Originally Posted by Vuthakral
All I can recall was a one-off notion from Siva I think it was? (probably misremembering) About a vaguely moral implication to it. It probably doesn't help that my first playthrough of DOS2 likely ended up aligning story-wise with characters who seemed to have no issues with it. Those being Red Prince & Beast.

So, the fact that your character will outright tell the god that such a thing is horrible, that literally every spirit you use it on screams in agony as you delete their literal soul and many interactions with souls that have a "Consume them" option always causing companions to get annoyed at you didn't land?

Originally Posted by Vuthakral
As we found Beast & Red Prince we had no real grasp on what all the options would be for how the characters would work out or classes they should be doing.

There's a dialogue option when you go to recruit a companion that lets you ask them to be another option, where they quite literally describe everything each thing does.

Originally Posted by Vuthakral
Yeah, cool. Modded playthroughs heavily alter the gameplay. I don't have any way of knowing you don't have other mods which could radically change the gameplay from the vanilla experience that made you feel the need to make the game even harder.

You mean other than such a point would be irrelevant to bring up had I used other mods to adjust gameplay?

I was playing base unmodded. Then modded to make the game harder. I later also used Divinity Unleashed when I got fed up with the crummy armour system and that's about it (I did dabble with mods to revamp classes and add new ones... But I never kept them because they never really felt worthwhile, especially when they crashed the game often...)

Originally Posted by Vuthakral
She ended up having to abandon necromancer basis pretty early on & just went full ranger so she was actually capable of doing something besides getting out-dps'ed by the enemies constantly.

Which is entirely due to Necromancer being gimped af, where their only good spells are Raining Blood (Multi-class Necro + Hydro) and Grasp of the Starved (Late game Source skill) and even then Raining Blood is only really useful because it enables Grasp of the Starved. Which is a shame because Necromancy is so cool as a theme but my god does it suck so bad in DOS2 (Not even mods can save it... Even with Divinity Unleashed all you do is cast Raining Blood and Grasp of the Starved and that's the only skills worth using from the class)

Most builds work best as multi-class because that's how you get access to good skills. Like having everyone with a heal skill from Hydro/Huntsman, skills like Tentacle Lash from Poly, Teleportation from Aero etc.

The stats you get from actually leveling the skills are generally a trap compared to the benefit of multi-classing. Especially since you only need 5 points to access the ultimate skills (And 3 points to get all non-Source skills) the former not even being relevant all the time (For example, Grasp of the Starved is Necro's best source skill and one of the best skills in the game... But it only needs 3 points in Necro compared to the 5 points for Totems of the Necromancer)

Originally Posted by Vuthakral
Hard disagree, especially because of the lack of availability of Source points if you're not going to be using vampirism. Every single time we attempted this strategy the enemy would just immediately re-curse the fire. It really doesn't help it effectively requires two source points to be expended (Cursed -> regular -> blessed) to do this, and if there's any enemies between turns for a chain bless it's basically a guarantee to not work. Couple this with the consideration of AP usage, a lot of the time it might be better to just not bother trying and get in some good damage instead.

It's still a thing that can be done and is more interesting than "Here's free double damage because the game wasn't easy enough". It goes with a lot more options to interact with surfaces in DOS2, with the only really annoying thing that Voidspawn make everything cursed which makes it harder to deal with (But you still have that capacity to use a Source to uncurse it and try and swap it with something else, if only to make it something that won't get cursed by a Voidspawn standing in the necrofire 10m away)

Originally Posted by Vuthakral
True, but most of them are very much a moot point. Acid especially is just "oh no, -1 ac; anyways..."

Aye, but still, that -1 AC from acid could be useful early on when you have less +attack bonuses... It it wasn't removed in a single hit because the enemy bleeds and replaces it with a blood pool.

Same thing with other interactions, there's that piece of equipment that adds surface effects you're standing in to your spells... Rendered obsolete when you get hit and bleed which replaces your fire damage with nothing.

Originally Posted by Vuthakral
The AI don't seem to be smart enough to consider surfaces in BG3 ever in my many playthroughs. I've never seen an AI ignite a wine/oil/powder surface with intent. I have seen them attack a smokepowder bag before, but often not even with an igniting ability/weapon/ammo. They also regularly waltz through tangling vines, lava, ice, etc. DOS2 AI actively navigated around all of these kinds of things & other dangerous surfaces, but seemingly not the BG3 AI.

Yeah, BG3 AI is super junk. Which is odd because there quite literally does exist some AI pathing, if you select a location to walk to, your character will in fact avoid mud and other surfaces to move there. It's just, for whatever reason, this behaviour is missing from NPC's (Including party members following you)

The only time I've seen anything different from NPC's is sometimes Goblins won't run through Vines and will instead sit at the edge of them and throw rocks at you (Then casting Fog or Darkness to obscure their ability to range attack will have them just sit there passing their turn)

Originally Posted by Vuthakral
I am aware of this, but I was reading some posts online about how it seems like Divinity 3 is going to be taking notes from Baldur's Gate 3's action economy & armour which is why I was so heavily making notes about what I don't like from it or found more enjoyable in DOS2 in here.

Aye, though it's hard to say exactly how much and what parts of these things they'll be "Taking notes from"

Like, "Taking notes from action economy" can range to be anything from "Copying it exactly" to "Maybe we just make movement not consume AP" and everything in between (Such as having Reactions. Having a secondary AP pool for "Bonus actions" like using items and minor actions, having multiple attacks per "AP consumption" etc)

Same is true for armour, which has a lot of possibilities. Also, very glaring problems even in BG3 (Notably how Medium Armour with no Dex cap is king for literally everyone and there's no reason for a caster to wear robes unless they give ridiculous bonuses and how Heavy Armour sucks outside the very specific build of Abjuration Wizard Tank with Heavy Armour Mastery)

We'll have to see when it hits EA, as if it's anything like the prior titles, it'll go EA pretty early and have a lot of adjustments based on player feedback.