Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta General Feedback Thread

knocked down enemies can block (range) attacks?
i think when a enemy is knocked down i.e with stun, they should not be able to block attacks after that.

Played the latest build until I was forced to stop by two more or less game-breaking issues. Some observations:

- Opening fight: three of the dead crabs spawned a grave, but the last one just left a body. It seems inconsistent.

- NPCs flail their arms around a little too much when they run, it doesn't really matter that much, but it looks a bit silly.

- This is more of a general thing, but there are certain 'quests' that probably shouldn't really count as such since they are one-time events without any choices. Example: the Orc fight at the beginning. Perhaps there should be a new section called Notes or something where these things get recorded. I don't see much point in considering them separate quests.

- As said before, a quicksave message would be useful.

- In-game chat would be a great quality-of-life fix.

- Typo: if you ask people about the attack upon the harbor, they will say something about 'that burnng ship'. I noticed that the other typos got fixed, so I'm mentioning this again in case it got overlooked.

- At the back of the side room in the warehouse, there is a carriage you can just walk/clip through.

- In co-op conversations, if your partner has the final response in a dialogue, it's impossible for you to see it. It immediatey skips to 'no, we'll do it my way!'. This adds to the general confusion during co-op dialogues.

- I managed to break Evelyn's programming by saving and reloading as she was walking away after the sequence where you decide to heal one of the dying patients. She just stood there in the middle of the room for the rest of the game.

- On a related note, I had some trouble with xp/leveling again. When I reached level 3, I didn't get any skill or ability points at all. It also took a suspiciously long time to get to that level in the first place. I spent a lot of time saving and reloading during that playthrough and I think that this may have caused it. The game seems to have trouble consistently calculating xp and levels, especially across saves. Probably one of the most serious issues still persisting.

The AoE spells affect everyone including party members. You can generally tell who is going to be hit by an effect because they will have a red outline appear around their character.

Bug [0.102]
Spoliers

I convinced the mortician to confess about using persuasion in dialogue (reason 2). Then I got him to agree to However when I got to her she took off like a shot for Aureus without taking the money I so thoughtfully got back for her. Now everyone acts like I kept the money for myself, which I suppose I did, but onlybecause of AI behavior. I also noticed the cash is evenlysplit between party members instead of given to main char, or given as a quest object, which would probably be easier.

Bug Combat

I'm crashing every other combat now, not sure of the trigger, although twice its happened with my melee 1h/s guy about to land a blow on a hard shell crab with a weapon that inflicts a fear roll. Animation of swing fires, and then everything freezes at the moment when the blow would have connected.

only ctr-alt-del gets me out.

Bug Convos

My conversation checks seem to be several steps behind and getting even laggier: I just walked into barracks office and had a convo without dialogue choices with commander, but then when I stop talking I get a couple random speech upgrades (romantic+1, pragmatic +1) that could have been from a speech check 2-3 conversations ago. Transisitioning between areas can sometimes trigger this update. Madora is walking around with 2-3 floatie exclamation points over her head now, every once in a while she becomes inaccessible to speech options. Other times you have a "normal" conversation with her (her stay/leave, background dialogue) and when you exit, you'll suddenly get a speech bonus that you should have had a few convos ago. Other times she'll suddenly be responsive to a previous speech check. Totes magotes buggy.

- I really like that you can use Charm/Intimidate/Reason skills on Roberts as a quest solution. That was great, and I hope that you can use those skills in many more conversations with NPC’s, and not just your party members.

-The Citizen at 225, 251 in the graveyard has a unique backstory. Shouldn’t she have a name to differentiate her from the generic citizens?

-Where is Robin, the fish thief’s house? He just vanishes into thin air. Okay ,I know schedules aren’t in yet, but in earlier builds, we were told the sad tale that if we send Robin to jail, his wife and child will go hungry. I guess that was deleted. Even if he lives alone though, Robin still exists. If I tell him not to steal the fish, does he just walk out of the city, never to return?

- The Summoning Magic skill was deleted. That will make being a specialist summoner hard, so I would’t mind if it’s brought back. But if it isn’t possible for an Ice Elemental to be boosted by both Summoning Magic and Water Magic, I can see why Summoning Magic had to get the axe.

- The huge gold piles in the underground room are non-blocking. Plus, it kinda doesn’t make sense to have huge gold piles that you can’t use to finance your adventure. It could work as an emergency stash for when the player runs out of money. (But that’s not likely, as coding it to make it unexploitable would be nigh-impossible). Maybe throw in a couple lines like “Hold on, these are just chocolate covered in foil!” “It’s worse than that – this chocolate is so old it’s gone bad. Yuck!” “Who knew that the old Source King had such a sweet tooth?”

- I bought a Level 5 requiring Push Dagger, and it worked very well indeed, even on the undead. The low AP cost plus high critical chance plus backstabbing works well. One fun strategy is to hold the rogue back for a turn or two to max out their AP, then have some teleport them behind enemy lines. The rogue might die, but can take out two or three enemies. I did 220 damage in one turn in 12 attacks, and I missed once, and 3 others were for normal damage not backstabs.

- The guy who you meet in the Sparkmaster cave should give you a clear warning to stay out of range of its claws, or else you’ll get ripped to shreds. Actually that’s not enough. To really get the message across, I’d pop up a tutorial message suggesting that some fights can be dangerous and difficult to attempt head-on, but clever thinking and exploration can make them easier.

- Also, I do kinda question an encounter where melee characters are basically worthless. The only thing they can do is toss barrels at the Sparkmaster for the casters to blow up... and most of the barrels require having to go past the Sparkmaster.

- I would really like if the Teleporter Pyramids didn't return to your inventory when returning to the homestead. They would be useful as a way to get back to where you were after returning to town via the homestead.

- The ability to look at any character's inventory/stats in combat would be useful. Another poster pointed this out in co-op but it also applies to single player. You cannot access other character inventories when it is not their turn.

- A range indicator on the Earthquake spell is needed so I can see if it will hit party members

- Tooltips for abilities in the skill bar currently cover your action points, especially those in the first few slots. This is inconvenient for seeing how many action points I will have left if casting the spell.

- Slash/Pierce/Crush resistance in the character sheet would be helpful

yes I did, I want to found good things but the graves are empty.

Now restartig the game with Warrior/ranger Party... and give all members ranged spells... so I manage to kill this one ork but I wish there where more tings to dig out!

BTW:
I want to have an possibility to give Robin, the fish thief some food bevor send him back! I have fishes in my inventory.. also soup... but no Dialog Option.

That Orc is level 5. Don't go fighting him at level 2! The west gates start locked for a reason.

Another session, more feedback:

• Where does Bertia live? You said you expanded Cyseal upwards to give NPC’s places to sleep, but where do these named NPC’s live? In the “under construction zone”?
• I know that Charms are what you’ve called the items you can socket in items in the first 3 Divinity games, but you can’t have something called “Charm Quality: 2” in a game where Charm is a special skill. Just call them “Sockets: 2” and call the Charms something else with the tooltip “can be inserted into sockets”.
• When you click on a waypoint in combat, the message says “you cannot go to the homestead while in combat. It should say waypoint (and I’d actually like to be able to use the waypoints to retreat from combat).
• Resurrect is useful, but not really in combat, because it revives with 10% health, so the guy you bring back will be one-shot by the enemy who killed him before he can act again.
• I think that your chance from falling on Ice is actually reduced if you move one circle at a time instead of trying to move several at once. I'll test this some more, but I think that's the case. Normally, if you succeed at a check, you get "Sucessful save against falling", but if you walk slowly across the ice, you don't even get that message indicating that there was a check.
• There are books on shelves in Esmerelda’s shop. The restrictions on the camera angle won’t let you see them, you must press Alt.
• Silly request Change the Black Cove line “That’s the biggest static cloud I’ve ever seen!” to “That’s the second biggest static cloud I’ve ever seen!” Because it’s funnier and will make people .
• Rats can break your attempts to sneak. That can be annoying.
• “Accursed Orcs, even without a nose I can still reek your filth.” Reek isn’t used that way. Maybe “Accursed Orcs, even without a nose I can still smell your filthy reek.”
• Message that pops up over a dead guy I kill with Ice Shard. “Saving throw against Freezing succeeded!” Great, except that’s pointless, seeing as you’re dead and all.
• Summoned Elementals should appear at the same character level as the caster is. They’re no good stuck at level 2. Points into the school of magic should boost their abilities, but their level should be the caster’s. It’s a distraction for about one attack, but that’s it. And no, they don't get boosted with points into the appropriate Elemental magic. Jahan has Water Magic 4, the Ice Elemental is still a level 2 with 35 HP.
• Undead Bombers do such pathetic damage that even a level 2 Ice Elemental with only 35 HP can let 3-4 explode on it while standing in oil and survive.
• I tested the explosive mines with Jahan and Madora. They cannot even perceive them with Perception 4 and 5. Good.

You guys rock with all the feedback. I was going to give feedback too, but this game looks AMAZING. Now I think I might want to just wait and play it on release... is that too selfish? Maybe it's just me but this looks like the best true RPG I've seen since the 90's or something.

I successfully melee'd the robot without using the control device. A spear with water elemental damage did full damage while my fighter stood there and tanked with medium / large healing potions. I also spawned an ice elemental behind it to divert attention (it turns around and focuses on the summon, although this might not be so useful now summons have been nerfed).

Only lost one of the NPC aids and the quest journal noted this. Not sure if there's a larger reward if you manage it without losses.

Okay I have exhausted all the alpha content in one playthrough finally. More feedback!

• Black Cove Secret spoilers:
  Maybe the portrait on the wall of the black cove pirate room should have a character note that it’s fixed on the wall and can’t be removed when you touch it. Right now you can’t click on it except to attack it. Possibly only give the note if you have the right trait or talent to spot secrets, though.
• Please at least enable NPC repairing of stuff in the next build. It does take a while, but stuff eventually does break if you use it enough.
• If the mouse is over the bar at the bottom, you can’t even use WASD to pan the camera. I realize that there's still work to be done in that area.
• When attacking Large enemies (Sparkmaster, Ceasar Crab), the damage dumbers appear above it and off the screen, making it hard to see how much you’re doing without fighting the camera.
• The [Element] Shield spells are worthless. +5% Resistance for 2 turn, plus a penalty to another element is a waste of AP. This is with 3 points into the appropriate school of magic, too. It needs to start at 25 points at rank 1 in the respective magic school for it to be worth considering. Go ahead and pump up the penalty to the other resistance to match it, just give me a reason to use it. Plus, why is Earthshield level 10? Does it make me breakfast, too? Hey Earthshield, I like my bacon crispy!
• Also, the bonus resistance doesn’t show up on the character screen. It doesn’t even seem to work. I cast Airshield on Jahan and fired a Tornado, but it didn’t make any difference in the damage he took – it was the same with the shield or not.

Spoilers through the end of “A Mysterious Murder”:

Just wondering about the teleporters.
In prior games you had a option of "use teleporter and put on ground". So you could teleport from one location to another and back again. Is this not possible now. Tried to put the one from inventory on the ground and right click. But nothing happens. Would really like to have this opportunity.

As it is now, I'm by Evelyns cave. so if I wan't to get back there I have to use a Waypoint shrine and walk for a bit.

I've only put about 5-6 hours into the game, but wanted to give a bit of feedback. I apologize if this stuff has already been mentioned - I tried searching on the forum for more appropriate threads for each aspect of my feedback, but this was the best place I could find.

1. I feel burn damage is a little low. It just feels like insignificant damage. I'll be fighting guys w/ over 100 hp and *if* they fail to save against burning, they take 1 damage for a few turns. As it seems like elemental interaction (burning oil, freezing water, etc) seems like one of the more unique mechanics to the game, I would expect it to have more of an impact on my choices. It also seems to make spells like Firefly only useful when lighting barrels & oil on fire.

2. Stealing things (using sneak) which aren't under a stationary guard who is staring directly at what you're trying to steal, seems too easy. Patrolling or wandering NPCs can be robbed blind since you can rob them as soon as you leave line of sight by immediately activating sneak, opening the container and hitting "loot all". Doing that usually takes less than a second. I'm not sure what would be the best way to go about changing this. One idea would be to give the sneak ability a 4-5 second cooldown after leaving an NPC's line of sight (maybe reducing the cooldown based on the character's sneak level). Just a thought.

3. I would love to be able to use the mouse wheel to zoom in/out of the map. It just seems natural to me to use the mouse wheel to zoom, rather than having to click the zoom in/out buttons.

Overall I'm loving the game and can't wait to see how it develops, but just wanted to add my 2 cents of feedback after my first good-sized session with the game.

From being sneaky in the previous build and leaving the designated alpha zone, I can say that there is at least one other 2 stage fight sequence.

I just played the game for a few hours until my save got corrupted. That was silly of me to keep one save in an alpha, but it does give me a good reason to quit and give feedback:

- There should be an autosave feature!

- Successful quicksave should be a notification that fades away instead of having to click 'OK'.

- Make it so you can click on the map and the camera moves to that location.

- Movement speed animations can be slow. For instance, Evelyn cultists methodically walk in combat and unnecessarily slows things down.

- Source hunter that is closest to being party leader should automatically start conversations instead of being greeted with "I will only talk to the source hunter."

- Some spells seem to be projectiles (in that walls or creatures block them) and some hit automatically (going around/through them). This might be a bug, but if it's not a bug then there should be a visual cue that when you target something you can't hit you see a highlight of what you will hit.

- Please allow us to undo movement in combat. Once you've attacked it should stick, but erroneously moving and effectively wasting part of a turn is frustrating.

- Health potions feel too powerful. More immediate healing for less AP than the heal spell is just wrong, especially with how plentiful health potions are. I feel like they negate a lot of use for a healer type. I think potions should eat up a significant amount of AP.

- I'm not a fan of being able to quicksave during combat. Makes it too easy to game battles.

You're not the only one who is waiting for the final release. It's pretty normal at all. It's not selfish. Although I'm supporting the game on the background like promoting it to other forums or to my friends, and sometimes playing if I'm in the mood.

It's impossible to cast a spell on character by selecting his/her portrait. Right now it's only working when you click on character him/herself. Also, selected spells until casting are weirdly animated in the skill bar - like a growing black box.

So, I'm finding that spell casting is a bit annoying because once you've selected a spell you have to right-click to de-select it before you can pick another. To me, at least, it's much more intuitive for a click on a different spell on the button bar to switch the selected spell to the one you've clicked on, rather than doing nothing. I've already accidentally fried a character because I thought I'd switched from fireball to heal.