Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Bug reports / feedbacks for 1.0.239

A small round of various issues we've encountered so far :

- Infinite XP glitch, new form!
Upon "freeing" Jake, you can go talk to him again via his tombstone. Each time you end the conversation, you gain 275xp. Slower than the exploration bug previously seen in the Alpha, still a possible exploit.

- Sound glitch. Has been wildly reported, but it's annoying enough to be mentioned again.

- co-op client camera height glitch : rather annoying for the client. The camera doesn't seem to correctly adjust to height variation ( when descending the wooden stairs in the Black Cove, among other spots ) and will stay "fixed" at the floor height until the player force it to re-adjust by teleporting to the host. zooming in won't fix the problem.

- Billeh Gar "what are you doing?" case. Moving the carpet around to reveal the button needed to disable the trap will trigger a "don't touch my stuff" dialogue with Billeh Gar. Moving it again will ultimately lead to a reputation loss and Billeh Gar shouting "Thief! Thief!".

- The BloodStone detained by Pontius the pirate can't be used when playing with two Lone Wolves characters. "this item can only be used by companions". But we can't have companions, so...

- Poison Immunity, Cold immunity don't seem to work. Probably true for every "immunity" spells.

- The identify bug. Already documented but still annoying. Multi-clicking on the item we are trying to identify will ultimately identify it.

- Loremaster : doesn't seem to give info on ennemies anymore ?

- Lockpicking : already documented too, but having no hints on whether we can actually lockpick a door or container, and loosing the lockpick in the process is annoying.

- We can still, in some instances, use movement skills like phoenix dive to reach otherwise unattainable places. I'm thinking the lever room before the Pontius fight : it's possible to jump directly to the other side without activating any levers, completely bypassing the whole event. Nice for speedruns, but probably not Working as intended.

- Crafting bug : drag and dropping some items on top of themselves in the inventory ( iron bars, sinews, branches... ) will result in a successful craft. In short : bowstrings from only one sinew, large iron/steel bars from one classic iron bar, one staff from one branch, etc.

And a bit of feedback / suggestions...

- Crafting is still unclear. There is a nice idea behind the multiple books containing one chapter/one hint at a time, but it lacks information both in recipes ( the metal shield chapter is especially vague ), and in how the skill rank actually matters to the stats of the crafted items.

- I know archers have been a bit on the low-tier side in previous builds, but now... They are just plain too powerful. One volley of arrows using a rocket laun... Sorry, crossbow, will wipe the screen clean of ennemies. Sticking to a boss to maximize hits will simply one-shot every boss we've met so far : the Source Horrors aka mutated crustaceans in the Black Cove, the Twins-joined-in-fire, etc, etc.
Either the crossbows are way too powerful, or the standard skill, arrow volley, is.
Note : this is with Lone Wolf + Raistlin, but only 1 point in Crossbows and 3 in Way of the Ranger. It's like bringing a Gatling Gun to a knife fight. Really.

- Talents : a few still seem to be WIP or not working ( weatherproof ? ). I'm quite surprised the talents were revamped so much : most of them aren't very interesting to begin with, and overall I feel like we are quickly done with them. Some of the talents even sound like a bad idea, like Elemental Archer. I didn't test it, but I fear it may lead to awkward situations like healing an elemental foe by triggering a random elemental effect. On the other hand, everyone will go for +stats, +abilities, while no one will take the food buff or probably the opportunity attacks. Overall, not sure where this is going, but I feel like talents aren't balanced and interesting enough...

- Overall, there is something off in the character progression. It's hard to point fingers. It seems too "fast", especially in regards to talents and attributes. Skills are a different story, mainly because it's almost impossible to assess how useful or useless skills like Crafting, Repair, Loremaster, Lockpicking, Pickpocket, etc, actually are. Ignoring them and dishing everything in combat skills will result in some very powerful characters early on, while trying to experiment can be very punishing. Repair isn't efficient enough to keep the equipment in good shape ( it even seems to degrades it faster ), but new gear comes a-plenty and it doesn't seem useful to "waste" points in Repair. Same foes for crafting, it looks like you would have to invest a lot of points right from the beginning to keep crafting challenging versus looted items.

Not sure if anyone mentionned this, but at one point it is impossible to initiate a conversation with Jahan.

This has the nasty side effect that it is also impossible to remove him from the party.

Have you tried talking with your other main character?

Annoyingly so, only 1 of the 2 is ever possible to talk to companions (and not always the same for both companions). And the one who can is seemingly set random upon loading your savegame (I found no patern anyway).

Does using the "Home" key (camera reset) fix this for you? You can trigger a similar problem (even in single player) when moving your characters from the upper level of the town of Cyseal to the lower elevation dock area.



I'm always running into a problem where I can't initiate a dialogue with either of my followers until I switch over to the other main character (and use them to start the dialogue instead). I wonder if that's the same bug.

Obviously there are many things to tweak here and there, so I won't go into an extensive list of things I'd like to see changed and will simply focus on the aspects that I really believe should be improved.

First off, the argument mini game is very enjoyable when playing co-op. However, I find it utterly useless when arguing with an NPC. Although it is now possible to skip them with space, I think they should just not exist at all outside of PC vs PC interactions, it just makes things confusing. Is there luck involved? Does it really matter I have a very high reasoning skill ? Did I just lose an argument in that context on pure shifumi randomness? I'm an extremely skilled and charismatic speaker yet my way of convincing people is rock paper cissors? Something just doesn't work when trying to convince NPCs.

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My second concern is the most important to me: talents. We get way too many of those, and a lot of them are very situational or simply weak at best. We end up prioritizing which ones we'll pick out of a real choice of 5 to 6 talents, all of which we'll end up having soon enough anyway. The moment everyone picks the same talents over every other ones (i.e. All Skilled Up, Bigger and Better) every time, you know something is not right. So here my thoughts on talents:

- We should get one less often. On the full course of a game, we should end up with only a few picks, maybe 5 or 6 at best, not more. Why? So that committing to one of them feels like a real choice that has consequences.

- They should be stronger. Fewer picks means we can get more powerful stuff. Immunity (or near immunity) to an element for example, the ability to lockpick without ever having to use lockpicks, almost never dull the durability of an item you repair, double potion effectiveness and duration (instead of food), immunity (or near) to certain effects (we already have one for fear, let's have more), a big one time boost to an ability, or critical chance, or critical damage, etc. These are just examples. Why? So that committing to one of them feels like a reward.

- Combine the two aforementioned and talents become that precious once in a while pick you are so eager to make when leveling up, knowing you will get powerful rewards, but in very limited numbers. The way talents work ATM are just a list of prioritizing the better picks first, then the okay picks, the not so bad picks, and then whatever's left.

So maybe you guys at Larian are simply just giving us the opportunity to fool around with a lot of talents right now since the BETA only provides so much space for us to try things in, and on the release the game will hold back more, in which case most of what I just said will be pretty irrelevent. If it's not the case, though, maybe something to consider?

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Next stop is crafting! ATM too confusing mostly by lack of information. It's pretty much try and try again, and spend a point in the craft ability and then try some more, maybe try over what you already tried before see if it works now. Not only confusing, it's also very disgruntling. And then you get to miss out on a lot of stuff by ignorance.

Lucky for me when I tried to craft, my co-op partner did as well and he had a higher crafting ability than I did, so eventually I figured that stacking iron bars on the anvil was not just all that could be done with iron bars and an anvil, but that I lacked the proper skills to do anything else. The game sure didn't tell me anything about that, so that even if I DID end up spending points in crafting I probably would never again have tried to drop iron bars on an anvil, accepting the idea that the anvil just had no use whatsoever.

The game needs to hand out more information on crafting. Discovering new recipes and tips from reading books scattered throughout the world is great. I love that, no problem, I would not change anything in that regards. But the game needs to tell me when I try a valid combination why it's not working if it isn't. Sometimes it does, but often it will just leave me ignorant. Seriously, I ended up thinking that the anvil or the whole crafting system was broken. And the only reason I thought that was because it used to work that way in previous builds, I might have just accepted the fact that anvils were just cosmetic environment if I was new to the game. I might have stuck to that idea had my co-op partner not tried to do the same combinations a few moments later with a higher skill and succeeded immediately. "Oooooh so THAT'S how it works!".

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Last, but not least, make them monsters tougher! They don't have to hit harder or have more advanced skills and spells, just some more HPs. Most of them die too fast as soon as the party gets some AoE or heavy single target spell/skills. Maybe it's just the power curve that is tester friendly right now so we can try stuff again and again without too much pain, in which case, again, what I say becomes irrelevent. If it's not, though, something to think about.

My first impressions when I tried D:OS on the very first Alpha Build available was that combat was hard but rewarding and satisfying. We won fights greatly outnumbered because we made good use of spells, synergies, and elemental combos, and that felt great. As of today, I feel we win because our guys just hit stronger and have more armor than the bad guys. That's not as rewarding or as satisfying. I used to strongly consider ice and lighting spells to gain control over the battlefield. Now I just whirlwind, phoenix dive, and bull rush the crap out of my enemies. Sad monster face.

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On a last note, I'd still like to thank the whole Larian staff for the work they are doing on D:OS, and the work they have done in the past on other Divinity titles that I also enjoyed a great deal. Player feedback can be harsh, but we're here because we love your games. Godspeed!

A shameless bump in order to provide, as it was nicely asked of me, a video deonstrating the above points.



I mentionned the camera glitch happening in co-op, but after acquiring the save from the host, it turned out I could reproduce it in solo too.
So either this is an issue with the save itself, with my system, or people didn't really notice that and I'm one of the very few being annoyed by this behaviour :p

I tend to zoom in, just for fun ( I like the tilt-shift depth of field effect ), so maybe doing so actually triggers something bad with the camera. No idea. /shrug

Are you kidding, I'm loving that (the high zoomlevel going down, not going back up)... I wish I could zoom so far more regularly.
I did have to disable Depth of Field though, but I don't really miss that...

Heh, it's actually comfy, yes. Still, remember there are mines and a few foes along the way down to the wharf... And being sooo zoomed out, it's almost impossible to see them

By the way, after discussing the issue some more, this happens because I'm moving by clicking on the ground, ala Baldur's Gate. Most people seem to be moving by mouse dragging, Hack'n'slash style, which would force the camera to continuously readjust itself.
Also, I believe that mouse dragging even for a split second ( as in, a heavy finger on the button ) will reset the single-click set waypoint and result in the character stopping in their tracks as well as the camera focusing back on them.

Also explain why doodads weren't loaded in the fog of war. It's because we weren't even supposed to pan the camera that far :p

In short, the game works better by mouse dragging right now, and it never even occurred to me we could actually move the HnS way... Oh well, Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition, see what you did to my habits !

Well, that's what the "Careful! I spotted a mine" is for

And I move by clicking too. Hold&Drag is such a drag, I can't see why anyone would want to use that. Click, watch back, sip a drink, pet the cat on your lap and laugh evilly. That's the way I like to play

Good list, Maali.




I agree that right now, there's something off about Talents. You get those every other level, for a total of 2 + 9 = 11 Talents. There are 36 Talents to choose from, however, only a select few will appeal to any particular build. I'm at level 9 for my current party and I've acquired the ones that work the best, and I'm wondering, "now what".

I'm trying to avoid the easy no-brainers like "Bigger and Better" and "All Skilled Up" that are build-neutral, but I've already picked up most or all of the build-specific ones.


Reducing how often you get them is one idea, but another is simply to increase how many Talents you have to choose from. I think the game needs closer to 50 Talents. I'm not saying to add them in before release, but maybe a couple months afterwards, you could make a "Skills + Talents Pack" patch that adds in additional skills and Talents.



Stuff like this are great examples of Talents that could be added in at some point.




You nailed it.

True, there is the message, but when the camera is so zoomed out, try seeing the mine in the shadows to either avoid it or destroy it :p
Oh, that's what the pet co-op partner is for... Am I silly.

And... Cats, right ? Funny, that may be why I click-and-forget too...



And let's not forget useless but ultra fun talents like what we could find in Fallout 1: Bloody Mess and, in New Vegas : Wild Wasteland.
Or playing a Malkavian in Vampire the masquerade : Bloodlines, whom madness could count as a hidden talent.

I could settle for a few "fun" talent, actually...

You're just jealous because you're too puny to be effective bomb-disposal, you cost a fortune in resurection scrolls. At least with the camera bug you had an excuse.

Here's one "fun" talent : Clumsy : traps trigger from random distances.

Already got that one. Description states : "Co-op partner will walk on every mine, successfully deactivating it at the expense of some of their health"

Very handy mine clearing tool if you ask me. Downside is that "You will walk on every trapped pressure plate, rendering you dead and using a bit of your co-op partner gold as he rezzes you with a newly purchased scroll of resurrection".

I also think that choice of talents now does not really have a big consequence since you can acquire so many of them. The schedule now might be a little bit too tight to add more talents (it is by the way a great idea for an expansion!) but reducing how often we get them could really help with the issue. Let us for example start with just one talent and get one talent point every 5 levels. So, we can maybe get just 5 talents in total and the choice suddenly starts to really matter.

A few other thoughts on particular talents:

The zombie talent is a very cool and useful one. However, it does not really have any downsides. The zombie character can heal infinitely while standing in a poison pool, the scarce supply of healing potions and food can now be divided between other party members. And the most important point: the undead mages usually cast poison darts and not healing spells - thus they can not really harm the zombie character.

What does the packmule talent do? Does it just increase the weight of items you can carry? If this is so, then it is pretty useless. I pick up the items only with my very weak witch (strength 5) and have not run into any difficulties with weight limit yet. If this should happen, I still have a few other characters for additional inventory space. You can also store items in your shelter plane and so on...

And here I was thinking Zombie was useless and Packmule pretty sweet (since, well, I'm a packmule!)
Though the storing items in the plane is new... haven't tried that 0_o

It's good to see that different people might like different stuff though. We just need to weed out the really useless talents no-one uses.

That may be a little too harsh. That would certainly make my Rogue pretty crappy if I had to wait until Level 5 to have both Speedcreeper and Guerrilla.


A few other thoughts on particular talents:



Uh, I think Zombie has a major downside in that you require poison pools everywhere to heal. That may be great for certain situations, but terrible in others, like fighting fire-based enemies. Plus, I assume there will be a lot fewer undead enemies after Act 1. (If there are loads of undead still, then poison damage will be pretty terrible.)



Yeah, my only issues with carrying things are that there's no sort button yet.

Agreed. However, one can easily learn the poison dart spell which allows to create poison surfaces.

Got a bug involving a save, in the Black Cove. I initiated conversation with the ghost dude in the house near the source-beast-thingemabob. He told me the room will explode when I tried to move.
I ended the conversation, didn't move, and saved the game before continuing. I exploded, so reloaded the save. Now, every time I load that save, the room explodes as soon as it's loaded.
Filmed it:
http://youtu.be/zXqV2hyUc3E

I think the progress is wrongly saved somehow.

Another round:

- Using a shovel to dig will unequip the off hand item, mainly, the shield.

- Frequent host/client desync when using mobility skills such as battering ram or phoenix dive. Inconsistencies with the results of these actions as the correct effects are applied but avatars do not change place, resulting in very strange scenarios where a character can friendly fire his teammates while not being in a position to do so (i.e.: phoenix dive)

- Suspected issue of inconsistent pathfinding on mobility skills.

- Possibility to stack objects forever using "floating benches". Stacked benches won't always fall back down if the objects on which they are stacked are removed.




- In co-op, when one of the players initiates a dialog with a NPC, the other player is free to roam around. Generally of no issue except when dialogs are triggered before a fight, such as the Evelyn encounter.

- Weapon proficiencies are mostly insignificant, and will become completely useless after lvl 10. +3/+5/+8 (I'm guessing +10/+15 best case scenario) is pretty irrelevant when wielding a weapon that can inflict 100+ damage or more.

- Using Bull Rush (or similar) skill in melee range will force the character to "slide" slightly out of melee range while still applying the skill's effects.

- It is possible to see chests in the void when using the "alt" key in basement areas, presumably chests in other basements not yet discovered.

- Fishnets need to be interactive. NPCs will now try to steal fish from the market due to improper food distribution.

- Melees are too hard, sometimes I lose health.

As a potential example :
- Player A targets a group of skeletons with Phoenix Dive.
- Following the Dive, he sees himself still standing at the same place. Player B sees him at the intended location, right in the middle of the skeletons. The skeletons have been damaged.
- Player A decides to fall back because the Dive seemingly failed to connect. On his screen, he moves back, everything's normal. On player B's screen, character A suddenly teleports to wherever A intended to go.

This behaviour seemed to happen a lot more with Rushes skills though.
- After rushing into a group of zombies standing next to B, A sees himself standing midway through the intended trajectory, or at least somewhere potentially safe. B sees him right there, next to the zombies ( and to B ).
- A decides to launch a nuclear Phoenix Dive strike, thinking he won't hit B since the game visually tells him he won't hit B. However, he IS actually next to B, resulting in B being damaged ( and killed, as it happened ) by the friendly Phoenix fire.

It may be of importance to note that this issue isn't one sided or dependent on the fact you're the client or the host : it's like the data are split in half and each half sent to one player only...

* On the topic of friendly fire : there seems to be some inconsistencies as to which skills will damage allies. Rushes have no effect on allies, neither does Arrow Spray, despite the red, visual indicator being displayed around the allies. Phoenix Dive and spells will do friendly fire.
It almost looks like pure physical skills won't damage friendlies while skills doing elemental damages will.



Because Flying Carpets are overrated.



I concur.
I chose the fighter archetype with Lone wolf and Raistlin again as starting traits, but the pros hardly outweighed the cons this time. Too much AP per turn ( 20! ) not enough HP. I doubt either of us ( knight + fighter, no real heal except for potions ) would have died had I not taken Raistlin. Even with a seemingly crippling disadvantage such as no ranged damage and no heal, the game as it is was a walk in the park.

*Being able to use multiple ranks of a seemingly identical skill seems weird. It's possible to chain Rush with Battering Ram before unlesshing a double Whirlwind ( ok a weak one and a strong one ). Was that intended? Aren't those skillbooks meant to be upgrades ?

*On the topic of skills, this mlaybe because it's still a beta, but rangers really do have waaay less available skills than warriors and mages.