Divinity: Original Sin and Dragon Commander

There is a mod for it in the first one, it makes the rolls just go off the charisma stat. Was thinking about picking it up.

Oh god that sounds like a must have. I will admit to using the RPS system to game my character's personality tags some, but it's really an awful system.

I think I've done everything I could do in the Fort Joy camp. It's kind of difficult to decide in which order to do things, since the first fights (where you couldn't equip yourself decently yet) all seem slightly over your weigth class. Right now my party is Lohse (summoning, water magic for support and decent with a bow), Fane (full wizard), Red Prince (sword and shield fighter) and Ahmed (twin daggers rogue). I couldn't find the dwarf main character anywhere, though. Oh well, I'm pretty happy with the party as it is, now that they all have decent armor values. I just need to find a few healing potions.

Now I'll try exploring the cave with the fire slugs, and then I guess it's time to break into the actual Fort.

edited 24th Sep '17 3:01:52 AM by Cozzer

....Who?

I'm assuming it's your custom made PC?

edited 24th Sep '17 7:34:58 AM by Ghilz

Ifan Ben-Mezd, maybe?

How do you get from Ifan to Ahmed?

Those have exactly one letter in common!

Ben-Mezd sounds like an Arabic surname. Ibn/bin/ben means "son of", and I'd be curious to know what Mezd means.

That's *how* bad I am with names.

...but yes, I meant Ifan. That said, this game certainly has an Early Game Hell. Now that my party is full equipped and knows a few key skills, fights are definitely more manageable.

edited 24th Sep '17 9:01:13 AM by Cozzer

Most isometric RPGs tend to have a case of Early Game Hell; Wasteland, Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, Baldur's Gate, and a lot of others are almost always pretty punishing at the beginning. I recall being pretty frustrating with PoE at the beginning, but eventually once you start building up your party it really gets much more manageable. I actually found Original Sin to be more frustrating than the sequel in its Early Game Hell, especially with how wide open, yet level-gated, each section of Cyseal was.

True. I disliked how you basically had to do all the "talky" Cyseal parts at once to get your characters to Level 4, so that they could tackle the easiest outside-Cyseal zone. This meant that I spent hours thinking "well, I sure would like a few fights", and then I got bored of fighting with almost no dialogue. The rest of the game was definitely better at pacing its gameplay.

Eh, you could get into a few scraps within Cyseal before level 4. The graveyard and underground for example, though if you followed the tunnels outside the city you'd be dead meat.

But I think that was intentional. You get a combat tutorial and then Cyseal acts as an unofficial "interaction tutorial", that ultimately results in you leaving Cyseal when you've got four geared up party members with a range of skills.

Anyway, just made it to Sacred Stone in my DOS 1 EE game, and then my partner and I stole every scrap of tenebrium in the town, teleported out and spent two hours crafting and sorting gear. xD I love this game so much.

I finished Act 1! The last boss was quite hard, but also an interesting melee-a-trois fight. I managed to win only by bringing two Seeker NP Cs with me (they both died but they were pretty useful, especially their armor-restoring skills) and by starting the fight from upper ground. Also, Lohse was first in initiative order and she used her very first action point to take the oil barrel next to her in her inventory. The fight would have gone very differently if the enemies could use it to slow us or make it explode during the first turns.

Obiviously, as soon as Act 2 started I spent half an hour respeccing my P Cs (I wasn't sure about what I wanted them to do during their first levels) and neatly sorting all armors and magic items I had. I'm not sure about keeping the Red Prince as a pure tank or respeccing him to a greatsword user. On one hand, he has great armor values... on the other, he's really lacking at offense. Thank the gods for the free and simple respeccing, I love this series for the way it just grants the player Anti-Frustration Features without fearing it's breaking some stupid taboo or something.

Also, I'm playing Lohse as kind of flirty... which resulted in her suddenly boning Fade. The scene was funny enough that I'm going to keep it in the canon of my playthrough, everybody should do it even if they reload later.

Also, oh hai other characters. I think I won't ever use them, so I can keep their stories for an eventual second playthrough.

edited 28th Sep '17 1:36:49 AM by Cozzer

Actually never found that to be the case of Tyranny or Baldur's Gate.

Wasteland and Wasteland 2 for sure.

edited 28th Sep '17 6:19:41 AM by Ghilz

The first Baldur's Gate is open-ended enough that you can wander into some pretty newbie-unfriendly zones if you stray from the main quest too early and the iron plague destroying your weapons (possibly even your armour if you don't think it through) can be a real kick in the teeth. But yeah, with 1st-level D&D, you're supposed to be taking it slow.

Beast as a dual-wielding wind-and-water-casting close combat monster is turning out to be pretty awesome. I've given Ifan (specced as a Metamorph) some Necromancy, and he's become a respectable, surprisingly mobile two-handed tank. For the Prince, my main, I've sunk almost all my points into Summoning and Leadership and haven't regretted it, with a few points in Scoundrel for added mobility and a point in a couple of the elements for some extra party support spells. Lohse's a Wayfarer with pyromancy at the moment, but I'm not really feeling archery so far. I might end up rebuilding her into more of a pure caster.

I've escaped the Joy, too. That battle with Alexandar and pretty much everything to do with your new ship was awesome. Even seeing the party members I didn't pick get their final word in as spirits was pretty cool. Bye Fane. See ya, Sebille.

Having made it to the mainland, all the enemies seem to be Level 12 to my Level 10. I'm guessing this is a Cyseal situation and I'm supposed to head straight to Driftwood and level up a bit more, but that quest with the kid's parents in the fort seems like the kind of thing that might be time-sensitive.

I gave the sequel a shot recently due to hearing a lot of praise and I haven't been disappointed.

Apparently you can respec in Act 2. Is this unlimited, or a one time deal?

As many times as you want. The best part is you don't have to relearn any skills, unlike the respect of the first game.

are you talking about the kid whose mother is across the raised bridge? I'm not aware of any time-sensitive quests on Act 2.

edited 28th Sep '17 2:41:00 PM by ITNW1989

That's the one, yeah. Cool, okay, because that ambush on the road past the graveyard is kicking my ass. Unless you can cut through the graveyard.

So, I'm strolling through Driftwood, just talking with people and doing the smaller sidequests (the one about the wedding ring, and the one where you can help the guy in the fish barrel). The story is way better than the one of the first game, without losing that quirky Larianness.

I like this game, but I swear, you'd never beleive the game actually was in early access or tested sometimes.

"Hey bob, lets make a quest that requires an npc to use teleport on the player." "Brilliant. Now lets go with a passive that reflect damage to enemies. So when the npc teleports the player, the damage we coded in the teleport spell for reasons that will never make sense to anyone, reflects on the NPC and he aggros, rendering the quest impossible to finish."

Yeah, the damage on Teleport always confused me. Like, I get it, someone's getting dropped out of midair, but it's not like Teleport's damage is ever even that useful. It's always a pitifully pathetic amount of damage regardless of Aerothurge level or Intelligence.

At least this time you can use it on your companions and not lose any Attitude with them. In the first game you risked the companion leaving you if you teleported them.

edited 30th Sep '17 8:39:42 PM by ITNW1989

Huh, didn't know about the chance of them leaving in the first game. Good to know, I've been trying it out again. Was able to get a bit further with it. The pirate cave is a pretty huge dungeon. And it's optional, right?

The dude with the teleportation quest only goes hostile if you teleport him to the wrong spot. It's not the beach, it's the ledge underneath you. Then you have to teleport him across to the fort. Then he abandons you, so it's not like you really miss much by botching the quest. You can still teleport your party down to the beach and an entrance to Fort Joy's dungeons.

The cost of all this open-endedness is a certain amount of bugs I mean emergent gameplay. It's a small price to pay, and they've been pretty good about supporting the game with hotfixes.

So what are you supposed to do about the diseased woman in the tent, incidentally?

edited 30th Sep '17 9:21:26 PM by Unsung

Nothing; she doesn't want to be healed, and if you try to cure her Diseased status, either by Frost Armor or First Aid, she'll furiously rant about how you've ruined it and turn hostile. She's the vendor for Necromancy skills, though, so there's also that.

Mind, there was a non-damaging teleport spell in the first game. It was hilariously broken.

Plus you've got the pyramids right? Use those. I'm pretty sure that's why they took out the Feather Fall spell.

No he goes hostile if you got any point in retribution when he hits you with teleport.

Anyway, I like the story much more, but I find the combat... less fun than the first game. Larian clearly fell in love too much with their own magic system. "Here's an enemy that can create poison everywhere. Now lets team him up with someone who can breathe fire/has grenades/etc" Every encounter has enemies designed to turn the entire battlefied into fire/poison/lightning. And it's just.... not fun anymore. Every fight is an identical clusterfuck of explosions.

edited 1st Oct '17 12:06:18 AM by Ghilz

Yeah, regarding the Reaper's Coast, the area directly west of Driftwood has is the lowest lv zone, as I recall.

After that there's the cemetery to the east. In general, things get harder the further north you go.

Anyway, the pyramids are so great. Once I had all 4 along with mobility skills on 3 members of the party I never had any problems getting around.

Speaking of which, I was unable to finish the quest with the two cows in the Driftwood Meadows. I gave the potion to one of them and tried to make a potion for the other, but neither my journal nor the cow went through any change.

edited 1st Oct '17 1:46:58 AM by joergenjetsam