Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Rogues op? Nah, mages op.(solo, guide, 29ap combo)

Original post was too long so I'll add the early game related stuff here.

Early game

This is doable completely solo, but won't be as "op" until you reach level 4, when invis, cooldown reset, fireball, netherswap and impalement are available, so the goal is to reach level 4 while picking the easier fight encounters.


You want to start with a wizard preset during character creation for the double poison wand, and if you happen to come across a fire wand from Siwan's body like I did, you don't need to craft/buy a wand later, there is a "short stick" right after prologue on the ground, requires highlight to see it, can buy a skull from vendors, combining the two will create an elemental wand, probably need saving here to get a fire one. Starting with a fire wand preset is another option, trigger explosions with poison dart and get poison wand from turtle.

Skill wise it's a bit hard to decide, as we only need rain from hydro to do the rain contamination combo, it does make early game easier than water wand + contaminate, but will delay your other combos, so the skill order I would recommend is pyro/geo, searing daggers, contamination and poison dart, followed by aero and poly, and then warfare for phoenix dive, finally hydro, after that I threw all the points into aero, can get hydro before pyro and poly if you want to make early game easier, dumping later skill points into poly-int instead of aero for overall damage is another option.


As for civil skills I went with 3 ranks of sneak then found it pretty underwhelming and put 1 point in loremaster to see resistances and such, it would be useful to be able to see initiative with high ranks, thievery can also be taken consideration for reason below.



During the prologue, trade items with magisters and lizard, after they die you loot your items back, learn adrenaline from the chunk of flesh, kill the dog by filling the hallway with poison and shooting it from afar, same thing can be done with the two magisters but you want to persuade them for exp first and then kill them.

After prologue spec into aero and steal rain book from one of the tents for later, go for turtles' wand, first small turtle can be killed from high ground, sneak up the hill and the big turtle can be killed from high ground in 1 turn, and the smaller one left will die running towards you walking on poison, now we dual wield poison/fire wand, which creates fire ground and explosion every hit, poison/poison is good too but doesn't have the first explosion when starting a fight, although I think poison/poison trigger 2 explosions, poison/fire also trigger 2 explosions if the target is poisoned I think but I'm not entirely sure.

Other exp sources

- Digging the source hunter's place in the cave

- Sneaking to the frog place in the cave without triggering combat

- Giving migo yarrow flower and completing the quest ( we come back to kill them later, rest with bedroll before initiating the fight will make you immune to migo's first battering ram charge or cripple.

- Jester with kid in alcove

- Maybe healing the guy outside of cave

- During the orange quest, make sure you attack silence with wands long before she gets to lizard, make her waste her first action on stabbing lizard, this way you can get a full turn with adrenaline and hit her with 3 wand explosions before she goes invis, and stunning her with electric discharge, the reason for this is that she drops an invisibility potion, although I don't really know where to use this potion, maybe it's possible to pickpocket the key from the prison houndmaster without fighting? that might be a viable strategy should contamination be nerfed in the future.

-The character Narin also has an invisibility potion, steal maybe?

- Three thugs on roof, create poison ground with wands and try to burst the main guy down so you loot an extra grenade.

- After you get out of prison you can probably kill a lot of silent monks for exp, which is something I probably should've done, completing withermore's quest gives a good chunk of exp, won't have a source point tho, can save for later.

- Crocs, I actually did crocs by creating water with a water wand, which takes more effort and won't be able to create water as far, it's probably really easy using rain and contamination from very far away but should the method be nerfed crocs can be saved for later.

- Before you teleport the guy down at the alcove, you can water up the whole place and contaminate-sneak, if you traded all his books before you kill him you loot everything back.

- Prison fight, I think rain and contaminate will do the job, I didn't have rain and water wand worked for me by going into Verdas' room after pull, position yourself to lure the melee guys out, lit up the poison with wand and rain to make archers come, then discharge the clouds or water maybe.

- can probably go to shelter for exp after prison

I didn't really use much consumables during my run, But I can think of a few that might come in handy


Teleport scrolls - this is probably the most useful and the only one I really used, didn't realize how good it is until later in my run.
Smoke grenades
Stun grenades
Invisibility potion

Two images of my character's stats before the final fight



I personally don't really like relying on rng items from the game but I used them anyway as crafted gear with stats on them like those from the first game aren't available yet, should be doable with pure unique and crafted items later.

Some notable unique items

-Turtle's claw
Good poison wand early on.

-Gloves of teleportation
Equivalent to 1 memory.

- Galwin's robe
This gives +1 to aero boosting damage by a bit.

-Source hunter's belt
+1 memory, best in slot until we can craft something better.

- Ring from Braccus Vault
For the +2 int, it curses you but we don't get to use wands much later so the accuracy penalty isn't that big of an issue.

-There is a +1 int ring along with 2 other unique stat items buried at the salamander place, probably best in slot early on along with Braccus ring

-Witch's wand
For the 2 int, carried as a stat stick.

-Fang of the winter dragon
For the 2 int, dual wield with witch's wand, you can equip this by drinking blood rose and rest with bedroll.


Although our memory slots are limited, our spellbook isn't really limited, so we can learn many skills and swap them around, like swapping poison stuff out when fighting undead etc, haste is useful with combined with invisibility to stealth past the salamanders, grow wings is useful to travel around the map for exp and loot before warfare phoenix dive is learned. Shocking touch, fortify, armor of frost, restoration, global cooling, chain lightning, epidemic of flame are all situational skills.