Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Status, archers, and mages

I feel like this game starts the enemies off with waaaaaaaay too many status effects. I'm watching skeletal archers freeze, knock down, explode, burn, poison, and heal. They literally have everything right off the bat.

What this does is make the combat feel the same no matter what you're against. They all have the same moves, just the weaknesses vary. IE can't use poison vs undead. I can understand why enemies later game would have an extensive skill book, but at level 2-6? Feels like the studio is trying too hard to make sure the game isn't easy.

For certain the game isn't easy, but what'll happen is there'll be instances where the AI cheeses you since everything on their side has ranged cc and your side will have some ranged and some melee. The first pirate/bandit fight comes to mind. You have two archers and three melee. Except the melee all have crushing fist and the archers have the standard archer skillbook. This set up creates too many high priority targets.

I think, at least at the beginning of the game, there should be more variation in what the units have. Every archer does the same thing as does every mage. The only difference between the undead pyromancer and the undead mages is rain of fire, and honestly the poison + fire arrow combo the archers do seems more pyromantic than anything the pyromancer does.

If taking away skills from some of the enemies to give more variation isn't an option, at least add in diminishing returns on CC. Having the tank knocked down for three turns, then stunned for two, then frozen for another 2 is a little much.


Conclusion: This game has the most early game CC I've seen in any game, and it feels overused on the enemy's side. I'd like to see some more diversity in the abilities enemies use and have available to them rather than fighting the same enemy with every special arrow or castable spell in different forms.

I have to agree, especially since the enemy has usually twice the number of units, so they can do combos like poison + fire constantly, while you can't, especially in the beginning of the game. Especially since you're human so you have no natural resistances but they're immune to poison, bleed and heal on poison etc etc.

It's not that much of an issue -- I actually thought it was a great learning tool; the game teaches you very early on to prioritize targets.

After your first encounter with poison arrow + fire arrow archers, you should know that as soon as you encounter the archers (again, even, if you died/reloaded) you know immediately that they should be your priority. You have your own knockdown abilities, and ways to disable them before they even get a turn.

The game is not about running in guns blazing and easily slaughtering everything in your path, it's far more tactical, and you have to think when it comes to encounters.

I will give you that the game favors range far more than melee, however. After playing the beta, I held off and made a spear-based spellblade, and turned Madora into a archer; it has for the most part completely trivialized the early encounters, but there are definite instances where I'm glad to have melee (when my teleport is on CD and an enemy melee-er decides to get up in my face; so nice to 2-hit him!) but for the most part, during the beta, even, I'd have a lot of time where my melee based characters couldn't do anything other than sit there and twiddle their thumbs because the enemy was too far away, and moving in close would be the death of me.

The problem is that after the initial undead fights, the game starts having too many priority targets. Using the bandit/pirate fight again. The two archers are priority because they have knock down, poison, fire arrow, stun arrow, and freeze arrow. All of those are issues. Then the melees are priorities because they pack crushing fist and are buffed from the battle mage who also has ways to stun you. All of the units here have the necessary CC to make them a priority target. This causes issues because no matter what you target, you're going to wish you targeted the others first.

Another example is the Evelyn fight. Evelyn will cast up to five spells in one turn, making her a high priority. The cyclops mage can cast up to three and has the standard mage skill book making it a high priority. Then there's the lieutenant who heals from fire, deals pure fire damage, and summons fire archers who have the same traits as him. This is made worse by the fact that the lieutenant will do 100+ damage even with fire resist potions on. So he's a big priority too. If you focus him, you'll have issues with cc, if you focus the casters you're going to have issues with big fire damage and adds that heal off the fire fields that will be on the ground.

There's just too many priority targets here, and the biggest reason is because the archers and mages have everything available to them. This cyclops mage can cast everything the undead mage can and everything Evelyn can, and all the things the cultists could. There's no variety, no change in how I'm going to deal with the mage. They've just added in the lieutenant who's more dangerous than the mage to give us a higher priority; but we get punished for choosing one either way because despite adding in this higher priority, it doesn't change the fact that a mage is going to cc the crap out of me if I don't take care of it.

I love those kinda fights to where I'm the underdog! You have to carefully plan out your next move, figure out which side to engage the enemy, and using the map to your advantage to come up on top. It feels very satisfying... Once you have those tactics down I actually feel like some battles are too easy.

Tips for battle to help you out:

1: Don't waste AP.
Let the enemy come to you! Don't waste AP walking to them... use corner to block line of sight and let them walk over to you.

2: Use terrain to your advantage.
Use sneak to scout out the area and pick the best possible position to engage the enemy.

3: Summons.
Make sure your casters have summons! They are very good "meat shields" to soak up most of the damage.

4: Abilities:
Don't just waste ability. I mean that by don't just simply pick an ability and click an enemy then boom next turn... have a plan and think a little ahead.
For example.. I initiate fights with rain and just on the edge of the puddle I created I would set up my summon ahead of my party, then most melee enemies would go after that particular summon and once they are in the puddle... I'd electrify it. In the early game my summons took all the beating because I engaged the enemy to where I want them and create situation that they would either have to go all the way around and waste AP to get to me or attack my summon or tank first.

5: Combining elements...it's very OP and can destroy enemies very easily. Like my boulder throw ability, it leaves behind a pool of poison then I would cast fireball to it and destroy everyone in that area... and if the enemy is way too spread out... I have two casters with the spell teleport..I'd bunch em up to one area and spread poison and fire.

Is there any way to wait and have one of your party members go first without giving up your turn? The one i want to go first to set up the other one always goes last in my party.

Increase his initiative and decrease your others' initiative. Initiative score is a factor in determining turn order.

There is a button on the right side of the screen to delay a character's turn until the end of the round. If you want the last one to go first, though, that would result in the enemy going first (not necessarily a bad thing, if you are in a position to force them to come to you).