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[Blyr]

semi-huge wall of text regarding my thoughts up to the end of act 3 ahead:

Just finished Act 3, we're a bit over-leveled.. we were 17 when we started, and 19 as we're leaving, and most enemies were typically 1-2 levels below us, however the final fight of that act legitimately had me sweating like no other fight has yet in this game, so I approve

I have to say, my biggest gripe with the game so far is the unique gear drops.. I keep finding really cool unique items that are 2-3 levels below me as I attain them, I kinda wish some items in the game would level with you, which would hurt the "gear treadmill" progression, I understand, but it's disappointing to find some ancient sword hidden in a deep temple that's only level 15 when my party is approaching 20.

Also, my original plan of giving my mages 4 schools of magic each has been pretty successful so far, but I think on future playthroughs I'm going to cut it down to 3 each, as I have more skills than I ever use at this point

I also wish I knew about the

Spoiler

stat boost from the scholars in the school earlier, as I was going to hard cap my memory at 30 for both of my mages, and now my primary dps mage has 34 memory, which.. I'll never use, even with hydro/geo/aero/necro

I also have to say, necromancer as a casting tree is a bit underwhelming, I left it at 2 points the majority of the game, as many of the skills require me to be in melee range, which is .. not good for a caster, but it would be wonderful if I were working on a battlemage hybrid. shackles of pain, infect, and mosquito swarm are probrably the only thing I use, and then that's just to soften physical armor on targets for my archer/tank to CC on their turn

Polymorph for my tank has been an incredible utility, tentacle lash has incredible range and has typically been enough to erradicate someone's armor + apply atrophy in a single turn, flying is fantastic because he usually needs to pass over my mages fields to get to enemies, medusa head, terrain transform, all of it has been incredible so far

Summoning was the skill tree that genuinely surprised me, I played with it in the EA and wasn't very impressed, but it seems a lot better, as my summon has been the MVP for much of the game, because I can summon him specifically to target my enemies weakness, if they have low magic armor, I summon him on a field, if they have low phys armor, I summon him on the ground, and with all the +summoning gear i've been stacking, I've had the "upgraded" vers for quite a while (probably since act 1 I think) so it's been a powerhouse for a while, I can't seem to manage to get to 20 though, even with all the gear and 10pts in summoning, though, unfortunately

having a minimum of 3 spell trees on your mages seems necessary though, too many times i've run into enemies who are just, immune to my primary DPS (fire immunity, or poisoning them would heal them, etc.) which is fine, I like to run aero on both my mages anyways, because teleport is once again one of the most useful and necessary tools for mages

Considering making a 1pt investment in warfare, and giving my mages 1 point in con each time the requirements on shields go up, because 1. the defensive gains of having a shield are so strong, and restore shields heavily outweighs the negligable loss in dps from not having a +int wand in your off hand, and 2. bouncing shield scales off your shield value, and is just an incredible skill in itself, my healer became virtually unkillable once I gave her a shield, as she'd always be targeted first because she'd throw out her summon and buff it

also, I'll go ahead and spoilertag this even though it's not much of a spoiler,

Spoiler

attaining source is a lot easier than I thought it would be, each fight typically leaves a few ghosts behind to consume, or there are source puddles everywhere before any serious fight, so maintaining max source feels like an after thought. I still might make a mod that removes the source cost from spells, and instead applies their source cost as a level +1 to the requirement for the skill, so that using the most powerful skills in the game requires a heavy investment, instead of an easy "I win" button with a slightly limited resource

Also apotheosis in the polymorph tree already renders this completely renders source cost useless, I've heavily considered respeccing into polymorph on my mage and popping that skill, then just ending fights in 1-2 turns, but that would be silly

madly in love with this game, have been planning out my build and setup for PT2 since act 2, and I just continue to learn more and more things to optimize my build, so I'm very likely going to start on tactician just for the added challenge so I don't steamroll the game

 

[Labadal]

How long are acts 3 and 4 compared to acts 1 and 2?

 

[MisterShine]

How long are acts 3 and 4 compared to acts 1 and 2?

Act 3 is maybe half the size, if not a third, of Act 1. Act 4 is about equal to Act 1 I'd say.

 

[Ryzaki009]

Just let him go to Jail. He can break himself out or you can get him out.

You could just pay them off. 75 worked for me I tried 25 but she got mad I was ripping her off.

 

[MikeBison]

Anyone getting a bug where the voice acting plays up for them? Like some people it works fine but for other conversations I'm not hearing anything

 

[carlsojo]

Finished a big fight and the NPC I saved afterward talked to Lohse instead of my Fane. And then teleported away after. Like god damn it I am not redoing a half hour fight.

 

[Stiler]

Finished a big fight and the NPC I saved afterward talked to Lohse instead of my Fane. And then teleported away after. Like god damn it I am not redoing a half hour fight.

That's one of the pet peeves I've ran into, some npc' sjust randomly strike up the conversation with someone and when it's not your character it can be annoying, especially if you have the highest persuasion on them + unique dialogue for that specific npc related to them.

I did the burning pigs npc like 3 times cause she kept talking to the red Prince and finally got her to talk to me (Fane) and what do you know, not one but two unique dialogues for him that I'd have missed out on.

They need to make the npc's talk to your mc or the character you had selected going into the fight instead of just randomly appearing and talking to the nearest character (which is what it seems to do).

 

[LurkerPrime]

Anyone getting a bug where the voice acting plays up for them? Like some people it works fine but for other conversations I'm not hearing anything

Maybe? I'm midway through Act 2 and I've had a few conversations (out of hundreds) that lack VO for whatever reason; mostly (entirely?) small, single-line replies/quips from companions.

 

[Hoo-doo]

That's one of the pet peeves I've ran into, some npc' sjust randomly strike up the conversation with someone and when it's not your character it can be annoying, especially if you have the highest persuasion on them + unique dialogue for that specific npc related to them.

I did the burning pigs npc like 3 times cause she kept talking to the red Prince and finally got her to talk to me (Fane) and what do you know, not one but two unique dialogues for him that I'd have missed out on.

They need to make the npc's talk to your mc or the character you had selected going into the fight instead of just randomly appearing and talking to the nearest character (which is what it seems to do).

You should be able to switch between who's having the conversation mid-conversation, to be honest.

 

[bati]

Stat inflation at the start of act 2 is insane. I did some exploring and ended up at the graveyard (was lvl 10) where I burned several res scrolls before I decided it might be a better idea to explore elsewhere first.

Also, Rivellon theme on loop in act is just the best, can't get enough of it lol. Borislav Slavov is a genius.

 

[timetokill]

Started playing yesterday... stopped because the middle mouse button stopped rotating the view. :/

 

[His Majesty]

Started playing yesterday... stopped because the middle mouse button stopped rotating the view. :/

You can rebind all keys.

 

[Royal_Phalanx]

Getting lag in Act 2. Also am finding the game takes ages to load very recently. Anyone else getting this issue?

 

[Durante]

I have a new way of expressing how good this game is:
I'm currently on a business trip, and using a laptop with integrated graphics where the game barely maintains 30 FPS at a mixture of low and very low settings and 720p resolution. Despite that, I still played it for 4 hours.

 

[Gunslinger]

Getting lag in Act 2. Also am finding the game takes ages to load very recently. Anyone else getting this issue?

Still good for me I am in act 2.

 

[FlibbertiGibbet]

I have a new way of expressing how good this game is:
I'm currently on a business trip, and using a laptop with integrated graphics where the game barely maintains 30 FPS at a mixture of low and very low settings and 720p resolution. Despite that, I still played it for 4 hours.

I went to play "a bit" last night at 9pm and ended up going to bed at 5am.

Last game that did that to me was Dark Souls.

This game is a masterpiece.

 

[Prototype Viktor]

Getting lag in Act 2. Also am finding the game takes ages to load very recently. Anyone else getting this issue?

loads are long yea but it barely loads if any afterwards so i never care

 

[His Majesty]

Finally got through Act 1 over the weekend after 40 hours of playing and screwing around. Only point of criticism so far is that there are quite a few quests that seem to be unresolved and bugged.

 

[A-V-B]

Finally got through Act 1 over the weekend after 40 hours of playing and screwing around. Only point of criticism so far is that there are quite a few quests that seem to be unresolved and bugged.

Yeah, this was a huge problem for me too.

 

[Sotha Sil]

I have a new way of expressing how good this game is:
I'm currently on a business trip, and using a laptop with integrated graphics where the game barely maintains 30 FPS at a mixture of low and very low settings and 720p resolution. Despite that, I still played it for 4 hours.

It's the "I didn't think video games could still surprise and enthrall me this way after all this time" kind of game.

 

[FlibbertiGibbet]

It's the "I didn't think video games could still surprise and enthrall me this way after all this time" kind of game.

This.

 

[Royal_Phalanx]

Nevermind the lag went away after restarting the game. Also they should fix the respec messing up your premade companions portraits issue. They are low poly and horrible looking in comparison. Respec is a must for every newbie to the game. It's a real lifesaver.

 

[Mutagenic]

Really enjoying how intuitive this is with a controller. The only problem I have in that mode is how the huge dialogue box covers up the majority of the screen and you can't watch conversations play out.

 

[Sullichin]

In case anyone else is having this problem, i realized having this game in full screen messes with / resets my gamma settings in NVIDIA control panel. It works fine in fake full screen.

 

[MikeBison]

Eh. Voice audio bug seems to have gone.

Anyway, paralysed by choice of stuff to buy in Driftwood. I want it all. Hard to steal from the main town merchants. Plus some of their stuff is so valuable anyway.

Godamn this game is ducking unbelievably good.

One small gripe is for as beautiful as it looks, and it really does, the character portraits are hideous. For the origin characters at least use the beautiful painted concept artwork.

 

[AuthenticM]

I've never played any of these games, but they interest me.

Are they like Dark Souls in the sense that it's recommended to play the entire game solo first before trying coop? Or does it not matter and I can play in coop from the get-go?

 

[cevion]

Double Click on the portrait of the people not fighting, so you gain control over them. Lead them to the fight.

Or even better, use F1-F4, my favorite hotkeys. They seem to select party members quicker than normal clicking. It's so snappy, game became a lot more manageable for doing tedious things like healing up/buffing on multiple characters or controlling separate characters after I started using those hotkeys. Was a true game changer for me, maybe you all know about it already but posting just in case. :3

What determines who get's the reward for escaping Fort Joy with [Minor character/animal spoiler for act 1]

Spoiler

the cat

through act 1 BTW? I got the reward on Red Prince, not my main, for some reason. Thus decided to make him the "main summoner" after that. Pounce and nether swap is nice, but the damage doesn't seem to scale as well as incarnate/necro "spider" summon at Summoning 10+. Can't keep more than 1 summon up at the same time which is a shame. Does the mentioned summon get stronger / gain new skills later in the game?

edit: Theorycrafted some and came up with Bloated corpse + flame crescendo. That should make for a nice aoe explosion at the start of the fight. After I blow up the bloated corpse I'm thinking I Summon Incarnate > Haste and maybe Enrage, then infusions. Anyone tried the flame crescendo + bloated corpse combo?

 

[goblin]

I have to say, my biggest gripe with the game so far is the unique gear drops.. I keep finding really cool unique items that are 2-3 levels below me as I attain them, I kinda wish some items in the game would level with you, which would hurt the "gear treadmill" progression, I understand, but it's disappointing to find some ancient sword hidden in a deep temple that's only level 15 when my party is approaching 20.

I know exactly what sword you're talking about and it bugged me too, especially because that chapter is when stat inflation on gear between levels starts to really skyrocket. Finding uniques below your level that you want to use starts to become more and more disappointing because they're missing hundreds of stat points. It's another problem compounded by ballooning numbers in later acts.

I'd like to see some sort of reforging options via crafting -- use ingredients to bump up some items you really like to your current level. On one hand, Divinity 2 has a LOT more uniques and I understand if Larian wants you to have to mix up your gear a bit and not just wear the same things forever. On the other, this is a game that lets you respec practically whenever you want after Act 1. Divinity allows for player freedom of gameplay in so many other ways, if someone wants to wear Braccus Rex's set the whole game why not support it to be a viable option?

Also it sounds like you're running a similar party setup that I was. Sword and shield tank maxed out Warfare/Poly, but I ended up with 3 Polymorph on all my other characters because Medusa Head, Skin Graft and Forced Exchange are too good. Both mages used shields for survability, had Shield Bounce, Phoenix Dive and Executioner. I probably could've dropped Executioner for The Pawn on the summoner/healer, but he scored enough kills that Executioner stayed useful and anytime I wanted to reposition him I'd want to avoid surfaces or attacks of opportunity with a teleport like Phoenix Dive or Tactical Retreat, anyway. Splashed a couple points of Necromancy onto casters just in case they needed a bit of extra physical damage to strip armor when Shield Bounce wasn't enough.

Set up like that, even with a dual wielding Rogue instead of a Ranger as my fourth and not really bothering with runes or min-max respecs, I was able to go through Classic without running into any particularly tricky fights until late Act 4. YMMV, but if you want more of a challenge before then it couldn't hurt to bump up the difficulty to Tactician before your next playthrough.

 

[Dezzy]

How exactly do you properly use melee characters when there are so many elements being tossed on the ground from both enemies and your own mages? So much friendly fire!
Oh, and of course all the AP it takes to reposition them all the time.

 

[fuzzyset]

God damn this game is so good. Still pretty early on, but the story and writing are so much better than the first game. This one really has its hooks in me already.

I just finished the Vault

Spoiler

of Braccus Rex. I met my god (playing as Sebille, not sure if it's different for each origin). The dialogue and choices are intense. He straight up tells me to murder Lohse. The whole "your party is working together but against you"
conceit seems really awesome. It has so much potential.

 

[JC Sera]

Thought it would be cool to play some relaxed on the couch on the TV with the gamepad, but I feel hamstrung with these controls. Not for combat, but for other things... like with a mouse, I can mouse over icons on the minimap and see what they are from far away. And I can actually click directly on items I want rather than having to line my body up with them first. That's too bad.

click down on the left stick to bring up a cursor
also click down on the right stick to toggle names on and off

 

[cevion]

How exactly do you properly use melee characters when there are so many elements being tossed on the ground from both enemies and your own mages? So much friendly fire!
Oh, and of course all the AP it takes to reposition them all the time.

Give them Tactical Retreat / Spread Your Wings / Phoenix Dive and/or "The Pawn" talent for movement/teleportation and less ap cost for moving. If they're taking damage, cast Fortify or Magic Shell on them or something similar, like "Mend Metal" or just something like Restoration to get rid of, for example, burning. If you use fire a lot on your mages you could give your melee the "Demon" talent, too (or the opposite one if you mainly use water/ice)

Sometimes with clever positioning plus the Teleport spell you can AoE the enemies while having your melee standing next to them, without getting hit. And other times you have to take the hit on your melee characters, but they are usually tanky if you have the gear and above mentioned armor restoring abilities, so it should work out

 

[Speely]

Help I can't get

Spoiler

OVER HOW FUCKING GOOD THIS GAME IS OMG. How did this happen? I don't want to play anything else.

Thanks in advance.

 

[timetokill]

You can rebind all keys.

I tried doing that, but I can't rebind middle mouse button+drag effectively... or at least I can't figure out how.

Anyway I'm gonna give it another try today.

 

[CrichtonKicks]

The small details in the game are incredible.

Act 2 non-story spoilers

Spoiler

I love that not only can you meet Kniles' mother, you can explore his room, and even find the graves of his sisters who died under mysterious circumstances. All of this for a character who IIRC isn't even linked to an actual quest.

 

[cevion]

I tried doing that, but I can't rebind middle mouse button+drag effectively... or at least I can't figure out how.

Anyway I'm gonna give it another try today.

I had a similar issue but it turned out my mouse software was using a different profile, thus rebinding middle mouse to something else. Just a shot in the dark but maybe that could be your issue as well? If not, I'd suggest setting all keybindings to "default", and trying both "fullscreen" and "fullscreen windowed". Good luck, hope it works out for you!

edit: Oh I think I misunderstood your post. The drag thing with middle mouse doesn't seem to work well for me, or at all really. Maybe because middle mouse is already bound to "rotate"? I have to use WASD or arrow keys for dragging IIRC.

 

[Sentenza]

Help I can't get

Spoiler

OVER HOW FUCKING GOOD THIS GAME IS OMG. How did this happen? I don't want to play anything else.

Thanks in advance.

Well, you just need to

Spoiler

HOLY SHIT, I DON'T KNOW. IT'S THE SAME HERE.

 

[Adnor]

Help I can't get

Spoiler

OVER HOW FUCKING GOOD THIS GAME IS OMG. How did this happen? I don't want to play anything else.

Thanks in advance.

Spoiler

I DON'T KNOW I HAVE 50 HOURS AND I NEED TO STUDY AAAAAH

 

[Gunmonkey36]

This game is amazing. It might be my GOTY in one of the toughest personal GOTY races in memory.

I was staying at a hotel this weekend and at one point used chrome remote desktop on my Chromebook to remotely play Divinity 2 with pretty extreme lag on my desktop at home...Still fun/I may have a problem.


I can't get enough.

 

[The Illiterati]

Thinking towards the future, I wouldn't mind larian releasing some relatively "small" dlc like quest packs the size of the Wreckers Cave questline in Act Two. I found that area so fantastically well designed and laid out, it blew me away. I would love certain challenge questline that choose your party and abilities for you in a linear area, allowing you to try to make due with what you're given. As much as I love the freedom, to use it to design some restraints for players could be just as entertaining.

 

[carlsojo]

Every time I break down and buy a new skillbook I swear it's the very next thing that drops.

 

[Adnor]

Thinking towards the future, I wouldn't mind larian releasing some relatively "small" dlc like quest packs the size of the Wreckers Cave questline in Act Two. I found that area so fantastically well designed and laid out, it blew me away. I would love certain challenge questline that choose your party and abilities for you in a linear area, allowing you to try to make due with what you're given. As much as I love the freedom, to use it to design some restraints for players could be just as entertaining.

Wrecker's Cave is amazing because it's not something you'd expect in this game

Spoiler

the whole scripted fight were you lose (but you can win if you're prepared and/or overleveled) and your party is separated, one of them appearing in a fight they can't win, or can't easily win, alone. It would be the big moment mid act 2 in any other RPG, here it's just another quest you can actually ignore.

And while the game is still humorous, it's easily the darkest and most serious part of the game you've seen if you don't get there overleveled

 

[Pyros_Eien]

Noticed Elemental Affinity is kinda bugged, if you generate a surface under your character, your next action shows the discounted prices but won't let you use the skills if you don't have enough AP for the original cost(for example, 2AP left, use rain to create a pool of water, then want to use winterblast which now costs 1AP, but it's greyed out). Luckily I remembered some similar crap in the first game, selecting another char and selecting back seems to fix.

Loving Elemental Affinity, makes a lot of shittier spells more viable. I waited a while to get it cause I find early game it's a lot harder to make use of it but now that I have a bunch of spells it's great, my fire mage loves standing in the fire and then casting 3-4fire spells in the same turn, deletes everything(well everything that doesn't heal from fire, those fights suck).

 

[JC Sera]

Help I can't get

Spoiler

OVER HOW FUCKING GOOD THIS GAME IS OMG. How did this happen? I don't want to play anything else.

Thanks in advance.

so to summarize
• Larian made D:OS via kickstarter, kept open channels with the community throughout this development and changed some things from beta player feedback.
• D:OS comes out, and it is probably the best Isometric CRPG gameplay wise ever. Not to mention it is also multiplayer. Writing not so much.
• Larian then made DO:SEE, fixing many major problems, sharpening up their engine ect, ect.
• Larian then announced D:OSII, which would be made using the D:OSEE engine. When the kickstarter started, the already had a fair amount of gameplay footage they could show off.
• They also promised to fix the non gameplay issues of D:OS, such as very unserious tone and only passable writing. They hired about 10~writers to do this.
• With Good faith, people who had played D:OS now backing and previous kickstarter experience, they raised $2m, versus the first games $950k.
• Part of the Kickstarter goals where community votes on new skills (we ended up with summoning and polymorph)
• Due to them having ~50% of assets needed for the game, plus already having a shiny new engine, a fair portion of KS money went into writing & voice acting.
• They also had experience on how to budget a kickstarter funded game.
• The game was put in EA for the actual purpose of EA. They made it so (you could opt out) each time you quit the game, it sent all the play data to Larian. They made a video on how they put that data to good use!

Edit: wrong video

 

[sadblob]

The shield throw skill is incredibly broken, I'm oneshoting most enemies in act 3. Not only it deals obscene amounts of damage (because it scales with the shield), if you get the enemies grouped, it bounces and destroys everything.

 

[ValfarHL]

so to summarize
• Larian made D:OS via kickstarter, kept open channels with the community throughout this development and changed some things from beta player feedback.
• D:OS comes out, and it is probably the best Isometric CRPG gameplay wise ever. Not to mention it is also multiplayer. Writing not so much.
• Larian then made DO:SEE, fixing many major problems, sharpening up their engine ect, ect.
• Larian then announced D:OSII, which would be made using the D:OSEE engine. When the kickstarter started, the already had a fair amount of gameplay footage they could show off.
• They also promised to fix the non gameplay issues of D:OS, such as very unserious tone and only passable writing. They hired about 10~writers to do this.
• With Good faith, people who had played D:OS now backing and previous kickstarter experience, they raised $2m, versus the first games $950k.
• Part of the Kickstarter goals where community votes on new skills (we ended up with summoning and polymorph)
• Due to them having ~50% of assets needed for the game, plus already having a shiny new engine, a fair portion of KS money went into writing & voice acting.
• They also had experience on how to budget a kickstarter funded game.
• The game was put in EA for the actual purpose of EA. They made it so (you could opt out) each time you quit the game, it sent all the play data to Larian. They made a video on how they put that data to good use!

Edit: wrong video

Coincidentally the best skill trees in the game

Thanks for the write up. Will definitely pay close attention to whatever Larian does in the future.

This game is pure crack. Whenever I'm not playing, I'm thinking about my party, how to optimise them, where to go next, and on and on..

I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the new stuff in the beginning of act 2, but I can't wait to truck on!

 

[MikeBison]

MAGICOCKREL!

 

[Labadal]

Every time I break down and buy a new skillbook I swear it's the very next thing that drops.

This doesn't upset me anymore. I just shake my head and laugh.

 

[texhnolyze]

MAGICOCKREL!

Poor chickens..

The shield throw skill is incredibly broken, I'm oneshoting most enemies in act 3. Not only it deals obscene amounts of damage (because it scales with the shield), if you get the enemies grouped, it bounces and destroys everything.

I'm still in Act 2 (almost done) and everyone but the ranger uses a shield, even the mage. It wrecks through enemies armors in the first turn, and they don't get the chance to even move in the second turn as they'd get stomped down. Armors don't really matter anymore at higher levels (with adequate gears).

 

[Adnor]

This doesn't upset me anymore. I just shake my head and laugh.

It's not like you have money problems after you learn to ROB EVERYONE.