God DAMN Divinity II is addictive

[Twinkle]

As a side benefit though, the 120hz refresh rate with almost 0 input lag, makes everything so much smoother and more 'snappy'. So any games running higher than 60FPS - you get to see every frame. Honestly - it's like being back in the good ole' CRT

Truth. I had a chance to test 3d vision and while it was fun for the first 10-15 minutes (ZOMG BULLETS FLY IN MAH FACE) it quickly gave me a nausea. The monitor itself (IIRC NEC F23W2A) was a gaming heavan. It's amazing how fluid it feels compared to a standard LCD, even at framerate below 60. My next monitor will definitely be 120hz.

because you can't patch it

Not true anymore.

 

[bhlaab]

Probably no one will know the answer to this but I'll ask anyway.

I have the graphics all cranked to the max, and when I play, it's like about 5 feet in front of my character there is a magical line where the textures change. It's distracting as fuck and I don't know how to fix it. I also had this issue in Morrowind, I think.

I'm not sure if it's a draw distance thing or what, but I don't think you can change that. Any ideas?

edit: I think it's the shadows (especially from the trees) not textures

Do you have timeslice shadows enabled? Because that's a thing where turning it off makes the game look better.

No matter what there's going to be a "line" of shadow LOD since that's the nature of games with large maps that stream in graphics data.

As far as I can tell Shadow Quality determines how far away from you that line is and turning off Timeslice Shadows makes that line less pronounced.

I keep timeslize shadows on however because the framerate it saves is much more noticable than the shadow line in the long run

 

[TheLostOne]

My new favourite moment in the game: Meeting the flying bug demon down the town well.

"Devil: Muahaha, you're challenging ME? You and what army?"

*PC turns into a dragon*

"Devil:.....oh bugger.

Currently level 28, grinding my way through a flying fortress. They're kind of a pain to get through - huge and crawling with powerful ranged attackers and mages. If they are indeed optional, I think I'll skip doing more than this one.

I always one-shotted that demon in Ego Draconis because I was overleveled when I met him and he could do no damage, but in DKS that bastard raped me again and again. I even had to resort to drinking potions in dragon form.

Same for me - lost to him repeatedly DESPITE being 5 levels above him.

Somebody with a sense of humour designed the difficulty level of this game. You can be cruising along thinking you're all that when all of a sudden you run into a wimpy looking boss that rapes you with a broomhandle. I like it - keeps it fresh.

You can use potions in dragon form??



It took me forever to beat that freaking demon dashing around, trying not to get hit while using that piddly dragon heal skill.

 

[bhlaab]

yeah that is something i would have liked to know

 

[Murk]

Interesting. I can't say I ever really needed to but that's good to know.

If you guys are talking about the demon in the well - za-something, I summoned my wyvern ally (maxed) and it killed him before i had a chance to get the camera in a position that let me see wtf was going on.

 

[Black]

Only pussies rely on summons!

 

[Murk]

I had points to spare -- I found that with the exception of the fire-sphere ability and 1 level of healing that the dragon skills were mostly meh. the AOE/self-targeted explosion might have had potential but I prefered to just blast the enemy from a distance and dodge their ballistae.

summons did make combat for a melee character fun though, helped clean up minor stragglers. your creature, when set up with a high level fireball spell, was pretty good at taking out ranged enemies that were a nuisance while you were occupied with melee enemies.

 

[bhlaab]

I like to load my creature up with as much HP and defense as possible and use him as a distraction for large crowds

 

[Murk]

You playing range-focused or melee-focused? I guess building it in a complementary way would be key.

I think mine had almost 10k HP, or something as equally ridiculous, near the end of the game.

 

[DraQ]

the AOE/self-targeted explosion might have had potential but I prefered to just blast the enemy from a distance and dodge their ballistae.

It's actually a good skill to have and max out for the fortresses - it doesn't seem to affect mage towers nor nests, but ballistae and lightning towers are usually tightly clustered and blowing them by entire clusters is far more entertaining and far less tiresome than breathing on each separately or sniping them with this homing fireball thing from afar.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Using that dragon wrath ability was too dangerous imo, it has a lengthy animation (2-3 seconds) and staying at the same place for the 3 seconds got me killed several times so i stopped to use it entirely. Dragon Heal maxed out was very potent. Dragon Shield too.

 

[bhlaab]

You playing range-focused or melee-focused? I guess building it in a complementary way would be key.

I think mine had almost 10k HP, or something as equally ridiculous, near the end of the game.

Melee, but with heavy use of dash attack

 

[Raghar]

Abridged.

Childish.

Spoiler

I seen 5 year olds that tried to block speaker's mouth by hand when they heard something they didn't want to listen to. It's interesting to see the same behavior on Internet.

 

[DraQ]

Abridged.

Childish.

Spoiler

I seen 5 year olds that tried to block speaker's mouth by hand when they heard something they didn't want to listen to. It's interesting to see the same behavior on Internet.

I'm afraid only a mod or admin can do something like that. I was merely hinting that in this case there is little point reading past poster's name - case in point.

 

[Raghar]

On the other hand Dragon knight ending was as I wanted. I wonder if Flames of vengeance will not be cliche.

The first part was worse than first 1/4th of DD. Considering DD ended as an uninspired hack and slash, I have low expectation for later parts of Flames of vengeance. Jumping left and right might be fun for few hours, however it lacks consistency and complex detailed story.

The trouble is when they moved into 3D they lost a lot in detail. Basically they looks like they can't create a proper seamless environment by geomorphing, thus they made it by hand... ...and they suck at making 3D terrain by hand. Even people who are doing photography would spot obvious flaws. These who worked on making 3D terrain and models would consider it a result of person who spend 3 weeks by learning.

Interiors are typical high hallways without much thought about architecture, which is actually quite bad because they were made by hand. (Is it that hard to remove ceiling, when someone is retarded and use third person camera?)

Yes it had funny parts, but I consider first part as lacking coherency and to be somehow disconnected.

 

[dr. one]

Just finished the ED part.
One beerstorm with friends and the rest of the time devoted to playing FoV now seems like an unfuckwithable plan for weekend.
Great game and certainly my favorite from 2010.
New Vegas needs to excuse me, DKS was simply more fun to play.

It´s all been said here already, exploration, loot, character options, art direction, music, quests/hidden stuff and humor rule in this game.
It also can´t be stressed enough how much the lack of hand holding improves the overall experience.
After the battle tower I´ve changed the difficulty from hard to nightmare and combat was a good challenge, but didn´t feel like a meaningless one.

Anyway, few somewhat spoiler-y remarks/questions:

Spoiler

I refrained from using charms/enchantments till I really needed them, which mostly haven´t occurred and ended up applying all my best stuff right before the final stage. This of course provided quite a major jump in character strength, but in the case of one enchantment, magical damage level 10, I´m not sure if it worked as intended - the boost seemed to be overkill. With strength 80, intelligence 70, sword&shield + way of the battle mage almost maxed, damage stats of The Blade of Hypnerotomachia enchanted with normal damage 9 and magical damage 10 were (400 - 650) + (1000 - 1100) which, along with maxed whirlwind, made the final stage cakewalk. Is it normal or is the highest magical damage enchantment bugged? Sorry for long-winding.

In regards to flying fortresses, I´ve found destroying their defences in dragon form quite fun and cleaning those in Broken Valley provided a solid exp boost without too much time investment, but the rest were hilariously overkill in regards to mob amount so only proper way to deal with them seemed to be just drop to loot chests (level 1 hide in shadows was all I needed), fly away and drop into teleporters afterwards.
How much different was it in original ED?

Mindreading and Wisdom skills seem to be implemented solely for the purpose to punish a player who can´t put two and two together - the way gained exp scales with level differences makes benefits of both almost null. I haven´t put any points in either (I had a bit of boost from gear at times though) and ended at level 34.

I´ve noticed some people complaining about DLC sets, but although I almost t haven´t used them, they didn´t seem so unbalanced to me - all parts together provided were more powerful than majority of gear acquirable by that stage, but since acquiring all parts required extensive questing/discovering hidden stuff, it felt quite appropriate.
Maybe it was different before the latest patch?

Most difficult fights for me were Zagan (Oh, bugger indeed!) and Raze.
Zagan was fun, Raze annoying - though maybe it was my mistake repeatedly failing perception check till I finally realized what´s going on.

Killer bunny in the ending cutscene was a killer throwback!
Maxos!

 

[Raghar]

Highest level magic enchantment works as it should, it requires Malachite gem. The previous level on the other hand...

Spoiler

Your problem was that maxed part. Obviously an one trick pony would have easier time when he could apply that one trick. These who roleplayed and spread realistically skill points were somehow punished.

Then again it was the same in DD, thus there is no difference.

Mindreading and Wisdom

Spoiler

They might somewhat matter when you have -350000. They might be implemented differently, but then the character system would need to be changed, or retraining costs shouldn't increase.

Spoiler

I never had problem with sets. In fact I used different earings because even with earings from the set, the set bonus was less important.
That set from generals is at the same level, or better, as the other sets and has only 4 pieces, thus all these epic bracers and other stuff could be used with. Considering how hard is to find all pieces of some sets, only complains are from people who played original German version.

Spoiler

One of the most difficult fight was with that person who talked about flowers. Being polymorphed twice and paralyzed afterwards is quite brutal when you are playing on one save and applying for an ironman.

 

[dr. one]

Highest level magic enchantment works as it should, it requires Malachite gem. The previous level on the other hand...

Spoiler

Your problem was that maxed part. Obviously an one trick pony would have easier time when he could apply that one trick. These who roleplayed and spread realistically skill points were somehow punished.

ok, thanks.
though what you call one trick pony, i´d call specialization .
for what it´s worth, i also had very high firewall, level 5 heal, lockpick and summon demon (by the endgame).
so mostly i roleplayed a battlemage-y dude who likes to take it up close and personal (level 1 rush attack works well enough as an opener for this).
i also used a bow quite extensively in certain places, especially in the beginning, even though i haven´t supported it with stat/skill development.
left the rest for a possible replay.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

How are you guys playing Nightmare and not going crazy? For me its Oblivion-level ridiculousness, with common enemies that take 25 hits to kill. I don't think I'm missing out on anything big, my equipment is enchanted with the best stuff I have available and my skills are allocated in an appropriately powergamed fashion. The highest difficulty I can play before enemy's health goes skyrockets is Normal, though Hard isn't too bad.

 

[Crispy]

Hint: nobody's actually playing at Nightmare level. If they say they are, they're fibbing.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Late-game, the game is a cakewalk with a battlemage on hard. I've shifted it up to nightmare a few times, such as the battle in the mines. Planning on staying on it in FoV, but we'll see how the schizophrenic difficulty goes there.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Another question: is it just me or are stat-buffing potions basically useless? A relatively standard 10 to a stat gives a remarkable 5% damage increase, which may as well be nothing. Even super-mega-godly potions don't seem to boost damage by more than 10%. Is there some hidden advantage to raising stats that I'm not seeing?

EDIT: Interesting bug I found. Entering Broken Valley on normal and then raising the difficulty to Nightmare later gave all of the spawned goblins their normal level health but the damage increase of Nightmare. Which actually feels pretty well balanced. The really annoying thing though is that enemies can still be healed up to their normal nightmare health, which basically makes them invincible under constant healing.

 

[Raghar]

I play on normal, It would be suicide otherwise. (I try to go for ironman.) A properly enchanted high end sword can kill enemy in three strikes. (800 on critical) A mage that is using 1000 strikes can slaughter these opponents fairly quickly (one on one). A high level fireball, or magic missiles with properly enchanted equipment can slaughter stuff quickly as well, as long as you can avoid all these archers, and wizards that are rush attacking you.
When I was cleaning fortresses, it was one fireball: three or four opponents down on one, two hits tops.

The highest danger is stun, or poison. You can use all these useful potions, when things go bad.

Highest difficulty would probably need a lot of reloading, it will not provide any qualitative difference however. (Thus what's the point of going above normal? The best part are all these conversations anyway.)

Is there some hidden advantage to raising stats that I'm not seeing?

Damage resistance.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

I'm playing an archer and with Way of the Ranger active I get 400-800 damage per arrow. Critical rate is 33% and hits for around 1500-2000 damage. Main attack skill is splitting arrows @ 11 attacks, which either guns down an entire group or turns into a 10k damage attack at melee range. Silly warriors think I can't fight in melee combat and try to rush me.

Other character I just started is melee. I'm going to try unarmed, but I'm unsure of how well that will play out.

Stun is definitely the worst thing in the game to happen to you. A single stunning arrow attack can come out of no where and it might as well be game over.

Damage resistance from potions seems to be useless. It scales off really fast so that drinking a dexterity potion when I am a ranger only boosts resistance by about 2-3%. I could drink a strength potion to boost melee resistance by a decent amount, but that obviously doesn't improve my damage at all and the idea of a ranged character drinking strength potions just seems stupid.

 

[dr. one]

Hint: nobody's actually playing at Nightmare level. If they say they are, they're fibbing.

plane tickets Crispy.

anyway, i´ve played on nightmare only after the tower, maybe it´s substantially more difficult before it, due to lack of skills/resources.
i also skipped majority of grinding opportunities offered in those fortresses, it would be insanely tedious not to do so and there´s next to none benefit anyway.

probably my most common strategy was summon demon and creature (goblin arms ftw) for distraction, soften opposition with explosive arrows (invested little in it, but had some bonuses from gear), then rush in, firewall, whirlwind and if needed retreat, heal, etc.
i made a good use of full resistance potions and occasionally tactical pause was helpful.

some scenarios were quite crazy, but rarely tedious (as i said, i skipped the majority of fortresses, to me the mobs in there are just for decorative purposes).
oh, and pc´s death screams are funny.