Divinity Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

[Daedalos]

Afaik, they changed the encounters somewhat, the alexandar fight was less enemies. HP and armor/magicarmor is still the same, brokenb and stupid.

Initiative is still also broken.

 

[DraQ]

I don't think there's much of a change here.
I did see some new content at Fort Joy but I'm not willing to burn a Pet Pal just to converse with that weird...squirrel-thing that's tagging along.
If I recruit a companion with Pet Pal the dialogue just cuts short. I guess I'll try taking Pet Pal when I re-spec later on.

Wait, you need PetPal on your main now for some stuff?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

HP and armor/magicarmor is still the same, brokenb and stupid.

figure out if the enemy has low magic or low physical armor
hit them with your character that does magical or physical damage

hope that helps champ, if you need more help just ask

 

[RK47]

I don't think there's much of a change here.
I did see some new content at Fort Joy but I'm not willing to burn a Pet Pal just to converse with that weird...squirrel-thing that's tagging along.
If I recruit a companion with Pet Pal the dialogue just cuts short. I guess I'll try taking Pet Pal when I re-spec later on.

Wait, you need PetPal on your main now for some stuff?

To clarify: Pet Pal works on other animal NPC side quest, but this newly added squirrel guy seems to work differently. I can see he scales up in HP but since I can't talk to him he doesn't do anything in combat. He has 250 HP now when I hit lvl 7 now.

 

[ScrotumBroth]

Quite like holding alt visibility improvement. Game also seems smoother. Playing on tactician to gauge difficulty properly.

 

[whydoibother]

HP and armor/magicarmor is still the same, brokenb and stupid.

figure out if the enemy has low magic or low physical armor
hit them with your character that does magical or physical damage

lmao nerd like just throw barrels at them ROFL
when will the mod to add deathfog barrel crafting recipe be updated? and the dual wielding barrels perk? and the fast draw 1AP barrel toss telekinesis perk?

BARRELMANCERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

Spoiler

Still a better story than Pillars of Eternity 2.

 

[Zarniwoop]

I don't think there's much of a change here.
I did see some new content at Fort Joy but I'm not willing to burn a Pet Pal just to converse with that weird...squirrel-thing that's tagging along.
If I recruit a companion with Pet Pal the dialogue just cuts short. I guess I'll try taking Pet Pal when I re-spec later on.

Dual Lone Wolves are still the best way to play. In terms of convenience and actual power.
If I have to pick from Larian's Pre-made Rosters I'd go for Lohse and Fane since their source ability is useful. Ifan's summon wolf is just terrible if you're not a summoner. And if Ifan's an actual summoner, the Incarnate is a way better option to have.

For custom-party, a Generic Undead Dwarf and Fane would be best. Fane would take front line (STR/WITS/CON) as Warfare10/Poly2/Aero2 while Undead Dwarf will go full CON wand/shield Summoner10/Necro2/Poly2

The toughest part of the game is always the start - when you lack gold to purchase the skill books. Without awesome button to move around / lose aggro your party will die quickly. That is why the first skill should always be Chameleon Cloak from Polymorph. Why? Well, 2 rounds of invisibility let you bank AP or just simply walk away without being fired upon. So the best use would be at round one - use your starting AP to reposition, but save the last one to cast Chameleon Cloak. Then bank your AP till max, on the last turn of the cloak, delay your turn so the enemy has to skip their turn. Larian doesn't let enemies delay turns. Commence alpha strike on the highest priority target and proceed with combat as usual. If the odds are terrible, consider a retreat after the first kill and repeat the chameleon strike again and again.

Awesome button?

You mean the one with the boot that lets you GTFO of combat instantly? Provided you have Escapist of course.

I'm surprised that the balance-fags haven't REEEEE'd about that being OP or something. It's pretty much the only way to beat some fights on tacticool mode.

 

[Murk]

I don't think there's much of a change here.
I did see some new content at Fort Joy but I'm not willing to burn a Pet Pal just to converse with that weird...squirrel-thing that's tagging along.
If I recruit a companion with Pet Pal the dialogue just cuts short. I guess I'll try taking Pet Pal when I re-spec later on.

Wait, you need PetPal on your main now for some stuff?

To clarify: Pet Pal works on other animal NPC side quest, but this newly added squirrel guy seems to work differently. I can see he scales up in HP but since I can't talk to him he doesn't do anything in combat. He has 250 HP now when I hit lvl 7 now.

I got petpal, he so far has given only a few lines of dialog (all the same you get at first). I only just left Fort Joy tho, so not sure if it keeps building up. He's some old timey knight (decent voice acting) who is on a quest to stop the Great Acorn from falling as per their creation myth. He keeps referring to you as a shield and a ward. He doesn't do anything in battle other than get hit, but he is considered allied so things like encourage work on him.

I think it's just some lel comedic relief stuff, typical of Larian humor.

Anyway, game's still fun. I like the UI changes, tho my verdict remains as before in whatever page of this thread it's burried. OS 1 was a superior game mechanically, OS 2 is a host of technical improvements and mechanical regression. If you are hung up on the initiative or the armor system, then you won't enjoy it. I dislike what it is, but it's not enough to hamper my having fun with it.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[RK47]

With Torturer, certain statues caused by you are no longer blocked by Magic or Physic Armour, and their duration is extended by one turn. Burning, Poisoned, Bleeding, Death Wish, and Ruptured Tendons are affected by this talent.

Torturer is a pretty good perk to have for mages now. Especially if you take into account the following AoE skill that inflicts status effects:

1. Hydro/Necro Rain of Blood - AoE Bleed and blood drench on the field

2. Geomancy - Contamination - AoE Poison, turns any liquid surface into poison

3. Pyromancy - Ignition - Any flame spell / Thrown candle - Blow up the poison to inflict burn

For 3 AP a group of enemy starts the battle with Bleeding (PA damage), Poison (MA damage) and Burning (MA damage).
Sawyer will not approve. This is really great for high initiative wizards since they can cast these 3 debuffs and still have enough AP to chameleon cloak and the enemy will just stand still and take the damage over time.

Although with a good shield, A conjurer should have no issue absorbing one turn of attack, especially if he summons a Fire-infused incarnate to dish out pure fire damage and tank damage at the same time. Alternatively, if you play an undead you can summon a Poison-infused Incarnate and have it punch you for healing.

 

[ScrotumBroth]

700mb patch just out, Hotfix v3.6.29.390.

Hello,

We have published a hotfix that fixes a crash that was happening for Chinese players that were using a controller.

Thank you very much for your patience and understanding.

Kick some Magister butt,

Larian Crew

 

[Lacrymas]

Torturer mandatory for keeping your sanity? And the fact they could've avoided this entirely by not giving so many CC abilities is not lost on me.

 

[RK47]

Torturer mandatory for keeping your sanity? And the fact they could've avoided this entirely by not giving so many CC abilities is not lost on me.

Well if you hadn't notice... Burning, Poisoned, Bleeding, Death Wish, and Ruptured Tendons are damage over time.
They're not crowd-control spell. So yeah it's funny how Larian decides this thing needs to be locked behind a talent.

But this combination is pretty powerful when you stack something like Medusa's Head (Polymorph) into the equation. If you can zero out multiple fodders' Magic Armor, the Medusa head will auto-petrify enemies within his vicinity. Really great stuff.

 

[Lacrymas]

I know they are DoTs. This talent is specifically designed to exclude CCs, but you still being able to inflict other statuses. That's why I'm saying they could've avoided the whole armor issue by not giving out CCs like candy.

 

[VioletShadow]

Think I'm gonna give this a try, nothing else to play.

 

[LESS T_T]

https://www.pcgamer.com/how-larian-revised-divinity-original-sin-2s-final-act/

How Larian revised Divinity: Original Sin 2’s final act
Swen Vincke talks to us about Dwarves, noble squirrels and moving onto new things after Definitive Edition.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 might be an exceptional RPG—not to mention PC Gamer’s 2017 game of the year—but after its launch last year, Larian Studios still thought it had room for improvement. With a console release on the cards, the developer set about working on Divinity: Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition.

“Once we saw it was doing well and we were certain we were going to make the console versions, we knew that was the right moment,” says Larian’s founder, Swen Vincke. “We had an opportunity to fix some of the things that had been bugging us during development.”

It wasn’t just a chance for the developer to fix its own bugbears; players had their own criticisms that Larian wanted to address. Most notable among them was the final act.

“One of the key criticisms was that Act 3 wasn’t as cool as the others, and we could sympathise with that,” says Vincke. “So we asked a couple of our narrative designers to go through it and told them to be very heavy with their criticism. They came back with a 48-page document. They asked what they should fix, and we just said, ‘Do everything.’ So that’s what they did.”

Unleashing Beast
The improvements to Act 3 should be most apparent with Beast, the Dwarven seadog, in the party. One of Original Sin 2’s neatest features is its origins system. A character’s background opens up all manner of new conversations, quests, alternative paths and plenty of flavour, but some of that was missing for Beast in Act 3. He meets a lot of fellow Dwarves, but that doesn't result in as much unique dialogue options or reactivity as you might expect. Fixing that was a priority, with the Definitive Edition's version of Beast’s storyline being filled with little details to set it apart.

One of the challenges Larian had encountered when it designed Act 3 initially was just testing it. There were so many ways that players could reach it, so many potential paths to keep track of, that blind spots were inevitable.

“It’s the classic problem: the part that gets played the most in QA sessions is the beginning,” says Vincke. “Every large RPG has this problem. I was talking to BioWare about Dragon Age and asked them how they tested their endings and all the permutations. It's an issue because we put so many choices in our games, and in the end they all have to come through. Has QA seen every single line that’s possible? It’s impossible to do so. They bifurcate, and we have ways of dealing with that, but actually having someone playing through all these lines? It’s mathematically impossible.”

With Original Sin 2 out in the wild, there were legions of players taking all sorts of routes with different characters and party combinations, revealing the places where Larian felt it could shore up some gaps. The final act’s antagonist has been beefed up narrative-wise and the epilogue provides more closure. More generally, says Vincke, the goal was to add an additional layer of polish and clarity to the narrative.

Yet the nature of Divinity means that a lot of these improvements might be less noticeable, depending on the path you take. “For some people it will be pretty much the experience they had before, but for some people it will be dramatically different,” explains Vincke. It’s a chunky update, but it's not an overhaul. “Fundamentally the content is the same.”

Taking notes
While Larian’s writers and voice actors worked on the story and dialogue, tweaks were being made to fights and visual effects, balance was being revisited, a new tutorial was being designed and the arena was getting a hotseat mode, along with new levels. There’s a huge document detailing all the changes, if you’ve got the patience to go through it all. And then there was the journal.

“We redesigned the entire journal for the Definitive Edition,” says Vincke. “A couple of souls really put a lot of effort into that. We’ve got really high review scores, but if there’s one bit of criticism coming in, it’s the fucking quest log. They say it’s still a little bit vague, but we can’t make it more precise because there are so many ways you can approach things.”

Larian caught a bit of flack for the journal the first time around, too, prompting the redesign, but while Vincke agrees that it's not always clear, the quests aren't designed in such a way that the journal could guide players through them.

“We design our quests in a way that’s different from a lot of other RPGs,” Vincke explains. “We say that you came from A, you came to B, but we have no clue how you got from A to B. We just know that you arrived at B. So we just assume that you did something to overcome all the challenges and we get on with our lives. But what Original Sin 2 does not tell you is how to get from A to B. The original quest entry in Act 1 told you to ‘get off the island’. Then we thought we should maybe give players a few more pointers. It would have been awesome if that had been the only quest in your journal, though.”

Shortcuts
Some fixes were purposefully not made. Players have discovered lots of exploits and quirks and clever but unintended solutions to conundrums—to Vincke they're both a testament to player ingenuity and the skill of the designers. The world works in a largely logical way—as logical as a world with magic and talking skeletons can work—even when players are coming up with things that have never been considered. And this started right when people first got their hands on the game.

Vincke recalls Original Sin 2’s first reviewer managing to sidestep an end-game problem in a way that made complete sense and also worked, taking Larian by complete surprise. It's a nifty trick that I won't spoil here. And there are other tricks, too, like stacking chairs to get a height advantage, and all the wonderful things you can do with teleportation, a skill so handy it sometimes feels like an exploit even when it’s working as intended.

The Definitive Edition is available now as a free upgrade on PC, though it's accompanied by some very cheap DLC: Sir Lora. The titular character is a knight who is also a squirrel. His mount is an undead cat. And yes, he can join your party. Since he's a squirrel, you'll need the Pet Pal skill to chat to him, learning about his heroic quest involving the Great Acorn and the end of the world. He's quite invested in it.

With another character comes more things Vincke would like to improve. Given that Sir Lora views his companions as, at least initially, dim-witted minions helping on his quest, I wonder if there might be some extra friction with Red Prince, since he's also got a pretty high opinion of himself. Vincke quickly quizzes his designers and is clearly disappointed when he confirms that the pair don't have any interactions like that. There's no time for Definitive Edition 2, however. Larian is ready to move on.

“It’s not as if we didn’t talk about adding new quests or a new origin character, but we only have so much time in our lives and there’s only that many things we can make,” explains Vincke. “We’ve already put a lot of effort into improving what’s there. People forget that these are three-year endeavours for us, and when you think about your lifecycle, you start counting how many you can make. It’s not that many. That’s why we need to move on and make new stuff.”

https://www.pcgamer.com/larian-is-g...-now-that-divinity-original-sin-2-is-updated/

Larian is going to 'make new stuff' now that Divinity: Original Sin 2 is updated
You can only make so many games in a lifetime, says founder Swen Vincke.

Larian could probably tweak, fix, enhance, and otherwise append things to Divinity: Original Sin 2 for the next decade and still not be done with it, but now that the Definitive Edition is out (it's a free update on PC), studio founder Swen Vincke says it's time to move on to the next project.

“It’s not as if we didn’t talk about adding new quests or a new origin character [to Divinity: OS2]," said Vincke in an interview we published earlier today, "but we only have so much time in our lives and there’s only that many things we can make.”

“We’ve already put a lot of effort into improving what’s there. People forget that these are three-year endeavours for us, and when you think about your lifecycle, you start counting how many you can make. It’s not that many. That’s why we need to move on and make new stuff.”

I've just restarted Original Sin 2, and while I wouldn't mind seeing it improved forever (Larian says it'll continue to support it with patches), I'm awfully curious about what the studio is working on now. A new Divinity or Divinity-style game would complete the dismantling of my social life, but I'm willing to pay that price.

Presumably, whatever game is next for Larian has already been brewing, so it may not be too long before we get a peek. "Expect to hear a lot more from us once we’re ready to announce our new endeavors," said the studio in its final Divinity: OS2 Kickstarter update.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Original Sin 3 Kickstarter when?

 

[a Goat]

I've already had le ebin squirrel sidekick die from AoE's and had to load save that was 40 minutes behind. It seems they adjusted its AI in meanthime tho becuase now it avoids being killed slightly better.

 

[RK47]

I've already had le ebin squirrel sidekick die from AoE's and had to load save that was 40 minutes behind. It seems they adjusted its AI in meanthime tho becuase now it avoids being killed slightly better.

Umm, I let him die. And I'm not gonna bother about him in Honour mode. But once I got to Act 2 and able to see spirits I realized this squirrel is still following me around in spirit form. So don't stress about it too much.
Act 2 seems untouched, almost everything felt the same and the Scarecrow encounter is still obnoxious as ever with high Magic damage nukes and permanent Terrifying aura (vs Magic Armor). I think the crazy part about this fight is how the terrifying scarecrow always starts first despite Fane having WITS 30. That fucked up my approach since it turns on the 90% Evasion buff and nuked down Fane's magic armor to zero. Terrified Fane then skips his turn and got blasted to death to the other minion crows for 150 earth damage per hit. He dies, triggers the Idol of Rebirth and resurrects with 0 magic armor - that gets him terrified again. Annoying. Fane never got to move in that fight and dies as Summoner Lohse retreats.

This puts me in a rough spot since Honour mode saves when you lose a party member. I have to somehow resurrect Fane while it's being surrounded by 5 scarecrows. And the moment I rez him, he'd be terrified again due to zero magic armor. Oh well, I look around and found a group of Lvl 13 Paladins guarding a bridge to the east. That sounds like my best bet - teleporting one of the scarecrows at max range towards the Paladin and have Lohse go into chameleon cloak. It worked - the scarecrows move towards the paladins and they start exchanging hits, Lohse resurrects Fane, who promptly destroyed one scarecrow that is lagging behind with well-placed melee strikes. By then the Terrifying Scarecrow lost his 90% evasion buff and its physical armor, Fane activates Living on the Edge, lands Shackle of Pain and drank a 1600 HP healing potion for the kill.

Whew. That's the closest I came to a complete wipe so far.

 

[Sjukob]

Could've avoided all the trouble by using earth resistance potions, the largest ones give 75% damage reduction.

 

[RK47]

Yeah, but you can't really tell before you start fighting what kind of damage he's dealing.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Is the armor & affliction system still retarted and is it still plagued by number bloat?

 

[RK47]

Is the armor & affliction system still retarted and is it still plagued by number bloat?

Yeah, it still is unchanged.
I am still browsing stores at every level up for 30 mins to find upgrades because the drops and random pickups are very unreliable.
What's funny was putting on +Barter gear, walking around the town, buying a gear and immediately changing it for a better one at another vendor just down the street.

 

[ScrotumBroth]

Can't you resurrect away from enemies?

 

[RK47]

Can't you resurrect away from enemies?

Yes you can, but Fane died too close around the scarecrows.