Larian Studios Forums Divinity II The Dragon Knight Saga / Flames of Vengeance (English) Divinity II - The Dragon Knight Saga Stat Point Distribution: What's the best way?

Me again. I'm thinking of trying a new build since my current one is stuck and dying to Dragon Elves...Looking back, I noticed I had a pretty heavy focus on doing a balanced set of stats, and I think that was my downfall. While STR was higher than DEX and INT, they were still all fairly close together in numbers, as I was trying to have a balanced amount of damage resistance in each category.

Now I'm not so sure that's the best way to go about it. So I guess what I'm wondering is how to best decide how many points to put into a stat at level up, and where I should leave it.

IE, should I worry about DEX that much if I'm not going to be using any archery? Should I bother pumping a lot into VIT as a Mage?

I've never really been good at managing stat points in games where you distribute your own stats, so any advice would be welcome on how to best spend those points and not leave myself weak because I tried to be a jack of all trades and master of none.

I have not played a mage, but I described what I did with my stats for a warrior (in the original release of D2:ED) and ranger in the topic below.

Anyone help a newb with Warrior build ... ???

If you die too quickly, the basic answer is to put points into Vitality. Else, try too see which type of ennemies deal the most damage (ranged, magic, melee), and try to boost that type of defense.

As a mage, you can "forget" Strength, as it boosts melee defense, and you should kill most mobs before they get close. Vitality is still needed as a Mage, even if it's not your primary stat.
You don't have to put tons of points into Spirit, as with high Intelligence, your mana replenishes faster, combined with the skill that reduces mana use (I'd say as much in Vitality than in Spirit at first, later on you may forget Spirit entirely).

I had the same problem (health) on my first run, have you thought of putting points into Ghost ? The ghost has a healing skill, which is very usefull, but you need to put more than one point in that skill.

O yeah, Summon Ghost and some other skills of the Priest (Charm!) make a BIG difference depending on "to survive" a battle !!

Summon Ghost is one of my favorite skills ...

And if you love to become a more rich (wo)man, put (max 5) points into Master Herbalist (required level 15) and you can make so many potions !
And since Summon Ghost is a real "potion-saver" (even on the hardest nightmare difficulty!) .....

In general with RPGs it almost always a mistake to spread your attribute points around because you become a jack of all trades and master of none so you lack the firepower to tackle strong enemies and bosses.

In this game (as with OB, Skyrim etc) you are single character so it is difficult to ignore certain attributes that appear necessary/desirable to have, but the games are designed and balanced so that you cannot be good at everything, you have to specialise in certain things using them to maximum effect and work out how to overcome your weaknesses in other areas.

In this game DEX is problem if you are playing a warrior, mage or warrior/mage since it governs both your ranged defence rating and the amount of extra damage you do on critical hits IIRC. Both are very desirable attributes, but you have to ignore DEX to solve those problems if you play this type of character.

Also in this game most charcters benefit from using magic to some degree (same as OB/Skyrim) but you should decide if you want to play a primarily weapon based or primarily magic based and distribute INT and STR accordingly rather than put the equal amounts in both. What is different in this game is that many weapons do primarily magic damage which is governed by INT so it is possible for a character with limited strength to do significant damage with the right melee weapons and do a great deal with magic.

If I was a warrior/mage I would put 2 pts each in VIT and STR for two levels and then 2pts VIT and 2pts INT for the third.

If I was a mage/warrior I would put 2pts VIT and 2pts INT more or less every level and use pure magic weapons. I suppose that's more of a pure mage really but that's how I would do it.

My first character I goofed up too. I tried to be a Battle Mage with Priest powers.

My second character I stuck with pure ranger and am now dominating. For skills, I would say there's not really a need to branch out to other skill trees even though those summons with the healing look mighty inviting.

For stat points, try this:
Warrior - 2 points strength, 1 point vitality, 1 point spirit
Rogue - 2 points dexerity, 1 point vitality, 1 point spirit
Mage - 2 points intelligence, 1 point vitality, 1 point spirit
Priest - ??? Not sure what the speciality is here except for watching your summons + necromancy creature do it all for you.

Now once in awhile as a rogue, I'll throw a point in strength or intelligence just to keep my resistance up. But as a now level 25 rogue, I have 40+ stats in dexerity and like 9 in strength.

For a Priest I will give (at least in the beginning levels) Spirit some extra point or try to find equipment that boost Spirit.
Further on go also for extra Vitality and since it is always wise to have at least 1 kind of weapon with you (even if you "try" to play as a pure Priest!), choose the kind of weapon you like most (bow, 1-handed or 2-handed melee weapon) and search for one you love .
Then again, you must decide between magical, balanced or normal (melee/ranged) damage weapon and so you can choose to improve other stats, depending on your weapons damage
And if I decide to also take 1 or 2 magical spells in case of ... I always put more points in Intelligence, no matter what weapon I use !

That is what I should do for a Priest (and for most other types starting distribute statpoints the first ca 10 - 15 levels).

My experience with Div II is that stat points are sorta important, but skills are far more important. The one thing to avoid doing is spreading your skill points - 5 skills at level 5 are much less useful than 2 skills at level 8 and one skill at level 9. This is because the skills don't progress in power linearly, they progress by some sort of exponential function. That is, an attack skill at level 5 might do, say, 50 points of damage. That skill at level 9 might do 140 points of damage, instead of the 90 you would expect from a 'linear' progression.

So, each additional point spent in a higher level skill is more valuable than the same point spent in a lower level skill.

Unfortunately, this has the effect of virtually forcing the player to min/max, because doing a "balanced" build like you tried will almost always end up so gimped you can't survive.

Finally, potions and enchantments on your armor can make up for any weak stats you have, once you get the Tower and upgrade your crafters a level or two. Armor and Weapon Sets can also have some really great bonuses that help a lot once you've found and equipped every item in the set.

Yeah, that's a slight problem, since Damage Resistance isn't that useful.

A complicating factor is the secondary bonuses from stats.

Strength increases health regeneration - by a small amount, but it can add up.
Dexterity increases the DAMAGE of critical hits - but not the chance of performing them.
Intelligence increases mana regeneration - again, by a small amount, but again, it adds up.


Making it even trickier is that many of the sets can give spectacularly large bonuses to attributes, and points over a certain amount will just hit the cap of 100 and be wasted.

I've played through this game many times and I still haven't got everything all worked out for a perfect stat build.

Generally, you should focus on one of the primary attributes and pump most of your points into that one. If you're going for an end-game stat, stop pumping points into it around 60 or 70.

Vitality and Spirit are other good spots to put points, but again, read up on the bonuses from the end-game sets to know when to stop pumping those up.

I like the 2 Primary / 1 Vitality / 1 Spirit approach, it should serve you well into level 20+, after that start looking more carefully at where you think you'll be in the end-game. This is what I did with my Warrior, I got lots into Spirit to use Thousand Strikes and Vitality because enemies hit HARD in this game.

Now that my Strength is exactly 70 naked, and my Vitality is 48 naked, I'm going to be putting almost all my points into Intelligence for Magic Resistance and bonuses to Magic Damage.

As a mage, the only true trouble that you will face is As long as your Vitality reaches 15 and have a few HP boosts from your equipments, all you will need is to focus on INT and SPR.

(the boss), was one magic blast and one firewall from death (although I did buff up my Destruction skill too for more damage). Plus, if you put 1 point in the hide-in-shadows skill, you're as good as invincible if you know how to hide and pick the enemies apart.

Any mage build should make ample use of some of the most effective passive skills in the game like Destruction and Confusion. A dual wielding mage with magic missile + confusion combo is almost invincible, specially at higher levels. It's a shame that confusion is capped at L9 but even at L6 it's a worthy choice. Destruction can be trained to L8 in FoV. Firewall is another great skill but you need to get close to enemies in order to engulf as many as possible. Regardless of skill choice, Vitality, Intelligence and Spirit are the attributes where every mage should spend more stat points. Dexterity only helps with ranged protection although a dual-wield melee set-up that relies on critical hits might also be benefited since Dexterity affects Heightened Reflex.

A 'discrete' mage can do with less points in vitality but that's not a very good idea. Using priestly skills like Hide in Shadows, Charm and summonings efficiently it is possible to survive even tough battles with low health but it's always easier with more points in Vitality.

One can skimp on Spirit though and can do so effectively, even a mage! If you can avoid skills with terrible mana cost like Healing or Thousand Strike and have points in Mana Efficiency, you will be fine. Mana regenerating jewelry and armor pieces with spirit buffs should also help. At Level-38 my mage character(naked) has only 8 points in spirit and I play @hard!

Having said all that Stat points DON'T dictate the terms of this game rather they help to ease things up when leveling. Skill points do play a much more decisive role provided you spend them wisely. But it's the strategy and maneuvering in real-time that decides whether you would fly like a Dragon or crawl like a Lovis crawler