update: last night they killed a god, and then consummated their relationship extremely awkwardly
i really love how the romance options for Ifan are clearly uh, not written with him falling in love with a grouchy skeleton in mind, it really elevates the level of absurdity. him reminiscing about how Fane looked when the rain soaked through his clothes…
I have no idea what I’m doing. I did a side quest helping some jerk escape Fort Joy but he abandoned my party. I fell into a hole which brought me to the crypt of the castle that has three possible paths out, all of which are blocked by enemies that are much stronger than my party. Surely the whole game isn’t a series of trial and error save scum states…right? I mean, for all of the accolades this game has received it’s just as clumsy and inscrutable as every other crpg I’ve attempted.
I assume I must be the issue though.
Can someone tell me how to find the fun? I am genuinely interested in the world building and character beats but apparently I’ve really screwed up somehow.
If you’re where it sounds like you are, in the holding cells area, there should be a safe path out via a locked door (opposite side of the room from the houndmaster fight). Just smash it down if you can’t pick it. If youre not there then uhh sorry
As someone who took a few tries to find the fun with this game, i can tell you that it’s the most frustrating at the start when seemingly everything can kill you very easily. The tips u_u provided just upthread were really helpful for me. Basically, you benefit a lot early on from just exploring and doing what side quests you can find until you have some more exp. Level scaling is really harsh so if you’re equal to or higher level than an enemy, it makes a big difference
That guy was just 1 way of escaping and is really meant to show you the power of teleportation, which you should abuse constantly for fun and profit. This is definitely kind of a clunky inscrutable crpg but it’s one you can break in your favor with some lateral thinking
Ooh and the #1 thing that helped me besides the teleport gloves was learning you can switch characters and freely arrange everyone into strategic positions while one of them is engaging in dialogue. Setting your party members up in advance keeps of all of your guys from immediately getting immolated at the start of every fight which is what was happening to me for awhile. You can even have a party member cast spells while “outside” an ongoing battle and get brought in after the fact, the barrier between combat and non-combat is more permeable than you might assume
Yeah there’s a lot of bullshit in act 1 but i think this might be one of the worst fuckups you can very plausibly wander into accidentally. it’s a shortcut for sure but taking it means you will bypass like 50% of that part of the game, it feels like it should have been a bit better hidden.
there is other stuff like that so it’s probably good to get in the habit of saving any time you are about to like open a door or enter a cave or anything like that. sad but true.
the other option is just to use online guides and shit. idk what your philosophy on that is but it doesn’t bother me too much. the one big one that comes up whenever you google anything is pretty good about avoiding plot spoilers, but some amount of spoilage is inevitable obviously.
i guess otherwise the ‘trial and error’ aspect of it is part of the ‘fun’. in that case it is like @sleepysmiles says it is theoretically possible to get back into the town rather than try to go through the dungeon that leads outside town. the latter is possible but yeah you’re probs ridiculously underleveled to do it without lots of cheap maneuvers. if you do happen to make it out be aware that if you ever want to go back into the town/prison camp thing all magisters will try to kill you on sight lol
so anyway what i mean is i think the intent behind shit like that is working your way out of a tricky predicament is kind of what the game is all about. but if that isn’t your think just read a walkthrough. in my opinion the combat and story stuff is more satisfying than any of the insanely convoluted ‘actions have seemingly random and disastrous consequences’ quest design model, but… somethin for everyone i guess. just save constantly!
a weird thing about the game is that a huge amount of the game, both in combat and just general navigation stuff, is built around shit like teleport, movement abilities that let you leap to otherwise unreachable areas, and teleportation pyramids, which you will eventually find 4 of. the game doesn’t really telegraph any of it that clearly but you are definitely always meant to be looking for spots to transport yourself to that in other games would feel like sequence breaking.
Ok, this is a relief to know. it certainly felt like extraordinarily bad luck. Dating all the way back to Morrowind, I’ve had this knack for completely fucking up western RPG’s in a similar fashion. Just something about them stymies me at certain points.
I think maybe @Felix mentioned that the writing is what Bioware strives to be, which feels spot on. Although what I’ve seen of the upcoming Baldur’s Gate game has me concerned that maybe the studio trending more towards that style?
The positive news is that I seemed to have a good handle on the battle system. Even going into a fight with the few options that were available to me felt extremely complex but approachable. I’m looking forward to seeing how this is layered on later in the game.
like a lot of western RPGs, the beginning of the game is harder than most of the rest of it, because designers that crib from D&D don’t know how to make low level characters interesting. the best is baldur’s gate, where you can play any D&D class, so long as you don’t touch any of them until baldur’s gate 2
My gf and I started playing this co-op the other day. The moment that really hooked us was when we pissed off the prison gang leader and had to fight his entire crew at once. We died terribly, but the battle system is such crunchy brain candy strategy! After fucking around with Paper Mario: The Origami King for the last few weeks, it feels so much better to play an RPG with teeth that motivates you to strengthen your party and consider your strategy.
I’m maining Fane as a summoner, with the Red Prince as a fighter/tank secondary. My gf is maining Beast as a wayfarer, with Lohse as an enchanter secondary. It seems like a solid team so far, but we definitely need to do all the side quests to get strong enough to take on some of the harder fights. Are we supposed to be able to do the basement arena fight during this first chapter, or is that a come-back-later thing? Cuz it is really hard!
the first chapter is a lot of everything feeling impossible because you’re maybe 1 or 2 levels too weak for it and haven’t figured out the strategy yet, and prodding just a little farther in any direction makes you exponentially more capable. so generally if you feel like you absolutely aren’t strong enough for something yet, you’re right, but as soon as you feel the least bit more empowered you can probably do it after all. it’s good.
how does co op work in this? it seems like there are a lot of mechanics that seem to exist solely to enable you to fuck with other human players. ranging from the minor (you can dye poison red to disguise it as a healing potion) to the major (you can fight over who gets to ascend to divinity at the end, potentially to the death)
but it’s hard for me to conceptualize what it would be like if you were actually decent at cooperating. also doing this with two separate monitors seems a lot more manageable than using the split screen thing. is that a console only thing…? it seems like it would be bad.
We’re playing on PS4 on a 55’ TV. You divide up your party members by player, so she and I are each controlling 2 of them. When you’re near each other, you appear on the same screen, but player 1 controls the camera. When you get too far away from each other, the screen splits. Splitscreen is never ideal, but it mostly works well enough, except for instances where you’re hovering around the splitting distance and the screen keeps splitting and unsplitting. But you can press a button to lock in the split to avoid that. Menus are also split-screen, so you can each be leveling up or doing item stuff at the same time. You CAN have two conversations going at once, but the game mutes the voices in one of them so it’s not chaos. Still, we avoid doing that so we can both focus on each particular conversation.
I haven’t played single player, but it seems to me like it’s just the same experience, except that the two of you can multitask out of battle, and then when you’re in battle you control your own assigned characters. I know there are weird competitive game mechanics like what you describe, but I think I read somewhere that there’s a competitive play option, or something? I dunno. The game has never tried to put us in competition with each other so far.
We’re still early game, but so far it’s working alright. It’s a little clumsy sometimes, but playing a game like this co-op is a rare experience and we’re having fun with it.
P.S. Local co-op is definitely available on PC too, as we messed around a LITTLE bit with it in Divinity OS 1 a while back. It’s hard to get two different kinds of controllers working on a PC at once and recognized as players 1 and 2 though, so it was too much hassle to continue. That’s why we skipped ahead to this one and got it on PS4, where connecting controllers is a simpler affair.
i didn’t realize the first d:os had co-op, i assumed arguing with myself was the intended (weirdly enjoyable) experience
that’s really cool, it sounds fun. maybe we will finally get a second controller one day and try it …
Escaped Fort Joy, and entered a new area. Found a maze and wormed my way through only to encounter a group of OP’d fire skeletons and got wrecked…
Pushed to another area and found a cave where I was ambushed by a witch and her minions and got wrecked…
Tried a third direction in the forest and ran into some undead and a mini boss and got wrecked…
Well, “wrecked” probably isn’t the way I’d describe it but I was very clearly going to lose so I loaded previous saves. My party currently is level 5 and the enemies I’m encountering are level 6. At this point, I’m just going to avoid battle at all costs. I’ll try for better gear but gathering enough gold to deck out my party is out of the question. When I looked up ways to earn more gold, it seemed the best method was just to upgrade a character’s thievery and rob everyone…for the entire game length? Of course in order to level up you have to fight but if every enemy you encounter is stronger then that makes leveling up a tricky proposition doesn’t it.
I’m frustrated because the exploration, atmosphere and writing are all clearly excellent but combat and progression just sucks right now.
You could try going back into Fort Joy and just killing every magister you see. At this point you’re probably well equipped to fight them, and it’ll get you more EXP and loot.
Every playthrough I’ve done, one of us specializes in pickpocketing and the other one talks to the mark to distract them while we steal everything. Then we run away very very quickly.
I’ve been doing precisely this and having quite a good time. It’s interesting how Western RPG’s tend to be centered around “breaking the game” and finding ways to either cheese the enemies you face or screw over well meaning NPCs, while JRPGs tend to be about the grind. Can’t help but think that mirrors our respective cultures. Not exactly original analysis but I figured I would reiterate it again.
Just got done rescuing Gareth and that fight was really fun. The main quest line seems to be perfectly calibrated to where my party is at right now, so I’ll probably stick to that for now and clean up any sidequests before I leave the area.
I’m really putting a premium on skills rather than brute strength, is that wise? Of course I am upgrading weapons when possible but the skills obviously turn the tide in a tough battle. Does upgrading intelligence strengthen these skills or do I just pump more points into that skill (necromancer, huntsman, etc) to get stronger?
the way the various points correspond to damage in different skill types is really confusing and there are tons of exceptions.
in the attributes, strength affects damage of melee weapons (except spears and daggers), finesse affects ranged weapons plus spears and daggers for some reason, and intelligence affects spells (but not all “skills”)
in the combat attributes, most of them do what they seem like they should, except necromancy doesn’t actually affect damage of necromancy spells. a few others are like this too. instead i think most necromancy skills scale of your base physical damage level?
it’s weird but i think the tooltip things actually do explain it clearly, the problem is it’s very complicated and hard to remember.
Yeah, I’m going to have to clarify this because I’m running Fane as my main character and focusing on necromancy.
I did not like divinity 2 and I’m irritated with the divinity people even more now for trying to shame me for always wanting to play as the most generic looking person possible. I don’t even like making my own character in a game to begin with, I didn’t ask for this!