Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General new player tips/help on build

I just got this game last night and will start my adventure tonight after work. my question is for those that have had the game for a while.

I've played DOS1 and went lone wolf and while fun, got board quickly with having a limited team.

This time I am going forth with a full 4 person (3 NPC team)

the question is:

Any suggestions on must have skills/characteristics? I normally play as a ranger with rouge abilities or as a Mage (fire/earth in past games) and find my tank and healer along the way.

any solid starting skills that are a must have i need to know about? I hate getting 20 hours in only to find out the base charter is flawed and can't survive acts 2 and on. Any idea/help appreciated. Thanks.

There are FULL, free, unlimited respecs in this game once you leave the island. Feel free to do literally anything to start off with, you can just respec later.

Currently physical damage is incredibly strong compared to magic damage. Due to the new armor mechanic, you want your party to be entirely physical or entirely magical. Example: fighter, thief, necromancer, ranger.

Due to how the warfare damage bonus is added (multipled instead of added to other bonuses) it is maxed first on every physical damage character. Even a necromancer will do more damage with 2 points necro and 10 warfare, than any other comination. Justput enough points in scoundrel, necro and hunstman to use the skill you want and put everything else into warfare.

The best civil skills are thievery and persuasion by far. Have your undead member max thievery as their fingers replace lock picks. Each party member can pickpocket an NPC one time each. So you can potentially max thievery on multiple members, as stealing shit is just that good.

Or, respec everyone into thievery and steal ffrom everyone. Then respec back into persuasion and bartering... Then when you see new npcs you go thievery again. Who needs a build when you can respec infinitely

I saw over the weekend that there will be a time to respec later in the game, I'm just not there yet. Thank you for the feed back. I got a lot of time over the weekend into the game and just left Fort Joy and found the hideout, so I think I still have a ways to go to get to the 'respec station', but I am enjoying the game and learning the mechanics of it.

Well not really necessary since you only need 1 thievery character, no point in having multiple. Also bartering is way better eventually since you can't steal forever from the same people. I prefer bartering first, then using up your thievery when you see really good items, then back to bartering after you can't steal anymore.



I completey disagree, you should have both imo, also that is more fun and versatile to me.. Actually, it really doesn't matter. You can do whatever. Having beaten the game and going through it again, I still ended up going with a similar setup as my first game because it was too good and so fun.

My optimal team composition is Ranger, Rogue, Earth/Fire mage(with some air), Earth/Fire/Air mage. The mage burst is just too strong, and with deathwish you do massive damage to start. You probably don't need to use it every fight, but late A2 and after you can get strong enough to one shot entire teams(take the ally you want to deal the major damage with that fight down to 25% hp, deathwish, resist death, peace of mind, start fight with them going first or second), whether it is on your Rogue going in on a backstab and doing a crippling blow to all enemies after teleporting them close to each other, Ranger doing arrowstorm or whatever it's called and killing everything, Mage doing thunderstorm, meteor shower, Explosive trap+impalement, depending on enemy resistances. It's all viable and awesome to see.

A big thing you need to learn in this game is how to use deathwish and have teleport on every character(You don't need to focus on this right away, more like later Act 2 into Act 3 try to have this) so you can group the enemies up and explode them. It makes everything trivial. Also use your massive source skills freely, it's easy to replenish it.

Another thing I recommend is having Peace of mind on almost every character, Adrenaline on everyone, tactical retreat on everyone(aim for 2 people with this by Act 2), and glass cannon on 2-4 of them. Taking max actions in a turn pretty much guarantees your win. To avoid getting statused, you just have to learn to prepare better before a fight(or just kill them before they go lol). Don't be afraid to save and restart to do things more tactically.

You'll also probably need fortify and frost armor, healing..etc support stuff.

If you want to see how awesome it is, look up Sin Tee's Honor playthrough on youtube(up to episode 90 right now), and see how ridiculous that comp is. It's so fun. But experiment and find out what you enjoy. The game can be beaten with pretty much anything with the right basics I mentioned.

Necessary/great skills(Most everything you'll get in A1/A2):
- Geo: Impalement, Throw dust(geo+huntsman skillbook), fossil strike, poison dart, poison wave, maybe a couple others as you wish.
- Pyro: Daggers(early game), fireball, explosive trap(combine fire+huntsman book, instant proc'd with aoe so don't have to wait a turn), laser ray(A2), combustion(good for a time in A2), fire whip(good for a time in A2), meteor shower(A2)
- Air: Teleport, I forget the name but the AOE close range one, chain lightning, dazing bolt, thunderstorm(later A2)
-Poly: Spider Legs, Medusa Head, chicken, chameleon cloak, others as you wish.
-Warfare(use on Rogue, some skills scale with finesse too): Crippling blow, whirlwind(low priority), stomp if you want CC, others as you wish.
I'm sure there's some I missed. The rest are pretty straightforward and very open to experimentation.

Stealing for gold or skillbooks is better because you can use gold on anything, and you might not have a lot of good items to steal, and good items are temporary anyway.

Right unless there are actually any good items, gold is probably best. But no reason not to take free items when you can though right? Early on you don't even get that much gold.

I agree stealing skillbooks is great value, at thievery 4-5 you can take pretty much every skillbook in their inventory, which you should do.

There's also a little trick if you want to be even more efficient:

- Get max Attitude with a character with high bartering.
- Put all your gold in a backpack
- BUY everything you want straight up, offering your backpack with gold.
-Steal back your backpack with gold. You get so much more value.

As soon as I switched to an all-physical party, I ran into the guy with a permanent evasion aura in act 2 on Tactician difficulty. Then after I respecced to deal with them, all the other mobs got too difficult to deal with as a hybrid party, even after min-maxing.

Hmm yeah tactician can ramp it up fast and be pretty hard to get a good footing. Steal/buy a lot of res scrolls. At first it will definitely not be insta-kill ezpz. But deathwish definitely helps A LOT and I think can be your saviour, have you used that? It's honestly all about upgrading your gear and pre-fight setup. Also making sure to have high ground advantage and the correct person going first. CC is pretty important if you can't kill them straight up too. Crippling, blinding, slowing, knockdown so they do little on their turns. I'm actually going through tactician right now in A2, not using deathwish as much as I should but I pretty much just CC to win.

I'm not the biggest fan of tactician honestly, normal is way more fun imo. Tactician just makes you min/max so much and go far and beyond on setup and gaming the system which kind of kills it for me, but still when you get to that point of blowing tactician up it's satisfying. The enemies just have upped hp/armor and act slightly more all in I think?

That fight in the woods in act 2 where the portals open... 500 damage from magic attacks, necrofire everywhere, 2 turns and I'm dead without killing a single enemy. The magister that you need to protect dies in 1 turn.

I'm not sure which fight this is, I'm not remembering it. Are the enemies the same level as you? you should always be fighting same level enemies

It's a fight in Cloisterwood against Hannag if you don't pass her persuasion check.

Ahh.. yeah you really don't want to fight Hannag. Actually her thing is a bit weird I never figured out how I got to her but one time I teleported to the waypoint and Hannag was talking to me in a friendly way for some reason, or she just ran and I had to find her again. She's pretty much made to instakill you I think, since you're supposed to befriend her. I would just spec your persuasion guy and go in with him and peace of mind them to make sure you succeed. Sometimes fighting is not the answer.

Edit: I remember also I killed the Magisters then she talked to me I think.

Yeah, I did end up passing her persuasion check by respeccing, but it was just frustrating that I felt forced to do so, because the battle seemed impossible. I could close a portal or two with magical attacks (physical didn't work) but enough of those Voidwoken came through to annihilate me and the magisters every time.

So whenever you are focusing on physical damage its better to max out warfare before maxing single/two-handed, ranged and dual-wielding?

What about magical damage as magic damage is not calculated from the weapons. For me there is 3 ways you could go:

1. Maximize the elemental trees as every level increases the damage it does with that type of spell? E.g. If you use mostly fire spells then max Pyrokinetic.

2. Maximize Scoundrel for crit, Huntsman for extra damage on high ground and two-handed for damage with staff?

3. Maximize Polymorph and put all attributes on intelligence?

Which way is the best?

Honestly idk. I max ranged on my ranger because I want crit chance, dual-wield for rogue for that dodge chance, and I never used two handed stuff so idk about that.

But yeah Poly for the overall damage boost isn't a bad idea later on when you max other stuff out. I haven't done the math on what would be more damage, not sure exactly how it's calculated. I don't think it would be that far off whichever you choose.