There are some set and unique items that will always have the same stats, and some items that have some stats set and some random, as well as completely random. There are also some chests that may have some or all of the contents predetermined, or partly determined (random item of a given type), but the majority are random.
Dragon Knight Saga FAQ/Guide (there were no changes made to equipment or quests, etc, between DKS and D2:DC)
Or for the original release:
Divinity 2: Ego Draconis All-Purpose GuideI don't know of any place with screenshots of all the equipment, but there is a preview video for the skills in the skill window (though for the sake of brevity spell limits and cooldown times may not be shown). These videos can also be played outside the game, from a subfolder in the main install folder (..\data\Video\Skills).
You can dual wield axes, swords, maces and hammers, but there are no daggers (axes look more like a
Gurkha's Kukri than wood or battle axes, and IIRC some of the one handed swords are short enough to be considered a long dagger). There is a Hide in Shadows skill, and an Evade skill can help you avoid melee attacks. Boosting dexterity will help with your critical hit rate, and there are also weapon bonuses, enchantments and a skill to do so. There is no direct speed boost; unarmed combat has the fastest attack rate, but your damage would then just come from strength and possibly melee damage boost charms (unlike enchantments, charms can not be removed or upgraded once placed in equipment with open charm slots).
The dragon armour primarily just gives bonuses to your dragon skills. There are pieces with bonuses to either hit points or mana (the former being preferable, since the dragon regenerates mana quickly anyway) as well as either offence or defence (again the former is preferable; if you run into problems there is a Dragon Shield spell which will give you a temporary defence boost as well as Summon Friend, which summons a wyvern that can act as a distraction).
I used the Mining Guild set with my archer playing the Xbox version of DKS (you can use the Developer Mode cheat window in D2:DC to give yourself any of the 3 level 15 bonus sets from the Steam version of DKS or the North American Xbox release, as they are not otherwise in the game), but other than that didn't use any sets. The collection of random and unique equipment I used was better, IMO, than any of the sets I tried.
Playing a warrior in the original release of D2:ED, I started off dual wielding axes, then gradually replaced both with swords, then started getting better hammers for quite awhile, and I eventually ended the game using an axe and sword.
The difficulty does not effect loot drops or equipment stats, etc. Hard is actually not terribly hard in DKS/D2:DC, due to changes made to enchantments that make better weapons available earlier in the game compared to the original release of D2:ED. A 'nightmare' difficulty was added to DKS by popular demand (though there are also some people who don't think the easy difficulty is easy enough). You can try out the training grounds and see what you think of the difficulty level. I started off on nightmare, but dropped it temporarily in Farglow to get a hang of the combat playing as an archer (it had been awhile since I played D2:ED with a warrior on normal), and then increased it again before heading to Broken Valley.
