Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Some notes

Hi. Thanks for this great game, I am enjoying it for 2 weeks already, playing together with a mate and making my solo campaign to get more experience.

I am making some notes about thing I think should be improved and some new ideas. I will keep posting here when have new ideas and time.

1) In a cave where fire lizards live, there is a chest (not sure if it is a chest) where a random 8 lvl item can be collected. First time I picked a wand with 18 damage, but I was lvl3 and had 50% accuracy with it. Last time I picked an 8lvl shield and it pretty much made my Red Prince immortal. It led me to idea that items shouldn't give stats of a higher lvl than a hero using it. So for example if I am of the lvl 1 and have a shield of lvl 3, it should give me stats of lvl 1 shield, because I am actualy not skilled enough to use this item to a full potencial.
2) The idea above brought me to another one. When I played DOS1 one thing that made me sad was that legendery items of lvl 6, despite all the bonuses they had we still too bad comparing to a common item of lvl 10. So why wouldn't unique or legendary items become stronger with the hero that wields it? May be with a growing loremaster skill a hero could recognize some new features of a weapon, that he could not see or know when he had less points in loremaster.
3) Thievery is overpowered. I noticed that when you steal items, the cost in the inventory of an NPC is much less then when you try to buy it from him. I played without a thief and could hardly get good loot, but then I played a thief with 5 points in thievery on lvl 5 and managed to still half of Zaleskar's items. The other half I could buy with 6 points in barter on another hero.
4) Trash costs too much. One coin in the current version is too much to leave it behind, since there is too much of this trash all over the map. Why wouldn't all the trash (body parts, buckets, stones, shells) cost 0, but shells would sometimes contain pearls? The problem is that if I want to have good items, I should spend too much time picking up all these things all over the map. It is not a big deal for me personally, but I would still love to see some other ways of getting wealthy (thievery is not a way I like, though it is very easy).
5) The economy is broken in some way. It may be balanced, but selling 2 4lvl unique daggers for 6 coins (equals 6 buckets) is weird.
6) Paladin Cork and Garreth are dumb. It is so uncomfortable that during a fight against one enemy, we are still not allies and I can hurt them with ranger and aoe skills.
7) Huntsman skill is kinda... weak? It allows you to use ranger abilities but the bonus is applied only if you shoot from highgroud, so it forces you to search for a higher position, but in ruins, for example, you can't shoot from top because of some variable obstacles. Increasing dodging/movespeed/sight/attack range should be considered.
8) Necromaster should let you pierce through any armor and drain that vitality. This way it would be worth improving.
9) I would love to have a way of quickly finishing chaos in my inventory. May be there is one I don't know about? Would also love to get rid of those books. Not seeing them every time I open inventory would be perfect.
10) Why do I have to use Wits or Finesse on my 22 Intelligence lizard when trying to walk away after theft? Just wondering... Red Prince has Strength option.

Now some bugs.
1) My friend got carts and barrels flying, and sometimes he couldn't see enemies on the screen. I didn't have that problem, I will later tell you what system he has.
2) Due to some reason I could only speak with Zaleskar once when I played Ifan. After the first dialog ended, I couldn't start a new one. It seemed to be starting, but yet didn't. Other 3 heroes didn't have that issue.
3) Leadership aura is broken. It works 50/50 in solo campaign, and in a lobby with a friend it doesn't work at all.
4) In Fort Joy hero models turn red when I pass Griff.
5) In both campaigns I had an issue that a random hero has "crippling didn't work" above his head all the time. Had to get them rested with First aid after each combat when they lost physical armor.

I think that's all for now. Hope to get some feedback. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year buddies!

General
6) True happened for me whith the burning man as well. But the last patch seems to correct the bug that AFTER the fight they turn hostile if you damage them in some way. Now you can damage them yes but it won't change the dialoge after combat.
9) I advise to use backpacks. e.g. one just for every book/letter/note. That helps a lot!
10) You have options according to your background. E.g. babarian, mystic, rogue etc. That and high stats work well together. If the Red Prince has strength then that means he is an intimidating fellow that scares people with his strength.
Wits would be used to give a clever excuse why you did steal something. As would finesse to hide your theft or steal something unnoticed. Careful read all options and then decide what your char excells in and would fit him/her.

Bugs
4) All chars become red when heated by a fire source. Like the one right besides Griff.
5) You probably had one of Braccus items equiped. All of them are cursed in some way. And If you have magical armor and manage to avoid the cripple/burn/disease effect from those items, you constantly get that avoidance message.

9) Backpacks are best for it. Stuff like arrows will be put there automatically, if the character has already one example in it.
10) It would be pointless, if you could win every argument just because you can always use your main stat to solve it. Different situations have different persuasion stats.


4) Leadership has sadly a range of only 5 meters.
5) Bracchus boots are cursed with crippling effect.

Three or 4 days ago I played with a friend and Cork turned hostile right after the dialog began. We had to redo the fight 3 times at least, because he also died sometimes. Unfortunately, you can't ressurect him. I think I haven't seen enemies ressurecting their mates, while in DOS it was a common thing. What is the reason to this change?


Thanks, will try.


And if there is no background, you can only use wits or finesse? Because with my mage lizard I had only 2 of these options every time. It would be fine for me if I just had something else, because I have 10 finesse and 10 wits on that lizard, so it is 100% failure, opposite of having intelligence every time.

It didn't work even that close when we played in a lobby. It also doesn't work through walls I guess. I will have a closer look at this in some days. 5 meters is useless though. You should stay next to one char to have your dodge and resistances improved, but you expose yourself to all aoe skills, effects and surfaces, so what is the point in having it? I'd better position my charecters far from each other without wasting points on leadership. Should be reworked.

But visually it looks like a bug.


Thank you. It is still annoying to have that message every 5 seconds.

The red is the visually sign for the status 'Warm', more warmth will but them on fire, at least in a fight.

At least the curse of the boots and most Bracchus equipment only takes effect, while worn. Some curses are more resistent.

Leadership should work on sight like in the old times, with now range limitations. Current Leadership is pretty useless, nerfed to death you could say.

For Persuasion you can always check their stats in advance with Loremaster and perhaps let somebody else do the talking. I have no idea, wich circumstances are needed for wich options. I already had talk with to Persuasions in followup, both using different skills as options. The Persuasion skill now give +4 per point, so is more usefull.

Here are some more of my thoughts. I really hope its useful and you read it, precious developers.

1) I don't see the reason to avoid multielemental spells.
It feels weird that the only damage dealing sorcery is fire, and when you meet fire immune beasts, your fire mage is complete shit. He has 3 options: take other element staff and spend only 2 out of 4 AP on staff usage every turn; cast haste; cast clear mind. So the game forces you to play fire-earth mage, so that you could at least use global poison and oil (don't remember the names), which is still around 6 AP all together and then you stay aside and watch your team dying. Sharing scrolls before a fight is good, but you can't always have nescessary scrolls and they are not worth spending money.
2) Ranger is a hard damage dealer. Fire mage also. Assasin deals too much damage too. And then you recall that last guy with a two-handed weapon that actually can't do shit, until ranger or assasin destroys all physical armor enemies have. Playing knight is boring. The game is built around crazy surface mixtures, so until you buy that rush forward skill or phoenix dive, your knight is useless. If he has shield, he is able to live through all that magical damage and then knock down enemies, if he has no shield, than he will probably die or keep staying stunned/frozen/knocked down. We are now 4 and neither of us agreed to play warfare-based unit. So we had to wait untill we pick an item with +1 strength so that we could combine it with human special aura and get that braccus spear out of petrified withermore (if I remember the name correctly).
How I see the problem: ranger crits and kills, has a lot of APs, and he is mobile. Same for assasin. Mages don't need to switch position, they just stay and stun/freeze/burn enemies. Knight takes years to start his turn (usually last one), then years to reach the enemy with low physical armor (good thing if his way isn't full of necrofire acid elecrified deseased stuff), then he can at last use one spell which will leave that enemy ranger or mage with 1-5 physical armor (no more spells avaliable, unfortunately) and then wait for some more years for his next turn. He can't knock down mages and rangers from the start because they are usually far away and their turn goes after your ranger.
3) When I played for the first time, I actually spent some points in constitution from time to time, but now I don't. There are too many avaliable opportunities to make a hero durable enough. Recover Armor, Frost Armor, Fortify (on elf ranger after he eats atusa's leg), Fortify on Red Prince, potions, First Aid, Restoration, Restoration scrolls. Later there are 2 more sick spells for healing. Constitution is useless. I thought about making strengh an attribute of vitality. Constitution can be replaced with Durability which passively recovers some percentage of player's magical and physical armor per turn. This way Knight becomes fun to lvlup and more fun to play. And warfare should reduce movement penalties from heavy armor.
4) Currently there are 3 types of armory: cloth, leather and metal. Strength and Intelligence bonuses force you to go full metal on Knight and full cloth on mage and they have percentage bonuses which later will become insane. But it leaves a knight without magical armor (if he has no shield) and a mage with no physical armor (if he has no fortify). And an assasin and ranger have no bonuses at all and should rely on dodging. The idea is good, but please let the poor robe have at least some physical armor and heavy metal stuff some magical armor. You can't rely on Frost armor every time. I noticed that there is more physical armor in leather, so it is around 60/40 for physical/magical armor, why not go 80/20 for metal and 30/70 for cloth?
5) Sometimes NPCs are very bad. Its alpha, so I guess you will work on it. They should learn what focusing a particular unit is, and they should try to combine their spells to disable or kill heroes. I guess that is a really hard job to do, but I hope you can do it.
6) Some fights are really easy won by sending your ranger forward, initiate the fight, and then just rush back with tactical retreat scroll or skill. These are the fight when you meet Delorus and the fight against skeleton mages and archer where Withermore's soul jar is. You just initiate, then rush away and wait until they come close to each other. Kinda hack for experienced players, not sure if you should do anything about it, but i would advise to revise some NPC's positions and let them flee out of combat if they have to follow you for too lond.

Bugs
1) When we tried to play in a party of 3, that guy with stolen cocaine sniffed it all out before I took the orange from him. There was nothing inside that orange.
2) In a hall where a lot of paintings are, on the top floor of fort joy castle, there are 2 small paintings in the corner, standing next to each other. When I picked one of them, the other flew under the roof and I dont recall how I got it, but it was hard.
3) Loremaster works bad if you have it only as a bonus from an item. I had to swith the ring with +1 loremaster between the heroes, before I could actually identify an item. It happened with two items in a row, so I guess it would happen for a third time aswell.
4) Don't think it is a bug, but silent monks are too passive. You kill them one by one and they don't care. You could even throw one right next to another (without dealing damage) and they don't care. This experience shouldn't be that easy to get.
5) Sometimes NPCs use tactical retreat and walk all the way back. I guess it happens when they should walk through dangerous surfaces in order to reach a target. And in arena I saw that dwarf mage running around without purpose a couple of times already.

I wanted to mention something else for sure.

Well I wrote one more huge post and then reduced it to this. Knight is no fun because of grenades. Warfare should make grenades more powerful and grenades should become more common and cheap. I have in mind an NPC selling nades for really cheap. And I noticed that I never use rage. It should give you immunity to surface damage (or 50% resistances to all elements) and 2x movespeed and block the ability to cast anything as a penalty. And I think one-handed melee weapons should require 1 AP for an attack.

Nerfing ranger and assasin in some way would be also good. This will leave more space for other classes, perhaps mixed ones. I think being a strong ranger or assasin should take more skillpoints.

I noticed I never used sneaking for fighting. The logic is that if I don't use something (like grenades which I feel are not worth wasting and should be kept for a better situation which will futher never occur) a new player would do neither. And I don't use something if there is no necessity.

So I finally decided to stop testing different skill-builds and finished the game.

1) As I already mentioned, knight is useless, and even more useless he was at the end, when enemies had more physical armor than vitality. Assasin killed every one of them. Ranger shot 1 time each turn, because he had a crossbow. The only thing my knight did, he somehow fell down the highground after using blitz attack (jumping on multiple enemies) and took around 220 damage (he was enraged, I decided to use this skill more yesterday, gives more trouble than benefits btw) and the fight lasted 20 seconds longer, because I wanted to cure him first.

2) I healed my knight with 2 abilities to almost all hp. Shouldn't be so, considering he is the most tanky of 4. Why not rework healing so that it heals some % of targets health, where the % depends of the caster's intelligence? 2 AP to heal all your team for 50% of their hp is too little. Especially when there is 10m distance between them.

3) The final fight, as you could already guess, wasn't impressive at all. I didn't know what was happening, but all magisters were stunned and then died soon after my chain lightning, the big boss died really fast after mortal blow and I never had a chance for Arrow Spray. Overpower did nothing, because of enemies positioning, and there was also no point in it since ranger and assasin almost killed the enemies by the time knight's turn came. I think bosses should be more unique and annoying. May be demanding some certain tactics. I din't feel Radeka at all. The music was sick, preparing for some hardcore action, but the fight was so easy that I laughed at that music. Music is brilliant in this game.

4) I noticed enemies never use teleportation and netherswap on my squad. I imagine how impressive it would be if I didn't focus on my positioning and let some enemy mage netherswap with my mage or ranger and leave them right next to the poor knight that actually made it to hit them and then burst them down with fire oil poison shocking stuff muahaha.

5) In a fight with Radeka I only got damaged hard by surfaces because missclicked. Yes, it was the knight.

6) I teleported to the ship where River is, but couldn't chat with him. Nothing happened, I just jumped back, end of story.

7) After the final fight I wanted to fill source points on my heroes, but game told me that there are no more charges on my wand. I didn't find any information about how many charges that wand had.

8) I actually realised that you let players make a hero some universal soldier, because skills are getting stronger with lvls more than with stats and you only need one point of any skill in order to get all the abilities, but it rules out the opportunity of building a really strong fire/earth/air/water mage or necromancer. I would better have fortify on 3 non-mage units, than on one earth mage.

9) There really shouldn't be 100% chances to stun/slow/cripple/knock down/blind etc. a unit that has no necessary armor. It makes the game too predictable. Ranger with 10 intelligence can't have the same chance to stun enemy as a mage with 25 intelligence even when he uses a scroll.

10) I'd really like to see some multielemental spells. Disables, buffs, enchantments. The chance of applying some effect should rely on one magical skill, the amount of damage on the other, the cooldown on something else, aoe etc. I imagine how cool it would be if somewhere at lvl 10 I put 1 point in each magical skill and can learn some cool ability that requires all those points.

11) I actually learned how to play the game at ease. Some universal gamehack for DOS2. You just delay your turns, wait until rangers and mages will stack together, then swap your knight with some enemy or swap your ranger with enemy ranger on highground, teleport one enemy close to 2 other enemies and then bursts them down. I don't feel any pressure, don't lose any arrows, grenades, scrolls, resurrection scrolls. Just aoe burst. And after you realise it, you don't want to play it other way. If you have teleportation on 2 heroes, you are officially indestructible. This skill is too good.

12) I actually skilled telekinesis on Lohse but during the game there was only one situation where I used it. And that was not in this playthrough. I used it to collect big paintings, because my knight didn't have enough strength. Then I passed it to a guy with barter that was standing right next to Zaleskar. One more gamehack.

I played HoMM, MTH, dota and the best (the most interesting) turn-based system imho was in HoMM5 where initiative let a unit have more turns (a dragon could make 2 turns before next turn of a zombie came) but you refused to have it for some reason, I guess, and the best sourcery among all games is in MTH. Dota is good when it comes to Invoker's lvlup (his skills depend on the amount of points spent on particular element), and balancing overall. I am sure that those games could lead you to some great ideas.

UPD
I have just started a new campaign. Decided to mix warfare and scoundrel in two-handed unit. Feels sick, but I got a 3rd lvl two-handed weapon and miss hits in knocked down enemies 2 times in a row (I am lvl 2). I feel pain and frustration................

Some more notes
1) Ranger attack animation was better in DOS1, hope you are going to bring it back. Lizard animations and animation for attack with a staff are also not so good.

2) When we are in a fight with my party, I we can't know enemy's resistances until the turn of a hero with loremaster comes. That shouldn't be so.

3) AP system in DOS1 was much more flexible. I liked and often used that feature when you spent 1 more AP on your attack, but it had more accuracy or damage. You could let abilities take less AP if there are a lot of points spent on some skill. There are so many interesting things you could do.

4) Why not change the way armor and vitality work. I think it would be better if armor and vitality were reduced equally from attacks, but the chance of setting a status on unit would be 2 times less if he has some armor. With this logic constitution would be great as a measure against falling under effects if you make it reduce the chance of getting debuffed.

5) Noticed that in DOS1 EE you dramatically reduced the amount of books that gave 1 Int for the cost of 1 Wits and let that secret shop have only 1 book for attributes and 1 for skillpoints (you could buy one every level before). In DOS2 I haven't seen any, but there is more need in them.

6) Should have a buff from air magic to improve dodging ability of an allied unit for some turns.

7) Oil is really overpowered. 100% chance to apply slow status, good aoe, penalty on ability points gain, sick movespeed penalty. Just telekinesis+fossil strike to get rid of at least 2 units for one turn. NPCs don't do shit if they are in oil, they just try to run away from it.

8) APs should be spent after you move some distance, not before. You have only 4 AP per turn and spending 1 AP to hit a target that stands 0.5m further than you need or to walk 0.2m to gain vision over enemy model is too much.

9) I noticed that preparing your heroes position before the fight doesn't require much brain (just let the most tanky initiate and others stand behind far enough from each other so that they don't get caught by one arrow or fossil strike), but makes a fight much more easy. Why not make some default posisions, or block the way back after the fight begins? (some falling trees, stones or magical barriers would do). For example that fight where you meet some strong voidwoken at highground, and some skeletons in other highgrounds. The fight would be much more interesting if I started it in the middle of the trap whatever pass I came from.

10) Don't think that either in DOS1 or DOS2 there is a way to reliably earn some money and do it whenever you want. Some cliched quests like saving some group, killing some monster, fighting in arena would do. Now the only way of getting really good items is picking up all the trash map has, then maximizing your bartering and thievery and buying it from gareth and zaleskar after you reach lvl 7. If you like shopping every lvl, you won't have money to trade by the end of the map.

Bugs
1) Models are standing when a knocked down status applied, happens often.

2) When casting fast, sound effects and animations pass, but APs not spent and no damage dealt.

3) Didn't have any dialog with Gareth or whoever after Shriekers were killed. I went to pick up the chest from right side of the map and saw noone after came back.

4) If I save Elodi by killing Griff's friends, the quest is completed, but if I just save her without killing, nothing happens, it is incompleted till the end, and I found no way to finish it.

5) Childsplay quest (if I remember the name) with Han also wasn't completed, don't know why.

6) There are too many incompleted quests and I don't know what to do with them. I guess, some of them will be finished outside the island.

7) When you try to hit an enemy with range attack or spell and you see only a little bit of his body inside the range, you try to aim at him and for a moment you find a place that shows that you actually may hit him, but then it instantly dissapears. And you actually can't hit him, but you keep aiming for 10-20 seconds before giving up. It is annoying. It happens when you aim at the enemy and pass the range cap with your mouse.

I am reading all those topics about slow xp gain and have suddenly recalled one more thing that I consider a problem in the game. It is stat gain from lvlup. I think it is wrong to make a hero gain boost for his spells and hp from lvlup. Heroes should gain power from combining spells and abilities in a smart way or from having more skills and more APs (or lesser AP costs) and from good equipment. With growing level you get better items. At the moment there are 6 main factors that make a unit stronger: items, abilities (the amount of them), skillpoints, attribute points, talents and xp. Getting xp is so important because items of a higher lvl have multiplied damage. If you buy a next lvl weapon, its damage is multiplied by your attribute and then also by skillpoints. In order to balance this, you have to go for exponential vitality growth. All this makes lvl matter too much. There is nothing bad in gaining advantage from lvling up, but why should it be exponential? I guess, if that was so starting from DOS1, you have chosen this way on purpose, but what is the reason? Is it making people do all quests possible? But you can motivate them by letting them get some really good loot or skillbook from finishing a quest. Finishing all possible quests in order to go futher through gamestory sounds boring. And it also feels boring when you want to try other class.

1) I think the game lacks action overall. It lacks some videos, some guidance over a player. Why don't you show how gates are closed when living Fort Joy through gates, or how heroes are sailing or how they move out of the drain. Why not start the game from fighting the voidwoken after you stand up. Instead you find a kid and read some boring useless dialog.
2) The quests should be seperated in a jornal as it was in D:OS2. Today I noticed that it is very uncomfortable to look through the quests and search for some particular one. We play once or twice a week, since it is a problem to gather 4 working men, so I had to read journal in order to understand at which stage we were at that moment. It would be also very nice to split main quests from additional ones.
3) 2 led me to idea that main quests should provide a player with enough XP to be of the necessary level, and additional quests should add a little bit of utility (some skill books/cool items).
4) Fought Radeka with my party 4, was too easy with a strong assasin. We teleported her next to our guy and he left her low hp. Ranger finished the job.
5) I still think that if the turn-based system looked like the one from HoMM5, the fights against bosses would be much more challenging.

Bugs
1) I got pants (skirt) dressed upside down on my Lohse all day. Had to redress it multiple times to make it look normal.
2) Voidwoken lizards that are protecting the entrance to a magical cave killed our guy at one hit somehow. Just a 150 hp mortal blow. I think it used some source spell, combining poison+fire damage. That should not happen, it is imbalanced.
3) I didn't get XP for blessing the burning pigs. Got XP for one of them only.

So we have finished it together (party 4). The final voidwoken didn't do anything at all, was just skipping his turns after we killed the magisters. Before that we teleported our ranger to a cliff where the chest is (in the ruins where the final fight takes place) and we couldn't teleport him back. He couldn't jump to us with tactical retreat also. We actually had to retry the fight because our ranger jumped over some surface and blown up. The guys from my party finished the game for the first time, didn't hear any "wow" comments, but they liked the game overall. Nothing more to add. +4 finesse wand.

That is because if you don't have far out man talent you can teleport to a destination 15m away but the target can only be 13m. So you can teleport someone to that ledge (which is 14.8m at the closest) and can't get them back.

I got stuck there also and had to reload. It is a bug I think - you should only be able to teleport 13m.

Either your character with teleport needs far out man talent or the one with tactical retreat - it works for both.

The chest always has good gear.