Divinity Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition

[RK47]

You've both won me over with your perfect logic, Honor Mode awaits for those who have mastered the game mechanics to your level. Post the screenshots of the final battle btw. I apologize for my mistake.

Apology accepted.

 

[Mangoose]

http://divinity.wikia.com/wiki/Skills_(Divinity:_Original_Sin)

Dude, the the high level spells in vanilla DOS are pretty fucking terrible compared to the lower ones. If you've actually played the game, you'd know. I haven't played EE yet so I can't comment on it.

 

[Renegen]

Dude, the the high level spells in vanilla DOS are pretty fucking terrible compared to the lower ones. If you've actually played the game, you'd know. I haven't played EE yet so I can't comment on it.

People can't keep saying things like terrible and not qualifying it. I finished the game which is more than most people, EE just has reshuffled spells from what I see so far. The higher level spells are objectively bigger and better, they give more tactical options. From memory, as soon as I got elemental summons I used them every fight, those are mid-high level spells.

 

[RK47]

He said

My point is simple, you're anal retentive and your arguments hold no weight. At level 1 you get a slow, at level 14 you get an aoe slow. Deny reality on your own.

Then he said.

People can't keep saying things like terrible and not qualifying it. I finished the game which is more than most people, EE just has reshuffled spells from what I see so far. The higher level spells are objectively bigger and better, they give more tactical options. From memory, as soon as I got elemental summons I used them every fight, those are mid-high level spells.

ah yes, those aoe slowing summons.

 

[Renegen]

I wonder if you even played the game that far because yeah, the summons do aoe slows and actually aoe stuns too. And I was referring to the actual water spell called "mass slow". You again fail to make any sense, your attention whoring is pretty sad.

 

[RK47]

No one is denying summons were irrelevant. What people keep saying are those high level spells like inferno/earthquake/mass slows are limited in application and tend to disappoint upon getting it. And that was your prime example in disproving our claims. They felt like a waste of skilll points to unlock and a waste of gold. It's a point that you seem to miss many times and kept brushing off by saying 'objectively high level spell is better than lower ones' when many are not seeing it. Now you change the whole argument into 'oh you didn't know about summons? oh my god that means you're not playing till late game to see it.'

I'm sorry to say I didn't play till finish, my partner Ormagöden did, I only activated the pyramid when he encounters combat.

 

[Mangoose]

From memory, as soon as I got elemental summons I used them every fight, those are mid-high level spells.

Lol, you link to the wiki and then you get it wrong?

The elemental summons came at varying levels. The right answer would be "low-mid-high level spells."


Required Character level/Skill level

Fire Elemental: Character level 4/ Skill 6
Ice Elemental: 7/8
Air Elemental: 13/14
Earth Elemental: 16/16


Sounds like you were:

not qualifying it

Now, just as RK47, I was referring to the actual high level skills such as Hail, Meteor Shower, Storm, Earthquake, Chain Lightning, etc. because they attacked random targets and were such large AOE that they would hit your own party. A Hailstorm alpha strike is the most I would do, because I could do that while my party was out of range, and the Hail was pretty good at freezing so it let me start a fight with at least a couple enemies frozen.

And guess what the most of the actually powerful (*cough*useful*cough*) skills/spells are? I'll list them:

Teleport
Blitz Bolt (aim at water = stunned enemies)
Bitter Cold
Rain
Piercing Ice Shard
Any Fire spell that can set oil and poison and shit on fire.
Boulder Bash
Walk in Shadows
Charming Touch
Battering Ram
Cure Wounds

Because... guess what? Crowd control is pretty fucking powerful in this game.

Now go qualify yourself.

 

[Mangoose]

PEE just has reshuffled spells from what I see so far.

Go qualify yourself by looking at the changelog instead of basing your conclusion on "what you see so far."

Here's a helping hand:

Spoiler

Skill System Overhaul
- Tier system: each skill belongs to a tier: novice, adept, master
- Skill Abilities now grant a certain number of skills that can be learned in one or more
tiers
- Rebalanced skills: damage, AP cost, cooldown, chances of setting a status, distance,
AoE radius...
- To encourage non-damage skills (set status, help allies), these skills were buffed
- As the player invests in the Skill school ability, the cooldown reduction is calculated
more fairly, better scaled.
- Moved skills around so that learning skills become progressively cooler (i.e. you can
learn certain skills sooner now, but other skills have become higher level)
- Removed skills that felt like copies so that skills are original and unique and so that
certain schools are the only ones that have certain powers and statuses
- A lot of skills got new effects, especially master tier skills that now look like total
overkill
- Splintered Arrow (Ranger): explodes into splinters on impact and distributes damage
among enemies in range
- Boulder Bash (Earth): a concrete ball of stone falls from the sky on the target
- Mass Healing (Water): an AoE healing skill
- Decaying Touch (Source): inflicts a status on an enemy so that he takes damage from
healing skills and potions (instead of healing, obviously)
- Coup De Grace (Fatality, Rogue): does 3 times regular weapon damage on targets
with low HP
- Crawling Infestation (Rogue): plants an egg on an enemy that "comes out" after a
certain amount of turns. When the egg comes out, the enemy dies and is replaced by a
spider.
- Shackles Of Pain (Warrior): creates a "damage link" between the target and the
warrior, target takes half the damage the warrior receives
- Shadow Step (Rogue): teleport to the back of an enemy, backstab, and jump back to
original spot
- Netherswap (Air): switch the position of two characters
- Rain Of Arrows (Ranger): rain down arrows from the sky
- Summon Ooze (Earth): summon an ooze
- Target Corpses (Ranger): ranger aims at all corpses in a radius and explodes them all
- Taunt (Warrior): enemies find the taunter more interesting to attack
- Hoverfeet (EtherealSoles, Rogue): the rogue can walk over surfaces
- Elemental Tortoise (Warrior): shield stance that makes all your elemental resistances
go up by 50%
- Barbed Wire (Warrior): shield stance that makes you reflect damage
- Adrenaline (Rogue): gain AP this turn (you lose this AP next turn)
- Created new skillbooks and scrolls
- Added new skillbooks and scrolls to shops and treasure generation
- Replaced manually placed skillbooks and scrolls in the world with appropriate ones
- Created AI scripts so that AI can use new skills
- All summons have a unique skill5
- Earth Summon can now also cast BoulderBash
- Spider Summon now has a Weakening Touch skill (Spider bite)
- Undead Summon now has a Draw Blood skill
- Greater Undead Summon now has a Taunt skill
- Wolf Summon now has a Bleeding skill (Neck bite)
- Fixed stats and equipment of Ooze Summon
- Spider now does piercing damage
- ImmuneToFreezing is now a water skill and also cures freezing
- ImmuneToBurning is now a fire skill and also cures burning
- Elemental Shield skills totally redone
- Self Immolation grants temporary fire resistance
- TargetedPerception lasts longer
- Farseer also gives 50% cth extra with ranged weapons
- Tornado now also clears INVISIBLE, BURNING, WARM, HASTED
- TreatPoisoning now gives temp boost to poison res
- Infect now plants an Infectious Disease
- Infectious Disease now also decreases bodybuilding
- Healing skills heal a percentage of HP and not with a levelmap
- Some master tier skills can only be cast once per combat
- Remove petrification skill is now called Wind Of Change
- Remove petrification skill can now also remove Slowed status
- ExplodeSelf skill now gives preview instead of immediately executing
- Bomber Go Boom skill now gives preview instead of immediately executing
- Survivor's Karma grants more crit chance and it lasts longer
- FirstAid now also heals you a bit
- FirstAid now also cures infectious disease
- Doctor now also gives you bodybuilding for a while
- Doctor now also cures diseased
- Lightning Strike is now called Thunder Jump
- Cleansing Water can now fix Decaying Touch
- Melee Defensive Stance does not give a CTH penalty but a damage penalty
- Melee Defensive Stance gives more armor boost
- Melee Power Stance gives movement boost
- Ranged Precision Stance does not give AP penalty but movement penalty
- Immune To ... skills now also freeze/burn/stun/poison on contact so that the skills are
less underwhelming
- Splinter Arrow hit radius is now larger so that it's harder to catch only one enemy in
its radius
- Mass Heal now heals less but over more rounds (slower)
- Bless now also removes Cursed status
- Farsight: also cures Blinded
- Can cast FirstAid and doctor in a larger radius
- RemovePetrification also cures stunned status now
- Malediction removes blessed status now
- EarthSpray now has less chance to petrify targets because OP
- Tornado's Chance to remove surface is now a lot higher
- BlessedEearth now removes curse
- Shackles of pain now shares 100% of the damage instead of 50%
- Inspire also gives 1 CON now
- FireSurfaceSelf gives 25 Fire res but also clears freezing and stunned
- BurningTouch does more damage
- Firesurfaceself cleans frozen and stunned in a 4m radius and gives everyone in a 4m
radius some fire res
- Malediction now both curses and weakens
- Precise Incision does 1.5 times your weapon damage instead of 1/3 of it
- Eye Gouge does 100% your weapon's damage instead of 1/3 of it
- Lacerate does 1.5 times your weapon damage instead of 100%
- Resurrection Skill heals for 50%
- Resurrection can not be found as a scroll, this is now a Resuscitate scroll which costs 10 AP, heals for 20%
- Summoning the little bomber costs 2 AP instead of 8 AP
- The little bomber does a little less damage

"Just has reshuffled spells" indeed.

lol.

 

[Aenra]

Some good points raised. High time to consider my approach thus far as ..conservative..

(though fuck you very much, wizard just = high Int and i won't change now, lol)

 

[whatevername]

On the positive side they removed that horrible exploit which let you rape everything with OP high level weapons of popamole+1:

Spoiler

Just kidding, they did NOT

upgraded toaster pics

 

[Ninjerk]

Taking snaps on a toaster?

 

[cvv]

Tell us how your 1 in everything character does late game, I don't understand what exactly you're doing complaining about 1 battle going your way when the game is 50 hours long.

At level 1 now you get AoE Boulder that drops pool of oil that slows.
At level 1 you still have Midnight Oil that slows too.

If you're still using Boulder and Midnight Oil past Cyseal on Tactician your game will be much, much longer than 50 hours. Trust me on that.

 

[Makabb]

This will be a good time sink before Fallout 4.

 

[Renegen]

Now, just as RK47, I was referring to the actual high level skills such as Hail, Meteor Shower, Storm, Earthquake, Chain Lightning, etc. because they attacked random targets and were such large AOE that they would hit your own party. A Hailstorm alpha strike is the most I would do, because I could do that while my party was out of range, and the Hail was pretty good at freezing so it let me start a fight with at least a couple enemies frozen.

Literally both you and RK are debating nothing but semantics while failing to provide any of your own because you have no argument to bring. RK can't even have complete sentences to say his points, just troll faces. As soon as I got Ice/Air elemental (high level, what the conversation was about) I used them every battle.

Your argument after 2 pages is now that only the highest level spells are useless, so you're saying the 10 or so spells out of 100 that you get at the very end of the game (lvl 17+) you only end up using a few times before the game ends, really? Do you expect to use such a small number of spells every single time? If your argument is that their aoe is too large and unpredictable, I don't want to see you use Rain ever again. You're complaining about getting more strategic options, oh sorry for getting a bazooka, I guess technically you can't use it in close range. I guess you never end up stunning one of your characters because it's still beneficial since you stunned 5 other dudes.

You simply have no argument to bring on that matter, the high level spells fulfill the function they were designed to do, bigger badder all in one spells that can turn a fight around if used properly. That's what you've been doing since the very start of the game with Rain and oil barrels. (don't ever use those, unpredictable! go use your Ice Shard and nothing else). Is the cognitive dissonance even there for you? The entire game is about managing the unpredictable nature of elements to mostly hurt the enemy. Oh and go play your jRPGS, I guess for you true progression is to have slightly higher damage numbers on the same tired old tactics you've been using all game.

 

[Roguey]

It's undeniable they put a lot of effort into the encounter design, and it's undeniable they don't care too much if you can break the difficulty completely (they do care some, considering certain balance changes). To Josh-quote

And while I have put about 400+ hours into Hitman: Blood Money and can roll through most levels with any weird goofball strategy (fiber wire every person in the level, shotgun every person in the level without ever being detected by a guard, get Silent Assassin in couple of minutes, etc.) I wouldn't want IO to base their game difficulty on my level of knowledge/familiarity. The first time the vast majority of players run through the IWD or BG games, they tend to take a lot of damage or spend a lot of time using area denial and kiting tactics.

 

[clemens]

So, RPG Codex Game of the Year 2014 is finally banal, shit, boring ? Well, that took its sweet time...

 

[veevoir]

So, RPG Codex Game of the Year 2014 is finally banal, shit, boring ? Well, that took its sweet time...

Have a plebrofist.

I do try EE though to see if everything after Cyseal goes downhill again or if Larian took the time to actually improve that. In original original sin it was painfully obvious that whatever wasn't in EA lacked polish and detail.
D:OS aside from combat was always banalshit. And the combat was/is fun as long as you restrain our inner powergamer to exploit the obvious mechanical flaws.

 

[cvv]

I do try EE though to see if everything after Cyseal goes downhill again or if Larian took the time to actually improve that. In original original sin it was painfully obvious that whatever wasn't in EA lacked polish and detail.

And difficulty curve balance. The difference between the Cyseal graft and post-Cyseal faceroll was stark as fuck.

D:OS aside from combat was always banalshit. And the combat was/is fun as long as you restrain our inner powergamer to exploit the obvious mechanical flaws.

Meh there are few, if any, RPGs that can't be exploited. You can finish Morrowind in 3 minutes. You can also console-cheat or skip to the end of your crime novel to learn who's the killer. Your loss then.

Exploitism is not a problem and designing around power gamers often does more harm than good. For me combat in D:OS was fun almost from start to finish which is just as well because the juvenile setting, lore, story, characters and writing start to be so unbearably annoying after Cyseal you need something powerful to keep you playing.

 

[Mangoose]

If you're still using Boulder and Midnight Oil past Cyseal on Tactician your game will be much, much longer than 50 hours. Trust me on that.

The point is that you set up elemental effects for CC throughout the game, and then follow up with other moves and/or regular attacks. Boulder and Midnight Oil aren't used for damage, they're used for knocking the enemy down (the former) and setting up fires/adding slowing spots on the field (latter). With Midnight Oil only costing 3 AP, you still have room to use other skills or again regular attacks however you decide.

As soon as I got Ice/Air elemental

as soon as I got elemental summons

Goalposts moved.

Ice elemental

Ice Elemental: 7/8

high level

Your argument after 2 pages is now that only the highest level spells are useless

high level spells are much more powerful than the low level ones..

And guess what the most of the actually powerful (*cough*useful*cough*) skills/spells are? I'll list them:

Teleport
Blitz Bolt (aim at water = stunned enemies)
Bitter Cold
Rain
Piercing Ice Shard
Any Fire spell that can set oil and poison and shit on fire.
Boulder Bash
Walk in Shadows
Charming Touch
Battering Ram
Cure Wounds

Goalposts moved.

If your argument is that their aoe is too large and unpredictable, I don't want to see you use Rain ever again.

Rain is quite predictable. It makes every single member of the fight Wet whether or not they are in a puddle, so it debuffs all fire casters/elemented-enemies, adds 30% chance for stunning, makes it a lot easier to freeze (chilled + wet = frozen). If your plan is geared on stunning, you can teleport the enemy into water puddles as necessary. You can Air Shield your own party member, and keep track of the turn order and including it in your plan on when to cast the subsequent Air spell (or shoot it with an Air staff). And/or you can have Rain on multiple characters for redundancy (redundancy is how one manages unpredictability); the benefit-to-cost ratio is worth spending one point in Hydrosophist even if a character's not built as a mage.

I guess you never end up stunning one of your characters because it's still beneficial since you stunned 5 other dudes.

Nope, because my stun-targets are high priority enemies such as spellcasters that can heal and/or crowd control, highly damaging enemies - especially those outside of easy reach, etc.

Then I weigh whether or not I need the resources (skills, damage, role) my possibly-stunned character provides, compared to the threat of said enemy/enemies. Also included in that decision is considering whether or not my character is susceptible to other, non-stunned, enemies damaging him and possible killing him.

The entire game is about managing the unpredictable nature of elements to mostly hurt the enemy.

The game is about setting up the playing field to be favorable to your party and your plan on how to use elemental effects for crowd control. Risk management.

Using Piercing Ice Shard to freeze multiple mobs is not unpredictable if it's ~100% chance due to your stats. Especially if they're already wet.

If I'm really going to be stunning 5 dudes with 1 of my characters within the AOE, I'm gonna be putting Air Shield on my character so that he doesn't get stunned.

 

[Ellef]

Everything not grimdark faggotry = juvenile apparently

It was lighthearted, Call of Duty is juvenile.

 

[Mangoose]

Exploitism is not a problem and designing around power gamers often does more harm than good. For me combat in D:OS was fun almost from start to finish which is just as well because the juvenile setting, lore, story, characters and writing start to be so unbearably annoying after Cyseal you need something powerful to keep you playing.

D:OS is actually fun because of the 'exploits.' If there's a locked caged door (as opposed to a regular opaque door) I will be Teleporting the enemy to the other side.

 

[Athelas]

Everything not grimdark faggotry = juvenile apparently

It was lighthearted, Call of Duty is juvenile.

Call of Duty is (also) grimdark faggotry, so you appear to be contradicting yourself.

 

[Ellef]

Call of Duty is (also) grimdark faggotry, so you appear to be contradicting yourself.

I just wanted to make a baseless jab at popamole ok?

My main point is grimdark is bad and lighthearted != juvenile.

 

[cvv]

It was lighthearted, Call of Duty is juvenile.

How old are you, 13?

There's a huge difference between adult lighthearted and disney infantile. And D:OS ain't the former that's for sure.

 

[Aenra]

Random. You were warned. Yes, this is a legitimate question, lol
I have heard that with sweetfx/reshades/some other third name that escapes me you can use a setting that makes your game look something akin to Shadowblade Remake's Retro Mode. Is that really a possibility and if so, how/where do i find it please?

edit: to explain, lol..first i disabled Bloom, too fucking shiny. Then i lowered the gamma as much as possible, because everything was still too fucking shiny. Then i disabled Field of View, because a mass of (shiny!!!111!) haze 3 meters away from my character was not my cup of tea either. Then i disabled MSAA because (shiny!!!111!) proper AF crispy or get the fuck out. You are getting the point i think..