Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Too many environmental effects

I think blood + electricity should be changed, blood conducting electricity so easily isnt realistic in any sense, besides why is every mob exploding blood like a water balloon as soon as my melee pokes it even slightly?

Actually, blood is litte more than salty water. It conducts electricity rather nicely. (And, a reliable source told me, blood is especially good at conducting magical electricity!)

I agree though that combat often more is about surface control than "killing enemies".

but it is exploding like everyone has infinite amount of it, thats the problem. You do not hear people get electricuted by blood at all in real life.

People can BE electrocuted mostly because the blood, which is inside of them, is conductive to electricity. So they come in contact with it, and get electrocuted. See?

Instead of wasting my time with you i think my point is already acrossed, the current effects are ridiculous, a tone down would be welcome.

It's probably a waste of my time talking to you, but that's just your opinion, most certainly not a fact.
Others seem to enjoy them.
You might want to tone down a bit.

The environmental effects is the core feature of the game, and are extremely important when playing a mage.
If anything the surfaces don't stay long enough.

Toning them down would be the same as removing magic.

No, it would balance things a bit better. Getting several melee chars stunned by the same ever-lasting magical effect for several turns is not fun. Especially in some cases the effects are invonlutarily caused by the actions of the melee chars itself.

I would prefer shorter durations for a few magical surface effects, above all the stun. Or it would be enough if blood which is everywhere could not be aerotheurged so easily.

If you cause effects involuntarily then you don't understand basic game mechanics, never mind strategy.

Can you explain it to me? For example how do you avoid blood from enemies you have to kill with melee weapons near an electroluted surface? You could have magical armor (sometimes in a fight sadly it's gone), use skills to avoid surfaces (even if available sometimes on cooldown) or idle around (bad if you need damage to survive).

What is your advice? Playing a group of mages?

Sorry to intervene, but the solution (at least, the idea of solution) is quite simple: make blood drop only under the enemy, enhance UI with an option to show hazardous ground contours, enable an option to avoid hazardous ground while moving. Nerf is not required, just transparency. An if the Devs have ever played the game, I believe they will settle the problem.

I concur. They need to make the cooldown period shorter. It is ridiculous how long things keep burning or electrified or whatever. I don't even like to cast rain anymore, because I know it will almost certainly result in huge pools around my characters as well, electrifying everyone. Those statuses should last maybe 2 rounds. They shouldn't remain there the entire fight, with some of them continuing even after you have won... then I spend time just trying to clear electrified water so I can walk, or literally putting out fires.

In a situation where attacking an enemy with a physical weapon would expand an electrified surface to melee range the options are the following:
- don't attack with a physical weapon
- don't attack from melee range
- move the enemy with teleport or netherswap
- remove the dangerous surface
- transform the surface into something that doesn't stun (freeze it, bless it, contaminate it, cover it in oil or poison)
- take the hit to your magic armor, possibly boosting it with skills beforehand (not an option if glass cannon)
- focus on another enemy instead

That's 7 very different actions that you can take to deal with a situation that you should have prevented to begin with using careful placement.

Ok, I see, nothing new. In the end none of the methods is viable because in the actual fight you have to do damage there and then for a reason. F.e. not attacking from melee range with melee chars is a bit difficult. Or if you opt to concentrate on a sceleton far away instead of trying to avoid Radeka's Shackles of Pain, it is of course an option but you may lose anyway.

The problem is not the many special surfaces or the mage's ability to use them. That's a game core mechanic. The problem for me is that some surface effects remain forever and no amount of armor or skill use is enough to avoid contact.

That's ridiculous, they're all very viable, have minimal AP cost, and controlling the battlefield is more important to victory than doing basic attacks.
Even Warfare alone has many ways to deal with this: it has ranged attacks, surface removal and a teleport+fire.

As I already said if a particular surface is causing you problems, just remove or transform it. Your argument about surfaces remaining "forever" is invalid.

Other options I did not mention:
- use float to avoid touching the surface
- equip shock-resistant gear

You imply that any of the options is available at will. There are restricted memory slots and there are cooldowns. Above all stunning is an effect that does not let you react. One or two turn fights are not a problem here.

In D:OS 1 were shield spells that protected you against effects like stun. Are they no longer available ? I think air shield and avatar of storms prevented being stunned. One of them was a novice spell that required only 1 point in aerotheurg so it was easily available. I could always cast this on my melee char which prevented any stun locks. Is this no longer possible ?

I did not see yet such protection shield spells. Maybe the system is different, I did not play the first game.

Now you are safe from any cc as long as you have enough physical or magical armor (except the extremely annoying slow effect of oil which ignores magical armor, why? why? why?). There are also several skills which buffer you from the effects of surfaces, the problem is there are a lot other skills necessary for combat.

The problem is not the stun from magical abilities cast by you or foes. For me the problem is the long lasting surface effects, three turns a row.

Which sometimes occurs out of the blue. Today I had it two times that blood was electrified in a fight although nobody, neither me nor the enemy, applied an electrifying skill at all. It is kind of crazy.

For me, the impact of "surface" is indeed too big, but not because of its mechanic (I think it is fun) but because there are way too many surfaces, so it happens everywhere. I don't think that the presence of that many barrels of water, oil or poison everywhere in the world is realistic. Also, blood comes in far too great quantities. Everytime you loose 5 HP, it is as if 40 liters of blood are spilled on the floor. Guys, a human body has 5 liters of blood ...

So I would keep the surfaces mechanic, but get rid of 80% of all the barrels (only leave them in places where there is a real logic for them to be, example in a warehouse), and I would only have dead body makes small blood pools.