The GWJ CRPG Club - Game 10: Divinity: Original Sin 2

Darkhaund wrote:

I will restart the game on story mode

Certainly a valid option, but I don't think you have to. There was one encounter that was really pissing me off on Bloodmoon Isle, where I finally dropped down to Story (or whatever the lowest is) just to manage that, and then popped it back up. Turns out, I probably shouldn't have attempted that location yet. This is also a game where if something seems stupid difficult, sometimes it means you need to explore elsewhere to level up, gear up better, and come back.

I see!!! Wehre can i lower the difficult? let me go look and see if i can do that

Darkhaund wrote:

I see!!! Wehre can i lower the difficult? let me go look and see if i can do that

On PC, I think it’s in the Options menu somewhere.

brokenclavicle wrote:

With this game, I've been managing three different saves/sessions. Two solo, and one with a dear friend. I have, however, prioritized one of the solo saves so as to actually make some progress. This game is pretty massive, even compared to the original.

Three saves? Garg! Do you sleep, man!

Mario_Alba wrote:

I'll pop in to cheer for both of you, Darkhaund and Godzilla Blitz!

Thanks! I'm going to try to get going on a 30-minutes-a-day plan for the next 10 days. See if I can get the wheels moving again.

BTW... i play it on PC WITH a Controller!!! I will start playing once I finish this opst...

I'm intimidated. I know this is a long game, and I'll be lucky if I finish it once, so I want it to "count". I watched the beginner video linked in the OP, and got freaked out by how he kept saying it's a hard game and the opening is the hardest, so don't do this, but do do that. I booted it up yesterday. On difficulty select, I was debating about whether to play on "normal" or the step down. I couldn't tell if you can change difficulty without restarting, so I said screw it and picked normal.

Then got into character creation, and got overwhelmed. I'm a story-first person, so I'm pretty sure I'm taking a prefab character background. Except I'm interested in at least four of the six characters, and I don't know which to take. I haven't even started looking at the actual classes and skills yet.

So maybe one of these days I'll actually make a decision and start playing.

It helped me to know that you can respec freely after about 15-20 hours of play. Party members can be swapped out, etc.

The main characters are all pretty cool, with their own backstories. You can pick up the other main character options as party members, so it's pretty easy to adjust on the fly.

It does create some inefficiency with abilities from books if you swap characters or respec, but other than that it's really quite an easy game to start and adjust things later.

Okay, so I started it last night. I have no idea what I'm doing. I went with Fane as the metamorph/rogue class prefab? I pickpocketed one of the magisters outside the crime scene room, he got wise and attacked me, I got roflstomped, and decided I need to save more often.

So, I'm finally in Arx, and all this has happened...

Spoiler:

In the Nameless Isle, I did a bunch of things that, despite all the busy work, felt rather pointless, mostly because, at the end, in the Arena of the One, I had to pretty much fight all my comrades and the other Godwoken that had supposedly died... and was, assailed by a bug that wouldn't let me move from where I was, so one of my former party members got to the end point or goal or whatever, and Dallis stole the whole god power thing... and now I'm alone and none of the things I did seem to matter that much hahahaha

It's been some ride.

I finally got back into this. I'm off the first island on onto the coastal area, but I feel like I missed enough by stumbling around that I should restart and scoop up some more of the stuff I missed (and locked myself out of through improper sequencing).

I will say this: I am really enjoying the experience of playing Lohse as a kind-hearted, decent person fighting against the dark presence she's carrying around.

And down goes Divinity II... I have to say, some of those latter puzzle fights were not particularly fun. That last fight took me a couple of tries, but I managed to pull it off. The ending was... fitting, I guess.

I really enjoyed the game, but it does take a bit of a dive in Act IV and some of the quests break sequence in such manner that I couldn't see them to their logical end.

I'm hoping that, if there's a Divinity III, Larian learn a lot from this and BG III.

Congrats on finishing, BC! Nice work! I’ll get you all leveled up in a bit.

Better late than never!

I recently picked this up on a recent Switch sale and am looking to start soon. The consensus seems to be that Ifan and Fane are the most narratively interesting of the main characters, while Lohse, Red Prince, and Sebilla also get some love. Is that correct? And do you have any preferences between Ifan and Fane? I am slightly learning towards Fane - I can't stand generic fantasy and an undead main character would be unique.

Fane and Loshe have the best Arcs imo. The Red Prince is just a fun character. There’s nothing wrong with the others, I just preferred those 2

Definitely agree that Fane and Lohse have some great arcs. Fane taking damage from healing while healing from poison can be equal parts blessing and curse, depending on the situation. If there is a next time around for me, I'll probably leave him out for that reason. I do feel like I missed out not getting the Red Prince's story, whereas I barely noticed Ifan's absence. Again, if there is a next time, I'd likely swap out Beast (who's story was fun, but not super memorable) for Ifan.

I found Sebille a great story to use as the player character; not sure how well she plays as just a party member. Lots and lots of dialogue options come out based on her history that let you, as the player, get into her head and think more deeply about how someone with her experiences would see the world. You essentially get to determine whether those experiences make her permanently angry/resentful or someone who learns to reckon with those wounds and become her own person despite them. I liked that a lot.

Mind Elemental wrote:

Better late than never!

I recently picked this up on a recent Switch sale and am looking to start soon. The consensus seems to be that Ifan and Fane are the most narratively interesting of the main characters, while Lohse, Red Prince, and Sebilla also get some love. Is that correct? And do you have any preferences between Ifan and Fane? I am slightly learning towards Fane - I can't stand generic fantasy and an undead main character would be unique.

Re: generic fantasy: Rivellon is kinda interesting in that respect. It looks like generic fantasy on the surface, but there's definitely weird and different stuff under that surface. The elves in particular are unlike any elves I've ever seen anywhere else.

Mind Elemental wrote:

Better late than never!

I recently picked this up on a recent Switch sale and am looking to start soon. The consensus seems to be that Ifan and Fane are the most narratively interesting of the main characters, while Lohse, Red Prince, and Sebilla also get some love. Is that correct? And do you have any preferences between Ifan and Fane? I am slightly learning towards Fane - I can't stand generic fantasy and an undead main character would be unique.

Plenty of time, welcome!

Just to add to the character conversation, I added Fane at the start to the party, really liked his story, but found handling him in combat tricky. I dropped him for Lohse, but the whole split personality trait wasn't working for me, so at the last opportunity, I dumped Lohse and added Fane back in. Now I'm REALLY struggling with combat again. I expect I'll get it sorted out eventually, but Fane seems super squishy unless you're a good player.

I'm playing on the second-lowest difficulty (Explorer, IIRC), so take this with however much salt you deem appropriate.

But I've found that the best way to keep Fane in one piece is to just keep him away from enemies - take a level of Aerothurge for Teleportation and/or Huntsman for Tactical Retreat and his survivability goes way up. Also, if you've got Ifan (or another bow expert) in your party, save poison/poison cloud arrows for long-range healing on Fane. That helps a bit, too. Finally, he benefits from Encourage as much as anyone.

And we're off!

It came down to a close race between Fane and Lohse for my main - I eventually settled on Fane. Very happy with that choice. I like his dry commentary, and Lohse's dialogue as an NPC / party member is great.

I'm in the early stages of exploring the Fort Joy ghetto. So far, so intriguing. I like the writing, and while there hasn't been a lot of combat so far, I like what I've seen so far. Look forward to playing more.

I tried to go back to this yesterday after a long break and found I had forgotten what was going on. I remember the mechanics and my character builds well enough, but the terrible journal didn't really effectively refresh me on the plot, important characters, or my immediate goals. I went to a walkthrough and it mentioned stuff I don't think I even ran into. Given the way the game tends to resolve itself in various ways that's no surprise, but I frankly haven't a clue what I am doing anymore. In spite of my overall enjoyment of the game mechanics this one is definitely in danger of being dropped due to re-entry feeling exceedingly difficult.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:

I expect I'll get it sorted out eventually, but Fane seems super squishy unless you're a good player.

Re-speccing Fane into a shield-bearer with Necromancy works pretty well, as he can absorb HP from delivered damage and shields have tons of defense.

imbiginjapan wrote:
Godzilla Blitz wrote:

I expect I'll get it sorted out eventually, but Fane seems super squishy unless you're a good player.

Re-speccing Fane into a shield-bearer with Necromancy works pretty well, as he can absorb HP from delivered damage and shields have tons of defense.

imbiginjapan wrote:

I tried to go back to this yesterday after a long break and found I had forgotten what was going on. I remember the mechanics and my character builds well enough, but the terrible journal didn't really effectively refresh me on the plot, important characters, or my immediate goals. I went to a walkthrough and it mentioned stuff I don't think I even ran into. Given the way the game tends to resolve itself in various ways that's no surprise, but I frankly haven't a clue what I am doing anymore. In spite of my overall enjoyment of the game mechanics this one is definitely in danger of being dropped due to re-entry feeling exceedingly difficult.

I'm somewhat in the same place. Need to recall what I was doing and figure out a way that Fane can survive the next few battles while I sort out making him less squishy.

Granted, I was on a lower difficulty rung, but I found the Eternal Warrior build (see Fextralife's site) pretty strong with Fane.

ubrakto wrote:

Granted, I was on a lower difficulty rung, but I found the Eternal Warrior build (see Fextralife's site) pretty strong with Fane.

I'd second that.

The game does have a tendancy to give NPCs a high lore value, which means even when he's in disguise they know that Fane is undead. I think this is part of the problem as healing spells become very powerful damaging spells for undead characters especially at the early stages of the game. There is definitely a mod that corrects that, but I also think they have have patched it into the game now.

Yeah, Divinity definitely has "step on your neck" AI - the computer will pick on a weak character or two until it drops them. Which is exactly what I do, so fair, but the whole "automatically knowing Fane is undead" is perhaps a little far. I'll have to try disguising him with his actual mask and see if that makes a difference; I've been leaving his mask off so he can wear headgear.

Timespike wrote:

Yeah, Divinity definitely has "step on your neck" AI - the computer will pick on a weak character or two until it drops them. Which is exactly what I do, so fair, but the whole "automatically knowing Fane is undead" is perhaps a little far. I'll have to try disguising him with his actual mask and see if that makes a difference; I've been leaving his mask off so he can wear headgear.

I need to take a deep breath, put on my determination hat, and solve this same problem.

I havent been able to play this!!!!! Damn

Timespike wrote:

I'll have to try disguising him with his actual mask and see if that makes a difference; I've been leaving his mask off so he can wear headgear.

When Fane is wearing his mask, he literally becomes a member of that race (at least mechanic-wise), not just looks like one. For example, if you need a blood pool he can wear the elf mask and use blood-sacrifice. I am fairly certain this applies to poison/healing potion use as well. Wearing any of the non-undead masks means he will be hurt by poison, healed by healing potions/energies

Clumber wrote:
Timespike wrote:

I'll have to try disguising him with his actual mask and see if that makes a difference; I've been leaving his mask off so he can wear headgear.

When Fane is wearing his mask, he literally becomes a member of that race (at least mechanic-wise), not just looks like one. For example, if you need a blood pool he can wear the elf mask and use blood-sacrifice. I am fairly certain this applies to poison/healing potion use as well. Wearing any of the non-undead masks means he will be hurt by poison, healed by healing potions/energies

Now I'm just intrigued. Will definitely have to experiment with this a bit tonight.