Larian Studios Forums Divinity II The Dragon Knight Saga / Flames of Vengeance (English) Divinity II - Flames of Vengeance Archers

First of all a newbie disclaimer: if this the wrong place for this, or if this has been talked about before, I apologise. This seemed like the right place and search didn’t yield any result. Moving on:

Archer enemies make me think this game was play tested with god mode on. Their ridiculously overpowered hitscan abilities are quickly draining away all fun I have playing this game, leaving naught but frustration and nerdrage. The poison arrow so far has been the main bane of my dragon knights’ existence, but that fight with Amdusias and his explosive arrow has not endeared me to that particular ability either.

So far the only way I’ve found I can handle encounters with archers by creeping up, shooting a magic blast and 1 – maybe 2 – magic missiles and then running the hell away to heal up because I just got hit with 3+ unavoidable poison arrows that whittled down my health from the 3 digits to the single digit.

Mind, this experience is on normal. I could turn down the difficulty down to easy, but this is just fixing symptoms as that turn down the archers from frustratingly overpowered to barely tolerably and at the same time turn everything else down to laughably easy.

Now archery isn’t the only source of annoyance from the hitscan department. After all, nothing quite makes me say “gee, this is a well designed game” then getting ganked by magic blasts from enemies behind a wall. But so far that has been a single unfortunate episode filled with tears and creative cussing, so I’m giving that a pass.

So, what am I doing wrong? Am I missing some “make archery sane” under the gameplay options? I know there’s such a thing as “archery resistance”, but as far as I can tell that does nothing to negate the damage from poison arrow and the like.

To evade arrows, you don't have to move, you have to use dodge (at the right time, since you can't cast and dodge).

I never found poison to be very dangerous, mind giving us your stats (vitality, HP, level, and ranged defense) ?

I can dodge regular arrows by rolling, I can’t avoid poison arrows (and to be fair they're not actual real hitscan abilities, but they're so fast and homing to boot that I'm just calling them that).
Though I have to say, I feel that dodging can become somewhat of a fruitless endeavour at times when you’re faced with 5+ bow equipped enemies that fire in series giving you absolutely no window of attack and forcing you to just suck it up and take the hits as you stop with rolling for a second to throw a magic missile in. But that's just nitpicking: the regular arrow shots do feel slightly overpowered to me, but aren't really bad compared to the gentle-caress-you hitscan abilities.

I’m currently on sentinel island, in the fight with the bandits leading up the battle tower.
Current stats are:

Level 18
Vitality: 13
Spirit: 20
Strength: 22
Dexterity: 15
Intelligence: 23
Hitpoints: 243
Mana: 332
Melee Resistance: 30.60%
Ranged Resistance: 16.26%
Magic Resistance: 18.34%

I have some equipment that can bump my ranged resistance up to 32%; but I while I see a small change in the amount of damage I get from ranged attacks, poison arrows still kill me just as fast. So given the fact that it’s kind of ugly looking, I’m not using it at the moment.

Having progressed further in game, I've now gotten to the point where reguler archer mooks have poison arrow and explosive arrow. Oh, goodie.
I can now officially say the stupidly overpoweredness of archery in this game has sucked away the joy I’m having while playing. Again, archers because somewhat (still not quite) sane on easy mode, but then all other enemies become jokes. So that’s not a solution.

I seriously think I'm missing something here. Can someone tell me how I'm suppose to survive encounters in narrow mineshafts (not that you can dodge hitscan abilities anyway) where a single explosive arrow and 2 poison arrows- to my face blast my health down from 400 to some about 40 in less time then it takes for me to say “run away, run away!”. Is this game moddable so that I can hit archers with a well deserved nerf stick myself?

For emphasis, I really want to like this game. It has a pretty neat concept. It’s just the archers that are bringing me to tears.

Hmmm... I say If you cannot beat'm, join'm. Why don't you try a Ranger character?

Thanks for the responce. But:
1. I don't really like playing as archers. Don't really know why, just don't. Eldritch knight sort of characters are usually my thing.
2. Wouldn't fix the issue of me getting slaughtered by highly damaging hitscan archery abilities.

Did you max out magic missile ? Are you also using some other spell or whatever to do damage ?
I just went through Sentinel Island today with my mage build, magic missile is very usefull (can be spammed), but doesn't nearly do enough damage, even at five.

As for your HP, I don't know, I think I had around 300HP (so not much higher), but I didn't die very quickly, the bandits did around 40.

PS : You are not the first one to complain about archers, by the way.

Doing enough damage myself isn't the issue. It's solely the damage archers can dish out and the fact that I can't avoid/negate it.

"You are not the first one to complain about archers, by the way."
Huh, I didn't find anything with search. Well, good to know I'm not alone in this then. Erm, those who complained previously about this; they didn't perchance find a way to fix archery in this game, did they?

My first post, hi everybody

i agree about enemy archers and rangers , even my 35L charakter can quickly lose healt.



Divinity 2 is a great game but there are some overpowered enemies who can break fun

Ranger class is also overpowered. I play as ranger myself.

My strategy for archers is to stand near a wall or some other kind of large object you can duck behind after taking a shot at em. Near the end of the game I took out archers with a fire ball and one or two magic missiles but take your shot, run behind cover, they should've started shooting when you were out of cover so the arrows will hit the wall (or object) you hid behind and you pop right back out and take another shot. Rinse and repeat till they're dead. Plus fire ball and magic blast stun so you can take maybe two or three spells (you'd be pushing it with three) before getting hit.

But explosive arrows are overpowered i agree -_-. You run into three archers, i had 700 life and I was down to 200 if not near death after all three took their shot. And that's before you get stunned so whatever other stuff you might be up against gets to take potshots as well.

:)Yes: explosive arrow + critical hit= mass destruction

Use your creature or summons to take the heat.

As soon as you see them fire their bows, use the flying barrel roll to avoid them ,then attack. Their ranged attacks have a cool down timer.
Raise your vitality so you can take a hit.
Use cover..

I use my creature alot..sometimes I just let it fight while I watch. It has 2x the HPs I do, way higher melee and ranged protection and is almost immune to magic.Plus it can cast wicked spells.
If this were a FPS..my creature would be a perfect meat shield.

And there is nothing wrong in running away...ahem..I meant Tactical Retreat.

Charm is one of greatest battle turners..it's the only magic spell I use.

Just run in and charm someone and run away...repeat if necessary. Thin the room out in no time.

what is wrong with you guys.. from my perspective view and excuse me., your character is a mess.
be fast and vigilant.
heres a strategy:
1. rush attack on the archers first and quickly take em out
2. lure the enemy archers for example., you hide behind a wall, or large stone, or large tree. then lure them by shooting missiles at them(it could be arrow/magic missiles). then the enemy archers will come and you can flank them( spring the trap).
3.it works for me when i was weak. now archers dont give much a problem to me. peanuts..
increase your vitality and dex

I’m starting to think you’re playing a different game then me. I’ve already tried those stratagems:

Using rush on a single archer works sometimes. Sometimes being the times when I’m not getting practically insta-killed the moment the archer spots (usually before I spot him) and the times when the rush attack itself is not interrupted by an explosive arrow to the face.
Using rush to get in quickly when faced with multiple archers is suicide; you take out one archer and the others are taking potshots at your behind.

Luring archers out of the big groups would be a great idea, where that in half the encounters you can’t do that (narrow mineshafts, cliffs, etc with little to no maneuvering space) and that that still doesn’t solve the issue of archers being walking nuclear bomb dispensers.

Increasing dex also seems to be utterly useless; I see no decrease in damage from ranged abilities (the unavoidable stuff that kills me) when increasing ranged resistance, it only decreases damage from regular ranged attacks (the ones that you can avoid).

It all comes back down to that giving enemies highly damaging, unavoidable attacks is just poor design. It’s right up there with those barriers that are nigh invisible and that insta-kill your dragon form with practically no warning. This game is starting to look like a perfect example of where the developers had some pretty neat ideas, but had no one that could look objectively at their design documents and say which ideas needed some heavy adjustments.

To any dev that might be reading these forums. Please, help me like your game; add a 'make this game's combat balanced' option, or something.

I dont think the devs can help you on this one .You might have to rethink u strats im lvl 13 and i havent even left broken valley yet, havent touched maxis tower and still have a bunch more stuff to turn in in fairness this is my several go around with the game cause i enjoy it so much(sorry to hear you are not) fav specis archer/mage now testin out battle mage heavy on the mage end my vitality is about double yours not sure on rest of stats.If you take your time read through some of the posts you find nice little tricks that im sure will make the game much more appealing.
Also even playing this game several times i still found stuff i missed.
I'm sure also if you need help you could always pm someone here on forums there are a great deal of ppl here that enjoy helping others enjoy the game . The only thing i frown apon is ppl that bash the game before they really understand it ,I dont want to sound negative and mean no disrespect but i think you need to slow down and pay close attention to things more you will find it quite helpful

I'm not bashing this game; if I would do that I'd go around screaming in l33t-speak about how this game sucks.
All I'm asking is how to get through encounters where enemies do ludicrous ammounts of unavoidable damage, as one cannot form strategems when enemies have "player go dead now" abilities.

Hidden in your post is the advice of pumping vitality. Sure, I'm willing to give that a go. But I've been putting one point in there practically every level. Do I need to just put all 4 points in there and ignore everything else? What's the magic ratio that gives me enough health while still giving me a good amount mana, resistances, etc?

when i first started playing ED last year. it was so hard. i know how you feel. I respect this game because it gives me a very hard time. Thats what i like /love about this game. It teaches me not to give up. I learnt a lot back then for instance where to avoid a specific place whereas the enemy is too hard for me. The solution for me is to levelling up.Here's a hint:
broken Valley : you have to be level 18 at least to go to the
Sentinel Tower: level 25 to go to
Orobas Fjords: level 35 and fight thhe flying fortress
aleroth : level 35~ 48 and then can continue Flames of Vengeance.
I also upgrade my stats ( Dex) at least 35~40
The Difference About ED and DKS is DKS IS a HELL lot MORE EASIER.
For your Info, im a warrior. Battle Hardened to endure attacks melee or range but a little weaker when facing magics.

I like this game a lot cause it remembers me for the hard times i went through completing this game.
One in a Million.

I can speak like hQ62 when hQ62 said this:
"when i first started playing ED last year. it was so hard. i know how you feel. I respect this game because it gives me a very hard time. Thats what i like /love about this game. It teaches me not to give up." ...

And strange (?) thing is that I had (in general) MORE problems with the Warrior oriented enemies (the Black Ring Members especially!) ! Also on "easy" difficulty !
But after several trials it worked better.

In the beginning I was a little unpatient because of "a new game(world) to discover", but I experienced that going to fast in this game is for me a "DON'T DO IT!"
So now I take all my time to explore the whole gameworld, speak with all NPC's I find, Mindread all NPC's (when I find the time is ready), make notes (old school RPG) for myself while playing, etc ... AND .. have so much fun with the game !! The humour (also via Mindreading!) is almost unbelieveble fantastic !!