Well just finished Divinity for the first time. A really fun game. Now it took me a while to find the approach I wanted to take to the game. I had two characters up to level 12 and one up to level 27 before restarting with the character I finally finished with. I was having fun with the first characters, but I kept thinking not as much fun as I could be having. I finally did two things: 1) turned the difficulty to hard and eliminated use of charms, traps and frosty weapons, and 2) decided to play a survivor who would take a low kill, efficient approach to quests. She would not kill everything in sight, but would instead run and sneak a lot to achieve her goals. I wasn't aiming (like Ariana in one thread I saw) for the lowest possible level or quite no unnecessary kills, just to keep at relatively low levels and avoid long tedious stretches of killing.
Here's how this approach worked out for me:
Milestones:
Complete Troll King Quest: Level 7
Complete Cursed Abby: Level 9
Arrive at Council of Seven: Level 16
Ring the Gong: Level 21
Complete Game: Level 27
Final Statistics:
Angelique (Angie)
Survivor
Level: 27
Vitality: 315
Mana: 336
Strength: 49
Agility: 65
Intelligence: 50
Constitution: 50
Lightning Resistence: 34
Poison Resistence: 33
Fire Resistence: 20
Spiritual Resistence: 62
Armor Class: 113
Reputation: 42
Gold: 74,000
Warrior Skills: Repair (1)
Mage Skills: Meteor Strike (5), Hell Spikes (5), Limbs of Lead (4), Restoration (3)
Survivor Skills: Lockpick (4), Identify Item (4), Pickpocket (2), Alchemy (3) Spirit Form (3), Temporal Storm (5)
(Does no include various skills that went completely unused, some just mistakes, some granted by persons or weapons. Also had 5 unused skill points at completion–just in case no skill I had was useful and something else might be!)
Combat: Angie basically relied on hellspikes, meteor strike and limbs of lead for all major battles. She carried a spear and shield normally, but for the stat additions and AC rather than to fight with (and I thought she looked good with a spear). Normally she tried to fight from a distance and by running around a lot (keep on the move and melee critters can't close enough, and archers and spell casters have trouble drawing a bead on you), but occasionally was forced into fight toe-to-toe. When this happened she just gobbled down potions. These simple tactics were quite adequate for all except some of the last battles at the Black Lake. Toward the end she relied for several battles on long range magic from stealth position.
Running, Sneaking, Spirit Form: The combination of running and sneaking are very nicely executed in Divinity. For those who have not tried, the sneak move is not an invisibility spell as in too many games. If things come close enough to you–they will notice and hit you. However, it combines nicely with running–run until they are out of range, go to sneak to throw them off the trail. Using this combination enables you to avoid a lot of killing and enables you to implement tricks like leading them away and then losing them for when the thing you need to examine carefully is heavily guarded. I found the run and sneak combination a lot of fun and capable of dealing with almost anything that didn't have to be killed. Late in the game, spirit form really is a virtual invisibility spell. It may have been a little cheesy, but I got a kick out of making short work of end game by having my divine survivor bring retribution on her foes by moving like a ghost though all their defenses and minions, then fighting them with magic spells from stealth so they seldom got more than a glimpse of what hit them.
Quests and Exploring: I think some quests are designed for this approach (e.g. the blow up the supply train and poison the well quests if taken early in the game). Many quests lend themselves very nicely to the basic approach: run, sneak, and then steal what you need if you can, kill the one big foe if you have to. I love games that permit approaches besides overpower and kill everything you meet–and many, probably the majority of quests, work out very well this way in Divinity. Still, I certainly killed a lot more things than I needed to–a combination of panic, frustration, and just needing to create some room for a running fight with a big bad boss. The downside of this approach is when it comes to detailed exploring and quests that require it. Running and sneaking is not a good way to appreciate all of the areas to the explore and all of the easter eggs and hidden items in the game. I finally cut the game short missing many quests, and leaving the majority of the Dark Forest unexplored for several reasons: 1) wanted to finish well under level 30; 2) exploration while running was getting tedious; 3) running was getting very artificial–it was getting to be more trouble to run from stuff than just blast it to smithereens; and 4) wanted to leave some new stuff behind for when I replay the game.
Other issues: I was always desperately short on money. I had not realized how much of your funding is from random drops of gold and treasure, and Angie had very few of these. On the whole this worked out well–I think the game plays better without the absurd amounts of treasure you can easily mount up. Every bit of gold counted for me for most of the game. More annoying, you also get most of the lockpicks in the game from random drops. It is really irritating to be a thief without lockpicks. (Finnegans lockpicks, even with the patch, were somehow bugged. They give me the stat boost, but not the infinite uses.)
Overall: I am sure others must have tried minimalist, low kill approaches (I saw Ariana's post on the old board on the topic) like this and would love to hear from them. I found it a lot of fun, and highly recommend it for someone looking for a different kind of replay who has not already tried it. I suspect the approach would be more fun for those who already know the game well, and know just where to look for things.
Thanks: Thanks to Larian for not just bragging about making, but actually making a game in which "there are an infinite number of way of playing". Thanks also to all the writers of walk-throughs and the many helpful people on this board for getting me through the many places I was stuck.
What kind of character and what kind of approach shall I take for my next time through Divinity?
Tovi