Original Sin II is a game with tons of freedom and mechanical depth, featuring a totally open class-build system, numerous skills to learn, and lots of gear to collect. As a result, it is hideously easy to break, with numerous ways to tear the game a new one.
- Physical damage. Boy does it scale fast. Two-handed warriors that stack Warfare can have their damage increased by 5% every point they put into the skill, while Rangers with increasing points in Huntsman will get very high damage from high ground (and are lucky enough in Act 1 to get a powerful bow guaranteed to spawn after a moderately difficult fight early-on). Rogues get their incredible Backstab damage with knives, while one-handed warriors with shields (the supposed tank, suffering in the early game) start to scale fast as their shields get high armor and Bouncing Shield veers into ridiculous damage. Mages can join in on the fun with most Necromancy attacks, such as Infect and Mosquito Swarm, which deal physical damage.
- Huntsmen in particular get access to the Ballistic Shot skill, which grants 5% bonus damage per 1m distance away. As archers are almost always positioned at the fringes of the battlefield and on high ground, it is laughably easy to arrange a 20+ meter shot for more than 100% bonus damage. Less heavily-armored enemies can go down in a single hit, and, in the endgame, it's common for regular attacks to hit around the thousands given the right conditions.
- State-changing arrows. What prevents regular state-changing skills from utterly destroying the game balance are their cooldowns: Sure, you can knock down an enemy this turn, but you'll have to wait 4 or 5 turns to do it again. Arrows, being items, have no cooldown whatsoever: As long as you have enough arrows, you can easily destroy an enemy's Physical Armor with the Ranger's absurd DPS before stunlocking the poor victim with Knock Down arrows. In addition, since Physical damage and Magical damage form a Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors strategy within the game, having magical arrows allows you to make a strong Physical damage attacker who can easily switch to doing magical damage on a whim, without having to spend precious points building up Intelligence. Electric arrows in particular are incredibly easy to mass-produce, as their arrowheads can be created from teeth (you'll need a spare blade to shape them accordingly, but that's also easy to acquire). And if you got the perk to have a 1/3 chance not to waste an arrow upon firing it, boy...
- The Lone Wolf talent is ostensibly designed to help a two-person party overcome the shortcomings of having a half-size party and a disadvantage in numbers. Invested attribute and combat points are doubled, each party member gets an additional 2 AP and max AP to work with, Vitality gets a 30% boost, and Armor even a 60% boost. In practice, this quickly results in two unstoppable juggernauts with a tremendous amount of front-loaded power, capable of easily disabling enemy groups before they can act. By level four you have the power of a level eight, by level eight you have the power of a level sixteen, and by level sixteen you are nearly double the strength of the game's normal level cap.
- A good number of skills are extremely powerful, and abusing them can break the game in half.
- Fane is easily the strongest of the six available party members due to his Time Warp source ability. For a mere two AP, one Source Point, and a three turn cooldown, Fane can target any ally (including himself) and give them another turn once they finish their first. This allows for some truly strong tactics, like building Fane with high Finesse and Scoundrel to maximize the amount of backstab damage he gets in a turn, or building a Fane with high Intelligence and Aerothurge/Pyromancy/Geomancy/whatever spellcasting skill you want to maximize the coverage of your spells. Even if Fane isn't in a situation to take advantage of Time Warp, he can always give it to another party member and allow them to truly shine. Lastly, the skill costs 0 Memory, meaning it can remain equipped permanently. Simply put, there is not a single archetype in the game that cannot benefit from this spell, and it's often recommended to try and fit Fane into your party somewhere so that you can take advantage of this.
- Teleport. Just like the first game, it's worth it to go Aerothurge just for this skill alone, let alone the dozens of other useful spells in that grouping. The main reason it's so useful is that it is a general purpose spell, and can be used for everything from navigation to setting up traps to collecting items and so on. It can also be used to open a fight, which can allow you to destroy the difficulty of certain fights by teleporting boss enemies straight into devastating traps. The best example of this is the fight against the Sallow Man in Act III. His lair is inside an active volcano, which means there's lava everywhere. Merely touching lava is an instant kill, which means all you have to do is use Terrain Transfusion to bring the lava to you, then line up your aerothurge in just the right way to teleport him into the lava and take him out of the fight instantly.
- In general, jump skills are very strong. Phoenix Dive, Tactical Retreat, Cloak and Dagger and Spread Your Wings are one to two AP spells that instantly teleport the spellcaster to an area within range. While the skills are not unilaterally the same and have their respective quirks, the ability to completely ignore the majority of surfaces by leaping right over them is too good to ignore. Because each one of these skills requires a minor two point investment to be able to use, it's recommended to devote at least one level of skill points to spec into them and reaping the benefits of your enhanced movement. Even better, all four of the schools these spells come from (Warfare, Hunstman, Scoundrel, and Polymorph) are very commonly built, with Phoenix Dive in particular being an incredible help to any frontline fighter.
- Adrenaline is the ultimate Scoundrel skill, and one which pushes Scoundrel into being one of the best skill groups in the game. For a measly single point of skill investment and one point of Memory to be able to cast it, Adrenaline allows you to immediately gain two AP in exchange for losing two AP next turn. It cannot be overstated how useful this skill is- need someone dead on your Rogue but lack the AP for one last attack? Pop Adrenaline. Need to cast one final spell to set up a powerful combo but lack the AP to do so? Pop Adrenaline. Need to heal to survive the enemies' attack but have run out of AP? Pop Adrenaline. The ability to squeeze out even a little bit more AP from your current turn can make the difference between life and death, as well as help equalize the action economy between you and your enemies. Adrenaline can also synergize with every other skill tree perfectly, since many powerful combos can be achieved with it that are otherwise limited by the amount of AP you get per turn. Lastly, the negative two AP penalty can be somewhat mitigated with Flesh Sacrifice or Haste. All in all, Adrenaline is a truly powerful skill that works well on any build, and causes Rogues to be top tier damage dealers all on its own.
- Enrage causes all melee attacks to automatically crit at the cost of silencing the user. While normally this is used for burst damage in two-handed strength builds, dual-wielding rogues can get in on the fun by maxxing out their Wits. Every point in Wits increases crit damage by ten percent, allowing you to set Wits to twenty and causing your damage to double on every crit strike. Enrage, pop Adrenaline, and watch as you start one-shotting everything in an encounter.
- The Skin Graft skill resets all cooldowns, which allows for enormous burst damage, especially when paired with Adrenaline and Flesh Sacrifice to generate extra action points. The main limitations of the skill are that it costs Source and it can only be used once per fight, but this can be circumvented by making Skin Graft scrolls, which have no such limitations. It's possible to stockpile a huge number of scrolls via crafting, which allows for effectively unlimited action points in conjunction with Adrenaline, which is exactly as absurd as it sounds.
- Apotheosis is a fifth-tier Polymorph skill with an expensive two AP and three Source Point cost that can only be used once per battle. What does it do? Why, it merely sets all Source Skills to use no Source points for two turns. You know, those Too Awesome to Use Source point Skills that drain from your Source resource? For two turns, those effectively become regular spells, which means it is possible to pop Apotheosis, instantly use a level three Source Skill to decimate the battlefield, pop Skin Graft next turn to reset your cooldowns, and then cast that spell again. There are very few enemies that can survive two level three Source Skills being dropped on top of them, whether that's an area of effect Skill like Meteor Swarm, or a single target Skill like Onslaught. This combo arguably synergizes the best with Totems of the Necromancer, which can be used to spawn two bone totems that deal 100% damage per turn for every enemy in the area of effect.
- The humble First Aid skill is a solid heal that comes with the added benefit of cleansing every single commonly occurring status effect in the entire game and applying Rested. While First Aid is from the Huntsman skill group (which is best for long-range archers) the skill has a range of eight meters, which is often just enough to apply it to anyone somewhat close by the caster. Since Hunstman characters rely so much on their high-ground bonuses, this skill also helps with cleansing nasty status effects that could potentially affect their accuracy, with the Rested bonus making their following turn even stronger. Coupled with its low investment of one point in Huntsman and a single point of AP to cost, this can be a reliable emergency healing skill on any frontline fighter.
- Living on the Edge prevents your HP from dropping below 1 point for two turns. This is insanely strong to say the least, since you essentially become invincible for two turns. While crowd control can still effect you, chugging potions that allow you to resist status effects can be a strong method of countering this. Living on the Edge also synergizes very well with other Necromancy skills, like Death Wish, which gives you a damage bonus depending on how much health you're missing, and Shackles of Pain, which causes any damage you receive to be redirected at your foes. Enemies are usually smart enough to not attack a character that has Shackles of Pain on them, so you can drop down to 1 HP, pop Shackles on yourself, and then heal back up to full with potions to continue your assault while enemies deliberately ignore you. For some added fun, bring Forced Exchange to swap HP totals with an enemy, allowing you to heal back to full while they lose almost all of their health in a single turn. Lastly, the spell synergizes amazingly with Last Rites, which does a hefty amount of damage to you in exchange for bringing a fallen ally back to life with full health. With Living on the Edge applied, Last Rites is basically a free full revive, and combined with the aforementioned Shackles of Pain can turn any Necromancer into a surprisingly effective revival machine.
- The combination of Chicken Claw and Rupture Tendons is an incredibly reliable way to deal noticeable damage. Chicken Claw forces the affected target to run away as much as possible, and Rupture Tendons deals piercing damage whenever they move, giving a solid damage option for Scoundrels at the mere cost of 2 Polymorph points. And that's without saying that the polymorphed enemy may decide to go through Fire or Necrofire surfaces while not having any Magic Armor...
- Green Tea Leaves, bought from Lady Kemm in Arx. -1 AP cost to all skills, lasts a decently hefty 2 turns, and doesn't cost any AP to consume. -1 AP effectively doubles the number of skills you can do per turn, making it especially useful for builds with lots of skills that use 2 AP or frequently use basic attacks. If that's not enough, you can craft them with a tea pot (of which, Lady Kemm provides free of use in her room) to boost that up to -2 AP, letting you spam some of the costliest skills with impunity.
- The Five-Star Diner talent combined with the Soul Mate spell and a Huge health potion will quickly make any encounter with an undead enemy trivial.This is because the undead can only heal through poison so regular healing hurts them and the Soul Mate spell can target anyone regardless of armour.
- It should be noted that unlike skills, food, potions and scrolls do not have any cooldown and can be used over and over.
- Telekinesis can turn out to be one thanks to Good Bad Bugs. The idea is that you can use Telekinesis to throw objects at your enemies, dealing damage based on how heavy the object is. Objects can be heavy enough to have the potential to deal One-Hit Kills on virtually anyone, even bosses. So, to discourage spamming this tactic, Telekinesis also damages whatever you dropped on top of the target. There is a major oversight, however, in that there are containers (such as Backpacksnote or certain Chestsnote ) that can't take damage from any sources (including Telekinesis itself), aided by the fact that the objects placed inside the containers also increase the container's weight (and thus the damage dealt by Telekinesis) while not taking any damage when used to attack enemies. With patience, grabbing whatever heavy objects you can to add it to one of those invulnerable containers, you can rack up ridiculous amounts of damage and one-shot whole groups of enemies in very few turns (because lifting an object with Telekinesis only spends one Action Point).
- In Arx, there is a woman that you can take a loan out with. It can be a small loan all the way to a massive loan. The only thing to note is she takes a vial of your blood as collateral, and if you don't repay the loan before the final boss, she will suddenly appear and will instantly kill your party. However, if you go behind her house, you can sneak into the basement where your blood vial is. If you are careful, you can sneak in and take it, or you can just bust in and kill everyone, including the woman, in a not particularly difficult fight(which also nets you some pretty good gear). Either way, you no longer have to worry about repaying the loan, and with the largest loan, you can essentially buy anything and everything you need for the rest of the game.
