Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks Tricks and features you may not know

This thread is little tricks and features discovered while playing that weren't apparent at first. Please feel free to contribute your own. Please note, this thread is not for strategies and exploits.

- When you're picking up stuff, you know how it seems to take a little too long before you can take another action? Well, if you right-click (doesn't matter what you right-click on, just hit that right mouse button) it cancels the animation. The thing you were picking up is still picked up, you just don't have to wait for the animation to complete before you do something else. This makes picking up a bunch of stuff off the ground much faster. This also works for some other stuff, like casting spells out-of-combat.

- When clicking on item models (the graphics, not the tooltips for them) to pick them up, if you double-click to pick it up, it skips most of the pickup animation. This lets you pick up things faster. If you're using the tooltips to pick stuff up, though, you still need to use the right-click trick.

- Right-click cancels movement commands, too. So if you accidentally send someone to the wrong spot, just right-click. It won't undo the distance they've gone, but it's better than letting them go on.

- Right-click on containers (crates and such) or candles in order to pick them up without having to drag them into your bag (it gives you a menu with the Pick Up option). You can sell those things for 1 gold each. Keep in mind that some containers (chests) are very heavy.

- If you drag a Bed Roll from your inventory to your hotbar, you can use it to instantly heal your party when out of combat. It also gives you a 3-turn stat buff, which helps sometimes. The bed roll is infinitely reusable. (You can also use it by right-clicking on it, as of the last patch.)

- If you hold down the button for Show Sneak Cones while not sneaking, you can still see NPC visibility areas. This can help you avoid conflict sometimes. Do note, though, that both friendly and enemy vision fields show up and look exactly the same. (They really ought to rename the keybind to "Show NPC Vision", as that would be more accurate.)

- You already know that, as an elf, you can eat body parts. But did you know that you can actually learn new abilities by doing so? This can give you access to abilities you don't have the skill for, but can now use anyway. I'm posting this in case others think it's just a story ability, as I initially did. Elves also heal from body eating parts, and don't get diseased from it as other races would.

- You can right-click on equipment directly to repair it without having to take it off first.

- Every time you level up (and apparently hourly, as SlamPow noted), NPCs update their inventories a bit. Check back with the more vendory ones to see what new stuff they have for sale.

- If you right-click an enemy, there's an Examine option. In the Examine window, you can mouse-over the buffs and debuffs on them to find out what they do. There's also additional information you can scroll down to see if you have points in Loremaster.

- Persuasion and Bartering on the same character helps lower prices even further than just Bartering. [noted by Kalrakh]

- Hold right shift when issuing movement commands to set multiple waypoints. (Essentially draw your path.) [noted by NinjaSteave]

- Hold Ctrl to make your left click into an attack, no matter what you're targeting. You can even attack the ground. When attacking the ground with a ranged attack, the first enemy in the path will get hit even if you can't target them directly due to smoke. You can also use this to break open some doors and chests. [noted by error3]

- While it costs AP to equip weapons/shields, it does not cost any AP to unequip them. (noted by error3)

- The amount of AP it costs to attack is equal to the number of hands holding equipment. So, if using a 2-handed weapon, dual wielding, or using a 1-hander and shield, attacks costs 2 AP. If only using one 1-hander with nothing in the other hand, attacks cost 1 AP. If you unequip one hand, leaving a weapon in the other, you will reduce the cost of attacks to 1 AP. [noted by error3]

- +Skill boosts from gear allow a player to learn the related skills even without an investment in them. [noted by error3]

- The items an NPC initially has for trade are not lootable from them when they die, however any items you trade to them will be lootable upon their death. [noted by error3] In my experience, they will not drop the gold you trade them, just items.

- Similar to the bed roll, the shovel can be used from your hot bar. You can use it to dig manually in locations where you know something is hidden, even when you don't technically have enough Wits to see it. [noted by Spectre_777]

- Activating the spell Teleportation (without choosing a target) highlights all interactable corpses within sight, even those you didn't cause. After you've seen the corpses, you can just right-click to cancel the spell.

- If you enter a conversation with an NPC, you can then switch to another character in your party (without exiting the conversation), sneak around behind that NPC, and rob them blind.

I'll update this with more things as I think of them.

Also of note, NPCs will update their inventories hourly as well.

Persuasion and Barting on the same guy helps lowering prices even further, than just Bartering.

Hold right shift when issuing movement commands to set multiple waypoints. (Essentially draw your path.)

This is really useful, especially if you don't want to spend ages tip-toeing past traps. I wish it was left-shift though, like DOS1. Speaking as someone who has just realised she didn't bother to check whether or not it's configurable.

It is configurable under the options->controls
labeled as "Queue commands"
Left shift is bound to the show NPC sight cones by default.

I'm updating my list with any new items people post (with credit given, of course).

Holding Ctrl will make your left-click fire your weapon at anything.
Aiming a ranged weapon this way will allow you to shoot the ground.
This can be used to either set off environments on the ground (e.g. Fire want to Oil), or to attack enemies that you can't "see", so long as the projectile passes through them on the way to its destination. (Workaround for "Target is Hidden" message)
This can also be used to break open chests and doors without any lockpicking skill, provided they take damage.

There is 0 cost to unequip an item in combat.
Unequipping an item that reduces your movement will allow you to move farther, and the armor lost from unequipping only affects your max armor, not your current. (current still cannot be higher than max)
Doing this with an offhand shield/weapon will allow you to perform regular attacks for 1 AP instead of 2, if you really need to do it cheaper on-the-fly.

+Skill boosts from gear will allow a player to learn the related skills even without an investment in them. (I think this is just a feature, not an exploit, but exploiting it can save a party several poorly placed points.)

Shopkeepers do not drop their entire supply when killed, but if you trade them for all of their supply and then kill them they will drop all of the items you swapped them.

Similar to the bed roll, the shovel can be added to your hot bar. You can use it to dig manually in locations where you know something is hidden, even when you don't technically have enough wits to see it.

This is useful for digging up items like Buddy's Key or the unique pirate treasure rings. Obvious caveat, you have to already know where the treasure is located.

This is neat!

I wonder if there are any buried items that can only be found with this method and do not show up with any amount of Wits.

I almost feel like the elf ability to eat corpses and gain new abilities from doing so, is almost an unfair advantage over all the other races, considering skillbooks aren't that cheap. They also heal from eating the body parts, and there is an abundance of body parts, while the other races need to buy healing spells or potions. The elf can get all that, and benefit from cannibalism.

I think the two skillbooks replaced by eating body parts are 50g each. The other ability you get is Levitate, which, while it seems cool, I haven't been able to justify using a memory slot for it. Honestly, I haven't found much need for Fortify or Magic Shell, so those usually get cut, as well (mostly because they're just really weak, especially if you don't have the skills that buff them). Truly, I feel like Cannibalism is one of the weakest racial traits. Of course, that's counterbalanced by Flesh Sacrifice, which is easily the strongest racial trait.

Over 100 armor/magic armor isn't that bad, like all skills they get more effectiv with higher level. And levitate is nice to ignore every kind of ground effects like ice and fire, at least till you get bless I guess. You can also get Burn my eyes from eating. Main problem is, only elf can really profit from it, so more than one hardly is usefull regarding this trait.

Unskilled, you're only getting over 100 at level 7+. I do know what Levitate is for, but many other abilities are just better. I guess it'd be good for a warrior, though. They don't need many skills, and they're all elves because of Flesh Sacrifice.

I can't edit the initial post anymore (there seems to be a statute of limitations on this forum for edits), so I'll just note it here.

When clicking on item models (the graphics, not the tooltips for them) to pick them up, if you double-click to pick it up, it skips most of the pickup animation. This lets you pick up things faster. If you're using the tooltips to pick stuff up, though, you still need to use the right-click trick.

It's possibly got too big or has too much formatting, obviously for fairly modest values of "too big" and "too much": the forum is known to be a bit glitchy when it comes to re-editing longish posts, sadly. It's partly the auto-censor's doing, which Raze can work around if needed (though I can't) so I think future updates can be cut-and-pasted into the OP by him.

By default there is a 3 day edit time limit on posts.

Well that's me told.

I think most if not all my edits were to correct the obvious typo that I'd spot 1.3 seconds after submission.

I'm probably the only person who is impacted by this who edits for legitimate reasons. Few people make long, updateable lists.

Hassat Hunter also does, amongst a few others. It's a legitimate concern.