Anyone played Divinity: Original Sin?

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

To add, I've been quite lucky this year. I never played XCOM when it came out, only this past Feb/Mar. I finally played The Witcher 2 also, since I'd first played it on release when the game's start was brutal (fixed by the EE). And D:OS, I picked up on the last day or so of the Steam Summer Sale. All these three are fantastic and I'm lucky to have had these great games to play so far. With Project Eternity to come this Autumn 2014 has been a good year.

I may or may not pick up DA: Inquisition, will wait to see what the jury says on that first. Or may wait until an edition comes out a year from now with all the DLCs at a standard price included since I can't be arsed with that system anymore.

If you pick up the game and want any pointers please feel free to ask.

 

[Jason Rayes]

You have disables, buffs, status effects etc. I am only in the second chapter atm, beginning (24h played, did nearly all sidequests I could find and found all hidden treasures, there are three chapters total), and each encounter against same level enemies has me combining spell effects, buffing my melee characters to increase their movement, cutting off pathways for the enemies through tar-field (that by the way are explosive and leave burning ground that really hurts, one of my tactics is just expanding it to keep the enemies confined in it).

It has a very good combat system focused on using elements. Very often you'll need to use the environments combined with elemental magic and the environments' elements to defeat the enemy. I love the combat system, best one in a RPG years, in my opinion. At the beginning, the fights will be somewhat difficult, getting easier after a while. You need strategy: combine elements and magic spells, consider your moves, think about positioning your characters etc.

You guys are very close to selling me a copy of Divinity, but I'd like a little clarification on what you're saying here...is the game entirely magic focused in terms of its tactical meat? If I opted to make a caster-less party, would I still have all kinds of beefy options like the ones described? Or is it very magic heavy?

Magic is pretty important. It pays to have a diverse party I think. I have two knights in the front row. Back row I had a cleric and a mage skilled in 3 schools. You might be able to manage with no magic at all but with no way to remove some of the crippling status effects you would be in deep trouble in some battles. Not to mention a good mage can turn the tide. That said I wouldn't say the game is entirely magic focused though, there is a synergy between all the classes. Without my knights there on the front row everything would have been lost. But without my cleric keeping them alive my knights wouldn't have been able to hold. Without the knights my mage wouldn't have survived to cast his spells. So its all about working things together. An all mage party would be toast for example.

 

[EternallyBored]

Pretty much echoing what other people have already said, although to add, at end game, if you get OCD with resistance gear you can kind of break the combat system by making it so you take 0 damage from any element, and with high armor you end up with basically invincible tanks and stupidly hard to kill mages as well.

Theres also two items you can buy over and over again periodically that give permanent boosts to skill and stat points which, given enough time, allowed me to create a mage that knew every spell in the game as well as having both maxed intelligence and speed which gives incredible damage and AP recovery and with glass cannon perk it basically creates a nuke cannon mage that can summon meteors, earthquakes, and lightning storms in a single turn, and if properly geared, those attacks will both annihilate the enemy, and heal your tanks at the same time.

There are some kind of annoyingly esoteric puzzles, that seem to involve convoluted point and click game logic to solve, but there's also usually clever workarounds to a lot of puzzles too, especially using the pyramids to teleport your party across gaps and around areas you can bypass a lot of annoying fights, puzzles and key quests just with those pyramids, a high strength or telekinesis character to throw them, and a good lockpicking skill

 

[Zhukov]

Mechanically adequate and well put together. Complex enough to be interesting, although it's kind of unbalanced and you'll have to handicap yourself to avoid breaking the game.

Writing is bloated, interminable and utterly uninspired. It feels like DnD fanfiction written by an engineer or, more likely, a programmer.

UI was okay, nothing great but neither did it have me swearing at the screen. Only complaint is that there's no shared inventory, which is a miserable pain unless you enjoy old-achool item-shuffling busywork.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

There are some kind of annoyingly esoteric puzzles, that seem to involve convoluted point and click game logic to solve, but there's also usually clever workarounds to a lot of puzzles too, especially using the pyramids to teleport your party across gaps and around areas you can bypass a lot of annoying fights, puzzles and key quests just with those pyramids, a high strength or telekinesis character to throw them, and a good lockpicking skill

yeah definitely would double this, not sure why I didn't mention it earlier....the game is very..."fluid" in the way you can react with the environment or solve puzzles, there are tons of random work arounds or shortcuts that sometimes you can't quite tell if the developer intended for that to be a possibility or just built the system in such a way that critical thinking and some imagination can get you through tough spots.

 

[Jason Rayes]

There are some kind of annoyingly esoteric puzzles, that seem to involve convoluted point and click game logic to solve, but there's also usually clever workarounds to a lot of puzzles too, especially using the pyramids to teleport your party across gaps and around areas you can bypass a lot of annoying fights, puzzles and key quests just with those pyramids, a high strength or telekinesis character to throw them, and a good lockpicking skill

yeah definitely would double this, not sure why I didn't mention it earlier....the game is very..."fluid" in the way you can react with the environment or solve puzzles, there are tons of random work arounds or shortcuts that sometimes you can't quite tell if the developer intended for that to be a possibility or just built the system in such a way that critical thinking and some imagination can get you through tough spots.

The Feather Drop spell is invaluable for these type of situations.

 

[EternallyBored]

There are some kind of annoyingly esoteric puzzles, that seem to involve convoluted point and click game logic to solve, but there's also usually clever workarounds to a lot of puzzles too, especially using the pyramids to teleport your party across gaps and around areas you can bypass a lot of annoying fights, puzzles and key quests just with those pyramids, a high strength or telekinesis character to throw them, and a good lockpicking skill

yeah definitely would double this, not sure why I didn't mention it earlier....the game is very..."fluid" in the way you can react with the environment or solve puzzles, there are tons of random work arounds or shortcuts that sometimes you can't quite tell if the developer intended for that to be a possibility or just built the system in such a way that critical thinking and some imagination can get you through tough spots.

The Feather Drop spell is invaluable for these type of situations.

I usually find throwing one of the pyramids works better in any situation outside of battle, even getting into a battle, using the pyramid as a way to drop both of my melee characters right into the middle of an enemy group is cheaper on the AP than using two featherfall spells. I usually find featherfall works better during battle when you need to hot drop a melee character into a better position, or move a caster out of the way.

 

[Jason Rayes]

I usually find throwing one of the pyramids works better in any situation outside of battle, even getting into a battle, using the pyramid as a way to drop both of my melee characters right into the middle of an enemy group is cheaper on the AP than using two featherfall spells. I usually find featherfall works better during battle when you need to hot drop a melee character into a better position, or move a caster out of the way.

I had no-one with strong telekinesis in my party but my caster had big range for feather drop. So I would give the pyramid to the person I was sending, put them in hard to reach places (Across gaps/lava) then have them drop the pyramid and port the party across.

Edit: I did use it in battle too, for exactly the same purpose as you. Put Madora right on a big group then whirlwind. Or drop to an annoying foe and flurry them to bloody pieces.

 

[Compatriot Block]

Playing through the campaign with my brother. Love it, fantastic RPG, co-op combat is a blast. Co-op dialogue is interesting at the least.

Only complaint is the market dialogue.

HALIBUH. SHEEP'S CHEESE. TOMAH-OES.

 

[Jason Rayes]

Playing through the campaign with my brother. Love it, fantastic RPG, co-op combat is a blast. Co-op dialogue is interesting at the least.

Only complaint is the market dialogue.

HALIBUH. SHEEP'S CHEESE. TOMAH-OES.

For some reason one of the people in the market there reminds me of Sam from Lord of the Rings when he is describing the uses for potatoes....

 

[Jason Rayes]

I... did not know ANY of that. Wow. Thanks. While I don't have problems in my progress (I realised pretty quick that one level difference is a lot in this game) this will help me quite a bit.

I didn't discover it 'til I was about level 8. Haha, it would have been SO useful early in the game where any little edge helps. But even right until the end of the game I made sure to upgrade my weapons and armour (You'll unlock other places to do so as the game goes on)

 

[Jason Rayes]

Well, I'm level 12 and in the second hub already so I guess it took me a tad longer to learn that.

Well the game never gives you any helping hands in that regard. I just lucked out when wandering around town and found those things behind the general store. It was just by screwing around that I found out how to improve the weapons and armour. I figure there must be a way to improve blunt weapons, I just never found out how. If you use two bits of sinew on each other you can make a bowstring. Im pretty sure if you use that on a bow you can improve it. I never had any bow users so I never tried that one.

 

[Jandau]

I talked about it in another thread a few days ago.

Basically, it's a good game that I can't bear playing. And I don't know why. I love isometric RPGs (BG2 = best game ever made) and it's not like we're overdosing on them these days. I like all the individual pieces of D:OS - the tactical combat, the robust stats and leveling, the elemental interactions, the visual style, etc. But I can't get further than an hour or two into the game before I completely lose interest and can't be bothered to start it up again.

It's like the game is somehow less than the sum of its parts...

 

[Qitz]

oh I know that, believe me that was the first thing I did after my first battle, I meant along the lines of modern rpg's where out of battle you can either "sleep" or just wait and your health auto-heals for you out of combat/in cities, which is why it is important to have a healer and not just throw mages out like I do in most rpg's I play (I typically don't care for mages, but in this game, rogues are fucking garbage for damage and mages are absolutely amazing with their summons and element spells)

Actually you can sleep to heal. You can't sleep right there, as far as I know, but if you find a bed and right-click on it and your characters will sleep in it and you'll heal each tick. Makes for fast recovery when you jump in-and-out of a combat area.

Also, for people wondering how to learn to craft things, outside of the wiki on it, you can pick up and read various books like Fun with Fluids or Adventurers Field Guide and it will tell you things like how to make Health Potions, how to craft an Arrow or an Axe and even give you Cooking recipes. To find them later you can open your Journal and go to Recipes.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Alright, I bought it after some of the strong recommendations here. Put in...I dunno...10-12 hours so far? Still in the first "area". I quite like the combat...I don't know if I'd say it rubs shoulders with pure tactical games, but it comes close. Temple of Elemental Evil seems like the best comparable, although this game clearly has more scope.

Some questions for people with more experience than me...

1. Is there any way to rig it up so you can buy/sell/repair from a single character instead of constantly needing to shuffle items/gold around? Gets very tiresome.

2. I'll occasionally try to melee characters that appear to be in range, and either I'll swipe the empty air (no miss declaration, just...nothing happens) or the command will refuse to go through. Anyone know what's happening there? Is it a bug, or is there some calculation I'm not taking into effect?

3. Does applying oil to an already burning target do anything?

4. What does the status effect "Chilled" mean? Does it affect combat performance in any meaningful way?

5. If you want to improve action point regeneration and availability, what is the best way to do that without compromising your core stats/skills?

 

[DoPo]

1. Is there any way to rig it up so you can buy/sell/repair from a single character instead of constantly needing to shuffle items/gold around? Gets very tiresome.

Well, give one character Blacksmith and/or Barter (if you think you need it) and all the items. I moved around with one of my characters and picked all items with her, then sold them. My other character did the talking, however and held all the quest items, so basically one was the material guy (or actually girl, in my case) as she dealt with possessions (also noteworthy - all keys), the other character handled quests.

My two companions almost didn't touch any equipment - Jahan had some crafting supplies and was occasionally handed my rogue's dagger for repairs but that's mostly it. Madora only held onto equipment/skillbooks she didn't yet have stats/level for.

So in short, that's what I did.

2. I'll occasionally try to melee characters that appear to be in range, and either I'll swipe the empty air (no miss declaration, just...nothing happens) or the command will refuse to go through. Anyone know what's happening there? Is it a bug, or is there some calculation I'm not taking into effect?

No idea, really.

3. Does applying oil to an already burning target do anything?

Some more burning damage, also they can be slowed (not sure, but seems that it worked sometimes for me. Though sometimes it didn't. It didn't seem to be "failing to apply slow", so I'm not sure why the variable result.)

4. What does the status effect "Chilled" mean? Does it affect combat performance in any meaningful way?

Not much, or sometimes a lot. Chilled, by itself, reduces movement speed a bit (not sure by how much, doesn't seem to be worth it) but also gives the target a penalty to water resistance and bonus to fire resistance. However, if you inflict the Chilled status to a target who is Wet, then the target will become Frozen - they can't act at all but also they get bonus armour. Fire/Warm would remove Chilled/Frozen.

5. If you want to improve action point regeneration and availability, what is the best way to do that without compromising your core stats/skills?

Glass Cannon. It doubles your AP generation. OK, true, it kicks in at the second turn of combat but you turn into a death machine at that point. Halving the max HP is not a huge issue. Heck, when you get GC you would probably need to pump Constitution a bit just so that your AP generation is not capped by it, so you'll have enough HP. Also, melee fighters (Madora) and summons tend to attract AI attention. AI is also quite stupid at moments. Do take Zombie with your melee characters (I had it on Madora and my rogue) and those that are capable of it would keep spewing poison on them thus causing no damage but healing them instead. Other resistances can be boosted to 100% and more with some Crafting and/or equipment - having more than 100% resistance heals you when you take damage.

Note that my experience is for an earlier patch version - I think the resistances may have been "balanced" (not sure to what extent) and some other changes may have been made. I know that Larian (attempted?) to fix Leech which was quite powerful, that's why I didn't suggest it. What it used to do is heal your character any time they were in contact with blood, this meant that most of the physical hits they suffered would also heal them for some amount (though usually less than 100% of the damage taken. Depending on what hit you.) but it really shined with the Bloodletting Witchcraft spell which spills so much blood that if you cast it on a character with Leech they'd be instantly healed to full.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Well, give one character Blacksmith and/or Barter (if you think you need it) and all the items. I moved around with one of my characters and picked all items with her, then sold them. My other character did the talking, however and held all the quest items, so basically one was the material guy (or actually girl, in my case) as she dealt with possessions (also noteworthy - all keys), the other character handled quests.

That's sort of what I'm doing now, minus the Blacksmith. I have my main talky/party leader character just carry EVERYTHING and do ALL the selling, it just gets annoying having to route everything through her. Especially when it comes time to repair gear, as I have to hand out money to everyone like they are little kids on hot dog day.

Some more burning damage, also they can be slowed (not sure, but seems that it worked sometimes for me. Though sometimes it didn't. It didn't seem to be "failing to apply slow", so I'm not sure why the variable result.)

I've tried splashing some oil on already burning peeps a few times and nothing seems to come of it, but I haven't played particularly close attention. My archer goes ahead of my Oiler in terms of initiative, so setting up a pool then lighting it up is a fantasy.

Not much, or sometimes a lot. Chilled, by itself, reduces movement speed a bit (not sure by how much, doesn't seem to be worth it) but also gives the target a penalty to water resistance and bonus to fire resistance. However, if you inflict the Chilled status to a target who is Wet, then the target will become Frozen - they can't act at all but also they get bonus armour. Fire/Warm would remove Chilled/Frozen.

God damn. I never thought about using it in conjunction with wet...I was wondering why I got frozen with it that one time and chilled every time thereafter. That's awesome, thank you.

Glass Cannon. It doubles your AP generation. OK, true, it kicks in at the second turn of combat but you turn into a death machine at that point.

I'd heard Glass Cannon was wildly OP and thus avoided it for exactly that reason. I also didn't roll a pure mage...I went for a "Cleric" type character (heavy armor, shield, self heals) and a "Rogue" type (archer, roguey skills, does all the talking/looting). My Cleric seems to suffer the most from AP issues...she's a bit lumbery with all that armor on.

Do take Zombie with your melee characters (I had it on Madora and my rogue) and those that are capable of it would keep spewing poison on them thus causing no damage but healing them instead.

Is that what Zombie does? Heals you with poison?

Question regarding that...once I shot a zombie with the ricochet ability, and every other target hit was "resisting poison". There is no poison on my bow. Did shooting that first poison zombie poison the arrow that went on to hit the other targets? Usually I'd think there wasn't a chance, but with this game I can't be sure...

 

[4RM3D]

Is it worth a purchase at $39?

The game reminds me of the days of Baldur's Gate and Planescape Torment, as in a rich world, no hand-holding, lot of freedom and possibilities.

Anyhow, I just wanted to mention about that $39 price tag... It's $21.45 here [http://www.g2play.net/category/4268/divinity-original-sin-steam-gift/].