Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Bad Design or the Ultimate BS

Yes, indeed. If you improve a weapon with a Tenebrium bar it becomes a Tenebrium weapons. If you enhance a 2h weapon with Tenebrium your 2h skill becomes completely pointless...

This is also NOWHERE explained in the game. At first sight I thought it was a bug because the bonus from 2h weapon skill wasn't added to my damage until somebody explained the Tenebrium skill to me.

This is imo a real design flaw, especially because it makes no sense at all. If you improve a weapon with Tenebrium the additional Tenebrium damage is rather weak (on par with elemental damage). If you have a traditional weapons skill (like 2h) on level 5 and Tenebrium on level 1 it's actually a no brainer to NOT enhance weapons with Tenebrium or to NOT use Tenebrium weapons at all. I mean, why putting tons of skill points into Tenebrium if it only adds like 20-50 damage to your weapon and you already have a high traditional weapon skill? Makes no sense at all...

You don't buy the tenebrium weapons from the Sacred Stone trader, but just use whatever weapon you like, upgrade it and use Tenebrium on it and now they will use your tenebrium skill instead of your weapon skill:
For example: legendary lvl 16 bow with all upgrades 111-191 +33-57 fire +33-57 tenebrium:
displayed damage
Bow 0 Tenebrium 8: 299-517 dmg
Bow 1 Tenebrium 8: 299-517 dmg
Bow 0 Tenebrium 7: 288-496 dmg

I suspect this is a bug. If I had to hazard a guess Tenebrium was added late game as a means to combat the quadratic wizards/linear warriors issues we always see in these types of games by providing those that do physical damage a means to provide overwhelming damage compared to wizards.

Look at it this way. A knight with +5 2h and +5T would be doing effectively triple damage every single hit, and six times weapon damage (or more!) on a critical. That's a tremendous amount of damage.

Tenebrium guerrilla backstabbing would be insane.

Tenebrium was planned for the game since the the EA version and some of their early trailers. There were no T weapons available yet, but you could choose it as a skill.

LOL! So there you go! Sure, your weapon/bow skills become meaningless with T weapons, but look at how much more damage T weapons make! I am pretty damn sure that developers decided to make weapon handling effect meaningless to T weapons because they would become way too powerful and make it too easy for you.

that's a terrible argument, since the only purpose of tenebrium... is to make your weapons more powerful.

if that is traded off AGAINST your skill with the weapon, then it's entirely pointless.

the way it SHOULD have been handled was that the tenebrium skill only affects how much damage handling tenebrium does to your character, and the only reason to use tenebrium on a weapon would be so that they could harm certain monster types; like silver vs werewolves.

this sounds like something someone could mod into the game, once people figure out how to use the mod tools in detail.

That's just not true for high levels.

Let's take a level 20 2h weapon with the following stats:

250-300 normal damage
50-80 elemental damage

=300-380 overall damage (without 2h bonus)

With 5 points in 2h damage I get a 50% damage bonus on these overall damage.

=450-570 overall damage (2h bonus included)

Let's have a look how things change when I enhance the weapon with Tenebrium damage.

250-300 normal damage
50-80 elemental damage
50-80 Tenebrium damage

=350-460 overall damage (without any bonus)

With Tenebrium my 5 points in 2h are worthless. Let's compare it with my new starting points in Tenebrium: 1 point which is worth 10% of additional damage

=385-506 overall damage (with Tenebrium bonus)

As you can see a weapon enchanted with Tenebrium and a low skill in Tenebrium is far less worth than a normal weapon with a high skill in 2h.

You need at least 3 points in Tenebrium to get a more useful weapon, so you need to invest 5 ability points in Tenebrium to even come to the same damage level. But at the same point the 15 points you've invested in 2h become completely worthless. There is imo no justification for that. No skill should become worthless, especially not if it's not properly explained and transparent. The whole Tenebrium damage bonus is imo pretty unnecessary in general. It adds nothing to the game. A Tenebrium trait which just grants you the ability to use Tenebrium would imo make much more sense. The rest could be done by Tenebrium crafting and normal weapon skills like 2h.

So use your normal weapons until you get those 5 points in T to get to the same level OR just don't use it at all. I guess it wasn't a perfect way of doing things, but it is by no means game-breaking. Your weapon skills were never worthless because they got you as far as they have. You needed them to get to T and then you develop new skills to continue.

The game is by no means properly balanced or polished at this point. After 1.0.81 patch its good enough to actually start playing the game. There will be another TON of patches coming to fix the rest of the technical issues and to address game imbalances like this one.

There is no problem.

This feature is story and narrative dependent and thats why it is as it is.

Suck it up, play on. Plenty of points to spend by that time and from that time, plus first point for free.

Also, you can see Tenebrium in the list of resistances in the character screen.

If you could put points in Tenebrium - before your characters would actually discover that part of the story and find out there is such a thing in the game world - it would be the worst possible metagaming feature ever made.


- i would agree that it isnt right that weapon skills dont affect tenebrium weapons but i guess they couldnt figure out an easy way out of that one.

Since after Brandon gives you ability to resist its bad effects you dont need any more defense from it at all.

There is a very simple solution to both of these problems.

Don't make a Tenebrium skill. It's not needed. It adds nothing to the game, and REMOVES quite a bit. Instead, simply give each character a talent : Tenebrium Training - no longer recieve Rot from Tenebrium.

You could add T to weapons, but it works exactly like every other method of enchanting.
When I add fire damage to my sword, I don't have to rely on 'Fire Skill', it just adds bonus fire damage. That's how Tenebrium should work.

This would be awesome

straw man of his argument. he never said it was game breaking, he said it was a dumb way of doing it, and he's right.

what's your argument again?

do you even have one?

Actually, during the beta Tenebrium was an option you could choice.
People complained about that, since there were no Tenebrium items in Cyseal, and thus they changed it so you no longer got Tenebrium as an option from the start but later on in the storyline.

In other words;
THIS CHANGE IS DUE TO THE BETA/EARLY-ACCESS TESTING...

Good solution.

If i ever make a rebalance mod for the main campaign i will probably use it - if such a change can be modded in.

IMHO, the best solution would be to reduce the individual bonuses of the weapon skill and add element-specific damage bonuses based on the skills you have.

To be more specific: Have the weapon skills affect ONLY the base physical damage of a weapon, NOT the overall damage. Then have any other relevant skills, like the mage skills and the tenebrium skill apply damage boosting to any elemental damage that weapon does.

Redoing the actual % damage boosting is a matter of balancing.


To be fair, this isn't even my idea, I remember someone suggesting something similar to this, and I thought it was a good idea. It keeps the complexity of choice, with the right % damage added from skills, it keeps it balanced, and it makes nothing redundant.

You misunderstand. I was specifically referring to the way Tenebrium weapons work and how the skill does not work in conjunction with other weapon skills. That is something we did not have the opportunity to test, or I can assure you there would have been people giving feedback on it.

Wow. That was a silly oversight.

I really like this idea.

Tenebrium Handler (talent)
Prerequisite: Level 15
You no longer contract Rot from handling Tenebrium.
Note: Received as reward for Brandon's quest (even if you don't meet level requirement).

Tenebrium Warrior (talent)
Prerequisites: Level 15
You deal 10% increased damage with Tenebrium weapons.
Note: Received as a result of using book found in Sacred Stone (even if not meeting level requirement). The book does not grant the Handler talent, which must be earned or taken separately. Using the book fails if the character already has Tenebrium Knight.

Yeah, I'd scrap all weapons passives and just toss it into the Skill Sets.
Man at Arms: Increases 1H/2H dmg by 5% per point
Expert Marksman: Increases Bow & Crossbow Dmg by 5% per point
Scoundrel: Increases daggers damage by 5% per point

Mages should get bonus damage to specific magic elements.
Geomancy: +5% earth dmg etc.

Honestly I would rather keep the weapon skills and rework the way stats affect attacking. Like have STR increase physical damage, and Dex increase chance to hit. Weapon skills would increase both.

That way you could make a dagger weilding man-at-arms (if you wanted) or a sword-and-board scoundrel. It would be interesting to what combinations would become viable.