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

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For more information on the GWJ CRPG Club, go here.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is the GWJ CRPG's Club's tenth winner, although it took an amazing climb up the ranked choices and a surge at the end to overthrow Wasteland 2 in a dramatic comeback win.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is Larian Studio's sequel to Divinity: Original Sin, which was the club's fourth game. It is a third-person, party-based RPG. The game is playable on Windows, Xbox One, Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch, and MacOS.

We'll be playing this game until September 30, 2020. This thread is for friendly discussion as we play through the game. Share your reflections, successes, defeats, tactics, wishes, impressions, and whatever here! The more conversation the better, so post away.

For BIG spoilers, please use the spoiler tag. (No! I am your father!) Tactics, strategies, general story progression likely won't need them.

Anyone and everyone is welcome to participate, and can start at any time, so join the fun! One quick favor: If you decide to play, make a post here along the lines of "I'm in!" to let us know. If you start and finish the game before the end, you'll level up your GWJ CRPG Membership.

Helpful Links (Coming Soon)
Steam ($44.99)
GOG ($44.99)
Playstation Store ($59.99)
Xbox Store ($29.99 <-- Sale!, reg: $59.99)
Amazon PS4 & XBoxOne ($19.99 <-- Sale!, reg: more than that)
Nintendo Switch ($49.99)
How Long to Beat (52-144 hours)
Wikipedia Page
Fan Wiki
Achievements Guide
Metacritic (93 metascore, 8.7 user score)
Walkthrough
Beginner's Guide Video
Definitive Edition Party Builds Video
Recipe Guide
Crafting Guide
+25% Movement Speed Mod
Achievements Enabled with Mods Active Mod
Crafted Skills
(Taking suggestions)

Members Completed
Clumber
Alien Love Gardener
Zoso1701
polypusher and friends
Sorbicol
strangederby
Redherring
gewy
Mario_Alba
ubrakto
brokenclavicle

Members Playing
Godzilla Blitz
Sundown
pyxistyx
blackanchor
jdzappa
RnRClown
A_Unicycle
imbiginjapan
mrlogical
malking
Nadaklu
merphle
tboon
Timespike
JLS
KozmoOchez
cerithe
Darkhaund
Mind Elemental
Chaz

Okie dokie, I've added some helpful links to the above thread. If you know of others, post them here and I'll add them as we go.

I'm in for this one, and determined to get back on track with my completion rating. I finished the first six games but will miss games 7 & 8, and maybe 9. I definitely want to reset and make it to the end of this one.

If you're joining in, please add a post saying to that effect and I'll add you to the group above. Welcome, all! I'm looking forward to this!

I'm in. I guess I'm doing back to back 100 hour RPGs (this plus the Witcher 3). Can't complain though, since both were on the backlog. I'm just glad I get to play both with others since I'm several years late to the original party.

I'll also be juggling both this and Bravely Second for the JRPG club, so I may be a bit slow going.

I’m in!

I'd love to be in on this, especially since I just picked up a Switch last week, but uncertain finances will probably keep me away, and it's not like I don't have a paralyzing amount of other stuff to play/watch/read/do.

Enjoy and hopefully I'll get a chance to jump in before it's over.

Yea! There are three of us!

35Gb later, I'm ready to go.

This video seems like a brief overview of party building. I've linked to it in the original post too.

malking wrote:

I'd love to be in on this, especially since I just picked up a Switch last week, but uncertain finances will probably keep me away, and it's not like I don't have a paralyzing amount of other stuff to play/watch/read/do.

Enjoy and hopefully I'll get a chance to jump in before it's over. :)

I'm guessing it'll go on sale again at some point soon, too, in case that helps. I'll update the main post when people post sale information, or if I run into it as well. It'd be great if you could join us, but totally understandable that finances should take priority.

I haven't played the fully patched and extended version of this so, yeah I'm in....not like I've got much else to do right now anyway.

Nice! And now we are 4!

When I played Divinity Original Sin 1, I totally messed up my first party. I watched that party composition video to help avoid that mistake this time. Based on that, I'm thinking...

Warrior (Juggernaut)
Ranger (with Summoning)
Mage (Geomancer)
Cleric

The more I dig into this, the more I'm looking forward to it. I really enjoyed the first game.

EDIT: Humm... Character Creation Paralysis. Anyone have suggestions on the scripted characters vs. creating a custom character? I feel like I want to create a custom character, but I'm wondering if there are story elements that make running with a scripted character a bit more interesting?

I'm in. Once I clear out my current games.

I’m in.

I will post some advice later. Fextralife’s (the person who posted that party guide you’ve linked Blitz) has also got some very good character build guides as well. My very brief tips to start would be:

1. Pick one of the main pre-made characters. You will lose loads of story beats if you don’t. They are all great but I think Fane, The Red Prince and Loshe’s story’s are particularly good.
2. The physical / magical armour system will take a while to get your head around. It’s also enormously important. Build your squad accordingly.
3. As per D:OS 1 - give someone petpal!
4. If you want to keep the cat, keep him away from the guards outside the main entrance to Fort Joy. That’s only a little spoiler!

I’ll add more with links later.

EDIT:

This is Fextralife's Beginners Guide video that I would heartily recommend watching if you've not played D:OS 2 before:

Classes:

Class paralysis is common in D:OS2 character building. They are quite a few, nothing is restricted and you are free to do what you like. Here is a link the Fextralife Build guides. They are up to date with the Definitive Edition, and are pretty damn good. Don't worry about Lone Wolf builds (unless, of course you are playing a lone wolf character). The Summoner Skill tree tends to get overlooked at first - don't. Incarnates (the summoner's avatar) punches like Mike Tyson at level 10 and should not be underestimated.

Economy:

Success in D:OS2 is considerably easier if you keep your gear appropriately leveled. If you fall too far behind the curve, you will get pasted. However, the economy system doesn't support the cost of buying these items (and skill books and everything else you need), and getting them from drops is very haphazard. Therefore, make sure that one of your party is light fingered and be prepared to steal everything. You can manipulate the game to make sure you don't get caught. It's also quite exploitative if you abuse it. But you will need to do it.

Recipe Guide
Crafting Guide

Bedroll

Right at the start of the game on the ship you can pick up a bedroll. Do so. Equip it into your ability bar along the bottom. You can click on it to "rest" at any time out of combat (more or less) and immediately regain full health and armour.

If I think of anything else I'll add here but that'll do for now.

I generally hate being railroaded into a single character's story in a game like this, which is why i went with a custom character first time around, but i might grit my teeth and go with one of the prefabs this time i guess. Not sure.

hrm...just spent about an hour or so picking classes and replaying the little intro deck of the ship that they added because i can't settle on any one class to play I don't remember what i specifically played with last time, but right now i'm leaning towards using Loshe as a base and making a necromantic rogue, or a straight up cleric.

I'm definitely in, but I'll put off starting to until after I've exhausted RE3.

Well, I just got this game last week, so I was clearly destined to join this club. It might take me a week or so to get started, but I'm in!

Great game. Already played through it twice before, but haven’t tried the extended edition.
Not sure if I’ll start it anytime soon, if at all. Too many games, too little time. Would love to play it again.

In!

I played a bit of the first act a year or two back, and enjoyed it. One of those things where life got in the way. I remember starting with a custom character and then restarting with one of the premades. I don't recall specifics, but my memory is that it felt like using one of the stock options added a lot more flavor.

As always, GB, thanks for coordinating all this!

pyxistyx wrote:

I generally hate being railroaded into a single character's story in a game like this, which is why i went with a custom character first time around, but i might grit my teeth and go with one of the prefabs this time i guess. Not sure.

You can take anyone of those characters and make them be or do whatever you want though. It’s not quite as bad as it looks face value, but you will miss so much of you don’t use one of them. Totally get where you are coming from though.

Turns out I do not own this. I thought I did. Or I think I thought I did! Bah! Considering my flawed fun with the original and a lukewarm intrigue for the second I may be priced out. I'll keep an eye on the Nintendo eShop and PS Store for any sale. I've a feeling it was on sale recently so that may be futile.

My participation with the club has been relatively good. My completion rate, though, is relatively awful! There's almost zero chance I'm rebounding with The Witcher 3. And now D:OS2 is up in the air. Doh!

I just finished this game last week, but will probably still roll up a party and jump in. I had one play through get to around the 90% point in the game and gave up in frustration, my party/character builds were just too sub-optimal and I was underlevelled. I decided to follow the fextralife guides to build a better party and hit more content enabling me to finish

Some random thoughts
⦁ Party composition is a huge deal, the magical/physical armor system means that eliminating enemies (either cc or kill) takes focused damage, or time. A mixed damage party is usually going to take more rounds to achieve this. I went with all physical my second playthrough and found the game a lot easier
⦁ If you don't have pet pal, you will miss out on a lot of good quests
⦁ Pickpocketing skill books from merchants early on (when you are strapped for gold), makes getting started much easier, just be sure to get your thief away from the mark because they will notice missing inventory after you steal from them and accost your rogue. The best way to pickpocket somebody is have one character engage them in dialog, switch to your thieving character sneak up behind and steal away
⦁ Runes can be added and removed to gear at any time without any cost. There's zero reason to not apply a rune because you are waiting to put it on a better piece of gear. As soon as you have gear with a rune slot, slot something, just remove it when you swap out the gear
⦁ Once you get to Arx, green tea is overpowered

FINALLY got out of the tutorial. I ended up customise Loshe into a 'captain america' shield throwing Cleric, but swapping out Necromancy for Hydromancy.

Catching up on everything, in no particular order...

- Our numbers grow! We are up to 10 and counting. Welcome, and I've added everyone's name to the first post. Let me know if I've missed you.

- Thanks for the thoughts on the origin vs. custom characters. I feel much the same way as pyxistyx, but I too have decided to go with an Origin character after reading the comments here and online. Seems that is more often the recommended route, and still allows for ample character customization.

- Thanks for the links and tips, Sorbicol and Clumber! I've added all the links in the first post.

- Thanks re: the organizing, ubrakto. Happy to do this!

- I think I read somewhere that you can respec characters at the end of Chapter 1?

- I was tempted to go with Sebille, but I think I'm leaning towards Ifan Ben-Mezd now as a starting character, and I thinking to build him as cleric. Not sure yet. I'm thinking that I could add the Red Prince as my warrior, Sebille as a ranger, and someone else a wizard/geomancer.

- What are people going with for difficulty? I'm going Classic.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:

- I think I read somewhere that you can respec characters at the end of Chapter 1?

Yes, After you leave Fort Joy Island you can change your point investment for free as many times as you want, the only things you can't change are tag(s) e.g. Noble, Jester,Mystic

Clumber wrote:
Godzilla Blitz wrote:

- I think I read somewhere that you can respec characters at the end of Chapter 1?

Yes, After you leave Fort Joy Island you can change your point investment for free as many times as you want, the only things you can't change are tag(s) e.g. Noble, Jester,Mystic

Most excellent, thanks!

I just watched that Beginner's Guide video, very helpful. Thanks for posting.

Cross-posting this from the main thread too...

If you're looking to buy this on sale, it's only full price at the moment. However, according to Is There Any Deal? data the longest it hasn't been on sale is 3 weeks. It's only available on Steam, GOG, and Humble Store, but we'd expect to see it go on sale again at one of those places in 1-3 weeks.

Well, I created a Character aaaaand started with one of the presets (Red Prince). Will play a few hours with both to see which one I decide to stick with for this playthrough.

I watched those two videos over lunch and I'm already overwhelmed, hahaha. I'll have to take it easy... and install the game first.

I've started with Ifan BenMezd, who I turned into a cleric. Just exploring the hold of the ship for a few minutes. Already I may have killed someone I shouldn't have killed. Oh well.

I'm looking pretty good, too. Really digging the helmet, and I'm armed with a butter knife:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/EiUKyhz.jpg)

- By the way, is there a way to show a screen like the character creation screen, of your character, after the game starts?

- Also, I've put a link to a +25% movement speed mod (for the definitive edition) in the top post for those who feel like characters just move too slowly while exploring. Legion shared one for the original game and it made a huge difference. I wish there were one to make the character go even faster, but this will do for now.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:

- Also, I've put a link to a +25% movement speed mod (for the definitive edition) in the top post for those who feel like characters just move too slowly while exploring. Legion shared one for the original game and it made a huge difference. I wish there were one to make the character go even faster, but this will do for now.

So I did a little poking around, and it looks like mods might disable achievements for those who care about that (I still do). However, someone made a mod to get around this, simply called Achievements.
https://www.nexusmods.com/divinityor...

Sundown wrote:
Godzilla Blitz wrote:

- Also, I've put a link to a +25% movement speed mod (for the definitive edition) in the top post for those who feel like characters just move too slowly while exploring. Legion shared one for the original game and it made a huge difference. I wish there were one to make the character go even faster, but this will do for now.

So I did a little poking around, and it looks like mods might disable achievements for those who care about that (I still do). However, someone made a mod to get around this, simply called Achievements.
https://www.nexusmods.com/divinityor...

Good to know, I've installed it and added it to the list in the links in the first post. Thanks! I definitely like to get achievements when I play.

I didn't get a warning that achievements were disabled when I activated the fast-walking mod, though, for whatever that is worth.

I probably won't start for real quite yet, but I loaded it up and started messing with character creation. I played the first Original Sin shortly before the club did, and enjoyed it but wasn't really wowed by it. This is already looking better- more refined, and the different character origins in particular seem promising. I generally prefer having a character with some kind of defined backstory. If I have a blank slate character (like Bethesda games), my imagination usually fails me and I wind up with a bland, generic hero. If there are dialogue choices, I might wind up with a hero with a sarcastic wit, and a selfish façade that quickly falls away when things get serious- basically Han Solo. That's who I wound up playing in Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition. I didn't have that issue so much with Dragon Age Origins which this seems similar to.

I see you can spec out your characters independently of their origin stories. Very good. In the past, I would have gravitated toward fighter characters because I enjoy upgrading weapons and armor. Nowadays, I usually pick spellcasters of some kind. Spells just seem more tactically interesting in combat, and it usually fits the inevitable Chosen One narrative that your character becomes a powerful magic wielder rather than just someone who's really good with a sword. Picking a character class is one thing, but picking the origin story is going to be harder.

So, who to pick? I'm going into this completely blind and just wildly speculating off of the brief character introductions. Spoiler to hide excessive rambling:

Spoiler:

The Red Prince. I love the look of this guy. He's simultaneously fierce, but also a bit ridiculous looking with his long neck and relatively small head. I also enjoy that he just sounds like some educated British guy. Usually lizardmen are portrayed as primitive savages, maybe a bit on the evil side, with excessive ssss's throughout their speech, so this was unexpected. He's actually a bit like the Geiko gecko, come to think of it. Seems like he might be pretty humorous as well. I get the sense that he feels very put upon. Anyway, the back story itself- stolen birthright- that's OK, but the real appeal is the juxtaposition of all these character traits and my expectations of lizardpeople.

Sebille. I like the elvish look they went for. Usually elves are portrayed as basically thin, overly beautiful people with pointy ears. Yawn. She's still beautiful, but this elf looks truly alien, with her elongated features that produce something of an uncanny valley-like effect. Also there's some weirdness to her torso's musculature that says, "this is not human". I'm less sold on her armor and weapons. They went for alien here too, but it doesn't look remotely practical. Her backstory- escaped slave looking for revenge- well, we've seen it before. But, classics are a classic for a reason, and nothing's more satisfying than giving slaveowners their final comeuppance. Still, the edge goes to Red Prince over her.

Ifan Ben-Mezd. He's more of a generic male human hero. Somewhat unremarkable. Maybe I wasn't fully paying attention, but I didn't get a good sense of what his backstory was. I'll need to rewatch it. I did get the idea that he might have a bit of cynicism and worldweariness to him based on past events, which I could run with. Seems like he probably also needs to get revenge on someone too for some reason. Not as straightforward as "they enslaved me" or "they stole my throne" though. I don't see myself picking this guy unless someone tells me he's really good. Maybe a weird mood could hit me where I feel compelled to pick the person most familiar to me. I mean, I'm a human male too. More often than not, in RPG's through the years I've played as human males. It's comfortable I guess. He's bottom of the list for now though.

Lohse. I like the sound of her backstory. There's a sense of mystery to it. It's dark, but she seems to have a sense of humor from her formerly carefree life. Sounds a bit "touched". Maybe even slightly similar to Malkavians in VTM: Bloodlines- probably way toned down though. She sounds well-tailored for a mage character. I'd put her even with The Red Prince so far.

Beast. Maybe he combines dwarven bluntness and stubbornness, with pirate crudeness, and a Scottish accent? That's promising. Why is this guy called Beast? Might be an interesting reason behind that. Opposing a tyrant relative is a bit similar to the stolen birthright motivation. He's OK. Not on par with Lohse and Red Prince though.

Fane. This guy seems the most original of all. He's a frickin skeleton from a forgotten civilization. I can imagine him going around thinking to himself (or outright commenting) about how primitive everyone is nowadays, and how much better things were back in "the old days". Kind of like Javik from Mass Effect 3. That would be fun to play. Good chance he can throw out some interesting lore tidbits about ancient history. There's this mention of him having to hide his face, even copying other people's faces? I wonder if that's a fully fleshed out mechanic or something that's just mentioned a couple of times and then disregarded. Hmmm. He's up there with Lohse and The Red Prince.

So, ultimately, I'm still undecided between The Red Prince, Fane and Lohse, but will almost certainly play a magic user.

Looking forward to this.

I forged ahead with Ifan Ben-Mezd. Made it past the tutorial and am now at Fort Joy and just hit Level 2. Party is up to three, and I'm liking the personalities quite a bit.

Inventory management was a nightmare in the first game, but it seems improved in this game. There is clearly still a lot of "stuff" though. I appreciate the ability to mark stuff as "wares." I assume this means I can just unload it at the next merchant opportunity.

Voices still have a touch of the cheesiness of the original, but on the whole this seems toned down, which is also good. Kind of varies by character, of course.

Combat feels mostly familiar, though the magic/physical armor mechanic is new and interesting.

Game definitely builds up slowly with gear, which feels fine to me. We're still equipped with threadbare armor and makeshift weapons.

Achievements are working fine with the faster movement mod and achievements mod, so all's good there.

Anyway, good times so far.

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