Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Normal or Hard?

Hi

I'm lucky enough to have just discovered this game half way through November after all these patches have been applied, but am not sure if i should be playing on hard difficulty or normal.

I am at the begining of the game and have just entered the first town (Cyseal i think), but along the way i have had maybe 3 little fights in which i was only hit once for about 15% dmg.

Firstly, can i change from normal to hard mid playing? Also, should i?

I like to be challenged but don't like fighting impossible odds and all i have experienced so far are easy kills.

All i can find about this on forums goes back to July when most people say the game is difficult so stick to normal but i am assuming they have changed the game a lot over the many months? So perhaps it is easier now?

What i am asking is, if i swap to hard after my few ours of gameplay, will it become stupidly difficult or do i have a chance?

Bare in mind i have played these types of games before and i enjoy the tactical thinking they encourage.

Many thanks

You can change the difficulty during the game. The combat you encounter before getting to Cyseal is meant to be a tutorial, so the fact that it is easy shouldn't necessarily provoke an increase in difficulty; see how you do after leaving Cyseal (north west being the easiest gate to leave by).

Depending on your character builds and tactics, hard is arguably not very hard. Harder difficulty modes are planned for a future update, including changes to opponents, etc.

Ok thanks

I'll leave it be for now and after my first battle beyond the gates of Cyseal i will decide if i need more of a challenge.

However i think i'm gonna be a long time in Cyseal learning aspect of the game and getting some armour before i get another chance to fight haha.

Thanks for your help

It's no shame to start playing on easy difficulty !
I've lowered the difficulty to easy (the "default" diff is normal I think) .

But I'm trying not to buy better gear by traders, just wearing what I can get from loot of enemies or searching the world ... (and not reloading for better loot!) ...

This extra "roleplay-rule" makes the game automatically a (little) bit more difficult !

i would start with hard - D:OS is getting too easy in the middle and end-game

Hmm ok guys, thanks for your inputs.

Think i will try hard mode and if it's too difficult i'll switch down and at least i know how hard it can be. Hopefully the amount of loot to be found does not decrease with hard?

I am in Cyseal still but have 4675 XP out of 3685 but have not increased level yet. Why have i gone over the level up amount but not levelled?

Cheers dudes

Normal or Hard is almost exclusively about how much you know about the game before starting up. If you make a cookie cutter party and use the "usual" tricks like lots of buffing from mages you can easily finish this game on hard first-try but if you put together a random group of classes without making sure you have all the OP stuff then Hard will instead be close to impossible.

You have to enter inventory mode on the character for it to level them, from there you can spend your stat/ability points

since you can change difficulty any time I'd suggest changing to hard if you want a challenge. IF you are the type to use tactics rather than just fast battle then it'll be too easy on normal...

The 'Next Level' in the inventory shows the amount of experience you need to reach the next level, rather than the total experience required; as you gain experience it will decrease until you level. You need 8,000 experience to reach level 3, for example, so that should be the sum of 'Experience' and 'Next Level' as long as your characters are on level 2.

Mouse over the experience bar at the bottom of the screen to see the experience past the current level and total experience from the current level to the next one.
You need 2,000 experience to reach level 2, for example, so when you are on that level, the bar will show (your experience - 2000) / 6000.

Ahh yes, i see the experience counting down now. I'm just used to game that count up in XP. Thanks for your help.