God DAMN Divinity II is addictive

[Zed]

Game has an awful intro part. When does it pick up? I've gotten to the first village and ran around picking up quests but not really doing anything.

 

[DraQ]

I'd put at least one point in invis, otherwise it will be raep.

 

[AlaCarcuss]

Game has an awful intro part. When does it pick up? I've gotten to the first village and ran around picking up quests but not really doing anything.

Oh, give it time. As I posted earlier in this thread, I got a few hours in to ED when it came out about a year ago and wasn't impressed at all so I dropped it.

It does pick up steam fairly quickly, but depending on the difficulty setting you're playing at (and your build), just be aware that the first 15 or so levels can be pretty tough (especially on nightmare). After that, save for a few key battles, it gets much easier due to more/better skills.

Be prepared for some long gaming hours, the title of this thread is pretty spot on.

 

[Kotep]

Game has an awful intro part. When does it pick up? I've gotten to the first village and ran around picking up quests but not really doing anything.

It picks up when you get out into Broken Valley itself. You'll know when you're out there, you get a couple scenes and you can explore around the valley.

 

[Mangoose]

I liked the little quests in the first village, actually. Starting out you already have a few choices within your quests (I forget if they have any consequences).

 

[Angthoron]

I didn't like jump attack much. After landing it leaves you vulnerable for too long for my taste.

I had the opposite experience, dishing out mass RAEP to pretty much everything with maxed out Jump Attack and evading most of the attacks. Oh, and to me it was really lenient of reach's distance, I would often hit someone that would be visibly out of attack's range.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Jesus Christ you people weren't kidding about the amount of skill books FoV throws at you. Enjoying it greatly, though, I've always been a huge fan of city adventures and this fits the bill well.

 

[Crispy]

Finally having made my way into the fjords, I was curious as to what would happen if I flew back into Broken Valley.

Damn.

Is it worth it to blow everything up there and explore a little? Does everything or anything there respawn?

(Yes, I'm very slow at this game but I don't care. I'm enjoying my snail's pace)

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Nothing respawns, but the towers and so on make for at least two or three levels' experience with minimal pain. Get to it.

There's a couple of quests that'll send you there, as well. You won't miss much if you head in just now, but as a rule of thumb, mindread any enemy that speaks to you.

 

[Crispy]

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

as a rule of thumb, mindread any enemy that speaks to you.

I'd say mindread whenever the option is there, sometimes you can even mindread the same person more than once in a single convo.

The way the xp system works in DKS makes skills that give you more xp or make you spend less on mindread pointless, don't miss out on content for XP's sake as you'll catch up quickly enough.

 

[Padre]

I already had those nightmares, especially thanks to stun arrows and polymorph. But I'm going to take the risk since hp and mp increase with level anyway.

Tried pure ranger, investing heavily into dex and lo and behold, got raped by magic and melee with dash attack or in tight corridors every fucking time.

Rangers suck btw, explosive arrow is good but it's on a 5 sec cd and eats a shitton of mana. Or am I missing something ? Got to lvl 18 or so but got bored because of the shoot, dodge, shoot technique. And since the creature is retarded and acts slowly you can't really use it as a meatshield.

Now I'm leveling a pure melee fighter, went with dual wield because of the juicy bonuses on weapons. Dash attack and whirlwind are one point wonders for sure. Right now trying to max dual wield spec, life leech and bleed. Got 2 points in mana leech from items and I never ever have mana problems anymore. Fatality seemed like a nice spell but tbh thousand strikes is so much better. Kills most bosses in one combo.

I would suggest you invest some points in Vit early on. It really helps to have 300hp early, then you can just concentrate on Str and Int.

 

[DraQ]

Rangers suck btw, explosive arrow is good but it's on a 5 sec cd and eats a shitton of mana. Or am I missing something ?

Split Arrows point-blank shotgun with Way of The Ranger active?

And Explosive Arrows seem to be the best way to deal AoE damage if you already have the bow out and good dexterity (because otherwise you'd do much better nailing crowds with Fireball once in a while).

The thing I can agree with is Ranger gameplay being relatively boring.

Fatality seemed like a nice spell but tbh thousand strikes is so much better. Kills most bosses in one combo.

I think the only point to this skill is killing those annoying fucks who have wagonload of HPs and like healing themselves the moment before you strike them down.

It should really shine against Raze, for instance.

 

[Padre]

Yeah fatality when maxed can kill someone who is below 50% hp. Although I have yet to meet someone who can survive dash + thousand strikes.

I just entered Fjords so probably things will change but since lvl 12-15 I have been mowing everything I met.

Another question though. How does bleed calculate damage ? At high enough lvl you get around 100% additional damage dealt in 1 second. But lower levels have higher 'over x seconds'. Do bleed effects stack ? Or after successful bleed attack the debuff just gets renewed with another damage number ? Combat log doesn't show the figures for bleed so I can't figure it out.

Magic missile with lots of magic damage sounds awesome though. Especially with dual wield.

 

[bhlaab]

I never needed Fatality at all. Bleed does its job much more helpfully since it is passive.

I just entered Fjords so probably things will change but since lvl 12-15 I have been mowing everything I met.

Flying fortresses will wreck your shit probably.

It's a bit counter intuitive but you might want to turn around and go straight back to Broken Valley since its fortresses are significantly easier than the Fjords'

 

[DraQ]

I never needed Fatality at all. Bleed does its job much more helpfully since it is passive.

I just entered Fjords so probably things will change but since lvl 12-15 I have been mowing everything I met.

Flying fortresses will wreck your shit probably.

It's a bit counter intuitive but you might want to turn around and go straight back to Broken Valley since its fortresses are significantly easier than the Fjords'

I've always thought they were harder - especially with damn fliers capable of healing themselves fully.

 

[Raghar]

I think the only point to this skill is killing those annoying fucks who have wagonload of HPs and like healing themselves the moment before you strike them down.

It should really shine against Raze, for instance.

Didn't work for me. My creature had Fatality at high level, and he went down in the traditional way, aka in suckatury way.

 

[Mangoose]

What, Ranger gameplay is boring? Damnit, I thought the consensus was that melee combat was boring. I played melee before they made all these balance changes (so it was legitimately boring back then), and I rolled a Ranger now. Now I dunno if I should go melee.

 

[abnaxus]

I've always thought they were harder - especially with damn fliers capable of healing themselves fully.

Dragon Polymorph rapes all tough flying enemies. Ladybirds can't heal.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

I didn't like jump attack much. After landing it leaves you vulnerable for too long for my taste.

I had the opposite experience, dishing out mass RAEP to pretty much everything with maxed out Jump Attack and evading most of the attacks. Oh, and to me it was really lenient of reach's distance, I would often hit someone that would be visibly out of attack's range.

Playing my unarmed game, Jump Attack is extraordinarily useful early on just because dodging is so important. Later when enemies use tons of auto-hit attacks it becomes a bit less useful but the damage catches up and starts being very respectable.

Rangers suck btw, explosive arrow is good but it's on a 5 sec cd and eats a shitton of mana. Or am I missing something ?

Split Arrows point-blank shotgun with Way of The Ranger active?

And Explosive Arrows seem to be the best way to deal AoE damage if you already have the bow out and good dexterity (because otherwise you'd do much better nailing crowds with Fireball once in a while).

The thing I can agree with is Ranger gameplay being relatively boring

Or just use Split Arrows more often for AoE damage. Way of the Ranger is ridiculously powerful. Do something like 6x as much damage as normal, have a high critical rate and maxed heightened reflexes makes criticals more deadly.

It is frankly pretty boring. The biggest problem being that enemies don't react as a group so you can easily fill one full of arrows and his friend 10 feet behind him won't notice until you move up 10 feet and activate him. The few times you do actually get overwhelmed with enemies the dodge moves are so ridiculously fast that you can get out of combat with nary a scratch easily.

Another question though. How does bleed calculate damage ? At high enough lvl you get around 100% additional damage dealt in 1 second. But lower levels have higher 'over x seconds'. Do bleed effects stack ? Or after successful bleed attack the debuff just gets renewed with another damage number ? Combat log doesn't show the figures for bleed so I can't figure it out.

I'm pretty sure it doesn't stack, the debuff just gets renewed. What are the stats at the highest level? At the point I'm at now Bleed seems ridiculously useless.

 

[Padre]

Bleed
-----
A successful melee hit has a *% chance of bleeding your enemy. It lasts for *
seconds and deals *% of the damage you did extra.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 10 | 13 | 15 | 18 | 20 | 23 | 25 | 27 | 30 | 32 | 35 | 37 | 40 | 42 | - |
| 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | - |
| 10 | 11 | 13 | 14 | 17 | 20 | 25 | 33 | 50 |100 |100 |100 |100 |100 | - |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

so at lvl 10 it lasts only 1 sec thus almost doubling your dps.

 

[Phelot]

I am still upset that all the shit you did in Broken Valley is reduced to "LOL POISON GASES LULZ!"

Fucking lame...

 

[AlaCarcuss]

Ok, I spent last night trying out new builds again. At level 34 now, so lots of points to spend.

One build I found very fun was this one:

Charm: 5
Summon Demon: 7
Hide in Shadows: 1
Magic Missiles: 10
Fireball: 10
Manna Efficiency: 5
Manna Leach: 2 (from gear)
Charge: 2 (from gear)
Way of the Battle Mage: 10
Destruction: 5
Lockpick: 4

(might be a couple I'm forgetting)

(note: just 1 point in each of the fighting disiplines - which you get by default)

I begin each battle by summoning my pets and then charming the closest enemey, so right away I have 3 minions on my side. At level 5, charm allows you to charm another 2 mobs as soon as the skills off cooldown, so at some points you can actually have 5 pets at the same time.

With Destruction (20% +magic damage) + WoTBM (75% +magic damage) activated, the damage you do with Fireball, and MM is just insane. In fact 1 MM blast is enough to take out a single regular mob, and you can cast it every second.

Manna Effeciency + Manna Leach ensures I never run out of manna.
Then I have 1 point in Hide just in case, though I almost never need it - I have autopause set at 20% health, so if I ever get to that point, I'll usually hit Hide rather waste a potion.

I find it really fun running around charming mobs and watching them and my pets duke it out, while I go a'lootin. If thngs get a bit heavy, a Fireball and a few MM's usually sorts things out. Now, charm doesn't work on bosses, but that's ok they almost always have minions and with a couple of them charmed, I can concentrate on the boss...

Also, I have a really good bow now (Bow of Orobas), that does 39-118 normal + 36-54 magic damage, +100 magic damage enchantment and +50 magic enchantment, with 4 charm slots filled with various mitigations. That sucker alone, without any skills activated does crazy dmage.

This style may not be everyone's taste (especially those who lke to get up close and personal), and it also might not be the most effecient build - but damn I think it's fun.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Does Summon Demon stay efficient? I took a few points in it, but quickly figured it was too much of a point sink for 1 level per point and would fall behind before long.

 

[hoverdog]

I think so, yes. You get it late so it's not a big sink in ED, 3-4 points are enough, and then, in FoV, you don't care about skill points anymore. Demon definitely deals much more damage than your pet, and works as a meatshield just the same.