Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Best game in a long time.. then Driftwood.

Playing on Classic via co-op, mix of skill levels. First part of the game, all of Fort Joy, felt pretty well balanced. Some fights erred a little easy, a few a bit tough, but we're still figuring out characters and game mechanics and all, so it's to be expected. All in all though, pretty fun.

But then comes Driftwood.

All at once it feels like the balance curve was thrown out and the numbers thrown on their head.

Why do the last enemies of the Fort Joy part of the game hit for 40-80, and immediately in Driftwood enemies hit for 150+? Why does enemy health double? Why does enemy armor double or triple abruptly?

We slogged through a few fights and also noticed a lot more issues with dialogues and quests - NPCs wouldn't recognize knowledge we had, responses got buggy (one character can't initiative conversation with any magisters anymore, another "took a bribe" from a beggar despite walking away.) and sloppy.

All of Fort Joy was the most fun we've had in a game in a long time and, on Classic, the difficulty felt about right. I dunno what happened with Driftwood, but enemies suddenly one-shotting every character's armor pools (yes, with up to date armor) just isn't fun. It's really poor balance, and it's so very frustrating because the game has been SO unbelievably fun up until that point.

Edit: Just to be clear, this isn't a "waah too hard", there's no "git gud" here. This is a frustration with a significant issue with the curve of difficulty on Classic mode - Fort Joy on Classic is WAY too easy, or Driftwood on classic is WAY too hard.

Driftwood has a variety of levels in it, you gotta be careful, you arrive at like level 8 or 9 typically, and the enemies you'll encounter are typically 8-15, so if you find an area that you can't do yet, just come back in a few levels.

Yeah Driftwood does have issues now and then, but it took me about 34 hours to get through all of the content in it, and I'm pretty sure I missed some stuff.

The character that cant initiate, its bc of the NPC thats in driftwood. Nicholas or w/e, the guy having a picnic. If you talk to him, your char that talks cant talk to anyone. Really, there are lots of buggy quests, especially starting from Driftwood. Really the experience does go down a bit considering just how unpolished the game is.

Day 1 "You killed Ryker"

Day 2"You found a stone tablet, perhaps you should let Ryker check it out"

Day 2 evening "One of grave keeper asks you to kill Ryker"

Day 38 "you rescued the missing priest."

Day 38 evening "you found a clue that leads to missing priest's where abouts."


*Sounds of head bashing against concrete wall*

Yeah there is no other way to put it, the game lost ALOT of its appeal to me after Fort Joy.

Driftwood area is extremely buggy in terms of quest, some quests simply will not finish even tho you've solved them. Some NPCs dont recognize that you've done their quest, but overall Driftwood is okay. There is a good sense of focus there and the story is more or less cohesive.

But it does suffer from the same thing that DoS:EE did for me, that being that the first part of the game is MILES better than what comes after. And way less confusing to navigate.

Then the real issue. Nameless Isle and Arx, these areas are not done. They severely lack in content and scope, the quests are few and extremely vague and the rewards are basically near non-existant.

I deeply despise the turn that this game takes after Fort Joy, I expected the game world to open up to me, instead it felt like it closed shut. Hell it feels like 50% if not more of the game is driftwood, because what comes after is okay at best.

It's a really really solid game, but it suffers from its "meh" story, linear areas and frankly.... Lack of content after Driftwood.

Why can skills go to 10, when there is nothing above rank 3 in terms of tiers? Why are all the truly interesting spells locked behind the mindlessly annnoying source point system? Spells that where free to cast as long as you had the AP in the previous game.
Why is Arx so empty? Barely anything going on there and feels like an amateur mod, not something from the people who made the fort joy area.


I'm just deeply dissapointed, I feel this game needed another few months at least in the oven. I can only hope the patches come rolling out soon, and plenty of them... Because more and more people are finishing fort joy, and trust me.... More and more are going to complain about what comes after.

Fort Joy is the only good area of the game atm, Driftwood would be "ok" if it's bugfixed, but even then its bland.... I mean, you have Tropical Fort Joy,Swampy Fort Joy with dabs of forest, then you have cold harsh coastline with dabs of forest and a little desert in Driftwood, and then nameless isle is tropical again, and Arx is just a massive and frankly soulless city. Driftwood and Fort Joy is filled to the brim with pointless, but ALIVE NPCs, Arx is just... silent, and dead.

Larian please, do a rehaul, I get that you wanted to meet your deadline but this is just sad... So much potential, just lost.

We reached Driftwoods yesterday on tactician. Perhaps we don't have optimal level, gear and builds but one hit is enough to deplete the whole armor and some health. Needless to say we have to do whatever we can to avoid getting hit,including perma cc, oil, ice, stun, petrify and every trick we can think about to keep them at bay. An archer can go up to 200+ crit in one hit. It took three attacks in one turn from an archer to kill one of our casters, hardest and longest fight we ever had in the game so far but luckily we managed somehow. I can see Source skills and death-preventing spells and cheese tactics abuse and if this keeps up :)

I have not reached this place yet but one explanation would be that Fort Joy was mostly part of pre release content, therefore lot of bugs were polished along the way. Then as for level differences, mayhaps devs should try to smoothen them a bit. But that's just my opinion

Feels like Fort Joy was actually finished and the rest of the game isn't. (Even then there's quests in Fort Joy that you finish but they won't mark themselves as finished)

While at Fort Joy you gained a ton of new abilities (6 abilities or so per Tree, x2 since you were given access to 2 tiers by the end) and gear seemed to scale up slowly in damage and stats.

Then you get to Driftwood and aren't given any new abilities outside of 1 or 2 source abilities per tree. (Of which, most are so terrible they aren't even worth the AP cost let alone the source points) and the gear scales so terribly. For example, I have a level 14 Legendary Xbow that does about 50 base dmg and a lvl 15 Epic Xbow that does 100 base dmg. The damage literally doubled in 1 level. That's terrible scaling.

The gear in the driftwood area all suffers from this, with certain milestones in the gear level giving massive bonuses over the previous ones. (Almost all gear becomes way better at lvl 15 for example, with lvl 10-14 gear all being meh)

I play on classic and did not noticed quest bugs or too hard fights in driftwood.
I would say fights seem to be a little too easy, because there is no chess like feeling where almost every choices of your moves are important, so you must really think what to do next.
I remember some fights with few levels higher enemy, for example when I arrived with level 9, I had a fight with level 12 magisters when I tried to cut off Meister Siva.
I believed that might be tricky, but no, fight was challanging (had to think what to do), but not hard in practice.

I think there maybe is a problem with balance of your characters development and whole party?
Also, it is turn based tactical game, which means you need to think about strategy tactics.
- Take surfaces to your advantage
- Do not spread your attack to all, but eliminate one by one, so you eliminate faster the sources that damage you
- Remember you need to pass enemy armors first to be able to use effects or reach direct damage, so use physic attacks on enemies on weakest physical armor and magic attacks on weakest magic armor
- Keep an eye on your armors, and recharge both with skills or spells as soon as they are too low, and take this as higher priority than attack (otherwise you might be disadvantaged with special effects, direct damage and even lost moves)
- Mix spells (wet(rain)+chill(water damage spells) or wet(rain)+shock(air damage spells) will make your enemies to lost turn)
- Summon creatures right behind enemies (higher damage when backstab or side, and extra opportunity attack if enemy wants to move to your characters) to make them busy instead of you or spam totems (there is no limit like for creatures)
- Use teleport to move out (as far as possible to make lost AP for move back or bring him directly to proper character that will handle this one in best way) more dangerous enemy or protect your character in critical cases (safer area)
- Shields are good thing to have, even for casters (much better armor stats, option to recharge physical and magic armor, nice damage and area of effect and range with shield throw skill)

The only real balance problem I found are Voidwokens.
The seem to be most easy enemy (mostly no armors or weak armors - waiting for your area of effect spells and spell combos (knocked down, stunned, frozen) that will make them lose a turn) and a lot of experience (too much in my opinion).

As about skill system, I like it very much, and I found more than half of them very useful (some when used as combo with other skill or spell).
You can still invest skill points above skill books requirement to get better damage (or other advantages), but on other hand there are a lot of skill schools that you can start invest too and even later (thanks to skill auto level ups so they not go weakened later and no pre-skill requirements) to get more possible options during combat.

It is very well designed and thought game, but just different than others you may know.
Compare it to other good games like Baldurs Gate, Planescape Torment, Temple Of Elemental Evil, Wizardry 8, Dragon Age, Jagged Alliance 2 or other in some way similar games, and still tell me it has less to offer.

Somehow it was fine during my playthrough, except that I wandered off to some higher level area, but then realized my mistake and went to a tamer one, maybe it's your case.

Also, one thing you need to make sure you are doing is constantly upgrade your gear item that was kickass at level 7 will be shit at level 10 except for maybe 1 or two specific items (which will become shit at level 11-12 anyway) and if you are at level 10 fighting level 10 enemies with level 7 gear, you will feel the pain.

Even common items from merchant can be enough to bump your own armor and damage considerably in case you were sticking to low level stuff.

After that, nothing a little tactics can't solve. You don't have to initiate every fight with your whole party stacked tight, it's a good way to get pummeled and some of the more difficult fights usually come up after some conversation where the intent of starting a fight is evident - you can control other party members to take good positions in with height advantage which will make things easier and then trigger the fight.



Combination of all the above should really fix most of the combat issues.

The scaling is a bit ridiculous late-game.

Take level 17 to level 19 for example; Armor values go from roughly 300 armor total on a chest piece to 800+ at level 19. 2H weapon damage goes from ~120 to close to 200. Daggers go from ~60 damage to ~95 damage. It took 17 levels to get daggers to ~60 damage, but only 2 levels thereafter to increase a dagger's base damage by more than 50% from level 17? Something weird. Which is why I don't craft unique items until late game, because they're worthless by then if you craft as soon as available (Level 15 Eternal Armor compared to level 20 - Good thing you can find enough materials to craft this armor 3 or 4 times throughout late-game though).

I have been playing over 3 hours in Driftwood and I concur. This area is really less polished than the previous one.
- The humongous scalling of the gear/enemies is ridiculous and unneeded.
- I lose almost all dialogs checks with 30+ stats (thanks to lone wolf) and 2 persuasion. I wonder if it is even possible to succeed the dialogs, especially if you do not play as a lone wolf.
- The level design of the map is a bit messy as you can go in higher level zones without any clue. It kind of reminds me of Cyseal in DOS1.
- The price of the new skills/gear is a bit too high...
- The loading of the map is horrible. It seems to be 2 to 3 times longer than the previous map. It hurts when you have to quick reload

I still have a lot of fun playing but my experience is not as great as it was in the previous zone.

Don't know, why they felt the urge for such an exponential stats increase after level 15. Sounds like the shit WoW has after level 60 ^^

From a developer standpoint, that is totally understandable and welcome for a new extension like in WoW. New players must be able to enter the game several years after the release. If there was no "stuff reset", they would never be able to catch up to old players.

But here I do not understand the point of doing such a major "stuff reset".

Huh ?

He was talking about the fact that lvl 60 = 6000hp, lvl 70 = 10k... and lvl 110 = 5 000 000.
Why are you even talking about stuff reset ? That's beside the point.

A not ridiculous scaling would have been lvl 60 = 6000hp, lvl 110 = 11 000hp

5 millions is overkill

Hold your horse sweetie, I was totally on point but not clear enough.
I was just implying that games that have several expansions could use the big stuff scalling as a good design mechanic but that I did not see the point in a standalone game like DOS2.
We are on the same page anyways.

My mistake if I was not clear enough.

Tip! You could be clearer by not using the word "stuff."

Larger numbers do not really give better feeling for progress. At least for me the WoW way was just way off for me, never played beyond level 91 if I remember correctly.

If you have far more health, enemie will just deal far more damage to compensate and stay at the same level, so in the end, 5 million HP is not really more than 11k would be, the numbers just look bigger.

That's why I don't like the attributes. They don't deliver real developement, only exploding numbers.

Been in Driftwood for about 15 hours now and I'm loving it so far. I'm playing on Tactician and while I did notice the significant boost in enemy's combat effectiveness, it hasn't bothered me. It's my nature to min/max in any RPG I play, so I arrived on Reaper's Coast feeling well suited for the combat which would ensue.

To be honest, up to that point, only two fights had given me a challenge: Alexander and the crocodiles you fight for the Teleportation Gloves. I spend quite a lot of time tinkering with stats, gear and skills to perfect my party composition. It's still far from ideal in terms of pure effectiveness, but I didn't like the idea of making a pure physical damage party so I admit I do have a fairly balanced mix of magic/physical damage in my party. Aside from my archer, my party members would probably qualify as 'hybrids'.

First thing I did was go to the Paladin Camp. I picked up a lvl 12 Paladin shield lying on the ground which had over twice the armor values of my current epic shield (which was looted from Dallis' chest during the Lady Vengeance fight). I equipped it to see what my Shield Throw damage would be and my jaw dropped. I considered how being able to hit for that hard would trivialize combat, so I dropped it back on the ground where I found it. I'll go back and pick it up again once I'm level 12

If you have enough spotting skills (Wits), you can stroll to the northeast area, near the lumber mill and get some juicy level 14+ gear early. I got it when I was level 10/11.