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#434348 05/01/11 06:58 PM
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Any tips on stats for a battlemage? I saw a battlemage guide on the Divinity 2 subforum but as far as I can tell, with dks there are no strength requirements for items anymore? int with magic damage swords would be equivalent to strength with melee damage swords? Should I go hog wild on the int? or maybe have a health ratio of both strength and int?

What do you think of:
50% int
30% strength
20% other stats

Or does principles of the Divinity 2 guide unwaveringly hold consistent with dks?


Another question, can you keep buying stat books or skill books? Is there a limited supply?

Last edited by Parmenides; 05/01/11 06:59 PM.
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For a battlemage, you'll want to focus primarily on INT. Ignore STR and DEX completely. Personally, I went (per level) 2 INT/1 VIT/1 SPR until 30-40 SPR at which point I switched to 2 INT/2 VIT. Once you hit 80 base INT or so, focus completely on VIT. The reason being that there is a hardcap of 100 on stats and in FoV/late ED you'll be able to gain 20 INT or so from gear and charms easily. Definitely use only magic damage weapons.

For your skill selection 5 in Lockpicking and 1 in Evade should be a given. Fireball and Firewall are your best friends. Other notable skills include Life Leech, Mana Leech, Mana Efficiency, Magic Blast, the weapon specialization skills and Destruction. Ignore magic missile as you'll be meleeing during your cooldowns and thus have no use for a spammable spell. Make sure to take one point in Rush Attack as well. Fireball + Rush Attack to move in + Firewall will decimate any group of mobs, even on the highest difficulty. I personally didn't take Way of the Battlemage for 2 reasons. The first being that rarely will you actually need more firepower, and the second being that the CONSTANT maintenance will get extremely annoying.

For gear and enchants your best set by far (until FoV) will be Ulthring's enchanted with Ultimate lifeline and for the pieces with 2 enchantment slots, 11 melee/ranged armor (whichever annoys you more, ranged or melee). As for your question on stat and skill books, you can't buy them ever. You find them in the world or as rewards from quests and there is a limited supply. Let me know if you have any more questions on the battlemage build, it's one of my favorites.

Edit: One thing I forgot to mention is that with this build, the stat build is exactly the same as a pure mage, so if you want to change your playstyle you can do so easily with a skill respec.

Last edited by Darien; 06/01/11 12:52 PM.
Darien #434395 06/01/11 03:10 AM
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Wow thanks a lot! I think I might want to start over again. My stats are all over the place, mostly in strength. I wish I could respec stats. Any sort of save editing that could be done? lol


Where's a good place for early equipment? Stores?

Last edited by Parmenides; 06/01/11 03:11 AM.
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For early equipment, just go with whatever you can get until you can piece together the Defenders of Aleroth set. That lasted me until Ulthring's. Also one thing I feel I should note: For the very early levels (1-8 or so) just use a bow. Keep your DEX at 1, but just use the best bow you can find.

At that level the lack of dex has almost no impact on your damage and the ability to auto-attack at range and kite things is invaluable. Ditch the bow as soon as your spells start getting powerful and you can actually survive in melee though. As you might know already, trying to melee in the first part of broken valley sucks. Goblin Chiefs especially will wreck you.

You might also find these links to be of use:

http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=431824&#Post431824

http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=409216#Post409216

http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=404215#Post404215

Last edited by Darien; 06/01/11 12:51 PM.
Darien #434420 06/01/11 06:49 AM
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Got lucky myself and pulled a +20 magic damage sword @level 3 from the smith..I think it was some kind of ultra rare spawn in his shop though...took 10 levels to find anything else comprable.

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Originally Posted by Damiarch72
Got lucky myself and pulled a +20 magic damage sword @level 3 from the smith..I think it was some kind of ultra rare spawn in his shop though...took 10 levels to find anything else comprable.

Yeah, if you see one of those in the shops grab it and ignore the bit of my post about a bow.

Darien #434471 06/01/11 01:21 PM
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Hi Darien,

thanks for dealing your thoughs with ous about spending statpoints and skills etc ... wink

Next time I start with DKS (hoop soon, when the Patch is coming out for the Xbox) I think about your advice when I spend my statpoints .
Whatever build I wish to make, I always make use of magic spells ! So intelligence and spirit + vitality are most useful for me. Plus the use of a Bow I find fun ! laugh

Maybe I make myself a Rangermage or perhaps something different ... who knows ?



On 7th of february 2015 : I start a new adventure in the Divinity world of Original Sin,
it's a Fantastic Freaking Fabulous Funny ... it's my All Time Favorite One !
Joram #434477 06/01/11 02:43 PM
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Actually I have noticed quite a few bows out there with magic damage on them. While I've never tried it myself, an arcane archer sort of build should be possible. Perhaps using the same base stat build as the battlemage but wearing gear like the Hunter set and charming DEX and heightened reflexes to make up for the loss of crit damage by going INT instead of DEX could work. I'd imagine Explosive Arrow + Fireball would be pretty devastating. I might just try this out on my next playthrough.

Darien #434500 06/01/11 06:16 PM
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Thanks for confirming the Goblin Chiefs for me, I'm lvl 9.25, but still get slaughtered by these Lvl 8 monsters. Thought it was just me, lol.

Managed to take down the lvl 11 Troll when I was barely Lvl 8, just with a Magic Bow... nice!

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Good thread, gave me some direction. Was curious about how to spend my stat points.


SENIOR CINCO: I suffer from an acute boot fetish and am compelled to see my characters feet...lol...
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The advice the other guy gave sounds good. I personally liked Magic Missle. If you keep it levelled, it does really good damage, at range, and is always available (although, you end up going through a lot of spirit points, so that can be a challenge).

As for Way of the Battlemage - I think that's more useful in FoV. I found when playing FoV that enemies got a lot harder, but with level 10+ WoBM, the extra 50%+ bonus would allow Fireball + Firewall to kill almost anything that wasn't a boss in one hit. Even the bosses get more manageable with WoBM - especially if you spam magic missle (and maybe magic blast, but I didn't take that - I tried magic blast for awhile, but personally, I find the recharge on it is just too long for what it does).

This totally depends on you, but I personally did spend some points on Dex and Str, for the armor bonuses, and for the Cond Body/Height. Reflex - because I hate having status effects like bleed, burn, poison, etc. Ind. Will takes care of most of the worst effects, but having some Cond. Body and Height. Reflex can help too.

I still had way more Int than Dex or Str though. I think towards the end of the game, I had like 25 or 30 points of 'natural' Str/Dex, and with armor/jewelry/etc I had like 40 or 60, which meant I had enough armor and status defense bonuses to really help.

If you really want to use a weapon, go for it. Mostly, I equipped one handed weapons and shields which gave me useful bonuses (like Int, magic damage, Ind. Will, mana regen, defense, etc).

One option which might be useful is taking Defensinve Posture and Healing - I found with a reasonablly decent set of armor, plus Def. Posture, + Healing, I could really tank enemies, which made Firewall a lot more useful (since I wasn't as likely to die quickly). Once I got the full Ulthring's set, and enchanted/charmed it, Defensive posture seemed a bit overkill, but it was nice earlier in the game when the armor still kind of sucked.

This might be stating the obvious for anyone who's already played the game, but one thing I found, once I got dragon form, was that in outdoor environments, spirit point consumption was not a problem - I had enough points to last me 2 - 3 battles, then I'd just morph into dragon and my spirit points would recharge in like 4 seconds (dragon form gets a massive spirit point regen bonus, probably because there is no dragon melee attack - everything uses mana). I had very little downtime between battles on the Flying Fortresses because of this - At the end of a couple battles, I'd be low on health, low on battle, but I'd hit healing, which would heal me about 60%, then morph to dragon, hit dragon healing and heal to 100%, and then morph back (total time about 5 seconds), where I'd have full health, full mana. This meant I didn't have to worry much about just mana dumping with magic attacks and heals (although for indoor dungeons, I'd rely a bit more on potions).

Once you get to about 70-80 Int points, plus a couple mana regen enchantments, maybe some Mana Efficiency Skill, even in human form you can regen mana so rapidly you almost never need potions - of course, you don't get there until significantly late in the game.

In FoV, I got to the point where there was no possible way for me to ever get low on mana - I'd literally regen faster than I could spend it.

Last edited by Lucreel; 12/04/11 10:35 PM.

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