Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Combat still has some issues

There is definitely great progress regarding combat - party experience, enemies attacking as groups, new skills and stances... But in several ways it is still complicated for me.

Now we have four characters in our party - and there comes the first problem, because rest of the group is always lagging behind the leading character. Since I can encouter enemies at any time, this leads to a serious disadvantage for me. I need my party to stay very close together and would even recommend to invent formations (Baldurs Gate had formations if I remember correctly).

Run speed should be increased as well, maybe doubled. And it may be better to toggle run/walk using a key, not by cursor distance. It is also strange that characters switch run/walk even in combat.

We are now able to see that target is too far or blocked for ranged attacs but not for spells. I hit walls or abstacles several times, even when enemy was highlighted. Also targets are often higlighted incorrectly. Several times I hit my party members with Winters breath simply because they were not marked as targets. On the other hand sometimes my flare didn´t do any damage to the target when he was marked. And flares seem to be slowing down as they approach their target which is odd.

There are some strange damage values on weapons. My fighter companion has two handed sword that is supposed to do up to 58 damage. But in combat she does about 9-13 damage. I don´t believe skeletons have such super armour. My ranger had a bow (before it dissapeared), with damage about 22, but in combat he did like 4. It is very confusing.

Overall I do only very little damage using weapons. Most effective way to destroy enemies is to use Winter breath and Phoenix dive, they deal between 30-40 damage. So either weapons are useless ot spells are overpowered.

I can´t display how much health enemies have, so it is difficult to calculate how many hits I need to take them down or how much health they are going to lose if I use an ability.

Finally I have two recommendations - first it would be good to display status effects also above the skill bar. There is more space and you can display them there with greater detail. And secondly - I don´t like to send my mages to close combat. There may be some special weapon for mages - like Wands - that will fire projectiles. Wands may be weaker than close combat weapons but would have bonuses enhancing spells.

The best weapons for mages are, without a doubt, spears.

In my play-through, I have received 3-4 high damage (level 6-8 req spear, damage 130ish), elemental typed, spears that give +1 to various spell skills. They can hit all mobs without difficulty (even boss mobs), have a notable range bonus compared to other melee weapons and usually have elemental damage which seemingly ignores the high AC of skeletons etc. Combined with this, spears only require 1-2 points in 2H weapons, even those requiring level 8; the change from 1>2 seems to be level 8.

All in all, there's no reason for mages to use staves at the moment; ironically, my fighter character needs 4 in 1H weapons to use a much lower damage weapon, and simply doesn't have the skill points to use decent shields (getting 3-4 in armour, 1H weapon eats up skill points) given that even low level vanilla shields such as the metal shield require 3-4 in shields to use.


Oh, and as everyone knows: Rain + Winter's Breath = instant kill.

There seems to have been wholesale changes to stats in general, i'm assuming that armor has been left with the same modifiers, but is much higher, as physical damage is pretty much useless right now.

Also don't need rain for winter's breath to insta kill, so far only evelyn, the giant robot (both losing about 60% health) and the frost demon (immune) haven't been insta killed by it.

Yeah, the weapon damage is definitely not being calculated properly, Larian confirmed that is some kind of bug.

Rangers are worthless against the undead because they do 1-3 piercing damage (which the undead resist) and the Undead have 80-100+ HP.

I agree that Winterbreath and Phoenix Dive do too much damage - it's most obvious with your hirelings who start out with those at level 3 even though you can't learn them yourselves until later.

You can display how much Health enemies have with points into the Loremaster Ability.

These two points are exactly what's bugging me the most in and out of combat.
Formations is definetly one way to do it, or lagging characters should just autorun up to leading character at the beginning of the battle.
Running out of combat also needs some adjustment - right now it feels sluggish.

Yes, Running out of combat is very sluggish, which is annoying in many places considering that you'll be doing a lot of running back through areas you've already cleared out.

The points below are what several combat issues of my friends and I have encountered:

1. Confused AI

First encounter with Orcs, 2 out of 3 games the Orc Shaman is being pummeled by fellow orcs even after death.

2. Summon Ice Elemental @ tavern Fight

The enclosed tavern area caused the ice elemental to suddenly walk through walls and into space.

3. Bows are a nonfactor

As highlighted in previous posts, rangers can shoot forever dealing 1-3 damage while the ice mages can cast singular spells capable of instagibbing 5-6 enemy mobs at a time.

QFT.

If I'm not mistaken they have stated that certain weapons will work better against certain enemies. Bow and Arrow will not work well against skeletons since it's piercing damage and the arrows could pass through the bones, so crushing damage is more effective. But they still don't do enough damage against human/orc opponents.

You are correct, lokitrixter, but something is clearly wrong about the damage we are doing, we should not be doing as little as we are at the moment. Even with damage reduction, I should not have trouble exceeding 10 damage with a 29-54 damage sword, even if I am using it on the Undead, and my 12-24 Crushing damage weapon should be doing more than 2-4 damage on a Zombie.

Oh yeah I admit there is something wrong overall, but wanted to point that one little thing out since not everyone has been around since the Kickstarter and wouldn't know these things.

I disagree with doubled run speed overall.... maybe double run speed in town, since you really run long distances there sometimes but within the enemy areas i'm okay with the run speed as it is now.

Maybe they could add speed buffs or so, would be a other way around or maybe some kind of npc within town that can give you a speed buff for a few minutes for a small fee?

If so, it cannot be for free cause it would`nt fit in this world cause they cannot live from it, when they give you buffs for free .

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And the other thing....
I agree with the "Formation idear", the group members always lagging behind it's a bit anoying. But know that formations cannot be maintained when the current terrain does'nt allows this.
For example when you run through a small way, because left and right are walls, rocks, trees or whatever, what is very often the case, cause the question "Are Formation really worth a try?". Would be cool if they find a way but how ? ....

The fact that your own attacks hurt your own companions does'nt make it easier. I never playedd "baldurs gate" but in "The last remnant" you had a nice formation editor where you could easily create different types of formations and define who is in which psition and every formation gave the group different bonuses. Maybe something like this ?

Often my companions are stuck within houses and cannot come out, when i don't single handedly navigate them outside .

Maybe not double the run speed, but I definitely would like it increased by about 50% - in all areas, not just town. After you clear out the non-respawning enemies, it's a long run back.




I don't think that paying some kind of fee to an NPC for a speed buff makes any sense at all, and is a bad idea. Speed buff abilities sound like a good idea for skills/spells, though.




Yeah, that's a strange bug. If they're trailing behind they seem to get confused and wait outside/inside, you have to manually move everyone in/out before they'll follow you again.

Slow speed is bearable on small maps, but here it will turn into boredom. I would accept it if there would be some fast travel option, but this is not the case.

As for formations - we are not trying to arrange an army, only 4 characters. I don´t think this will be a problem. If you are in a tight spot you simply switch to more suitable formation - like 2x2 or 1x3. Pathfinding may be a bit difficult, but in Baldurs Gate you had 6 characters and they still handled this. If terrain was rough, they simply found closest position to the "ideal" mark of selected formation. Or there may be an option to enable/disable formations.

Warrior still sucks because of all the running around. I can't even use any skills properly because of AP draining. I think the class needs some sort of Charge skill which, using the same AP, covers more distance than actual running up to an enemy. As a penalty make it's miss chance much higher.

There is a "Rush" skill you can buy from Aureus.

Well i like that to be honest ^^.
I mean the enemy has the same "problem" as you, so it's fair. The AI is not very smart, you can turn that into your advantage.

My tactic is always that i control my mage so she is always ahead of the others. That way she can cast her first spell in fight always without anyone who is in the way.

My meeles i keep somewhere near the mage to guard her and to build up ap as much as possible and let the meeles of the enemy come to me. While they do that, i try to slow them and keep em away as long as possible so that my meeles can build up a large amount of ap.

When the meeles finally made it to me, they have exhausted their ap and i am full with two meeles and can strike 'em down .