Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Dear Larian, can we talk itemization?

Since the most recent update, I have to completely agree with the OP. Not only with unique items you can find throughout your adventures, but also on the vast majority of all of the level 18-20 end-game unique items that used to come with 3 rune sockets have been nerfed to 1 socket and their vendor values are all trash now, making them statistically substantially worse than a level 20/21 vendor purchased Divine. The triple sockets made many of these items better than anything you could find or purchase 2-3 levels higher, and the feeling you get when you found one of these items was amazing FeelsGoodMan.

Now though? I don't even bother picking them up as their vendor value has been nerfed to oblivion as well, and my gear is usually better by the time I find them anyway.

To add to OPs statement earlier about hand-placed loot; I completely agree.

If I am going to go out of my way and spend hours on side quests to find that (supposed-to-be) awesome unique item, that item should provide SOME type of usefulness past its spawned level where I wont end up almost being *required* to replace it on my next level-up. It just feels vastly unrewarding and actually hurts the replay value of this game.

As what the OP mentioned, in games like Baldur's Gate 2 where you can get items like Lirarcor +3 or Celestial Bane or Carsomyr +5 very early on, I can use those items for almost (if not) the entire play-through and that doesn't make the game less replayable. It is actually more rewarding to know that I can reliably find these items that will last me rather than doing this dumb vendor grind to find that one Divine item that trumps the one I purchased from the same vendor on my previous level-up.

Further, this game doesn't have randomly generated dungeons or areas with re-spawning monsters to allow a fun method of grinding for this randomly generated Divine gear; I am restricted to scum-saving or waiting every X hours for a vendor to update if I am unhappy with my loot rolls by level 21/22 and am nearing the last few end-game fights.

I also don't think any response that suggests I use mods to "fix" what is broken is a viable solution; I shouldn't have to resort to using a third party mod to fix a fundamentally flawed aspect of the game's base design. The game should've addressed this from the start.

Just to put things into perspective; This game was released just shy of 1 month ago and I am already considering putting it down after my third play-through and nearly 600 hours invested (EA included).

Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, D2LOD, etc. are games that were released 15+ years ago and I still play them to this day, many thousands of played hours later, and to me they never get old. DOS2 already feels played-out to me. FeelsFrustratedMan.

Edit:
One should sense a tiny bit of over-exaggeration in my post, as there is one item I have stuck with nearly the entire play-through (Amulet of the Void) because of the socket and Immunity to Stun on an amulet.

Other than that though, even unique items like An Mafin shield and the unique 2h Mace, Armor of Eternals (crafted to scale with player level - can still find better Divine armor at vendors same level) and the unique 3-layered crossbow with the high water damage all used to have 3 sockets now have 1... I have better items one level later even without having the modifiers like "Deflecting" and such.

Just.... Argh. Very disappointing.