Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Newest Update...A few problems.

Having recently had to restart his game once again I have noticed a sharp spike in combat difficulty...I am all for enemies using items like scrolls or elemental arrows but the spike in difficulty has gotten a tad too ridiculous in early levels. I find archers freezing my units a bit too often, using gas clouds then fire...and it ends up taking more then half my health the moment they get a single status effect and that is not over time that is the first moment they take damage from the arrow. It makes even fighting same level enemies a pain. Maybe just make sure they have less items to use in the beginning? That way I don't have to burn through Hpots and Resurrection scrolls.

Also having a problem with finding any decent weapons before the update...the weapons I am finding do maybe 1/10th of an enemies health per hit. Enemies who are my level. Even using weapons that have a higher level requirement which i can only use once per turn. Not sure if the balancing got severely screwed up?

I have also had a few issues with my characters staying together even when chained in the same party. Sometimes one decides to stop moving and falls behind. I also have had a few issues with the pyramids only teleporting one person.

Issues having items repaired or identified by anyone. Also an issue with item comparison stating in red that stats do not meet the items requirements when they do. Or for some reason showing an entirely different item altogether? Also when identifying items my characters do it twice every-time?

Other then that the update has been pretty good.

Are you playing on easy?

Why would I play on easy? Does that fix the difficulty and the loot system? Does that ensure my characters dont have to hack away slowly at enemies who seem to be the same level and manage to use items very frequently early on that makes starting much more difficult?

Well if one is complaining something is too hard and not playing on an easier level, well it doesn't make perfect sense to complain, just knock down the difficulty. Easy would fix difficulty for sure.

Loot, no problem there or are you meaning the identify issue? You can only identify/repair stuff that is on the character that speaks with the NPC character. Unless you bring up Loremaster on one of your players. Knowing that, no issue identifying.

You will notice in time, that you become quite strong fast enough and then to me it seems to easy still. Haven't played hard, soon.

No I mean the loot I am finding has such a low damage amount the same level enemies I am fighting hardly take any damage...I am finding horrible drops. Even weapons that are higher levels seem completely useless.

Also no...if the difficulty presents itself too frustrating in the amount of enemies equipped with status effect items that are pretty damn hard to counter in the beginning with no starting armor or any armor I have found having resistances. I can beat my enemies but it ends up being a chore to even succeed because of the enemies taking tiny bits of damage and my characters taking half their health in damage from a single arrow (AGAIN SAME LEVEL ENEMY). As far as identification...I know. Its a simple process to understand.

Not sure if your just getting damn lucky with the loot and I just ended up screwed. Hell the strongest weapon I have found is a pickaxe that manages to do 1/5 a standard enemies health. I have searched all the shops and almost every container in the area.

The difficulty is an experiment by Larian, Swen even mentions they might have ramped it up "too much" and that they're looking for feedback to tune it to a good level for release. So you should expect difficulty to fluctuate a bit until release.

Normal difficulty is pretty harsh, and this is from a LONG time player. Divinity games have never been about protracted battles. They should be over in a round or two for normal fights. A boss fight like at the lighthouse should last a little longer. If Larian is trying to change their identity, then the tough battles are fine. If Cyseal is even 15% of the whole game, this is going to be a massive letdown. It worries me that a game due out in a month only has a 10 hour beta that has been playtested massively. Glad my copy is already paid for.

If the demo I'm playing was free, I would not likely purchase the game at this point until I was sure the bugs will be gone from the full game. The amount of poor game balancing would scare me away till there was a Steam sale. There are too many sections of the game that are a chore. They don't even have AI in effect yet and 90% of the people playing this will play the single player game. I don't want to make Scarlett's decisions once the real thing gets here.

Jahan and Madora are dull beyond belief. Their banter needs to be spoken and not prompted. My God, Minsc could talk in the 90's.

I cant agree with any of this. The difficulty is way to easy. On normal.

In the last playthrough i simply stopped leveling up about level 5. Finished the whole beta at level 8 and i only spent those points because i was bored.

Im going to make a separate thread in which i will explain these things in more details but seeing how many people say the game is too hard is just ridiculous and means only one thing:

None of these people ever bothered switching tactics or doing anything differently about any of the fights or actually using all the options and tools they get very easily.

While many never even open character stats tabs and read what some talent or skill actually does.

No, it means not everyone is a super stud player who has played the beta 26 times. You're just too awesome and no game can be too tough for you, superstar. LOL

If you say so...

Switching tactics definitely helps a great deal. I'm trying to avoid character deaths until I reach the lighthouse fight, and after several instances where it seemed death was unavoidable, I banged my head against the wall until I worked out a strategy.

That does not mean that the game in its current state is balanced, though. Poison and burning status effects do an excessive amount of damage, it's absurd, and is essentially a one-shot kill on some of my full-health characters (even with 6 and 7 CON) before I can do anything about it. Most of my strategies revolved around using status effects to disable enemy archers before they could use their arsenal of nuclear arrows.

For the house on the western cliff, I had to go with Steamcloud Arrow + Blitzbolt to disable the archers.

Different class types and combinations also have different levels of effectiveness against the mostly skeleton force you'll be facing in Cyseal. It doesn't help that because of the vendor spell selection issue, there are skills which I can afford and use, but are not available because the vendor chooses not to sell them.

It's not simply a case of "u just suck, git good".

I never said its just the case of "u just suck, git good". Thats what crpgnut said, not me.

Im saying that the game is too easy right now.

And i never said it is properly balanced either. Burning is clearly not, but that works against enemies too, all except the burning horde and braccus at the end.

It is true that the archers can oneshot you with poisonous cloud arrows, even if that didnt happen to me. But they only shoot one of those and otherwise, except that - all fights are very easy.

In the last run i intentionally didnt use some spells just to see how the game will play, i never min-maxed anything - never changed a single spell i took (which has its own reasons to be like that) and i never had to use a single special arrow, except in a few very rare fights.

I know that is how you feel now. You will soon learn the system and you will find too many things are OP.

What level were you when you made this post? So far in a fair bit of research (and it's common amongst games in general) the Hard is coming from playing too little bit and making a judgement. And a few have come back after a while and stating "ok" yeah, it's not too hard.

Also if you are saying it's too hard and not playing Easy... think about that one.

I'm ok if Easy and Normal aren't hard. But I hope there is an option that makes it a down right challenge it should be when facing up with what you do. I'm cool with adding a "Nightmare".

Your opinion is that it's too easy. Our opinion is that it's a little difficult, especially for someone who hasn't already played the betas numerous times. We're playing a different game though because every skeleton archer in my game has at least one special and there are 3 or 4 archers in a group and I get party wipes if they get multiple specials in one round. There are ways to game the system; ie sneaking up with your ranger and firing your own special arrow to start combat, etc.

Or you are jumping to conclusions on what you perceive of us? Remember the McDonald's commercial "I was once like you?". I possibly and coming from a bit more of a position of in the know, now you can make me sound elitist our you can try understanding/trusting our POV.

Also love the Your vs Our. One persons view vs the many. Golf clap on that one.

I'm trying to help, explain... what level are you before concluding the game is too hard? This is a fair question.

This game is hard in one real manner that has nothing to do with mechanics, but by design. Starting a new game for the first time, knowing the path to go where the enemy level is the lowest. Yes if you go out of the city in one direction you will get it handed to you, if you go out another, you'll handle them and level pretty fast. This is part of design, they don't want to hand-hold you, many RPG'ers have asked for this and that enemies don't scale to your level, meaning you may have to comeback. Now I've seen a few of these recently (M&M X), it's polarizing, there is no right or wrong answer, if you choose scale vs no scale (viceversa) someone will be loud and not happy. My suggestion for the first time player is don't plan on flying right into combat once you hit the city and when you venture out, see if you can sneak a peak at the enemy level before engaging. There is a lot to do in the City (hours worth of table setting) before getting out and really hammering combat.

Honestly, it's like we are playing two different games. I will try to assist, I have a ton of saves I can reference back to. What level are you? And I can tell you what I have if you would like to know. It isn't luck, for a classic RPG there is a lot of loot being dropped all around and lots of it is adequate.

What is your party make up? That possibly could have the biggest affect and do you have both Hirelings? You should be exiting the city with a group of 4 (unless you took Lone-Wolf).

I'd like to chime in a bit as someone who is more of an average gamer. I find the normal difficulty to be rather punishing in the current state. I have managed to craftily get my way through a few of the tougher fights at earlier levels (I'm looking at your Mr. archers on the ridge). But I've also managed to just flail around and get crushed in fights that I'm even leveled with the enemy.

I think the big issue right now is AOE (poison and fire) and status effects. I've gone through numerous battles where my characters are taking 1/2 if not more damage of their HP in the first round largely due to poison. Couple this with enemy mages who seem to freeze/stun me rather frequently and it does make for frustrating battles. We get to top this all off with zombie enemies that not only do poison damage, but when struck, splash a little AOE poison about and are healed by that very poison.

I'm all for making fights challenging and rewarding. But I feel right now the game is forcing me to play a very CC heavy style to deal with all the enemies flinging CC about. This in turn I believe favors the caster classes since they have built in CC on a variety of their spell types. A caster can cast those virtually every turn while the melee dependent classes are reliant on skills (which have a cooldown) to do this. I'm also finding archers are very powerful with their caster like arrows.

The simplest way I've found to deal with this is just summon monsters to hopefully soak up all that CC and AOE nonsense. I feel this is poor game design. My party shouldn't be a world destroying superforce, but they also should just kneel down and die the minute they see a skeleton archer flinging poison arrows.

I'd like to close with my overall concern. If the game proves fairly difficult at the "normal" difficulty (meaning multiple reloads to deal with singular battles) for average players they will be turned off from the game. Most people will see normal difficulty and say "hey, that's me, I'm a normal guy," and start plowing through the game. They'll want to run out and destroy some skeletons only to be utterly trashed by these insane skeleton archers. If the game is to sell well and attract a large audience, it absolutely needs to cater to the folks that would shun this kind of difficulty (and let's face it, losing 1/2 or more of your HP in round one on your tank is extremely frustrating).

You know what guys?


If you bothered to eat a single apple in the game - you would know there is a very easy solution to the poison arrows problem.


While there is plenty of armor that gives protection vs poison specifically and Earth magic (to which poison element belongs) - to be found in the most obvious first locations you visit in the city.


Its not poor game design JoeBart. At all.
Infact the game is too easy. Yesterday i went through the western legions of undead - with two characters on level 3 - without lonewolf or raistlin talents - and without using fire magic.

That includes the Lighthouse fight too.

I like this guy!

I've only played through the beta once; and while I have a few issues combat difficulties is not one of them.