Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Latest News Patchnotes v3.0.15.252 - Meet our New Stats System

Hi everybody!

Here's another update with lots of new stuff, improvements and fixes.

Based on feedback, we have been busy getting a new RPG system going. This is its first release into the wild and we'd like to read your thoughts on it. It should improve what you thought was not working very well, and your choices are now more impactful. Every point matters!

For a detailed list on what changed, feel free to peruse the list at the bottom of this message.

As always, this update is also featured in a more multimedia, less texty, Kickstarter update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdQsm0Sh2Zg

These changes are so huge, this new version is unfortunately not compatible with old savegames. However, if would like to continue your old savegames, we have made the old builds available on different Steam branches: ea_version_1 for savegames made in version 2.0.165.341 and ea_version_2 for savegames made in version 3.0.5.530.

To switch to a previous build, follow these simple steps:

1. In your Steam library, right click the game Divinity: Original Sin 2 and select Properties
2. In the Properties screen, click on the tab BETAS
3. In BETAS, click the arrow to open the dropdown
4. From the dropdown, select the branch "ea_version_1" or "ea_version_2" and then click Close

Enjoy and don't be a stranger now, ya hear

David

And now, for the changelist!

Improvements

• Improved player feedback when switching to inactive characters during combat
• Improved player feedback it's not possible to perform certain actions
• Improved UI sound events
• Physical armor and Magic armor now have hit effects
• Improved path visualizations in combat
• Improved clickable area of listed savegames
• Improved and redesigned the bottom bar interface.
• Added option to switch between hotbars (up to five)
• Chat toggle is now on the bottom bar
• Improved lighting and visuals in Blood Rose cave
• Improved visualisation of move preview
• Improved following behavior when leader of party is in combat
• Improved targetting preview when casting teleport skills (out of sight is now properly greyed out)
• Tweaked and added several effects
• Updated several animations that were not finished yet

Additions

• Added new tornado effect and fixed tornado atmosphere settings
• Added preview for attacks with multiple projectiles
• Added blinking and progress bar in windows (when game is minimized)
• Players now get directly assigned a free slot in the arena lobby upon joining
• Teams are automatically assigned for AI's in the arena lobby
• Added combat log entries for source vampirism
• Added more logging stats for balancing reasons
• Ifan's recruitment dialog now recognizes and allows Drudanae

Balancing and design changes

Primary Attributes overhaul

• Strength now provides 5% damage bonus and 2% Physical Armour bonus per point-
• Finesse now provides 5% damage bonus and 1% Dodging per point
• Intelligence now provides 5% damage bonus and 2% Magic Armour bonus per point
• Characters now have a base amount of vitality that grows with levels.
• Constitution now provides 7% vitality bonus.
• Characters now start with 3 Memory Slots and receive 1 free Memory Slot every 2 levels.
• Memory attribute now provides 1 Memory Slot per point
• Wits now provides 1% Critical Chance and 1 Initiative per point.
• Vitality, armour and damage numbers start from lower values, but grow faster each level.

Changes to combat abilities

• Combat abilities now give larger bonuses per point and are capped at 10 points.
• Previous Defence abilities were removed.
• New Defence ability: Pain Reflection. Allows you to reflect 10% of incoming damage back onto attackers per point
• Leadership is now a combat ability in Defence category. Allies in 5m range receive 5% Dodging and 5% All Res per point

Changes to talents

• Re-enabled Elemental Affinity talent (Reduces AP cost of skills when standing in surface of corresponding element. Does not apply to skills with AP cost smaller or equal to 1)
• Added new memory talent: Mnemonic. (adds 3 Memory)
• Changed human talent to give bartering instead of leadership

Changes to weapons

• Earth wands were replaced with Poison wands that receive bonus damage from Geomancer ability.
• Buffed armor on shields
• Gave shields a free skill that recovers their armor
• Gave two-handed melee weapons a free skill that unlocks a heavy attack that costs 3AP
• Receive a free skill when dual-wielding melee weapons that unlocks a heavy attack that costs 3AP
• Free skill for fighting with single melee weapon and empty offhand: 1AP attack that Knocks Down
• Attacking with single-handed weapon now costs 2AP (with or without shield)
• When dual-wielding, damage of the offhand weapon is halved.
• Added free movement if you move less than one meter before attacking
• Weapon attacks receive swoosh effects depending on main combat ability
• Inquisitor preset now wields a staff and starts with melee skills. (N.B. using Crippling Blow while wielding a staff will use the base elemental damage of the staff and receive bonus from INT since staff is and INT weapon).
• Witch and Wizard start with wands
• Replaced Sawtooth Knife with Vault in the list of starting Scoundrel skills to increase early game mobility.
• Ranger now has Haste instead of Piercing Shot as starting skill

Misc

• Increased difficulty for fights level 4 and above. Humanoid enemies now have new skills and engage in combat more aggressively.
• Fixed several issues with AI of ranged enemies.
• Targetted source skills can never miss. (E.g. Mortal Blow)
• Enemy Rage now lasts two turns
• Griff now sells weapons
• Petrified characters are now immune to Burning
• Reduced AP penalty from Slow.
• You no longer lose invisibility due to blessed smoke
• Rogues should now be able to pickpocket in arena
• Increased levels NPCs that help you in the last fight
• Cursed oil now has a chance of setting Necrofire instead of Burning
• Crocodiles now have magic armor and a stronger bite
• Buffed Radeka the blood witch and her minions
• Increased damage from Viscous Voidling death explosions
• Buffed purged dragon stats and gave him Hail Attack
• Tweaked loot drops so that you cannot get two weapons or shields from the same source
• Manually placed several weapons throughout the start of Fort Joy
• Burning and Regenerate statuses now replace eachother
• Petrified status now gives immunity to necrofire and holy fire
• Improved closest possible position when using Multistrike skills
• Hail strike skillbook now can be found from level one and healing ritual from level 4
• You can now knockdown turtles
• Improved enemy NPC treasure table drop chance from 1 in 5 to 1 in 3
• Haste now costs 0 AP and removes slowed and crippled status
• Clear-minded provides more Wits (gives Critical chance and Initiative)
• Fixed items being in stuck state when frozen or petrified
• Fixed "Walk it off" talent
• Assigned colors to unique weapons and NPC weapons
• Fixed incorrect pricing for certain weapons
• Blinding radiance does not affects neutral NPC's anymore
• Characters with zombie talent do not get damaged anymore when using a bed
• Ending combat now correctly heals NPC's with Decaying Touch status
• Fixed being allowed to learn skills from a skillbook when skill is already known from wearing an item
• Fixed enemy NPC's from regaining AP incorrectly after setting a status on them
• Hasted and slowed now also modify starting AP, so you will start combat with one more AP if you are hasted
• Set correct loot for barrels
• Enemy immunity skills should now make them immune to both damage and statuses

Bug Fixes

• Fixed several crashes
• Fixed hiding helmet causing bald characters
• Fixed charm skill fumbling too much
• Fixed client player being stuck in options menu when server reloads
• Fixed client player(s) issues if host loads single player savegame
• Fixed not being able to select eighth profile
• Fixed "Your Turn" staying on screen after combat
• Fixed NPC alignment issues
• Fixed controls settings being applied to different profiles on the same machine
• Fixed arena npc's having low stats after first starting a campaign in explorer mode
• Fixed being able to talk to characters behind closed doors
• Fixed being able to learn skills by getting 1 point in them from items. You now need at least one base point of a skill school to be able to learn spells
• Fixed corpse explosion on using source vampirism
• Fixed armor values displayed incorrectly after loading in combat
• Fixed surface tooltips for certain surface combinations
• Fixed momentarily seeing an empty level when accepting invitation from arena lobby
• Fixed characters receiving fire damage after blessing a fire surface
• Fixed invisible rogues being followed by the camera, indicating their position
• Fixed being able to target enemies in sneaking (arena)
• Fixed overlapping tooltips (range indication and surface information)
• Fixed incorrect message when savethrowing out of a status
• Fixed issue with base vitality being calculated incorrectly on enemies
• Fixed Map not updating upon selection of a lobby in the lobby browser
• Fixed not getting error message when not connected to Community/Platform server
• Fixed spamming immune text when forcing application of a status
• Fixed Surrender button being available in campaign mode / not being available in arena mode in certain cases
• Fixed crash when putting something inside the Unusually Large Orange
• Fixed crash related to creation of surfaces
• Fixed issue being unable to unlearn skill from memorized skills
• Fixed HP amounts for items with very low HP
• Fixed Funny Meat not dropping
• Fixed physics for orange container
• Fixed Staff of Magus being present in skill list when selecting inquisitor class
• Fixed skills getting added to the skillbar twice
• Fixed infinite combat loop when several combats are joined together
• Fixed getting stuck when picking up an item while sneaking
• Fixed issue with guard button being enabled correctly
• Fixed "can't reach" issue when trying to talk to someone that is not visually blocked
• Fixed being able to start the game without selecting any skills
• Fixed crash related to dashing through a campfire
• Fixed characters not being able to perform attack of opportunity during first turn of combat
• Fixed Multistrike skills landing on characters outside of weapon range
• Fixed setting warm on items when dousing them to avoid spamming of statuses
• Fixed Human female portrait aligmnent going wrong sometimes
• Fixed Attack of Opportunity triggering on multistrike and rush skills
• Fixed Players being able to start an arena match when host is spectator
• Fixed crash when client leaves arena lobby while game is starting
• Fixed starting dialog for illusion dungeon statue
• Fixed Accuracy boost from gear not being applied correctly
• Fixed vitality tooltip when your CON is below 10
• Fixed Battering ram skillbook being unsellable
• Fixed being able to target self with Source Vampirism
• Fixed Attack of Opportunity not triggering for NPC's that are running away from characters
• Fixed tooltips for skills that restore hp and armor (they now take into account bonuses from abilities)
• Fixed inconsistent tooltip size formatting
• Stop party from doing formation when sneaking or going invisible
• Fixed issue that having more than one partymember could cause getting double or triple XP reward for party
• Fixed black or grey loading screen when switching party member right before loading a savegame
• Fixed duplicate recipes in crafting interface
• Fixed "can't see" message when targetting yourself
• Fixed pickpocketted items going missing sometimes
• Fixed being able to wear a bucket on your head for all races
• Fixed Exter's dialog after Gareth dies to Magisters
• Fixed blocked dialog after winning arena under fort joy but dying right after

New Memory stat implementation is absolutely horrible.

No longer does it provide a consistent benefit for the first 10 points(what happens if you drop below 10?) and with the free ability slots the players gets from leveling Memory is now the stat that drops in value as you level up, meaning that it's a dead end trap investment.

Doesn't help that there is now also a talent that works way better at opening up new slots.

Might as well remove it, leaving only the other 5 stats, and look into alternate sources of skill slots after that.

Memory got a huge buff, not a nerf. Sure, you'll gain skills through leveling, but at level 20 you'd still only have 13 skills or so without any investment in memory, or far fewer with any source skills (assuming they still cost 3 memory). That's a decent amount of skills, but not enough for plenty of builds, especially if they add tons more skills. Possibly memory is over the top good, even.

Overall the stat overhaul looks like a solid improvement, though it really doesn't seem all that different to me. The side bonuses the primary stats grant just don't seem that significant or interesting, though I guess they will add up over time. It doesn't seem like throwing a couple points in strength for the armor bonus as a mage would really do much, though at least it will have SOME benefit. Wits still feels kind of like a waste on rogues since backstabs are autocrits.

I'd still love a stat system like in Pillars of Eternity where every attribute felt like it could be useful on any class archetype, depending on your build. That's more the case now than it was, but not by that much.

Other things: new animations actually hitting sounds great, though I can't tell if that means some weapon ranges have actually been reduced? Does sound like the free 1m movement incorporated in an attack (VERY HELPFUL) makes that less of an issue though. It'd be really cool if certain weapons actually had ideal ranges with different animations, like a spear, where attacking at its max range would be a piercing jab, while hitting something right next to you would mean swinging it like a staff for a blunt (crushing damage) hit for slightly less damage.

Also a big fan of automatic skills being granted for certain weapon types. Kind of too bad one-handed weapons are up to 2AP always, but sucker punch might make up for that depending on its cooldown. Granting a movement bonus while just using a one-handed weapon might be nice too. Random skills fit for certain weapon (e.g., a spear throw on certain magical spears) would be cool too. Happy about placed treasure, too.

Leadership changes are interesting, and pain reflection is awesome. Leadership is potentially absurdly powerful, though 5m range is difficult to maintain. It's a much more niche and active ability that affects playstyle, though, instead of a no-brainer for just about any character.

Overall, very solid update, looking forward to playing through again. Good work.

Ranged weapons (bows&crossbows) haven't received an additonal skill.
Is it just not yet in the game or will ranged weapon don't get an automatic skill?

I am excited about these changes. I'll give them a try.

After fighting the crocs some more, yeah I honestly don't know what you guys were smoking when you tried to balance this fight, they are overpowered like you wouldn't believe.

They start by chunking half if not all of your party by half health using Fossil Strike, teleport ontop of your party and if you are lucky they are out of AP, but if you aren't, they Battering Ram you knocking down half the party followed by Horrific Scream making the whole party Feared for two turns allowing them to slaughter you without ever having a chance to even fight back.

I did manage to beat them, with extreme luck that they were absolutely stupid and kept teleporting away and wasting their turns, but this is absurd, a battle shouldn't be like this, even at the same level as them it is insane how tough they are to beat. There is no challenge to fighting them, only luck and this is on normal difficulty, I can't even fathom how strong they'd be on Tactician mode, you wouldn't even be able to fight them until you were twice their level.

What was changed, exactly? Or rather, what was it doing wrong before, and how is it correct now?

My PC is repairing, but i think in 2 or 3 days i ll be able to try this new changes, want to really see the new memory system and fights!

I played through what I think is the first half of act I (through the Braccus vault) for last patch and now this one, both on classic mode, so my impressions are based on that experience. As background, I've been playing CRPG's since the days of the original Fallout and baldur's gate series, and while I'm no strategic genius, I'm also not new to the genre and am passable at the kind of tactical combat in Divinity.

Overall, I like starting at lower numbers for damage, health, etc., and enjoy the additional skills and consumables enemies now use. Fights feel much more dynamic and scrappy. However, there are a couple aspects of the changes that kind of felt bad to me. These all kind of relate to the player party perpetually feeling weak and underpowered relative to the enemies you're facing. Maybe I'm a wimp, or this balances out better later on and I just haven't gotten there yet, but I spent much more time feeling frustrated with this patch compared to the last one. It seemed like I didn't have the tools to succeed without retrying every other fight multiple times due to wipes or cripplingly pyrrhic victories, which was detrimental to my enjoyment. Below are a the points that really stood out to me as contributing to this feeling.

- It feels icky when enemies start reguarly using source skills on you. Being a sourcerer is a 'special' thing, so when I got into the marshes and every skeleton archer or pyromancer started bombarding me with source attacks, it was pretty gross and felt a touch unfair due to how scarce source is as a resource (at least at that stage of the game.) Overall, unless source and source skills become so abundant players can start using them every fight, I would suggest reserving enemies who use source attacks for bosses or other suitably epic encounters.

- It doesn't seem like enemy physical and magic armor is in proper balance with the now lowered damage and equipment values for the player party. It wasn't unusual to face enemies of equal level with 2-3x the combined physical and magic armor of my characters, which often led to attempts at exploiting the AI or abusing save scumming to give me the opportunity to chip away at enemy defenses while desperately trying to keep my party up through all the status afflictions enemies threw at me. To be clear, I don't mind them trying to incapacitate my party (that's just good strategy) but I kept finding my characters underwater from the first round, while it took multiple turns to chip through an enemy's defences to afflict them with an equivalently debilitating effect.

- A few of the early game enemies seem to deal outsized damage. The crocodiles can body a player character in like two hits, and so can the melee dogs. These enemies have solid defenses though, and require substantial investment to incapacitate even one, which gets frustrating when they come in groups.

- Frozen shard seems pretty OP when enemies have used it on me (I don't know if this skill is available to the player yet, if it is I haven't found it.) It's basically a fireball that stuns, which, given the low player armor values I mentioned above, meant that I had almost my whole party frozen from the first round of a couple fights, with the only character getting to do anything before getting locked down being Ifan. I would suggest making this chill, and freeze only targets that are already chilled. Compared to something like fireball (which it appears to be the water magic equivalent of), freeze is substantially more powerful than burning, and is available in a skill category with heals and a defense boost which is a big deal. I imagine if this skill is available to players, it's enough to push hydromancy into being the most powerful skill set by far, even with the nerf to hail storm.

All of this said, I'm loving the game even if some of the balancing in the current patch feels relatively discouraging, so while I'm trying to offer constructive criticism here, please recognize I'm on the edge of my seat in anticipation of the final version, and really think you have the makings of something really special here. Thanks for all the hard work you guys are putting into thie great game!

Seems to be a couple of new glitches that I've noticed. I'm seeing big fps drops in combat, from around 45 (I'm using an old graphics card while my new one gets repaired) down to 10 or less. It seems quite intermittent and its cause isn't obvious, though.

After combat, the ground markers for both enemy and party locations are often persisting too.

Some of the physics-enabled outfits are also still a bit glitchy, especially in character creation, and a few clothing items are still incorrect, such as substituting the blacksmith boots for mage's shoes, for instance.

Another few problems with the Griff and his oranges quest: Amyro's cage flickers like mad and it's very distracting; if not all the party members say "yeah whatevs, we'll just turn him over", the subsequent peaceful option doesn't work, it just keeps repeating in the quest log and the only thing that works is to enter combat; and if one chooses to engage Silence in combat, once it's finished the sounds of combat continue until leaving the area. The last one I remember being a problem with the previous revision too, but the other two problems I think are new.

I still believe, even after playing this patch, that the armor system NEEDS to be complemented by a Saving Throw system, like the other game.

From the patch notes:

- Strength now provides 5% damage bonus and 2% Physical Armour bonus per point
- Finesse now provides 5% damage bonus and 1% Dodging per point
- Intelligence now provides 5% damage bonus and 2% Magic Armour bonus per point

Is this "5% damage" generic across all forms of damage, or are the patch notes leaving out an assumed "melee damage / ranged damage / magic damage"? As written this reminds me of the much-disliked Might stat from Pillars of Eternity in removing distinction between magic and physical attacks.

I think it's for the respective skills and weapons the attribute correspond to.

Regarding the might stat, I thought it was brilliant, as was the entire POE stat system for the most part. There was an issue with might being used for physical intimidation dialog lines, which didn't fit very well thematically with wizards with high might, but I liked the concept of might being more a measure of personal power, whether it be physical or magical.

I personally think a more open-ended attribute system like POE would fit amazingly well for D:OS, something like this:

Strength would add range for all non-melee skills (including grenades, bows, and spells) and adds melee damage and reduces armor movement penalties
Dexterity increases hit chance for all weapons, initiative, movespeed, and dodge
Intelligence increases AOE area of all AOE skills, and the damage inflicted by elemental spells (including all status effects except bleeding, even if caused by a weapon)

Memory and con could stay as is, where wits would probably need some kind of change, like increasing crit chance and crit multiplier

Melee characters would have to balance between strength and dexterity for hit chance and melee damage, and would also benefit from int if they applied lots of statuses or used lots of AOE abilities. Mages would benefit from strength to add range on their skills, and dexterity if they use wands or staves or want more survivability.

These kind of radical changes aren't going to happen at this point, but I can still hope for them.

Can anyone confirm this for sure?

My body is ready.

Ingame, the strength says "Strength increase the damage of strength-based weapons and skills and provides a bonus to physical armor." The same wording goes for finesse and intelligence.

From that wording, it seems strength no longer reduces armor movement penalty, increases strength-based weapon accuracy, or increases throw distance, or increase carry amount. Or maybe those bonuses just aren't listed, but still are in effect? If strength no longer affects those things, it seems like a loss to me. If they do affect those things, the tooltips need clarifying.

For those wondering how the combat abilities have been changed, they're simplified and pretty dramatically more powerful per point.

Necromancer now grants 10% damage returned as health on damage dealt to vitality. This seems crazy powerful to me, even with just a couple points in necro.

Marskman now simply grants a 5% damage bonus when attacking from high ground, which is good, but doesn't give you those crazy range bonuses anymore.

The rest are more less the same as before. The bonuses per point:

Aerothurge: +10% damage dealt to magic armor
Warfare: +10% damage dealt to physical armor
Scoundrel: +5% crit multipler and +5% move speed
Geomancer: +5% poison damage, +10% armor restored on restore skills
Vitality: +10% healing, +10% magic armor restored
Pyrokinetic: +5% fire damage

Weapon skills all grant +5% damage per point, plus the bonuses for each weapon:
DW: +1% dodge
Single-handed: +2% accuracy
Two-handed: +5% crit multiplier
Ranged: +1% crit chance

Still need a shield ability, IMO.

Many changes look neat, some are odd, like the buff for the crocodiles, they were already one of the toughest fights anyway. If they feared you, you team was pretty death. And it looks like some stuff is still missing. At least Warlord, the most broken trait, doesn't get mentioned so far.

So, I took a long break from the game and forums to let patches and changes roll in. So, is the armor system basically unchanged? (I've been arguing for this since I first got the game, but I wanted to to see if how they might change it in updates)

I noticed someone mentioned increased numbers for AI, how's that feeling?

Anyway. I like that they took notice of our beef with the defence stats. Does leadership only effect companions? If so, I'd argue against placing it with the other defensive combat ability. Not really much of a defense for the guy using it. Changing it so it effects the user and allies would help. Also maybe changing the name to reflect that change

I'll probably mosey back around to playing with the game to see the new changes in action sometime soonish.

At the moment is still unchanged.