I know this is early access, and thus this Act 1 might not be representative of what will actually be in it, but currently it seems that the environmental effects and power of them is crazy.

When going back to DOS 1 it becomes clear it's probably less to do with the environment itself, and more the spells available (and also just amount of oil every where in DOS 2).

Look at the novice level spells in DOS 1. http://divinityoriginalsin.wiki.fextralife.com/Skills.

  • Close Proximity, single target spells (with CC chance)
  • Some ranged single target (mix of damage and/or CC)
  • Limited aoe spells (firefly, boulder bash, immolation, battering ram, etc.)
  • Buffs / Debuffs (single target)
  • Summons
  • Limited environment creating spells (rain, boulder bash, firefly, etc.)


Some of these spells require/penalty you if you only have 1 point into the skill as well. These spells required you to actually play and position differently, other than a ranger you needed to be close to enemies to use spells, along with the lack of aoe made grouping up (both you and enemies) less of an issue early, but using the environment was much more important (rivers, poison, etc.)

Meanwhile in DOS 2
  • Very few melee range spells
  • Many aoe spells, a lot of which create significant amount of environment
  • Many mobility spells/teleporting spells


Along with this, the new Armor and CC system actually makes environmental effects (aside from extra damage) not as important. In DOS 1 it was very significant to use "transition" states like Wet, Cold, Warm, etc. in order to secure a stun, freeze, burn, etc. In DOS 2 if magic armor = 0, you get the stun, freeze, etc regardless of what you did before. There is a large loss of strategy and planning to put the environment and such in your favor, now it's just nuke armor down, throw CC down, win. Previously it was do damage and set up debuffs/states (wet, lower resistances, etc.), exploit the advantage you set up to CC, pick off the weakened enemies (and usually prioritize enemies properly, so they don't set up an advantage against you).