Finished in about 16 hours of playing. I am not doing these playthroughs using ridiculous amounts of min maxing. I have been playing it as someone familiar with DOS and rpg mechanics, but trying to treat every run as if it were my first playthrough, as such I’m not using an optimal build (also slightly gimping my build by taking certain abilities after they would have been really helpful, but that doesn't mean this build isn't competently made though) as I believe expecting such from a player on their first playthrough is a bit unreasonable, and goes a bit against the spirit of Divinity. I believe the beauty of DOS is that it can be completed with almost any combination of skills, stat allocation, and builds. Of course there will be many other more effective, but the point is that you are given that level of freedom to play in a way you find fun.
Build:
Main character is a Jack of all trades mage capable of casting all types of magic, and a point in scoundrel at some point because I like having access to adrenaline on all characters for the options it provides, cloak and dagger because it’s nice to have an escape when things get bad, and chloroform for more MA damage. He drank all 3 blood rose potions, and the stats I gave him on level up were 1int and 1 mem, or 1wit and 1mem every other level. Wears physical armor for torso, and mage pants for bottoms, everything else is based on the stat buffs they give, and he wields a staff. Speced into persuasion.
Red Prince: was a battle mage: gave him a sword and shield, speced into pyro, areo, warefare, 1 point in scoundrel for the same reasons as my jack of all trades mage. Having two escapes on a battle mage is actually really fun because instead of using those to escape, you can use them to get in on targets who are running away. Hes also speced in lore master.
Loshe: Enchanter that focused solely on getting all buff and healing spells. The only damage skills she had were the ones she started with. She had one point in scoundrel for adrenaline, but her only escape skill was tactile retreat for the self-haste. Speced int memory, and occasional points into const and wits.
Ifan: started out as a pure backstab rouge, but eventually branched into warefare, because the party was lacking in physical armor related cc. His only escape was cloack and dagger, but he did have battering ram, because backstab battering ram is kind of the best XD. Speced finesse, strength, wit. Most points went into dual wield on level up. Speced into stealth and thievery.
Miscellaneous Feedback:
The option to tell Griff that we know that his oranges are actually drudane only being available only if you take the drudane out is a nice touch. I like that the inmates will join you once you start attacking the magisters, but it often leads to you babysitting vendors to make sure they don’t die. You could buff up the vendors to be the same level as Griff and his kitchen staff, and it would be fine.
New Scapor dialogue was amazing. Especially the mislead dialogue route. Very reminiscent of something you would see in Plansecape: Torment .
Positive, neutral, bad dialogue 1-4 near the final area where you are talking about what to about the seekers who are turning into shirkers.
Got stuck on the choose teleport character cursor, and had to restart the game.
If you use battering ram on Magister Ames while on the rock you fall through the map.
Difficulty:
Difficulty throughout the campaign was fairly consistent if you are playing every fight at level. With the exception of the High Judge Orivand fight, and the last fight in the illusionist’s cave. High Judge Orivand doing 60 damage of physical armor is a bit ridiculous. You could tone him done by half and he’d still obliterate most party’s PA on turn 1 if you fight him at level. Easily the hardest of the level 4 encounters due to his damage alone. My battle mage didn’t start doing his level of damage till he hit level 7. Also got barley any loot from that encounter from the corpses.
I think the first fight in the illusionist’s cave being easy is fine, but you could make everyone during the last fight level 6, and buff their stats slightly to make it a bit more challenging. My jack of all trades mage 1 shot two of them. He teleported the one on the high ground on top of the one that was blocking the corridor, cast haste, cast burn my eyes, cast fireball, and then ignition, and then they died.
Another fight you could probably turn down a little bit is Radeka. I actually fear for certain builds going up against this fight. The second my battle mage and rouge couldn’t keep her cc’d she tore through my party, and someone (couldn’t see who) cast regen on her, and it took quite a few turns to get her back down. Her team used source skills with reckless abandon, and it’s definitely a very intense fight. I think just removing source skills from one or two of her party would be enough.
Had to use a bit of blessed oil and ice abuse early on in the Alexander fight, because otherwise he would battering ram or knockdown the entirety of my party because of how much PA damage he does.
Gear:
Loot was fairly placed most of the time, but when you click on a body after a really hard fight like, High Judge Orivand, and there is nothing there it’s a bit disheartening. That’s not to say I didn’t get any loot from Orivand, Alaxander, Radeka, etc., but it would be nice after every fight like that every corpse had atleast something on it.
I absolutely hate that what gear you can equip is tied to attributes for reasons i’ve already explained in other threads. That said, I didn’t find it too horrible in this patch, and found it was handled MUCH better than how Dos1 and Dos EE handled it. In Dos 1 and EE if you weren’t constantly pumping points into primary attributes you fell rapidly behind in damage and gear, but that’s not the case here for several reasons. For one, the attribute requirements are low, so you don’t need to go really out of your way to meet them. The other improvement that makes it nowhere near as horrible as it was in Dos1 and EE is that stats from gear will allow to reach the attribute minimum for equipping items. As long as the attribute requirements stay small, and only increase by 1 every 5 levels or so like it was done here it will be tolerable (i'd still rather they just not exist though).
Suggestions for balance:
Economy felt perfect throughout the entire journey to me. It was restricting and starved you early on, but gradually opened up as the adventure went on. If you want to make it a bit more restricting on tactician you could, but I urge you to consider that freedom is still a pretty big part of the fun when design harder modes.
Make perseverance a 10-15% increase for every other point placed in it, and place it on certain a.i opponents you don’t want to be stunned constantly. I love the MA PA system, and I feel this ability could solve a fair number of complaints players have about permeant cc. I’d also say increase base health a bit more on level for both players and a.i, and const should also give 1-2% MA/PA, and a 10% increase instead of 7%.
Tone down the dps of the A.I at lvl4+, and raise their base health and the player’s a lot. Once armor is gone it feels like both players and the A.I are too squishy, and often one dies before they get a chance to replenish their armor, and start re-strategizing.
Increase the level of vendors inside fort joy to 3, and give them a decent amount of MA/PA for their level.
I remember a poster suggesting that cripple ignore PA like slow, and considering it no longer gives an ap penalty I think it would be a pretty cool change. I could be biased because I think impalement is one of the coolest skills in the game.
Overall still an incredibly enjoyable experience in spite of the bugs and glitches. Hoping blood rose elixir buffs going away on death finally gets fixed next patch. Looking forward to the next update, and hopefully summoning master skill tree *crosses fingers* (I want to summon hordes of creatures so badly).
Last edited by Damashi; 11/02/17 09:51 PM.
