I am very surprised that no one has been talking about this. I have yet to see anyone say anything about this, but what is up with the lack of talents in this game?

In the first game there was a huge list of talents you can pick from, including talents for unique playstyles that people were going for. But in this game, almost every single talent is from the old game, any some new ones are....not even worth it. Like the one that makes it so you use 1 AP for grenades if you dont have a weapon in the offhand.

I like the spell variety in this game, they are much more unique in this game in terms of what they do and etc, but talents on the other hand....have been a HUGEEE disappointment. Am I the only one that feels that this is a letdown, considering I am seeing NO ONE talk about it?

I felt the same way. It would've been nice to see more talents that give bonuses to different combat skills. They did it for Warfare, which is part of why it's amazingly strong, so it'd be nice to have similar options for the others.

The talents do suck and the one that are good are quest-related, like the -2con for +2wit or +2int kiss.

It's a shame the good build ends up using something like "Bigger is better" or "All skilled up" because nothing else is worth taking after you have The Pawn/Executioner, Hot headed and the + range for mages.

There need to be more stuffs that aren't just extra stats. Something situational but can be really useful. Something like 50% weapon cleave or "Deal more damage with ranged attack the closer you are to your targets, loses the bonus after a certain m".

Agreed. I don't think they put a lot of time in the talent area of the game. Maybe now with the original release, they could add a feel more talents in the game in a future patch. Is that is not the case, there is always modding to help us. hehe

Overall I think its a trade off, the game is really polished and it seems that a lot of time was spent on other areas.

I talked my ear off about it in the alpha. I gave up when no new talents had been added by the time the release date of the game was announced. They did add a couple more since then, but they could have done more.

Magic users still have almost nothing, although they did fix Savage Sortelige to make it worthwhile.

Something that lets you specialized in something.

Hell, even Bully is gone. It didn't give you a unique playstyle, but it let you make use of a certain CC.

I would have joined you in the talks if I was around at that time.

But yeah, the more Crit chance you build the better Savage seems to be. But if you're a healer, then you won't really need it, since you won' t have that much crit. (maybe from items, but not from wits. my healer doesn't like going first)!

I noticed that as well. It would be very cool if they could add more niche talents to encourage non conventional builds. I like the idea of having an empty offhand but it's too much of a dps loss to make it worth while, even for a grenadier. Would love to see more touch spells added and maybe have ambidextrous reduce the ap on them.

We had many talks about talents, but as usual never an answer.

Tbh, I think it has to do with not having the manpower to do the coding for weird talents. The actual game came out with quite a few major bugs.

Most of the talent are just free stats that don't take ages to code multiple line for them to work. They are just simply number modification.

Extra range, extra damage, extra health and other stuffs feel like variables that are already in the equations, just set to 0 instead.

And some extra stuff are just small if case like Execution is probably a small if case on checking death. something like if (turnKillCount < 1 && executioner == true) gainAP(2); when the char deals damage and it kills.

And with all those variable set in stone, they probably don't want to add anything yet that will introduce more bugs as situational yet interesting talents aren't simple line of code like Executioner and even The Pawn (It's probably an increaseMovementDistance(movementSpeed) at the start of the turn since the game track that when you spend an AP to walk).

So if you plan on suggesting they do something, make sure it's something that won't take more than 1 or 2 line of code to enable and will not mess around with other variables already in the game.

The easiest one we can get is something like "Alchemist, craft 2x as much potion" where the game will just have to alter the amount of item obtained or even something like "Grenade explosion deals more damage" since grenades already have their own damage formula and that kind of talent is just adding variable.

Character progression as a whole is busted, and it was only slightly better in the previous game.

The whole system is done without a higher concept in mind, it's functional and contains what you'd expect from an RPG, but that's about it.

Yep.
The talent list is totally "meh".
Then again, as stated before, it's not the only 'meh' thing about the way the combat system is handled now...

I do feel like you don't really progress much in Act 2 in terms of skills and stuff.

Like you get majority of the skills in Act 1 and the few in Act 2 and after that you're not really getting anything else. In the previous game you put points in to get more skills, 6 novice and more adept and etc, now you don't really have anything to work towards when you hit Act 2. (maybe it picks up again later, idk since im not done with the game, but just my thoughts so far).

Act 2 is just a grind fest. You pick up gears and later, 3 point source skill + source vampirism. That's pretty much it.

The quests are even more tedious because some quest require you to use spirit vision to progress and they're so easy to miss when you're not used to using it. The worst offender is the void chicken quest. You either know about it and finish the quests really fast for easy exp and gear, or you don't know about it and carry the chicken all over the place as if it's a cat from act 1 but with no destination.

And it likes to commit suicide if necrofire is involved. Get rid of it asap. Make your life so much easier.

Are you talking about Peeper...?

Did I really just have to use spirit vision?

Fuck man, I reloaded so many times cuz my chicken died from poison or fire or some shit hoping something cool will happen.

Yes. Spirit vision to talk to the mother.

This is what I hate about the spirit vision. It's a "Does your instinct tell you to use it" or "Did some kind of NPC mention something weird" kind of quest tool. There needs to be more shimmer here and to give out hints on random places like Peeper quest and Big Marge.

...We need a talent that makes spirit vision a permanent buff.

I think the reason talents are so few is because they're based on an outdated system, and the more talents they add, the more it takes to dig themselves out of this system. I've heard there were plenty of requests within Larian for a more data-driven Talent system, but the talents were just too embedded I guess. Unfortunately, that means modders can't add new talents either. Hopefully we see a way to add new talents in a more roundabout way (e.g., with "talent books,"), but even that's not possible quite yet. For now, I hope to at least script some of the existing meh talents (e.g., Demon and Ice King) to be more interesting. Any suggestions for ways to improve existing ones I'll consider.

So with the way its coded, even with Mods it'll be tough to add new talents? Welp, that's certainly not what I like to hear ;-;