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The day has finally come! At long last, you’ll feel the power of the Polymorph and Summoning schools.

Turn your enemies into chickens; slap them with tentacles; or turn the tide of battle with totems and a powered-up incarnate. Sprout wings and soar to high ground to fire long-distance shots at pesky enemies. Grow horns and charge at enemies across the battlefield to gain the best position-- and leave carnage in your wake. The possibilities are limitless and we can’t wait to see what you’ll come up with!

Here’s a juicy new trailer to whet your appetite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7mQOFuJNoU

As always, your feedback helps us make the game better so please hit that “Send feedback to Larian” button after playing, or let us know your thoughts on our forums.

Have fun!

Savegame compatibility

This new version is 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
  • ea_version_2 for savegames made in version 3.0.5.530
  • ea_version_3 for savegames made in version 3.0.15.252
  • ea_version_4 for savegames made in version 3.0.33.118

To switch to a previous build, follow these simple steps:
  • In your Steam library, right click the game Divinity: Original Sin 2 and select Properties
  • In the Properties screen, click on the tab BETAS
  • In BETAS, click the arrow to open the dropdown
  • From the dropdown, select an old "ea_version_" branch and then click Close

If you are playing on GoG, you can simply use the Galaxy version management to roll back to a previous version.

Additions
  • Added Summoning combat ability: Summons start with 10% increased Vitality, Damage, Magic Armour and Physical Armour per Ability Point invested.
  • Added Summoning skills
    • Conjure Incarnate - Conjure a personal elemental that matches the ground surface it's summoned onto. Your Incarnate can be buffed with Infusions.
    • Elemental Totem - Target a ground surface and conjure a totem of the corresponding element. Each turn, this totem will fire a projectile at enemies in sight
    • Dimensional Bolt - Shoot a volatile bolt that deals damage of a random type, and then creates a corresponding surface
    • Farsight Infusion - Unlock ranged attack for your Incarnate. Buffs Magic Armour
    • Power Infusion - Unlock Whirlwind and Rush for your Incarnate. Buffs Physical Armour
    • Rallying Cry - Target character regenerates Vitality and Magic Armour according to the number of allied characters and totems in their vicinity
    • Supercharger - Target summon deals increased damage during its next turn-- then explodes
  • Added Polymorph combat ability: receive one free Attribute Point for every Ability Point invested.
  • Added Polymorph skills
    • Bull Horns - Magnificent horns sprout from your forehead. You can rush at your enemies and gore them
    • Tentacle Lash - With tentacular limbs, lash out at the enemy and Disarm them
    • Chicken Claw - Turn the target character into a chicken. Squawk!
    • Heart of Steel - Your skin turns to steel, increasing Physical Armour and regenerating a portion of it every turn
    • Chameleon Cloak - Become one with the shadows so that you're invisible to your opponents
    • Spread Your Wings - Grow wings that unlock Flight skill. You ignore ground surfaces as long as you are walking
    • Skin Graft - Reset all cooldowns, yet also strip off all Physical Armour and Magic Armour. Removes Burning, Poisoned, Bleeding
  • Added new class presets
    • Conjurer - Conjures a trusty personal demon and elemental totems to aid in battle
    • Metamorph - Adapts to dangerous situations with transforming tricks of nature
  • Added new visual effects and sounds for all Summoning and Polymorph skills
  • Added PVP Support. This allows you to play the game in multiplayer and choose whether to work with or against your friends. You can start as allies and continue as rivals (or vice versa) by making war or peace with other parties.
  • Added Origin Story Updates
    • Made several changes and additions to origin stories (Ifan, Lohse, Sebille, and Red Prince)
    • Party members will now engage with NPCs to play out origin moments particular to their own background stories - if the player allows them to do so.
  • Added a tutorial messages log in the journal
  • Added new Arena level: Castle Outskirts
  • Added and updated several sound effects for skills
  • Added a crime check on lockpicking items that have an owner

Improvements
  • Improved the ladder animation system
  • Examining a character now uses the highest level of loremaster in your party
  • Certain AI 2.0 decision improvements added (regarding potions, invisibility, 'sleep' status, surface transform, Polymorph, Summons...)
  • AI now supports more skills and statuses
  • Improved performance when targeting enemies with ranged weapons
  • Improved feedback for characters inside fog (when targeting)
  • Improved targeting from high to low ground with skills that use teleport (self)
  • Updated several skill and attack animations
  • Updated several effects for skills
  • Companion preset selector is now embedded within recruitment dialogs.

Balancing and design changes
  • Several changes were made to the combats in and around Fort Joy:
    • Early-game Voidwoken don't bleed Cursed Blood anymore
    • The Freshly Buried Corpse no longer has armor.
    • Tweaked the Source Hound Kennel's level design. Bark, bark.
    • Tweaked the Houndmaster encounter's level design.
    • Tweaked Teleporting Crocodiles' level design.
    • Reworked a number of fights in Fort Joy to ensure coherence in spell distribution and smooth our learning curve.
  • Characters that heal due to high resistance should be damaged if they have Decaying Touch on
  • Pickup action now gets disabled in combat if you do not have enough AP
  • You can now use sucker punch when wielding only one wand
  • Applying Bless to an item on a surface now blesses that surface
  • Reduced requirements on armor, weapons, and shields
  • Made it easier to Pickpocket low level NPCs by changing the Thievery mechanics
  • Characters will no longer absorb Source surfaces when they already have their maximum number of Source Points
  • Surfaces created by skills like Fireball no longer create surfaces through walls
  • Sending an item from a container to another character now also costs 1 AP
  • Mark' now prevents characters from going invisible.
  • Increased stats of Dallis' Hammer and renamed it to "The Reckoning"
  • You can now cast Blood Sucker on other characters. Try combining it with Decaying Touch.
  • Electrification and ice should go away after 3 turns.
  • Changed how Magic Pockets work for multiplayer when having separate parties active (for the PvP system)
  • Kniles' monks are no longer linked to other monks in the dungeon
  • Blessed smoke now removes Silence
  • Refusing Withermoore's help causes him to no longer appear
  • Increased AP cost of Enrage to two; can only target allies now
  • Refactored persuasion system: You now need more points in persuasion to have an effect on higher level NPC's. Stats have less impact
  • New status: Disarmed. Prevents attacking with weapons and using skills that are based on them (e.g. Ricochet, Whirlwind)
  • Muted should not prevent characters from using weapon skills
  • The most used generic treasure tables have been completely redesigned.
  • They now generate more by value than by category.
  • When a container is opened and it generates items, the order in which they appear is randomized. This is purely a representative change.

Bug Fixes
  • Fixed an issue causing players to have their input stuck
  • Fixed an issue with the Necromancer Tower Maze. Players no longer have re-equip the ring to trigger the correct dialog options
  • Fixed roofs blocking projectiles and sight inside a building
  • Fixed some map markers not correctly showing up for all party members
  • Fixed several spell and highlight tooltips
  • Fixed certain characters dropping double the amount of loot they should be dropping
  • Fixed certain skills not showing a proper area preview around the target (e.g. Crippling Blow)
  • Fixed being able to cancel jump skills while they are still being cast (e.g. not creating a fire surface on landing with Phoenix Dive)
  • Fixed item requirements displayed red despite meeting the requirements
  • Fixed Magic Armour not disappearing on death
  • Fixed incorrect behavior with Fullscreen and Fake Fullscreen mode
  • Fixed certain statuses from being spammed above characters when wearing Cursed items
  • Fixed several issues with Tarlene's dialog regarding Shriekers and Gareth
  • Fixed items not being assigned to bottom bar when recruiting a companion
  • Fixed bug where Samadel wouldn't leave towards the call to arms
  • Fixed several crime-related behaviors
  • Fixed several NPC alignment issues
  • Fixed input being blocked in certain situations, resulting in not being able to control certain party members directly
  • Fixed minor issues regarding Gareth's death and the resulting dialogs
  • Fixed several minor quest and Journal issues
  • Fixed issue where NPCs would incorrectly force end their turn without taking action
  • Fixed not being able to reassign teams for AI after returning to lobby from a previous game


Last edited by Larian_QA; 28/03/17 02:44 PM.
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Very nice update guys. I'm excited to check out the polymorpher class more than anything. I got to play around with it a little bit at PAX East so I'm pretty excited for it =)

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Super excited to try this new patch out! <3 to Larian

I have one quick little criticism before jumping in: with the new Polymorph skill giving 1 attribute point per skill point spent, the talent ''All Skilled Up'' is strictly (miles) better than ''Bigger and Better'', and the latter seems quite worthless to take in any situation, especially later on when 1 stat point matters less and less. I really want to see ''Bigger and Better'' replaced by a more useful and perhaps more interesting talent.

EDIT: I gotta say, the red text for stealing is so useful. I love it. Totems seem quite overpowered to me; you can have three of them at the same time with this current 1 turn cooldown, they deal a lot of damage with a high range. The fact that they can be one-shot by almost anything keeps them in check somewhat.

Last edited by ivodeb; 28/03/17 04:12 PM.
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Neat stuff, but...

Still no changes to racial skills or passives.
Still no new Talents.
Still no changes to the relationship between Hard CC, physical/magical armor, and attribute balance.


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...and still no more UI improvements (http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=599150#Post599150). Hopefully we'll see more in the next update.

But of course, the polymorph and summoning gimmicks look rad. smile

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That's because those changes aren't necessary. Especially not as a priority.

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Summoning looks solid, but I guess the theme of polymorph is "you can do anything." Which is fine, so long as the other trees feel a little less jack of all tradesy, but I find the ability point attribute bonus half-baked. It doesn't really feel like the ability directly benefits the skills (barring putting that point in intelligence, assuming that improves the skills). I'd rather see something that more directly improves each polymorphed state, though that's tough with how versatile the skills are. Something boring like casting polymorph spells heals you by 3% of max health per point and boosting your speed or what have you might work, but that's not too interesting either.

Edit: On watching the update video, I'm more impressed with polymorph than initially. The wings are especially awesome, although 1 AP for movement almost anywhere + floating status is pretty redonkulous. I still think the ability could grant bonuses for each active polymorph state, though not every skill is a status (like the tentacle, though I think it'd be awesome if this was a status that boosted your melee attack range instead of just disarming enemies). Also hope there's a skill that lets you remove all of your active polymorph statuses for some effect (self-healing, remove other negative statuses, or something cooler).

Chicken polymorph also seems like stupidly powerful cc. No action AND it removes all resists (that was my impression)? It should at least boost movespeed and grant a short flight ability :P

Decaying Touch buff seems unnecessary with its strength already, though I like the concept of negating elemental healing. Maybe the conversion of healing to damage needs to be reduced somewhat. Blood Sucker buff is nice though. Not sure if rage nerf was the right direction, but at least you can't turn enemies to mush with it and it needs a bit more prep to get the most out of.


Last edited by Baardvark; 28/03/17 06:17 PM.
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Originally Posted by ivodeb
That's because those changes aren't necessary. Especially not as a priority.


Different people can have different definitions of necessary. Are those changes strictly necessary, well, no. However, they are absolutely things which can be IMPROVED upon.

Since September, there has been a thread for Talent suggestions, which is 5 pages long. I think maybe one (1) new Talent has been added to the game, which I find discouraging given that the game is still ostensibly scheduled for release in mid-2017.

There is a new patch once every 2 months, and the Talent selection is underwhelming, with a lot of poor or questionable Talents, and there has been zero indication that Larian has any interest in changing that.

So yes, I will definitely be trying out the awesome new Polymorphing and Summoning which they have been working on for a long time, but the clock is ticking ever closer to release, so I am also going to try to bring some other things to their attention as well. That okay with you?

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Originally Posted by Stabbey
Originally Posted by ivodeb
That's because those changes aren't necessary. Especially not as a priority.


Different people can have different definitions of necessary. Are those changes strictly necessary, well, no. However, they are absolutely things which can be IMPROVED upon.

Since September, there has been a thread for Talent suggestions, which is 5 pages long. I think maybe one (1) new Talent has been added to the game, which I find discouraging given that the game is still ostensibly scheduled for release in mid-2017.

There is a new patch once every 2 months, and the Talent selection is underwhelming, with a lot of poor or questionable Talents, and there has been zero indication that Larian has any interest in changing that.

So yes, I will definitely be trying out the awesome new Polymorphing and Summoning which they have been working on for a long time, but the clock is ticking ever closer to release, so I am also going to try to bring some other things to their attention as well. That okay with you?



The fact is that Larian is essentially forced to prioritize the stretch goals they promised in their Kickstarter.

Straight up adding more talents is something they should limit; more choice is not always good, contrary to popular belief, i.e. if some choices invalidate all others.

I realize you are very worried about the game balance and specifically the subtleties of the abilities, skills, talents etc. They are being worked on in the background; early access is not quite an accurate representation of the release with all its nuances in place, it's rather a way for Larian to receive feedback on some of the more chunky pieces of content.

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Originally Posted by ivodeb

The fact is that Larian is essentially forced to prioritize the stretch goals they promised in their Kickstarter.

Straight up adding more talents is something they should limit; more choice is not always good, contrary to popular belief, i.e. if some choices invalidate all others.


The big problem I see with the Talents is that it's the worst of two worlds: A lot of Talents are unimaginative, or mediocre-to-bad AND there's not a large selection* of them.

There are three Talents aimed towards Bow/Crossbow users (and that is counting Duck Duck Goose which is good for basically anyone), and five aimed towards casters, even though there are - count 'em - SEVEN different schools of magic.

Of those five caster-aimed Talents, there's one for ice and one for fire (they are also mutually exclusive), and they're basically a wash because they raise one resistance and lower another, so the benefit is questionable. A third lets magic spells critical, but at half the rate of your existing critical chance, and critical chance is already low before being cut in half.


Quote
I realize you are very worried about the game balance and specifically the subtleties of the abilities, skills, talents etc. They are being worked on in the background; early access is not quite an accurate representation of the release with all its nuances in place, it's rather a way for Larian to receive feedback on some of the more chunky pieces of content.


Right. And as I have said, there was a thread for Talent ideas started about 5 days after the alpha launch, and since then, only one talent (Mnemonic) has been added. It's been 6 months since the alpha launched.

I absolutely, wholeheartedly, 100% disagree with the premise that "Don't worry about X, I'm sure it will magically turn out to be in the final version even if Larian doesn't hear anyone talking about it, so shut up." I know people at Larian are hard at work among many things, but they aren't being overly chatty about what they are working on.

Patches come every two months or so, so even though this is the big New Skill Tree patch, we do not have the time to wait around for another two months or another two months after that or another two months after that to poke Larian about that.

So my feedback is: "Hey Larian, are you going to do something about the crappy selection of Talents at some point?"


* EDIT: Because I know someone will complain, YES, there are about 30 Talents in number. But after you divide that among different builds, there's quite a bit fewer, and that's still counting ones which are flat out not worthwhile.

One Talent every 4 levels, level cap of 30, and that means each character will want seven Talents over the course of the game. Think of a build you want to use, look at the Talent list and see how many you can think of before needing to resort to "All Skilled Up".

Last edited by Stabbey; 29/03/17 02:59 AM. Reason: people will complain
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So, my new graphics card came in and my computer works...so YAY!

I can once again test out the Alpha and see where things lie....looking forward to trying the new skills out.

I'd like to mention though that Stabbey has always had a point on the Talents and that it's a critical piece considering how they can alter gameplay for a player and are suppose to be these awesome things that really hammer home how far your character has progressed.

No one likes an RPG that just has numbers going up. We want new skills. Cool items to find. New abilities and Talents that open up new possibilities and effect gameplay and tactics.

In D: OS EE they touched on this stuff somewhat, but playing a mage was still completely overwhelming as none the Talents were actually that useful aside from about 3. In D:OS 2, it's ..... dissappointing to see the same problem persist. Especially after so much dedicated feedback on the issue.

Further, I'd prefer if Larian focused on basic elements like the CC/Armor System and stat balancing and so on (which are the main elements the game is built around) and then add in stretch goals as Updates as time goes forward.

Perfect the foundation before lookin' at the shiny add ons everyone wants. It's not like they can't add stuff afterwards. D:OS EE is perfect example of them donig that and it working out in their favor.

Last edited by aj0413; 28/03/17 08:03 PM.
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Originally Posted by Stabbey

"Don't worry about X, I'm sure it will magically turn out to be in the final version even if Larian doesn't hear anyone talking about it, so shut up."


Not at all what I'm saying, I mean the finer details are not going to get as much attention as the core.

It's funny that you bring up how uninteresting and unimpactful most of the talents are. I mentioned this in my first reply to this patch, so I can't (and wouldn't want to) deny that I 100% agree with you on this.

In any case, thank you for elaborating on your opinion on talents. I do appreciate the effort you've put in.

Last edited by ivodeb; 28/03/17 08:47 PM.
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Originally Posted by Stabbey
attribute balance

It hurts.

At this point, I've mostly resigned myself to hoping most of it can be fixed through modding.

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Hi, thank you for the additions to Summoning and Polymorphs. Some items of note:

When activating polymorph abilities (such as bull horns or wings) the animation goes through but the ability is not applied. I've found quick saving and loading usually solves this issue, similar to how it would fixed bugged characters not moving.

Some corpses have 'standing' animations despite being dead. But not a big deal just something to note.

I have encountered a problem during identifying an item, it has said my loremaster level is too low even when it is two levels higher. I usually just get a merchant to identify an item for me.

When I click 'drop item' nothing happens, so I usually drag it off screen onto the ground to solve this.

Only minor things which do not detract from the awesome game you have created! Thank you Larian!

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Originally Posted by Naqel
Originally Posted by Stabbey
attribute balance

It hurts.

At this point, I've mostly resigned myself to hoping most of it can be fixed through modding.
Same feeling. Game-play shitty no change on horizon. I thing Sven's tshirt sent the biggest message: "LMess is more"

Last edited by gGeo; 29/03/17 08:17 AM.
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One thing with the polymorpher skill:

I think the tentacle lash ability needs to really last more than just the one turn. Maybe two or three turns like the bull rush skill.

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Who sells the polymorph skillbooks early on?

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@Looped

The Doctor near the Caverns and the tinkerer woman near the front entrance to the camp, I can't remember her name.

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Dr Leste I think her name was, thank you

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Some mechanics and skills design are frustrating, but not bug:
1. Range of "All in" with spear uses range of 2h sword instead of range of spear.

2. Automatic hotbar, and moving icons on hotbar is not easy.

3.I remember in the earliest EA version, cripple attack shows an AOE indicator, but it does not shows the indicator in current version, though it is still an AOE attack.

4. Is craft skills gone? Or it is not done yet?

5. Please make back-stab indicator more obivous.(Especially in some maps of Arena).

6. Please indicate if those assassin skills need a dagger.the skill book only says need Scoundrel 1, so I assume it can be used with a spear, but when I learn the skill, it says need a dagger. By the way, please indicate the bull horn charge and flight's skill description(eg.which attributes bonus the skill, cool down, AP cost), so players can decide if they are useful before they learn them.

7.Is there anyway to cancel the action of drag an object like barrel during battle? For example, I want to move a barrel and hold mouse left button to drag it, then I reconsider and give up my mind, but I cannot cancel the drag command and have to walk to that location.

8. Why character with zombie talent bleed blood instead of poison?

And there are also some features I want to see in the EA version:
1. Please add polymorph and summon profession mob in the story mode and arena, so we can test how those skills work in enemy side.(I just arrive at hide of seeker, and have not seen any enemy with new skill trees.)

2. Undead race!

3. More classes or custom class in Arena Mode.

Looking forward to see a better OS2!


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