So a single point is nice if you don't want to invest heavily in another CC (who said charm?)
• Heal: very useful spell, a point here really cuts back on downtime/potion use, but also comes with a high mana cost.
• Way of the Battlemage: raise your magic damage by a large amount, and it applies to your weapon. Awesome.

Priest Skills

• Raise Ghost:
  
  Summons are powerful, and stay useful even after you get your creature. This one comes with a very handy healing spell.
  The downside is you'll have to keep investing skill points if you want to keep using it. Also you'll sometime find yourself unable to upgrade your pet: from level 14 to the moment you get your battle tower, so it'll be harder if you depend heavily on it.
• Raise Zombie: more dps than the ghost, but no healing (which makes it worse in my opinion)
• Master Summoner: nice if you use summon spells, but does not applies to your creature.
• Fear: very powerful crowd control spell, two bad the cooldown is so long. Can be a good complement to charm.
• Embrace the shadows:
  
  Need 10s to drink a potion in peace during a long fight, while positioning yourself in the best position to wreak havoc when it wears of? Skip past a group of nasties you don't want to fight?
  You get all that for only 1 point, more is not that useful.
  It also makes snatching a scale from an angry dragon a breeze... (*hint hint*).
• Charm:
  
  The best crowd control in my opinion: usable during the whole fight duration once you invest a few points, distract quite a few opponents and with lucks even kill some.
  Like most others, you must keep investing in it for it to stays usable.
  Too bad there's a xp penalty for mobs you kill with this spell, or it would be all powerful.
• Blind: can take out a mob for quite a while, but the cooldown is way too long.
• Curse: useful for boss fights, not much more.
• Life sacrifice: handy for pure mages, but for others mana drain/efficiency and potions are usually enough.
• Summon Demon: nice little tank, give it a try if your creature is feeling lonely.
• Way of the wise Wizard: boosts your magic defenses at the cost of less magic damage. At rank 5 the offense penalty disappears, making it quite nice but 5 skill points is a bit too costly for my taste.

Tips/Tricks:

• Damage bonuses stacks geometrically. For example if you get +50% damage from two different sources, you wont end up with +100% but +125% (1.5*1.5)! So try have has many damage boosting skills/stats as possible, instead of focusing heavily on only one.
• Kiting is extremely easy, in particular using the back jump you get after becoming a dragon knight.
• Don't forget to bind the quick save/load keys in the option menu, it makes your life really easier :P
• Go for the warrior class at the beginning, since it gets you whirlwind (nice for breaking crates!), and the str points are always useful for equipment requirements. The other skills you can get (poison arrows/fireball), are not that nice.
• Useful mindreads cost a lot of exp, you can safely skip the low cost ones.

Your turn now! :P

Edit: enhanced the presentation, fixed an incorrect dual wield skill value, added a missing 0 in the regen numbers

Very nice guide. You're mostly correct on the numbers.

To help you out let me inform you about Heightened Reflexes.
A critical does 1,5 times damage.
On top of that add your heightened reflex in % to that damage.

So a normal hit of 100 damage will do 150 if critical and 225 if your heightened reflexes is 50%.


Also on your comparison of the different weaponconfigurations, do not forget the animation speeds.
Unarmed does a lot more hits in 10 seconds than for instance a twohander.

Keep up the good work!

Greever

"You can find a lot of weapons that have 90% of their damage as magical, so in my opinion that makes intelligence the superior stat for offense: it has double the effect (+1%/point vs +0.5%/point), and raises melee, ranged and spell dps, while dex/str only raise one."


hummm, you saying that you should go INT instead of Dex/STR for both ranger and melee style of play in adition to a more "mage style"?

Thats not a very logical from a design point of view... /confused

what is AE and DPS?

I got 5 in lockpick, found some good equipment early on in some of those chests. However, I do disagree with the 2 hand vs duel wield. I've found Duel Wield far more damaging then 2 hand. 2 Had had like 7-69 damage while duel wild had more like 45-69 meaning you don't get low hits. Though swinging a longer sword was more fun.

Shields are a joke in this game, hopefully they are greatly improved in the patch.

I put 5 in healing and maxed the mana efficiency skill. Maxing that skill meant I was not totally dependent on mana as a warrior.

@Greever: Thanks for the heightened reflex formula


I made a damage instead of dps comparison because 2 handed and dual wields seemed to have the same swinging speed, and also because the flat damage value is used for skills.
That's what makes me disregard 1h/unarmed: even if the regular swinging dps is the same (thanks to a faster animation), the skill damage is halved, which makes 2h or dual wield a better choice.


For melee I'd say Int is the way to go, even if that's counter intuitive.
For ranger it's close. Choosing Dex and putting lot of points into ranger strength will give you slightly more damage (this skill is only applied to physical damage). But choosing Int will not cost you any skill point for a damage that is close, and will also boost melee and spells.

@LightningLockey:
AE means Aera of Effect, DPS means damage per second.

I've found that 2h is the best early on but after the battle tower the 1h weapons start to rule and 2h weapons stop becoming stronger + dual wield is slow while 2h in dps do more

because of the skill points bug I've checked the best 2h and dual wield and 2h did on 300 damage more (in dps it should be like 500)

Well... Nice guide, but STR isn't all that unreliable xD I made a Hydrid character, with more str and i can say having HIGH regen is awesome... i barely use potions, and going thru the battles is like a taking walk in the park... The Dragon Slayer skills of Expertise are junk up to lvl 5, nice up to lvl 10 and total hax after that.

It's easy to get high damages, but not so easy to get good defenses, the mage skills aren't all that bad as u said too xD mobs usually have weak magical defense, depends on their classes obviously, but i used to take like... 20 melee dmg and 60 magic dmg, with melee and magical defenses having almost the same values, perhaps, later in the game they get crappy, but who knows, the Dragon Slayer trainer says he is better at magic training, perhaps he CAN do some magic with those advanced lvls...

The Wisdow thingie xD ekip drops are totally random... lucky you u got a 2 wisdow jewelry, i only found a crappy bow that gave 1, if u get something and die, load and open the same chest and it'll drop something diffrent of the first time.

Well... I really liked ur post, rouses up opinions ^^ we can learn wich each other!

Heh, don't worry, using strength doesn't make a character unreliable :P
Sure the regen strength gives you is nice, but take a look at the regeneration skill: with 6 points in it, you can get the same regen as a char with 100 Str... So by going Int, you get more melee damage, ranged damage, and spell damage.. and you can get the same regen if you feel like it. Not to mention that you also get a boosted mana regen that can't be duplicated with skills.


Well for two handed, you get the same bonus/point (10%) whether you're below or above lvl 5. In the case of dual wield, it's the other way around: bonuses are good from 1-5, then average to a low 3%/point after that.


While it's true that most drops are random, not all are; like some named drops from bosses, or a few quest rewards.
The one I'm talking about is the "Hermits' Talisman of the North of the Magic Gods", which is not random, and you can get by doing the the 3 talisman quest in the delerict tunnels below broken valley.

Endgame, Magic Missile is actualy far more powerful than anything you do in melee with similar point investments. Remember the way the spell scales, and how damage modifiers work.

It's harder with magic until level 15 or so, after that it actually gets easier as a mage than as a fighter because the spells are so powerful ^^;

I totally disagree with that. Let me crunch some numbers to prove it:

Magic Missile:
Let's assume 100 int (+100% magic damage), rank 10 magic missile (4 projectiles/33 dmg), rank 5 destruction skill (+50% spell damage), activated rank 5 Way of the Battlemage (+50% magic damage).
You're looking at:
4*33*2*1.5*1.5=594 damage.
With a cooldown of 1s, that's 594 dps.

Melee:
Let's assume 100 int (+100% magic damage), 30 str, 20 dex, rank 10 two-handed expertise (+95% weapon damage), activated rank 5 Way of the Battlemage (+50% magic damage), rank 5 death blow (+17% crit chance).
Let's take a basic lvl 25 2h sword with 85 average damage, 70% of which is magical, and a single 24 magical dmg enchantment.
You're looking at:
109*(.3*1.15+.7*2*1.5)*1.95=519.7 damage.
Let's take into account the crit damage.
7% base crit + 17% bonus from death blow, critical damage of 1.5*1.2 (thanks Greever for the formula :P):
519.7*(1+.24*1.5*1.2)=744.2 average damage

A 2h sword swing once every ~0.82 seconds, so that gives us a total of 744.2/0.82=907.6 dps.

You'll notice the melee build uses a mid-level, poor quality sword (usually you'd add a few +24 magic damage enchantment), and we're just using regular swing dps.
A well equiped, skill using warrior will be doing a lot more than that.
So yes, melee is doing more damage :P

Hello all!

COuldnt help but read this mini-spoiler before playing the game and i must confess i'm quite puzzled that in an RPG, the melee oriented character gets more damage from INT than from STR.

If your numbers are correct (wich they seem), i think larian should re-balance it somewhat so that Strenght is back on its track as more usefull to warrior builds instead of intelect. Perhaps rebalance the percentage of magical damage that weapons do, or rebalance the bonus from intelect on those weapons enhancements.

It also seems that warrior builds, with a 2h weapon are by far the most damaging types, wich probably has to do with that added damage from Intelect affecting enchantments and the magical damage of weapons. Seems to me it should be brought down a little.

There are 2 types of damage that can be done on a weapon.

Regular weapon damage (modified by str)
Magic weapon damage (modified by int)

I was playing fine with adding nothing into int, all into vitality and strength.

Mages get to wild weapons as well as warriors. There are some weapons that offer little regular weapon damage and lots of magic weapon damage. Those require substantially higher int to wield.

And for every 1 dexterity, you get 1% more chance of doing critical damage.

The weapon will look like this as an example

Weapon damage 1-8
Magic damage 0-2

Requires 3 str

--------------------

Weapon damage 0-2
Magic damage 1-8

Requires 3 int.

xD i Don't think str is unreliable, or int is too reliable, and that's what i liked more in the game... You can make any type of character and be good with it!

Besides, there's each one opinion behind each character, magic is nice, yeah, but even tho u can get the same regen of 100 str with regen 6, imagine what u can do with both? or yet with regen 15 and str 100? xD

Well... Perhaps my view might be warped, cause, my lvl lately is being much higher than the mobs, after lvl 25, killing monsters is being a piece of cake, i kill the bosses with one Thousand Strikes...

I see this is a game i'll play many times, i'll sure make all types of builds, then, i could, dunno, discuss better about this, as i said, i'm not even totally melee or anything, i have an hybrid build, at lvl 34 i have VIT-45, SPR-3, STR-62, DEX-48 and INT-41 with the ekips i use, very few skills, invested more in "quality" than quantity...

Made this sticky cause it contains lots of useful info for new players. And I like ppl discussing about this type of stuff.

Really
oo yea
I am mage
I always invest only in spirit and little in intelligence
so on level 18- I have
-505 mana
-250 health
-1 strenght
-1 dexterity
-10 intelligence

After I get high mana I start investiong points in stamina but they still kill me very fast
oh yes
I think I will skip wisdom
I use charm,magic missiles and healing

is that good

Spirit isn't so important, intelligence matters much.
Also, forget about wisdom. It almost useless. Don't spend too much EXP for Mindread and you're set.

Don't forget that putting points in STR DEX and INT also boosts their respective defenses.

yap
but I am pure mage
something like dragon lord

Thanks guys

Even as a mage it's very wise to also put points in strength... to bolster your melee protection. Also, to be able to wear the best armor in the game. I raise Strength only to meet requirements. I don't raise dexterity but use potions of dexterity when I have to fight many archers (to increase my ranged protection).

But then, I'm playing more as a battlemage... I throw a fireball, and if that does not kill them outright, I use firewall when they're close, then hack them up with a two-hander.

Pure magic here
I know this game isn"t suitable for pure mages but hell I am overpowered
Right now

Level 19
Vitality-1(150 health)
Spirit-54(505 mana)
DEX-1
STR-1
INT-34

and I have nice belt that give +1 to magic missiles so I am always one step ahead of my enemies
My true problem is my health but I find solution

Magic is weak against me(34% for now :-D)
Melee enemies are dead before they even reach to me and I am secure against them(firewall)
only problem is ranged attack
damn arrows follow my mage


Spells

Magic missiles-8(4*73=292 DPS)
Fire wall-2
Mindread-5

but I see that virumor is kind of expert with magic

How about destruction(is that even worth to take)

charm VS polymorph


EDIT:I forgot to tell you
I wear nightbringer set(require intelligene and boost ranged and magic ressistance)