Divinity Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

[Reinhardt]

I need to play something until Dragon Quest release,

 

[Salvo]

So is it gud? Should i play basic or upgraded version?
Backed game years ago but never launched.

It's an enjoyable game, though don't go in expecting a profound story or deeply tactical combat.

 

[Roqua]

My biggest issue was the huge jump in gear power level per level. Is this addressed in the console version?

The buttons I got didn't answer or help at all. The yes or no button would be a lot more helpful, friends. Please don't tell me to watch a video or do an internet search or read through tons pages to find a simple answer one of you fuckers know off the top of your head and can answer with a button.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

My biggest issue was the huge jump in gear power level per level. Is this addressed in the console version?

The buttons I got didn't answer or help at all. The yes or no button would be a lot more helpful, friends. Please don't tell me to watch a video or do an internet search or read through tons pages to find a simple answer one of you fuckers know off the top of your head and can answer with a button.

I doubt it, honestly. One of Swen Vincke's most constant design principles to have "item fever" as he calls it, so the more random and varying your gear is, the better it is, per his view.

 

[Lacrymas]

You can mod out the bloat, though. The randomness, no.

 

[Infinitron]

This is the end:



https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/larianstudios/divinity-original-sin-2/posts/2275088

Update #48: Definitive Edition! The Final Kickstarter Update

Hi everybody!

Three years ago, 42,713 of you - our most dedicated fans - supported us and believed in our game when it was still in its infancy. To say that since then the game has come a long way would be an understatement.

As we’re getting ready to release the Definitive Edition this Thursday, we wanted to take a moment to say thank you once again.

Without a shadow of a doubt, Divinity:Original Sin 2 would not be the game it is if it hadn’t been for the community that supported us throughout and after development. You all have been amazing and we’re very grateful for having such a wonderful, positive and supportive community.

Swen returned to the place where it all began to record this final Kickstarter update. He tells the tale of how sometimes drastic measures are necessary if you want to release a game...

Live Stream
To celebrate the release of the Definitive Edition, we’re organizing a massive live stream from PAX West. We’ll be showing the game, answering any questions you might have and hopefully also bringing in a few surprise guests. It should be a lot of fun, so be sure to tune in.

The stream will go live at 10am PDT / 6pm GMT and you can find us directly on our store page within the steam application or on their website.

The Definitive Edition
As Kickstarter backers, you should already have Divinity: Original Sin 2 in your Steam or GOG library. Once we go live on the 31st, the game will update, adding a launcher window that will let you choose between the original version of the game or the Definitive Edition.

You can continue playing the existing version and use your existing saves, but if you want to try out the Definitive Edition, you will need to create a new character.

This update is 100% free and everyone that owns the game on the 31st will receive the Definitive Edition automatically.

You will also get free access to our new mini-companion DLC, Sir Lora.

If you want to know what’s in the Definitive Edition, check out this 53 page document containing all the changes. (Warning: Massive spoilers ahead.)

Our Last Kickstarter Update
This will be the last Kickstarter update for Divinity:Original Sin 2.

We’ll obviously continue to support the game with patches and we are still working on ports to other platforms, but content wise we’ll be moving on to new things. Expect to hear a lot more from us once we’re ready to announce our new endeavors.

It’s been a great ride.

You are all fantastic.

Thank you.

 

[Infinitron]

Okay, that video was really something. :D

Swen says Larian's next games probably won't be on Kickstarter.

 

[Krzysiek]

Essence of the changes in Definitive Edition.

Spoiler

Programming

Hotseat Arena

We have added hotseat mode to our multiplayer arena, which allows two or more players to play Arena on the same device by taking turns!


Also, you will be able to select characters from the Divinity Universe, preset with a special build that fits their lore and the balancing of the Arena. You can make up teams by choosing from the following characters:

• Arhu
• Dallis
• Damian
• Gareth
• Alexander
• Jahan
• Kniles
• Lucian
• Malady
• Radeka
• Ryker
• Saheila
• Slane
• Tarquin
• Lohar
• Zandalor

Optimization and Better Performance

Programmers primarily focused on porting our in-house engine to console. In the meanwhile, they optimized code and achieved immense performance gains in memory usage, and processor usage. Streaming has been improved vastly, and we even switched physics engine halfway through the porting effort for performance sake.

HDR

The game will support High Dynamic Range on console. It will also be available on PC, but you will need a Windows 10 machine with full DirectX11.4 support (Creator's Update).

User Interfaces

Journal

• Fullscreen for better screenspace usage and readability
• Easily switch between Quest Log, Lore section, Quest Archive, Dialog Log, Combat Log, Tutorial Log
• For clarity's sake, Quest Archive is now a separate tab, not a switch you can turn on and off
• Categories in the Quest Log split up entries

Inventory

• Fullscreen for readability, usability, better use of screenspace
• Easier party inventory management
• Can now Multiselect items to easily manage items, add them to wares, share them with other party members

Skill Window

• Fullscreen for better usability
• Made memory slots immediately visible instead of having to toggle between skill list and memorized skills

Dialog Window

• Redesigned so it doesn't obscure what is going on in the game
• Using the full width of the screen for better readability and usability

Map

• Fullscreen version if you're not in splitscreen so you can see more of the map immediately

Sexy Tooltips

Some tooltips were very texty. We fancied them up with better spacing, colours, little icons and sometimes nice and big icons. This makes them not just pretty but also more readable!

Design

Icons

We introduced more icons so that there is more variation and progress in items. We also created new icons for certain unique and special items.

Journal

The journal not only got a total UI overhaul, but also more functionality to ensure you know and understand what to do. To support this, all journal entries were rewritten and categorized. Map markers were added, tracking and following map markers has improved, and journal entries were split up into quests, lore entries, and quests specific to your chosen origin character.

Balancing

• Economy: updated item prices
  Unique items in Vanilla are too valuable. Their prices are now more in sync with legendary items of the same level, but still higher. Armor prices now reflect their utility. In Vanilla there is too much of a price difference on armor pieces that actually give a similar same amount of armour points.
• Balancing: reduced damage of some 3SP skills
  In Vanilla, Arrow Storm, Hail Storm, Meteor Shower and the Storms are frequently cited as "win" buttons that lead to one-shots. There was room for nerfing without making them any less fantastic.
• Removed stat jump at level 13, slow down the curve by 3%
  In Vanilla, there is an artificial stat jump at level 13 meant to separate lower RC content from upper RC content. This jump is too noticeable for the players since RC ended up having a very open flow. We removed this jump and analysed the other stat jumps at levels 9, 16 and 18.
• Revised Persuasion difficulties all across Arx
  Persuasion in Arx is unproportionally hard compared to its result. We fixed that. This includes making Tagged Persuasion moments easier, which rewards tag usage.
• Fixed Damage from heal missing some damage bonuses
  Healing can damage the undead and characters with Decay. However, in that case, the damage dealt now also will receive bonuses from Warfare, and it can now crit if you have the Savage Sortilege talent.
• Reduced damage bonuses on non-unique weapons
  Close to the end of the Vanilla game, bonuses on simple rare weapons are getting so high that they start overtaking unique weapons. We fixed this without making rare weapons less interesting. They still have bonuses but the curve was improved.
• Torturer talent now allows applying damaging statuses through armour
  Burning, Poisoned and Bleeding are now applied on top of armor. This makes these statuses useful again once you don't have armor anymore.
• Added optional teleportation counter to items with Teleport use action
  For Planar Gateway skill, we reduced the AP cost without opening the possibility of infinite turn exploit. We can do this because we now have a maximum number of teleport use action on items.
• Lone Wolf abilities and attributes are now capped at normal caps
  Currently Lone Wolves can increase attributes and combat abilities through soft caps of 40 and 10 points respectively. In Definitive Edition, this is blocked: double point bonus only brings points to the cap and not above it.
• Totems now have intelligence scaling
  Totems now gain Intelligence points when growing in levels. This makes it so that the damage they deal follows the norm of the end game.
• We buffed underused skills
  • Petrifying Touch damage increased by 33%
  • Sucker Punch damage increased by 10%
  • Mosquito Swarm cooldown reduced to 3 turns
  • Increase damage of Infect by 10%
  • Increase duration of Door to Eternity to 3 turns
• Increased SP cost of Overpower
  Overpower was incorrectly underpriced.
• Made AI more likely to attack players that have damage reflection
  It was still too hard to get AI to attack characters with reflection, which made it an aggro reducing stat instead of an offensive one. So we are now making this type of enemy more interesting to the AI.
• High quality wands create surfaces
  High quality wands didn't create surfaces anymore and that was a mistake. They totally should.

New difficulty mode and difficulty changes

Extra difficulty mode

We introduced a new difficulty mode called Story Mode. Apart from stat bonuses and enemy penalties (see below), players also get:

• Free Resurrect skill
  Grant free skill on game start, can be used out of combat to res allies.
  Ensures that players never run out of scrolls, lifts burden on the economy.
• Free Escapist talent
  Allows players to flee high-level fights they accidentally stumble into without reloading.

Improved Defence and Vitality balancing

For the new Story mode we moved enemy Effective Defence below 1, by buffing player damage to double of the base amount. For player characters, we moved Effective Defence to 8.7, by upping Armour bonus to 50% which means that an entire party of four enemies shouldn’t get through one player’s Armour in one turn without using specials.

For Explorer, we bumped the enemy Effective Defence over 1, to 1.35 (1 crit or 2 hits), by reducing enemy Armour malus to -30%. We reduced player characters' Effective Defence to 5.4 by bumping enemy Damage to 70% of base instead of 50%.

Vitality multiplier has a smaller effect on the difficulty of the fights, and negative Vitality multipliers of large magnitude create some issues with story NPCs that are supposed to be damaged or depowered by default. It is still important to have them for appearances, so enemy Vitality multipliers have been set to -40%, -20% for Story and Explorer, and player Vitality multipliers were set to +100%, +50% respectively.

Improved Hardcore Mode

Hardcore players are assumed to always take advantage of the crit\special\SP\combo skills, which grow in number and relative potency throughout the game. This means that relative player power steadily grows with each Act and we cannot use a single multiplier for enemies of all Acts in Hardcore. But in Vanilla, that is what we did. We changed that in Definitive Edition.

On Vanilla, in hardcore mode, the nominal enemy Effective Defence is 4.35 and player Effective Defence is 1.93 throughout Hardcore. This makes Act 1 of Hardcore very tough, and sometimes a drag. However, if we assume that a hardcore player’s damage output increases from use of SP skills, combos and high crit builds by at least 1.3, enemy Effective Defence drops to 3.35 by the end of the game. We can assume that player Effective Defense is also at least 1.3 higher than normal from the use of high-resistance potions, better gear picked up in secret locations, better Armour management. In addition, Physical Armour multiplier should be raised slightly above Magic Armour multiplier to offset prevalence of physical damage stacking builds.

In order to keep enemy Effective Defence just below 4.0 for MA and just above 4.0 for PA and player Effective Defence just below 2.0, we switched the multipliers as follows:


Enemy MA +(35+(Level-1)*2)%, enemy PA +(40+(Level-1)*2.5)%, enemy damage +(30+(Level-1)*3)%.

New Tutorial

A new deck has been added to the ship that you start on. This deck was designed to ease you into the game instead of throwing you at the mercy of the systems and magisters immediately. It's optional, you can skip it by climbing the ladder immediately, but if you explore the rooms, tutorial messages and learning moments will be more spread out.

New Arena Levels

We are introducing 4 new arenas: the Horrorsleep Arena, the Oasis, Canals and Temple.

Combat

Apart from many fixes and improvements to combat situations and AI, there are also new fights in Arx, most notably and noticeably:

• The Harbour fight
  When the characters approach the Harbour (go down the flight of stairs), a cutscene starts showing the Kraken emerging from the water. A combat begins involving the Kraken & its 5 tentacles. The Kraken is very destructive but can be pushed back into the water if its HP reach 80%. It's doable, provided that characters do nothing else… Otherwise if the 5 Tentacles are killed, the kraken leaves as well. Tentacles have very little HP.
• Clan War fight
  Paladins & Voidwoken are fighting an neverending fight (nobody can die, neither side can win). When the player enters combat with the Voidwoken, they all become mortal; then, a quick dialogue plays & the VW boss appears. The VW boss casts a custom skill on the Paladins (Projectile_EnemyInfectiousBlood / Blood Contagion), then combat proper begins. From then on, the VW described below will progressively spawn; more spawn as the previous VW get killed. The 3 Paladins at the start of the fight are not meant to be saved; regarding Vishlar, Trefor & Geir, they're difficult to save but it should be doable. It's recommended to place your characters before engaging.
• A new fight in Kemm's Garden (at position 122 285)
  A group of plants will attack you as you enter Kemm's Garden. This encounter is organized around the combo of 2 statuses, WET and SUNSHINE. The main creature, the Thorny Suncaller, can cast Rain_EnemySunshine / Sunshine, applying the SUNSHINE status to all allies in range. The 2 Hungry Flowers can cast Rain_EnemyRain_Short / Short Rain, which will apply WET to all allies in range. When a vegetal creatures gets WET & SUNSHINE, these statuses are destroyed & replaced by a new one: OVERGROWN, which grants a massive damage boost. When the Suncaller casts Sunshine for the first time, the atmosphere changes to become sunny & the rain goes away; this change is reverted when the Suncaller dies.
• New combat in the Ruins (at position 263 65)
  This fight is the fallback / placeholder for Jahan's demon. If the player didn't follow that quest to here, he gets this new fight. Otherwise, the Jahan's demon events unfold.
• Possessed Kid (at position 377 153)
  This is a follow-up for the possessed kid situation that was started on Blood Island. This was often felt as missing so we added an ending to it.
• Kemm's Assassins (241 306)
  A fight against humanoid assassins sent by Kemm. They jump out of the water, engaging immediately.
• Deathfog Zone (383 36)
  An optional fight was added here and is intended to be super hard. (In Vanilla nothing was here and it felt like a missed opportunity.) To start, jump on the cliff above that position using Phoenix Dive or Tactical Retreat. Then follow the mountain path to the Deathfog Zone.

 

[Seethe]

Is initiative still as broken as at launch?

 

[Roguey]

As Kickstarter backers, you should already have Divinity: Original Sin 2 in your Steam or GOG library. Once we go live on the 31st, the game will update, adding a launcher window that will let you choose between the original version of the game or the Definitive Edition.

By how much is this going to increase the download size?

Lone Wolf abilities and attributes are now capped at normal caps
Currently Lone Wolves can increase attributes and combat abilities through soft caps of 40 and 10 points respectively. In Definitive Edition, this is blocked: double point bonus only brings points to the cap and not above it.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Lone Wolf abilities and attributes are now capped at normal caps
Currently Lone Wolves can increase attributes and combat abilities through soft caps of 40 and 10 points respectively. In Definitive Edition, this is blocked: double point bonus only brings points to the cap and not above it.

While I agree it is decline, but shouldn't you be happy?

As your idol Joshua Eric Sawyer, places more emphasis on than fun?

 

[Reinhardt]

So there is zero reasons to get definitive edition. All i see is nerfs and story mode.

 

[Lacrymas]

There are basically no noteworthy changes.

 

[Sykar]

Is it worth pirating?

 

[Daedalos]

D:OS 2 - The nothing fucking changed edition

D:OS 2 - Return of the casuls edition

 

[CaesarCzech]

so no new content, conpared to definitive edition OS 1 its dissapointing

 

[Roguey]

While I agree it is decline, but shouldn't you be happy?

As your idol Joshua Eric Sawyer, places more emphasis on than fun?

I'm post-Sawyerist.

 

[Dodo1610]

The changelog https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IcADAJsLeHHXYjCnR5MwCm9GTWRdKzRtIYcCqO_RI6U/preview
People are angry about a free update? Anyway the remade large parts of the last act and added additional dialogue.

 

[Black]

added additional dialogue.

 

[Infinitron]

Not calling it the Definitive Edition in the video title to avoid confusing the console kiddies? Sad if true!

 

[Zarniwoop]

D:OS 2 - The nothing fucking changed edition

D:OS 2 - Return of the casuls edition

D:OS 2 - Of COOOOOOOOURSE your fucking savegames don't work anymore edition.

Can't wait for the Enhanced Edition(TM) that will break saves yet again

 

[whydoibother]

No new perks/talents to support the barrelmancery school of magic. Sad!

 

[Infinitron]

It's out, I think: https://steamcommunity.com/games/435150/announcements/detail/1703938422704592613

Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition now available

Hello!

You have probably noticed a big update that came to Divinity: Original Sin 2. The big update is the Definitive Edition that was added.

People that have bought Original Sin 2 when it came out, get this for free. It is an optimized, revised, rebalanced version of the game, with a couple of new features, overhauled Arena mode, better UI, better journal, rewritten dialogues, and much more.

If you would like to know what exactly "much more" is, we have tried to document it here, in over 50 pages: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IcADAJsLeHHXYjCnR5MwCm9GTWRdKzRtIYcCqO_RI6U/edit

If you are now wondering what version to choose, Classic or Definitive, it's easy:

- If you have a game or a GM campaign in progress in Classic mode, start up Classic mode and continue there. Savegames from the Classic game are not compatible with Definitive Edition. If you ever feel like rolling a new character, please come over to the Definitive Side when you're ready.

- If you are new to Original Sin 2, or if you were only a couple of levels in on classic, start up the Definitive Edition.

- If you have already finished the Classic version a dozen times and you're a champion in the classic arena, give the Definitive Edition a go What harm is there in rolling one. More. Character.

We hope you enjoy this new game version and are excited to read about what you think.

For those of you wondering:

- the editor is coming out in a few days
- mods created for classic are incompatible
- HDR mode will be added later on as well

Don't worry, we're on top of it, and working together with modders to make popular mods available and convert them over to definitive edition. We're also watching the forums to help out where we can, and address some early issues that were identified. So we're not done yet.

Enjoy the game!

Larian Studios

 

[Roguey]

Divinity: Original Sin 2 Content 54.00 GiB

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So much for that I suppose.

 

[Zarniwoop]

It's out, I think: https://steamcommunity.com/games/435150/announcements/detail/1703938422704592613

Yes, it is out.

You think I made that edgepost about saves not working before actually trying it?