Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - Enhanced Edition So.. tact is imposable

So is it just me or is tact mode impossible. Every fight at least 3 of my party members die or they all die and i have to reload. Ive tried about 20 different builds and they all get insta killed.

also.. Is it just me or do Warriors suck.

It's certainly possible. But it isn't possible for me, so I always play on one of the easier settings.

It's also very easy to take a wrong turn once you get to Cyseal: some of the mobs can be seriously bad news for a low-level or poorly-levelled team. I mostly work around problems like that with a sneaky character.

In general, though, moving west towards the lighthouse should be do-able, whereas moving east towards the church can get you pwned in pretty short order.

i didnt leave town till level 5 and still got steam rolled.

I nearly threw my PC out the window. Then again, I nearly did the same with Morrowind when I decided to attempt to clear the first cave at level 1, and The Witcher when I decided to take on the bloody dog with far too little experience, and... well, probably most games I've played have had That Moment.

D:OS is a bit more demanding when it comes to really pushing you to the limit of what you can reasonably be expected to do, though. I feel your frustration, even as someone who's definitely more at the casual/explorer end of the difficulty spectrum!

i gave up on tact mode. completely un balanced. im all for a harder difficulty but making it impossible to get out of town isnt fun.

I also started the game on tactical and while struggling on the start, I have reached level 8 and it appears to be a little easier now, also because I know better the game mechanics.

Here are my advices
(some of them may be obvious):

1) this is a must: always try to use the environment to your advantage. For example use air on water to stun enemies or fire to burn them. It takes some time to understand the relationships between water, air, venom, etc... For example igniting a venom cloud result in smoke which can help your party avoid enemy archers.
2) Recon first and if possible never try to battle with multiple enemies above your level. Use a character with high lore skill to inspect the enemy weaknesses.
3) try to concentrate on one enemy at a time by using spells or scrolls which takes temporarily enemies out of combat.
4) since undead do not like fire, I think it is better to start with a wizard who can do fire damage. If you don't have wizards, use molotov grenades, may be with the "catapult" ability, which increases the range.
5) try to lure away the enemy from his position, may be around an angle so that you can concentrate fire. In an open battle you have little chance of winning on tactical level.

The battle system is quite complex, so take your time to experiment, it's really one of the best part of the game.
Good luck !

tried all that. I think the biggest problem i have is that im trying to do Man at arms tank. and he just sucks.

The game can be hard as it can be easy, it depends whether or not you understand the tatics that make this game simple, or not.

In my opinion, games tend to become harder (require skill) when you are limited by time to perform your actions, so I view D:OS as quite simple. D:OS requires understanding, and perhaps some preparation, but not much skill.

A man-at-arms tank kinda sucks, but not to the point of making the game impossible.

What builds have you tested up until now? You mention 20.

Heya, fellow source hunters!

The tact mode is possible, but it is truly hard indeed! I'm happy enough that I did defeat Braccus Rex! :3

I've seen the tips posted by Isu, those are really good. I'll add my own tips, to complete it :

1) Do not, ever, under any circumstance, try to play this mode until you've done at least on play through. Obvious tip, but necessary tip
2) Team composition : Everyone has its preferences. Yet I suggest you don't have too many melees : a lot of ennemies have AoE skills, and if they get more than 2 of your members, this is usually game over.
A rogue /stealth character is often useful. Try to build him to be fast and have a lot of CC abilities. Alternatively, you can use this character to max your charisma & other "utility" abilities. His purpose is not to deal a lot of damages, it is to be useful (see point 6). He is also your "last hope" : when everyone dies, you stealth him, disappear, flee away and come back to rez everyone
An archer is (imo) necessary : the special arrows add so much CC and are so easy to found / craft, you just can't win without it
Janhan is great : he has a lot of spells that are very useful. I suggest you pick him as a mage.
Indeed, you do need a tank. Not some half melee/half magic bullshit. No. A tank. You only level up the defensive abilities, man-at-arms and 1 handed weapon (forget about two-handed weapons. The shield is such a good mechanic).
3) The crafting! Janhan, the mage buddy you can get easily, starts with scientist (+ 1 craft, + 1 blacksmith). Those stats are really important. I know the crafting might seem a little bit boring, but trust me : craft potions, grenades, arrows, enchant your stuff, craft MEALS (the health + stats is indeed important for the fighting). Do not hesitate to check some crafting tables online.
4) The "traits" : Divinity : OS has a good traits system : every action you make towards NPC's has an influence on it. Those traits are not only for the RP : if you look at it, they have bonuses attached to them. Try your best to have the trait bonus fit your character build (some of those bonuses are really good.. Immune to curse, immune to fear..) Think before every interaction.
5) DO NOT get Glass Canon or Lone Wolf. Rip Run.
6) Quite, quite, quite, aaaaaaaaand... Quite! Agro the ennemies from a large distance. get your stealth character in the back of the ennemies. The ennemies will split : some will chase the rogue, other will go to your team. Then, when half the ennemies are far enough, use the TELEPORTATION PYRAMID of the rogue to get to the team and kill half the ennemies. Repeat until win.
7) know the spawns. Some ennemies are stealth, or appear only when you walk a particular path. It is necessary you know the spawn. If you get surprised, you die. The same works with traps (explosive)
8) Do not try to fight every ennemy you see : some are too hard to kill in one shot (I'm thinking about that giant spider in the cave)
9) placement : you have to think before EVERY fight where do you place your characters : hard to reach, easy to lock down an enemy,
10) last but not least : determination. You will die. Again, again and again. Ever Dark Souls didn't prepare you enough for this. If you want to win in this mode, you have to accept that every mistake will make you fail. Sometimes, you won't do any mistake, yet you'll still lose. It's the game, deal with it.

I think that with those informations, you might be able to *perhaps* success in this difficult yet so self-rewarding mode.

Good luck and have fun saving Rivellon again, again and again! <3

Hard? Im steam rolling the second time around on tactician mostly because i know whats what and who's who I suggest starting on classic difficulty. Also its all about crafting crafting crafting! And blacksmithing craft arrows for your archer craft some charm arrows and change the battle! Want to get rid of the armor penalty for your warriors? Blacksmith it! And make sure your on the same level as your enemies or higher

Tactician mode is definitely not impossible. Challenging, mostly, frustrating at times.

To take it on you need good understanding of the game, decent positioning and most importantly good, conservative decision making. AKA: don't take useless risks.

Someone mentioned crafting as a solve-everything kind of thing. Yes and no. It's useful (bloody useful, actually) but NOT mandatory. Special arrows are found by the dozen through the game (i think i ended my tact run with 100+ spare arrows), and you can always buy them, same goes for the potions.
Improving equipment is a very nice thing to do, tho. I'd say that especially later in the game it makes things much easier thanks to added tankiness and damage.

Now, a few suggestions:
- especially early, get some summons. Scrolls or learned skills it's irrelevant, but just having another meatshield to take some pressure off your party is invaluable, especially against bosses. I will forever love the spider who tanked Diederik and an archer for three(!) turns, giving me the much needed time to slay everyone else. As your team grows in power, you will be less and less reliant on them but they will forever be a good asset when you find yourself outnumbered.
- scrolls and grenades. They can (and will) save your life countless times. Also, consider that scrolls generally consume less AP than actually casting the learned spell giving you some breathing room should you NEED that spell but you can't afford staying still.
- get multiple healing sources. Regeneration is OP, and much much later on, Mass Healing is the ultimate anti non-lethal traps tool. If you have at least two high-int character who can keep spamming it, you should never get into real troubles. Potions help, but only from the point you get mediums. Minor healing potions are bad to the point of irrelevancy and should be used only if you have no other options and are very, very optimistic (IMO).
- CC. EVERYTHING. Should you not know that, CC stands for Crowd Control, that is any form of impairment you can inflict to your enemies from knockdown to a "simple" slow (in D:OS slow is OP as hell). In tactician mode it's OP, mandatory and if not employed to MASSIVE scale you die every time. Unfortunately, enemies tend to have resistances or immunities of various kinds, therefore you should spend your time getting some loremaster skill points (the more, the better). In D:OS knowledge is literally power. Keep it well.
- buffs and debuffs. This directly links to the CC point, but there are spells that can drastically improve/decrease a character performance on the field.
- know your battlefield. A great way to improve your chances is getting to know what terrain can do. Enemies are not (completely) stupid and will most of the times try to avoid fire/ooze/ice pools. Any AP they spend moving around it is an AP they don't spend whacking your skull. Besides, taking out an enemy by poisoning him and then setting him on fire causing massive explosion damage is fun AF. Again, knowledge is power.

I could go on and on and on. What i said is probably enough to make most of the game easy if not trivial. There is a lot to learn about the game and in my opinion, it's what makes this game so awesome.

EDIT: one more thing. I've read that tanks should not be half assed hybrids. FALSE: you can roll out a mostly magic tank and gain MASSIVE utility for a "small" loss in survivability. I used a jack-of-all-trades tank in tactician and he paid off so much i don't have words for it. Without the tons of curses, stuns, freezes and so on he dealt i would have ragequitted. So. Hard.