Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - Enhanced Edition First timer seeks advice.

Hello.

Soon i will start my first attempt at DOS:EE. I had spent some time on the net researching what builds are viable in this game and came with a following idea of a party:

1. Mage (leader)

ATTRIBUTES:
Max int asap, after that con to 10, and speed to 10.

TALLENTS: Far out man, pet pall

SKILLS: EARTH and AIR magic, CHARISMA

2. Mage

ATTRIBUTES:
Max int asap, after that con to 10, and speed to 10.

TALLENTS: Far out man, Know it all.

SKILLS: FIRE and WATER magic, Later WITCHCRAFT cause i heard it is usefull late game.

3. Madora.

ATTRIBUTES:
Max str asap, after that con to 10, and speed to 10.

SKILLS: Will improve her existing skills and add LEADERSHIP.

She will mostly protect the party against whomever survives theirs spell and arrow barrage.

4. Bairdot

ATTRIBUTES:
Max dex asap, after that con to 10, and speed to 10.

SKILLS: Will max her BOW, MARKSMAN and LOREMASTER skills.





Can You comment on viability of this party? Am i missing something important here? From what i understand thieving skills are obsolite and crafting can be dumped on non-party companions.

I use two battlemages as I like the man at arms skills of crushing fist and battering ram with melee between cooldowns in the early part of the game but your party is viable. Suggest 1 point in scoundrel for Bairdotr so she can be accurate with grenades when not shooting her bow for crowd control. There are many items in the game that add to charisma as well as trait bonus so you do not need to put a lot of points into it on level up. That is also true of strength, intelligence and other attributes. Combining points off gear will reduce the points you need to put into those skills and allow you to add or augment other skills.

I'm only a level 10, so take what I say with a grain of salt ;)

For both mages, get Withcraft to level 2 fast. Rapture, Oath of Desecration, and Drain Willpower are very useful right away. Rapture actually feels like cheating. There are some other low level witchcraft spells that are solid.

For your marksman character, get a point or two in Scoundrel for Walk in Shadows, Winged Feet, and Fast Track. There are some other skills that are sometimes useful like Trip, Adrenaline, Become Air, Cloak and Dagger, etc... With Walk in Shadows you can steal paintings and weapons and open chests in front of others and not get caught. You can also enter sneak mode and not be revealed in front of others so you can pickpocket a vendor (using +1 pickpocket gear).

For your Loremaster character, you only need to put 2 levels in it. You can get to level 5 with two +1 rings and a +1 amulet.

If you want to put Blacksmith and Crafting on one of your mages, it's not too hard. The Scientist Talent gives +1 to each, a belt can give +1, and a bracer can give +1. You only need to waste 6 ability points to get to level 5 in both. I believe there are two books in the game that can give +3 ability points, so if you use them on this character he won't be too nerfed.

A few other tips... Don't waste points in Charisma. It's not that great. Check vendors after each level up, they restock. Buy every Sinew or Strong Sinew you find. These are needed to make Bowstring for making and enhancing Bows. Buy every Pixie dust, Stardust plant, Sheet of Paper, Charm and Silver arrows/arrowheads, Tormented Soul, Ore, Iron/Steel/Silver Bar, Ruby, Moonstone, and if you can afford it the Water/Fire/Earth/Air Essences.

Thanks for replies.

1. Should i use wands as a backup for my mages or can i skip them?

2. Are there any adventages of having crafting and blcksmithing on my haracters as oposed of dumping it on non-party dude?




I was also thinking about a different party concept.

One support mage with leadership and all good support spells. And one rogue with good offense. I would add to them the same archer and knight as obove. This would be more classical party but probably less powerfull. One mage healing and buffing and other 3 chars just doing phisical dammage. Also. What weapons should a support mage get? Sword+shield or something ranged?

What difficulty? You might not have enough physical damage and in Tactician Difficulty there are enemies with elemental immunity auras and wards that confer elemental immunity (just one element). Also, you want speed at 11, since the breakpoints are even ODD number, not even. I suppose you could get items to get you that one point, but I think they removed all the craftable speed items.

High charisma is only useful to get a lot of XP for one encounter as far as I know.

The advantages of having a "crafting/blacksmith" character on a non-party guy that will not be in your party (leave them at the edge of time) is saving yourself points.

The way most people have been beating the game is using a lot of environmental effects. Sadly this makes it harder for your melee to get in most of the time. You could keep the battlefield mostly clean, but you'd need "clean" summons (summons that don't leave environmental debris) to help tank since most of the time you will be outnumbered.

Normal. Its my first time , and since dual mages seems very strong i was thinking about saving it for my second try (on harder difficulty) and doing something less OP first




Pc melee rogue, NPC archer, NPC knight and a PC support mage to buff them all. That migt be not enought?
Is magic dammage reallt so much better in this game?



Noted. Is it only speed or all attributes get bonuses on odd numbers? Also by the end of the game can i get 15 in all 3 attributes (Main, con, speed) or is it 15 in main (Str, dex or int) and 11 in speed and con? Because various guides seem to contradict each otcher.



Noted and dissapointed. I love when sociall skills are important in rpg.



I understand that. But my questions was the other way around. Is there any reason to have these two skills in my active party and not on backup haracters.



I know. Thats why i was thinking about trying a party of 3 non-mages (rogue, ranger, knight) and one support mage/healer. As oposed to offensive dual mages with only one melee and one ranger.

You get a total of 49 skill points to distribute normally. You can get 2 more using the "all skilled up" talent and six more buying the book from the Teller of Secrets and finding one book. So ideally that gives you 57 points. So in an ideal situation you can max out three skills {45) and have some points left over for other skills (4-12). That is why gear becomes important if you are going that route. Many players focus on just two skills to max and spread the remaining points into skills they want to roleplay, e.g. crafting, smithing.

As for attribute points get the main attributes of the character up to ten initially then from the wiki:


Divinity Wiki

All Attributes start at base 5. A newly created character has five Attribute points to spend. Each even level grants an additional Attribute point, ending up with 15 spendable Attribute Points.

There have been some changes in Attribues from DOS to DOS:EE.


Effects
Strength
20 Carry Weight per point (base 10)
6 Offense Rating per point for Strength-based Weapons
Every 5 strength points after 10 STR reduces the cooldown of Man-at-Arms by 1 turn
Dexterity
2 Defense rating per point (or -2 per point) **See derived Stats as this can go negative
6 Offense Rating per point for Dexterity-Based Weapons
Intelligence
Every 2 intelligence points after 4 int reduces the cooldown of magic school skills by 1 turn
6 Offense Rating per point for Intelligence-Based Weapons
Constitution
1 Maximum Action Points per point
6.2 Vitality per point and level (+7.13 in normal difficulty due to the +15% bonus)
Speed
0.1 Movement per point.
0.5 Initiative per point.
0.5 Turn Action Points per point.
0.5 Start Action points per point.
Perception
1 Hearing per point, No Longer Grants Sight (?Possible Bug?)
0.5 Initiative per Point
0.5 Start Action Points per point
1% Critical Chance per point
Unknown increase to chance to detect traps and hidden objects. More then likely these have a pre-set perception score requirement and a check is made to see if you have enough.
5% Ranged Penalty Reduction per point
Derived Statistics
Initiative = 0 + (Speed/2) + (Perception/2)
Movement = 1 + (Speed/10)
Defense Rating = 8 + ((Dexterity - 5) x 2)) (Minimum 0)
Start Action Points = 2 + (Perception/2) + (Speed/2)
Turn Action Points = 4 + ((Speed - 1) / 2)
Maximum Action Points = 7 + Constitution
Critical Chance = Perception - 5 (Minimum 0)
Ranged Accuracy
Having spent some time testing this to work out the "Math" involved in the calculation, I thought this deserved its own section as the explanation is rather complicated.

Maximum Range = Your weapons max range, for instance crossbows are 22
Range = The Range in meters of your target
Base Penalty Percent (BPP)= Range / Maximum Range example 15/22 = 0.68
Penatly Reduction (PR) = 5% per point of Perception example 10 Perception = 50%
Ranged Penalty Percent (RPP) = Base Penalty Percent * Penatly Reduction example 0.68 * 0.5 = 0.34
Hit Percent = (Offence Rating - Targets Defence Rating) * (1 - Ranged Penalty Percent) example (70 - 15) * (1 - 0.34) = 36.3 Percent chance to hit.
Conclusion that can arrived at from the above information? If you want to be incredibly accurate at long range, you need to get your Perception up as close to 20 as you can, but, you also need to get your Dexterity fairly high as well, since perception only reduces the penatly, but doesn't actually increase your chance to hit. TLDR: At 20 Perception all ranged attack penalties are gone.

Im not sure i understand the wording here.

Does it matter if i buff con early or late? There are some games that do not account for con when leveling up (like fallout 3) so you alvays end up with the same ammount of HP no matter when did you put point in con.

On the other hand there are some games that reward player for investing in con early (MMX, DnD). So that You will get more HP if You start with high con as compared to a haracter who started with low con and improwed it later.

How does it work in DOS?

You can pretty much do whatever you want on "normal" difficulty. It's a good difficulty level for experimenting to find the builds and party compositions that works for you.

1) You've got the right idea with two mages filling each other's gap. Personally, I tend towards the elemental schools, so I have one mage with higher initiative (using gears) specializing in water and earth, casting CC and "set up" spells (like midnight oil, rain, freeze, etc), and the other mage acting as the "cleaner" who cast damage spells that synergize with those elements. On normal, I often finish a battle before slow moving Madora has a chance to smack a baddie.

2) I usually make one of my mage a hybrid rogue, although you can get away with just putting one rank in scoundrel and picking up "Walk in Shadows" (think someone already suggested this). This will allow that character to steal lots of stuff which will help the money issue in the beginning of the game. Add a rank of telekinesis if you want to make it go even faster (or just use telekinesis buff gears). If you don't want to steal for RP reasons, that's fine too. Money will eventually roll in on any difficulty level without stealing anything (I do it more as a scavenger habit of picking up anything that isn't nailed down--traditional adventure games have corrupted me...). I wouldn't bother with pickpocket though. There are a few quest related shortcuts that are available if you have pickpocket, but otherwise it doesn't seem worth it unless you heavily invest in the skill.

3) Since you are not going to have Johan as a regular member of your party, you can just turn him into a crafting mule and have him pick up crafting/blacksmithing instead of any of your characters. It's too bad though, 3 mages are OP (and I quite like Johan's story).

4) My mages use bows/crossbows early game, then once they have a sizable repertoire of combat spells (usually by level 5 or 6), I switch them to using wands. By then, they rarely run out of useful spells to cast on any given turn, and I usually only have wands on them to make use of the wand abilities.

5) You won't need to put more than 2 ranks in lore (if even).

6) CON benefits are retroactive, so you can add CON whenever you want. I personally don't bother with it for my mages, because mages can never have enough INT. (different story on tactician difficulty though, when so many AI archers have "alpha strike" one shot abilities...)

Charisma is mostly useful for the rock paper scissor minigame. You should have a look at it first, and decide how you want to deal with this minigame (swap gear or not, save-scumm or not).
If you want to swap gear, you can craft up to 4 charisma items right off the bat.

Speed is best at odd number, and perception is best left even (best ignored actually, except for the explorer guy who has to spot traps and stuff, even though the spider invocation does a good job at finding stuff).

Attributes like INT, DEX and STR are varyingly interesting past 15 (STR is mostly not, DEX depends how often you use skills vs autoshots, INT depends if you use master spells often), gear included (I have between 10 and 12 without gear). But crafted gear usually requires high amount really quick, so it's usually the priority. Ideally, you want to start at 8 STR/INT/DEX at the start of the game, and then match this stat with the crafted gear requirement as you go along (and if you can/cannot find rings/necklaces/garments/belts that give bonuses - it's best to craft and switch items that give armor as frequently as possible).
You put extra points in speed or con, depending on your needs.

Having the craftman in your party requires 4 points (and attention to trait) if it's one of the two mains, or 6 if it's a companion, plus the scientist talent. You can swap character if you really want to optimize your build. Like the gear swapping for Charisma, it's up to you to see if the time lost is worth it (I think if you setup your craft camp in the armory as soon as possible it might be, but bear in mind you'll have to craft at every level up, or every two levels, to make at least the STR/DEX weapons and boost them with wetstone/bowcord + poison or tenebrium).

I meant your first build with the mages might not be enough physical damage. Your second build should be fine.

Mages are strong if you can creatively use them to abuse crowd control (icy paths) and damage over time "kill zones" like poison clouds, static clouds, flaming lands, etc.

They also never miss which is very handy early game. I felt they fell off a little mid-game but then make somewhat a comeback late game once they get their master spells. I'm doing another honor run through where there is a little more focus on mage spells for damage.

Regarding your question on CON, they reworked it a bunch from the original so I don't think the website information is accurate. All I know is it seems to go up linearly the more you put into it. Another 35 from 5->6. Another 45ish from 6->7. Seems to go up a lot and is handy for your tank type of characters. Also consider that health pots work on % health so it really makes it handy. Water of life is a pretty awesome buff spell which raises your CON by a few points which seems to net out to around 200-300 more HP for all of my characters. I'd tell you exact numbers if I didn't get wiped today.

If it wasn't clear, it doesn't matter when you add the CON as far as I know. So feel free to add it later on.

Thanks for all help.

Im on a fence now about which party should i take.

How good are shields for a warrior?

Can i make a support mage out of Jahan? From what i understend support mage should spread his points around all magic types instead of specializing.

If i make support mage should i give him weapon or are these low level spells enough?


Maybe i should go:

Jahan as Support (all novice spells + leadership)

Madora

PC Shield Fighter as tank (please propose a build)

PC Assassin as DPS (Daggers are better than bow in late game right?)

I think marksmen are better than dagger-wearer at any time of the game, be it CC, burst or sustained damage. So no, daggers are not better than bow, even lategame. Just positioning yourself in the back of ennemies is annoying and you have to do it just to do roughly equal damage.

I have no idea how good shields are for warriors, because I give shield to my support mage (once the mage has unloaded his cc, there's not much use to him so can tank himself). The advantage to that is that you can use touch-based spells aswell.
However, I don't do it before lvl 14 (when tormented souls give 2 strength on weapons). At which point I get one or two points in man-at-arms for the stances (including turtle), the AOE shout, the anti-knockback/burn ability, the dash.
Note that shields at low level have a very low block chance (armor give always the same damage reduction when you keep it up to date, but that's not the case for magic resistance nor block chances, which means mid-game to lategame you can become immune to elemental damage and block a lot).

Giving leadership to a mage/support is a good idea because generally they don't benefit much from it, however it's really best when the mage is one of your two main character (I rarely pick Jahan). Especially since such mage need a lot of ability points, and you don't really want your mage to be your crafter aswell (especially not if not a main).
Because you get one point in leadership for free from trait (assuming you don't pick the useless trait that gives pickpocketing), which translates into 6 ability point if you use it to cap leadership to 6, and because the leader doesn't get the immunity to fear nor any of the benefit leadership provides to the team, but the main chars get an immunity to fear from a trait. And a mage can have two wands with leadership on it early game (+2), then a str-based weapon and a shield mid-game / late-game (only +1). With a leadership helmet, it means a mage only need 2 points in leadership to get capped early game, and 3 lategame.

A mage support is essentially hydrosophist/witchcraft (4 and 4 is enough), and 2 in areo. You can have 2 in geo, 1 2 or 3 in pyro (very optional however) aswell. It gives you the cheap cc from areo/witchcraft/hydro, the heals from hydro, the cheap summon from witchcraft (or the other one who has the AOE taunt), the icewall (which creates ice fields -> ennemies slip and that trigger bully), mass disease (you can drop it from afar without triggering combat, cheap way of removing 30% of ennemies HP from the get go) and soulsap (put it on priority target).
In general you want 4 in a branch not before lvl 12, and 5 (if you decide to get 5, which is only really useful on marksmen) not before 15. 2 not before 6 and 3 not before 9. (simply multiply by 3).
So you need at least one unused point at level 11, and sometimes two unused at level 14. The rest of the point, you can spend on other things like weapon specialization, leadership, craft, ...

You could just play the game with whatever and change mid-way. There are a lot of flexible options.

Some adept spells are too good to pass up like Rapture - Witchcraft Adept (long ranged charm) You just got to read the description and see if it fits your play style.

My "support" mage picks up what I deem are the useful spells for my party build. Water of Life is incredibly powerful and also an Adept spell in the water tree but might not be useful if you can keep a wall of summons going.

I'm going to agree with the other guy regarding bows but for now I'm doing a flexible build leaning towards dex. Bows are really good. The only advantage a dagger might give you is being able to switch to a shield and/or getting double buffs/mods/de-buffs since you can dual wield two separate items. Just one point in crossbow potentially increases your damage output by a lot, but crossbows tend to slow you down a lot due to higher AP costs and movement penalty.

You can still go dual wield and if you have enough points get shield specialist. That way for the normal fights you go dual wield (but you still have to pick STR or DEX to keep up your offensive rating OR, rely on someone to cast Bless on you OR CC the enemy for 100% to hit).

If you aren't doing something super cheesy, bosses tend to eat summons for breakfast with the Destroy Summon spell (by the way, that's another amazing spell for Witchcraft Adept), so having someone tank with a shield is nice.

Otherwise, you can usually CC the boss just once, and burst him in one or two rounds.

Oh yeah so back to the dagger. You can have some fun if you put a point in the AIR tree and get the one where you auto-teleport behind someone after you cast it. I haven't tried it but I wonder if this combo will work. Not sure if you can start sneak into it but if you have high initiative, you can make sure you have a pyramid and keep the other pyramid on your main group.

1) delay your turn
2) cast spell to get behind someone. backstab backstab - end of everyone's turn
3) start new turn backstab to finish then either use pyramid to escape back to main group then switch to bow and support OR use walk in shadows to wait for a better opening when your tank draws aggro and continue.

How usefull are Willpower and Bodybuilding? And are they good for whole team or only front liners (cause melee gets targeted more)

Very useful but can get points from gear so don't need to put 15 points into them. With high enough levels the characters become immune to the status effects associated with the skills. Your mages and rangers get targeted frequently by enemy mages and special arrows so some points for them are good.

1) you could make Johan into a support mage--in fact that is what I usually have him do if I plan to have him as a regular party member. But a support mage should still specialize in a select number of schools of magic to maximize their potential, rather than spread their points around. I would suggest water/earth because those schools provide a lot of CC spells and "set up" spells that synergizes with combat spells from the other caster(s) in the party. I don't know if I would give Johan witchcraft beyond just a few points. Witchcraft does have a lot of buff and debuff spells, which works great for a support mage, but also has a lot of excellent close range spells, and I typically find it better to have a combat warrior/mage specialize in witchcraft to fully utilize its potential. No need to march my range mage into melee range of AI mobs to cast death punch when my warrior/mage hybrid is already there

2) willpower and bodybuilding can be useful if a character invests in it, but it's not really worth the effort IMHO in light of the limited availability of points and the soft level cap. It's much better to invest those points into your caster's spell schools and use spells to buff your front liner and counter enemy CC and debuffs (thereby shooting two birds with one stone).

3) I find shields rather limited in their utility. Presumably it would be useful to have a shield on the party member who is going to be the dedicated party tank, but that degrades their damage output potential in comparison to a warrior with a two hander. I find it much easier to use spells to buff the tank. If I need a tank just to soak up enemy damage without consideration of whether they will inflict any significant damage to the AI mobs, I usually just use summons as they serve that role quite well.

That said, while melee tank characters are sort of lackluster in the early game, they really starts to shine in the late game with enhanced gear (although crushing fist is always a great CC tool). Since you are playing on normal, feel free to experiment and go with whichever type of warrior template you prefer.

Thanks for all the answers so far. Very helpfull. I already started (Dual mages) and im having lots of fun.

I heard that oryginall DOS was too easy in late game but EE fixed that. Is EE harder cause they aded tactician mode or is normall dificoulty also harder than it was?

I'm playing on normal and its fun cause its hard. Would be a shame if it gets too easy later.

For the people who really min/max hard and know the game mechanics, the game isn't really that hard. Although, you don't have to use such strategies if you don't want to. Tactician mode is a bit harder at first, but can get easier as you use more powerful strategies.

Honor mode is tactician mode with only ONE save game which autosaves every time you die.... e.g. if your main characters both die, the game is OVER forever. You must restart.

If you are finding normal challenging then you are at the right difficulty. Tactician isn't significantly different except for the fact that mobs get +20% health, more mobs for some encounters, some mobs have "alpha strike" abilities, and some have additional immunities. The ranged mobs' "alpha strikes" can be devastating when they down your mages at the outset of a battle, which tends to happen early game before you've buffed them with gears (especially the first battle outside of the temple).