f13.net

Larian is back with a kickstarter for a turn based sequel to Divine Divinity. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/larianstudios/divinity-original-sin. I think this is another perfect company for a kickstarted as their quirky games never sold well enough to make them real money but were loved by the fans that played them. Now, with coop multiplayer and shipping the same editor they use to make the game it looks like a winner. Usually I don't like kickstarted threads because of all the people who just have to post about how they wont contribute but seeing as I know we've got a bunch of ppl who played and loved DD I thought I'd spread the word.

You tube link cause the video on the kickstarter page was slow as heck for me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weUPfejQ7xE&hd=1

I really like the looks of this one.

Actually that was a pretty convincing, straightforward salespitch. Feels more honest than some of the sky-in-pie dreams we seen from Kickstarter.

Looking foward.

Impressive. Backed.

Yah.  This is the best gaming Kickstarter I've ever seen really.  They have a solid concept, a prototype that's almost ready for release, and a great design.  Plus they're a small studio who likely need the monies.   Backed.

^ I need this game, too much cynicism inducing shite lately, even for gaming development.

Same. Although I couldn't help being a bit calculating and picked the 'Couples Pack'. 2x digital versions of the game for 40$. That's like 15,5€ for one game.

Now I only need to find one person in the world that likes me and wants to play with me. How hard can that be?!  :crying_panda: :crying_panda:

I already backed this, but I could play with you anyway ;)

Oh, I was kidding a little bit, I already have someone in mind. ^^

But sure, love to, it's not like polygameying among consenting adults is something bad!

On a more general note...judging from the responses so far it seems this is going to be a F13-favourite. Wonder how much they are gonna get from this forum alone...

These guys definitely set a high bar for quality Kickstarter project intro videos.

That's pretty much the only reason I'm considering in on this.  We get a game regardless, but if I pay now I get a game with more content. 

The fact that they're so far along in production is what makes it for me.  Also, super stoked about this game.

This seems to throw a lot of people off really.
It went under the radar - and a lot of people really think this KS is about 'a game under development' and they can contribute ideas and 'change' it according to their tastes.
When they realized it's not really about that, the reaction is kinda cold.
I'm just angry that a lot of people back Torment 2 more than an actual product with gameplay - nearing release this year.

Fucking emotions trumping logic. >:(

Little update:

Kickstarter has 357k out of 400k. 19 days to go. Strech goals announced:

(http://i.imgur.com/zEjNlqk.jpg)

I'm disappointed they haven't hit $400,000 yet, 'cause I've seen less interesting things get more funding in this much time.  I really hope they manage to hit some of the stretch goals, cause I'd love to see all of those things.

Thanks to Falconeer linking a Chris Taylor interview, I found this interview with Swen Vincke (producer, designer) on Divinity: OS and RPGs in general: -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIpfydUsaNw

I don't have the time to watch it right now, so this will be a bit of a naked link.

They hit the 400k already (414k with 16 days left). I am pretty sure they'll reach at least the 650k stretchgoal.

Their tiers are pretty wonky economically. 25$ tier gives you the game, 40$ gives you 2x copies, 65% gives 2 copies and 1 copy of the upcoming Dragon Commander (3D RTS). Assuming the usual steam release-day price of $/€ 49.99 that's a pretty hefty pre-order discount. Especially for us Euros due to the conversion rate.

I'd really like to see it hit the mill. The schedules and cycles would be a huge addition to the series, since Garriot can't be trusted to make an Ultimahaha.

45 hours left: if you combine KS and Paypal, 800k and beyond is achievable.

Latest update: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/larianstudios/divinity-original-sin/posts/462635?ref=activity

If you, like me, enjoyed the original Divine Divinity, take a look at this (video is included in the aforementioned update) :D http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dpGvBZD0q4A


Oh right, I almost forgot: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=22258.0  :raspberry:

TB has a video out on this today with lots of pre-alpha footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuF8ruhjlTY

Actually looks pretty neat.

Yeah, I think this is the game I'm most excited for this year.  Looks just fun.

Including Paypal, they're roughly 100k away from the last stretch goal, with 7 hours to go :thumbs_up:

Livestream going on. http://www.twitch.tv/larianstudios

For $25 (I guess it's $28 now) I still think it's a decent deal, since they're returning to the roots of the series without publisher interference. The first was a good game (better than Diablo by a long shot) and I think a eurorpg studio going indie is a great move.

About 5k short of a million, but they're putting in the awesome stretch goal anyway. That's really cool, it puts this game so much closer to being the game Garriot won't be delivering :)

Yep, they'll include the last stretch goal (NPC schedules, day/night cycle and weather system having also an effect on gameplay/combat) no matter what, at this point. Can't wait for the game! (gee, I spent more on this than Torment, Eternity or Star Citizen)

(http://img.pandawhale.com/43402-Minions-cheering-gif-OrI5.gif)

Ya it's superficial resemblance to Diablo is likely it's worst aspect. It's going to get a lot of people trying to compare it to Diablo when it should be compared to an Ultima like 6 or 7. Same as divine divinity. Not even in the same ballpark much less the same sport as Diablo.

greatest thing is that, bar any delay, unlike other promising KS videogame projects, by next Christmas we'll be feasting on this game  (hopefully with the RPG Editor too)  :eat:

Reminder: if you want to pledge via Paypal, yo'll have two more weeks to do so:

http://www.divinityoriginalsin.com/kickstart.php (right sidebar)

Bumped to early 2014.  Boo.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/09/27/divinity-original-sin-condemned-to-2014/

Edit:  Boo, but I'm okay with it.  This is the game I'm most looking forward to in the next year.  So I'd rather it be right and ready.

Yeah, February. I'm ready for it to be released but good on them for holding off.

They did have some 90min q&a video which told much of nothing, except that they're thinking of letting people sell the games they make with the SDK once Larian figures out the details of how to do that. The rest was "I want to tell you, but I can't" type of answers or "a mod can be built for that."

Alpha is coming...for everyone who backed this project on KS (any tier)....probably within a week or so! very soon!! (yep, too much enthusiasm)   :heart: :heart:

Boom!!  :drill: :drill:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzPS8jJWZZU (update by Project director Sven Vincke)

I KSed this shit the day it started.  Cant wait.  But you're gonna have to because Alpha's not ready.  Also, I had an unwritten rule never to Alpha/Beta big story-driven RPGs like this because, uhhh spoilerz?  However since it's coop and there's an editor I may just break it.

Is Divinity: Original Sin Ready for Alpha Release? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnZYMrWI4BI) Swen Vincke does a short hands-on on the current build.

And the anwer is, Yes. Alpha release date (for Kickstarter backers): 17th December 2013  :-)

It'll have about 10hrs of gameplay.  That's probably about as far as I'll go with it before risking the rest of the storyline.
I'm still more interested in the ruleset (which they haven't divulged) then anything else, because I'm planning on attempting a port to the tabletop that uses the game as a GM emulator.

How's the reddit for this game?  Fruitful?

Same as I said for Eternity; no interest in testing due to spoilers. I'm ok with waiting.

From what I read, the game is shaping up to be VERY big, so if you mess around a lot (which seems possible in D:OS) you won't get really spoilered:

http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=475930

An official "alpha" forum has just been opened:

http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=cfrm&c=17


And if I go to my D:OS KS section on the Larian Vault now it says that "alpha access" now accepts my input (currently I can only choose "Steam" as my key option). It's coming!!  :eat:

https://www.larianvault.com/index.php

EDIT: Article on Eurogamer:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-12-17-tasty-action-rpg-divinity-original-sin-now-playable

I think the keys should go out at  noon EST right?  or is it noon PST?  Cant wait to try this thing.  (only game I've KSed, and you know how I feel about KSing games)

I sometimes wish I liked people enough to co-op. This, Saint's Row, TOR, that's about it.

Alpha release probably still happening today, but:

Alpha just went live.  Larianvault will have your steam key.
Supposedly a shitton of bugs, but I'm gonna give it a gander anyways.

Downloading it, at last!  :drill:

Here's the "alpha's here" announcement:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiFEjWd00Qw

Swen always seems such a posed and well-grounded guy. Hope the guys at Larian will manage to release a great game  :heart:

It's almost Christmas sky, we can play more Swtor.......

My poor old assassin can't camp the champ mobs like our BHs did. Every class should really get a healer companion asap. As dps, I'm pretty much stuck with Khem, as I don't like being left with a sliver of health just burning down an elite mob, let alone champ. And without healing, Khem can't tank a champ though I did get a -4 level champ to about 10% burning CDs.

Yes. I have to admit after watching the kickstarter pitch I developed a little crush, and it was basically why I pledged.  :heart:

Whoa, this game IS good.

Is it immersive?

I only ever heard good things about Divinity 2, but playing it myself I found it very hard to get into. I am not sure what, maybe something about the setting, the atmosphere which made it feel a bit generic and "not serious" enough. Still haven't passed the first 1/4th of the game, and it's a shame I think, probably missing out. :(

Release pushed back to Summer 2014.

According to Sven Vicke in a Gamestar.de (http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/divinity-original-sin/news/divinity_original_sin,48271,3032029.html) interview. According to Vicke it's mostly the Kickstarter goals, especially the day night cycle, that needs longer than they expected.

Not really surprising. The Alpha version thats playable for Kickstarter user didn't look like something thats out in less than a month. I am partly sad because (again, judging from the Alpha) the game is shaping up really well. But glad they have the power push back instead of being forced to shove out an unfinished product *cough* Kotor 2 *cough*.

I bought it when it launched on Steam Alpha, but haven't had a chance to open it.  I'm okay with delays to make it better, though. 

Not surprised at all, they were pretty sure it was going to take quite a bit more work to incorporate all that stuff. I'm in no hurry.

Fantastic "1 year later" video. Game is getting better and better and better (and beta is already great) :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HevrTza0Nxg

EDIT....now with a release date! June 20th, 2014

....And with a new update on Steam Early Access!!



 :drill: :drill: :drill:

Game is starting to shape up into a seriously professional experience.  I think I might go hands-off the build and wait until official release.  It's that good.

Good for them, I'll give it a look when it releases.

Some facts about Divinity: Original Sin, since I've noticed that it's on the Steam sale right now (have been in early access since the alpha):

Now with CHARACTER CREATION VIDEO!! (it's from 2 weeks ago, doesn't include the latest patch, implemented 5 or 6 days ago, although it didn't change that aspect of the game dramatically)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4DOA4ET5LU
---------------------------


- It comes out June 30th, 2014 (yep, that's 10 days, basically)

- Currently, it's almost bug-free

- Character creation is great, and now it strongly resembles the Arcanum one (minus the backgrounds and race selection: in D:OS, your starting character/s is human)

- Its inspiration, when it comes to item interaction (with the environment and inside your inventory), NPC schedules and world detail is definitely Ultima VII-esque.

- Isometric view, not fixed, but not full camera rotation either;

- Game is apparently VERY long, not unlikely the original Divinity Divinity, which I still think it's basically neverending :P  ;

- It has turn-based combat with action points  ;

- You can hire companions that have certain personalities (still have to do that). But don't expect something as detailed as BG2 ;

- Graphic style is kinda "cartoony"; there's lots of humor, just like the original Divinity; the soundtrack was made by the awesome Kirill Pokrovsky (it's mostly a piano-based soundtrack, no fancy or boasting stuff like other soundtracks) ;

- It comes with an editor

- And yes, you can play "duo" with another person, also thanks to Steam integration (but I guess it will work over GOG too)


tl;dr It's shaping up to be FUCKING GREAT. Just purchase it already if you like CRPGs, you fools  :grin:

But, on the other hand, remember that I have "suspect taste in games"  :why_so_serious:

I own it and I like the 30 minutes I've played.  I purposefully held off playing more to preserve the launch experience. 

I think it's going to shape up to be a great game, though be aware that if you buy now, you only get about 20% of the game until the 30th.  Plus, anything you play till then will likely not be compatible.

Yep, savegames won't be compatible.

Another video about the recent character creation update; also some gameplay from the starter area:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-vmhoeKR-Y

He skips the beginning cave; another notable feature: if you play solo, of course you command both the protagonists, but you can assign different tasks to them, and that's useful for puzzles, like pressure plates, avoid traps, discover hidden triggers and so on. There is also a "formation" button for when your party grows bigger, similar to Baldur's Gate.

Elements are a factor in combat and in other situations: use a "rain" spell on something that is on fire. Or use an electricity spell on water for maximum efficiency :D ; game also comes with the usual tropes: lockpicking, discover traps, loremaster in order to identify objects; bartering with NPCs  and more.

:grin:

The 2 pack with the older games and DLC was too good of a deal to pass up. Looks like this could be a fun game for co-op with the wife.

Any idea if I load up early access if it will just patch on release day or will require downloading and installing the entire thing again? Shitty internet so I'll just wait for the 30th if it's the latter.

I already asked in the Steam Sale thread, but maybe this is more appropriate.  How on earth does this game already have DLC if it isn't even out yet?

Ha, good question.

It surprised me when I saw it yesterday, too.  I'm not too worried; the base game was only $40 so this would bring it to $50.  From what I've seen so far, I think it will be worth it for me to buy.

I just bought it because it was on sale and this is the old fashioned sort of rpg that I love.  I got loads of cards all of a sudden, too, and not just for this game.  Weird.  I bought the toofer because it includes two games, one for me and my sister (luckily it's also Mac), and Divine Divinity which I don't seem to have any more.  Maybe that's why they gave me so many cards.  I don't do cards, though.

For some reason this has made me overly excited and I broke out in hives.  Calm down, Signe.  Take a nap.  Or a Xanax.   (http://i.imgur.com/U7caLhM.gif)

Looking at the DLC content, I think it simply includes some of the original kickstarter digital items/rewards. Compare it with this chart:

http://www.larian.com/kickstarter/rewards_Matrix_Digital_big.jpg

CaptainNapkin - I think the currently available beta version will simply become the official release one throughout  a patch on release day (if they need to do that), no need to re-download everything. But it's better if you ask either on Steam or the official forums; both have Larian representatives that should be able to answer your question.
------

Official unboxing of the Kickstarter collector's edition (can't wait to have it in my greedy hands. Cards are awesome  :drill:):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGngb4egREM

Available here: https://www.larianvault.com/product.php?item=43

If this were less Baldur's Gate and more Diablo, I'd be all over it. As it stands, I'm more excited about Sacred 3. Larian is not good enough at writing to make me want to dick around with a CRPG from them.

So this is fun.  However, damn, I haven't played an actual RPG that doesn't hold your hand in years and it's showing as I struggle through the first big story quest.

Also; the camera is goddamn terrible.

I gave it a spin for a couple hours last night and while the camera's not fantastic, I've seen much much worse (NWN 1 and 2 come immediately to mind).

Game itself is pretty great, and I've whetted my appetite for the full thing next week.

Camera is frustrating, yeah.

I spent ten minutes in the early dungeon trying to figure out how to separate my two guys when I hit the first pressure plates only to get the hint from the game about how to do it right after that.

I had to turn off the panning edges option and enable the rotate camera option.  I just seemed to fling the camera all over the place until I did that. 

Finally hit level 5 last night before bed which means I can head up north.

Spellcaster-Rogue was a bad starting combo.  The 2h warrior woman you pick-up in town may be crazy but she destroys the shit out of monsters in a way the other two wish they could even approach.

Editor releases in two days; comes with the groundbreaking "Cow Simulator 2014":

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/06/23/nude-skins-ahoy-divinity-original-sin-editor-due-this-week/#more-215005

It will also include a copy of the main campaign that you'll be able to modify (and then play) as you see fit.
---

Just to have some fun with it, I'm toying with the idea of replicating the beginning of Ultima VII (Trinsic and the murder mystery).

Played a tiny bit through the tutorial and enjoyed it enough to decide to break and wait for release. I typically don't like turn based combat but this didn't turn me off immediately.
So I loaded up the original and wow, how did I ever miss that one? Good stuff.

Is this really going to be released, complete, in a few days? I am trying to avoid buying another unfinished "early access" beta game.

It's due to be released on the last day of the Steam sale, June 30th. If they put it out on sale then I'll probably get it, otherwise I'll just peruse the reviews.

But in what state is it? Is it really done?

Oh right, I have no idea.  :awesome_for_real:

Hard to say in terms of promised content (e.g., quests, places to go, etc.), but in terms of mechanics, features, etc., it's done. And so far I'm fairly impressed.

Yeah I've thrown way more time than I should have in to it in the last few days, considering my save will be wiped on the 30th. The game's stable, except for global chat, which comes and goes infrequently.  I've only encountered one bug which is a known issue that will be fixed in the patch according to steam's forums.  In all it's stable and complete, you just need to get used to the camera.

The game is absolutely feature and content complete: I think they might just give another pass to class/spell/skill balance, and also tweak a few companions abilities. The only thing they cut (and that was promised as a stretch goal in the KS campaign) are day/night cycles, which they meant to integrate with some spell characteristics (plus with NPC schedules). It's still uncertain if they're going to implement them in a later patch.

I'm just using this week to try-out different character pairings.

I'm a little concerned with the strangely uneven class abilities; they seem to think that they have 4 distinct spell casting classes; and yet Melee is just one big lump of abilities.

Stealth for me was clunky and I don't get why all the rogue (early) abilities have 10+ turn cool downs.  You could get the Melee catch-all bucket... but that requires editing the pre-builts.

Many of Talents seem odd - or, more accurately - hard to understand why they would be helpful - like: talk to animals.  Not, summon a pet to attack/defend, but as far as I can tell, a linguistic ability.  For all I know it will be wildly important somewhere in the "story" but it's hard to fathom why you would allocate one of two starting points to it.

I really like the look and feel of the game, and the optimistic side says that release will bring better documentation on why/how personality skills might be helpful... or possibly simply playing the game will have enough content and "forgiveness" that a point in Good Luck (or whatever it is called) will not be wasted.  The pessimist in me wonders if the game is put together to appear open worldy, but is really just a book read backwards where "talk to animals" is really really important - but only the authors know why.

Good points, particularly about the melee vs spell skills.

The spell classes are also WILDLY uneven, at least in the early game.  Fire is useless as it applies burning, which is only extra damage.  Considering how you have to scrape for XP before the things outside the starter city won't kick your ass, that extra damage pales in comparison to "Freeze for x turns" or "stunned for 3 turns" or "knocked down, unable to move for 3 turns."

Then you compare the AP cost for skills and lighting pulls ahead pretty quick. Stuns often and works on all mobs you find in the early game and (at least on my caster) costs 1ap less than the fire or melee stuns.

2h weapon is so superior to 1h it's a joke to even try the latter. You can't dual wield and while I'm finding 1h that do 12-36 damage I'm finding 2h that do 36-76.

The talk to animals skill is useful for quest hints.  There's always an animal or two around (typically a rat) that will drop a hint about enemies near by or what you should be doing to advance. The dog was pretty clutch to figure out part of the murder quest for me, too. (Though what he told me was also revealed later.)  I can't imagine it's worth more than a single point, unless later on you can talk to Chimeras, etc.

And obviously fire magic and 1h weapons should be far superior to everything else, just like every other rpg in history.  :oh_i_see:

That doesn't even deserve a response, so it's not getting one.

Don't

(http://forums.f13.net/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=4905;type=avatar)

him up!

(http://i.imgur.com/cR5TX.gif)

Divinity Editor should be available sometime today: was supposed to be released yesterday, but apparently Steam didn't push the right buttons to deploy it :P (as the other toolkits, you will find it in the "Tools" section).

Here's yesterday Twitch stream where they teach a few of the basic stuff (they plan on releasing a series of video tutorials in the next few weeks) :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz_BHdOmHdg

Don't expect a "tight" session full of info: there's improvisation, some downtime here and there, but also lots of decent info about the terrain manager, how to place objects, activate shadows and light sources and more.

First, official, written mini-guide about the editor basic setup:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=276611375

And finally, here's the Editor trailer  :awesome_for_real::

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyWpSpdiKhY
------

They also published the last early access update, 2.3GB; no patch notes, saves from previous build are not compatible.

Pagz: +10

Written guide, part 2: Creating your first mod

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=276641529

Editor will be released at 10am PDT .

..."Two days later"... :P

From this post by Swen (Project Director and founder of Larian):

http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=502044&page=2


Yep, looks like Gabe is all

...nothing new, really :P.
--------------

In other news, it looks like some content has been cut, after all:

http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=502142#Post502142


So, nothing critical, although I might wait 'til more A.I. personalities are patched in; that post provoked an immediate and not so happy reaction, as you can imagine, both on the official and the Steam forum.

Swen replied:


And I can easily believe him about the density and the length (and hopefully, that will ultimately translate in a fun game as well ) of the game, having played the original Divinity game. Looks like they REALLY needed to start raking in some money. They probably couldn't afford one more delay (maybe three weeks/one month delay would have been enough, considering the cuts they've done).

Cuts happen, that's part of software. I've seen nothing to lead me to believe they are really "rushing" the game, which is genuinely surprising. The amount of work completed and the professionalism of the product so far is very impressive.

The only reason they seem to be mentioning cuts at all, is because they Kickstarted the game. But I think they've delivered what they promised they would, and arguably more than that. And software (particularly game software) has an organic development process; if you want a fun game you can't just make bullet point features and call it a day.

Seems to be 20% off currently on Steam. Any idea the exact time when it goes from Beta to release?

I'll keep an eye on Swen's Twitter (https://twitter.com/LarAtLarian) throughout the day, but I suspect sometime after the end of the Steam sale (so, after 10am PDT - 7pm CET), maybe together with the release of the editor.

Reminder: this will also get released today on GOG. Patches on GOG will be slightly delayed compared to the Steam counterpart. Mods installation, editor compatibility between GOG and Steam etc. might also be a little tricky, at least in the first few weeks if Larian needs to make some adjustments on that part.

Downloading 1GB update to beta client now... says full version release. 

Given the large pre-release patch a few days ago, and no additional notes, I'm assuming it is just later stage content and no further ability or systems tweaking.

Yep, game has been released  :thumbs_up: :inluv: on Steam. Looks like they're experiencing some troubles with KS key redemption, global chat disconnections and whatever else you might expect from a release day on the online/infrastructure side.
---

Last pre-release KS update (includes info about KS codes, slight delay of translations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKQObTZJEM4
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/larianstudios/divinity-original-sin/posts/894881

Editor should come out later today as expected. Here's a new, brief video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBzzYVK7cEI

As this video explains, since you can modify the main campaign, you can alter how existing skills, traits and whatever else comes to your mind (trap damage, for example) works.

Is there any random element to this game or is the entire thing scripted, worthy of a single playthrough? I simply don't expect good writing from Larian, so if there's no replay value, I'm going to wait for it to be $5 in 6 months.

Pulled the trigger on this today with 75 minutes to spare on the sale. Looks promising.

It gave me a man voice despite choosing a female character.  :(

Wait.

I asked for a review copy instead. We have a frontpage afterall.

Twitch stream going on at Larian (in collaboration with Eurogamer), showing the very early game:

http://www.twitch.tv/larianstudios

That works too.

It's a sandbox RPG. The 'main story' is secondary to the game anyway.  Skyrim's story wasn't all that great, but the game was worth it.

Steam's frontpage says "Full Version Available", but the game's store page still says "Early Access".  Oh well, bought it today and won't get to play for two weeks anyway.  Woo, vacation!

E: No longer says "Early Access".

Editor now available in the "Tools" section of the library ("The Divinity Engine"); size is 400MB

I will theoretically be doing a review of this.

Is there a manual for this game? The tutorial is more or less useless.

Tutorial is bad. Movement is horrifically slow out of combat. Non 360 degree rotation is obnoxious.

That said, I think I like it, even if its a time machine to 1999 with better graphics.

Yeah the limited rotation annoyed me too. Is there some game design reason for it? Is it a graphical issue? I don't get it.

There's an option to unlock full camera rotation under Game Settings, not video settings. When you do it warns you the base campaign isn't made to support it and it's there more for custom scenarios. I haven't bothered to try it, not bugging me that much yet but I'm barely past the tutorial.

Uhh, I like how it gives me a bunch of magic schools/disciplines to choose from and tells me fuckall about them.   I could really use a manual here.

edit:  Eh fuck it, LET'S TRY THIS.   

I'm good now, but man, the initial character creation is no picnic.

TOR's on maintenance tonite, so I might be forced to try it.  :oh_i_see:

For those who want to purchase it from there, GOG version should be unlocked sometime today:

http://www.gog.com/game/divinity_original_sin

Saves seem to me to take a long time. I've disabled the autosave.

Speedy for me, saves take 2-3 seconds at most.  Try reinstalling or checking your HD sectors?

ed: Oh, I see C.Napkin said this already. I'll just quote him since it's a new page.:

Messed around with it for 30 minutes last night.  There are so many options for character creation that I will probably never be satisfied with my choice of characters.  Dammit.

Larian just published a small hotfix which I think (no patch notes, yet) it's related to the final version of some localizations (namely, german and french; dunno about the russian one), KS rewards and some other minor stuff. Looks like they're also working on the annoying voiceover loops:

https://twitter.com/larianstudios/status/483956378789494784

What is TOR?  I forget.

(Star Wars) The Old Republic.

It is what it is.

(http://i.imgur.com/khw9aym.jpg)

Oh, right!  D'oh!  Thanks.

By the way, if you need it because I certainly do:  Divinity Editor Guide (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=276611375)

did a short run b4 TOR servers are back up (http://youtu.be/GsyeKrujq3c)

Yeah, but, I have talking underwear.  So there.

LOL, nice video  :grin: . And yeah, at first glance the Knight is kinda unattractive, probably gets better when you have a full party of 4 and those support skills actually get better along with more complex fights.

1.0.40 changelist (no spoilers):

People in Global chat were talking about how Melee is unviable.  Must be later in the game because I found spells (other than lighting and summons) unviable in the preview.  Finding the same to be true at release.

Give someone a 1h mace or a 2h sword and wack the shit out of things where spells were *plink* *plink* "Oh shit he's in melee range.."  Ranged weaps weren't any better but at least you can take a few steps in retreat every turn.

Today's gamers playing D:OS (just an example among many) :

http://steamcommunity.com/app/230230/discussions/0/522730702224757226/

Comments like that make me want to force feed Dwarf Fortress on the masses and tell them it's the new thing. 

There's nothing new about that - companies used to sell game genies because people wanted shortcuts, cheats and instant wins 20 years ago... :)

Hint lines used to be a thing.   

This game is really old school in a way that people playing it now were toddlers or not born when comparable games were released.

I appreciate the tutorial dungeon showing you some of the environment interactions.  Makes me feel like I should always have a fire spell available, even if I don't plan to use it for much else other than lighting shit on fire.

I have no problem with the difficulty or lack of tutorial. I do, however, have a problem with the fact the narrative is not clear to me. But then, Europe will be Europe.

That first dungeon that you find before you go in the first town is supposed to be the tutorial.  They only tell you that, though, if you go in the town before you go in the dungeon.  If you do it in the right order, you'll never know it was the tutorial.   :oh_i_see:

Yup.

Also, what's so hard about the narrative? 

One more hotfix (v. 1.0.41 , no spoilers) :

As long as this isn't one of those old-school games that makes me compulsively click on asbolutely everything because they hide loot all over the place.  Death to pixel-hunting.

Must.  Collect.  All.  Toadstools.

That is precisely what this is. With a varnish of Eurotrash.

I'm thinking of things specifically like in Final Fantasy VI, where you had to walk down X number of steps from point A and press a button to unlock a cool hidden esper, with nothing in the game actually indicating that you could or should do that.  Love the game, but fuck that noise.

At least from my 15 minutes messing around with Divinity last night, all the random collectible shells were labeled.

I know.  It's driving me nuts.  I have to catch them all.   :ye_gods:

(http://i.imgur.com/lOo5htu.jpg)

What's the deal with multiplayer? Purely one-on-one co-op, or is more Minecraft, where many people can run around in the same server?


Pretty much my impression after a mere 45 minutes. There are some critical items that are too small to see (example: keys) without holding down ALT to make names appear.

The first major quest is obtuse as all hell in parts and doesn't seem to trigger things logically.  This is starting to annoy me.

How did this quest stay in game as is with all of the free play testing they got?

edit: managed to progress it.  In a completely logical way.  :roll: 

Sarcasm or real answer?  I'm finding my oldschool RPG skills are a LOT rustier than I thought. I can't imagine  the frustration younger kids are having.

So there's an update.  Like right now.  So it shut my game down in the middle of a big fat fight.   :ye_gods:

Also - for those who like this sort of game and never got around to Sacred 2, it's on Steam for $3.99. 

Sacred 2 is a weird fucking Diablo clone and nothing like Divinity: Original Sin.

DOS is eurotrash Baldur's Gate with horrific writing.

I want to like the Sacred series, but their classes are strange and the camera on S2 might be the worst camera I've ever used.

That game world is HUGE though, and the synergy in skills is good.  I'm not sure it's worth playing due to the above, though.

Tonight I'm spending almost the entirety in Original Sin.  No work, just play.

The camera in Sacred is in fact absolutely horrific. I have no clue how they fucked up "almost isometric" that badly.

I found that key in that fish in Ultima VII, so I'm sure we will all survive this.

In other news: if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.

I know I played Sacred 2 but I can't remember a thing about it.  Must be Old Timer's Disease.  Or too many thresholds. 

What is eurotrash anyway? I know of ameritrash, which is about US American boardgames. Eurotrash? About European Turn Based RPGs?

Next to Eurotrash in the dictionary there's a picture of the box that Risen comes in.

 :Love_Letters:

(Actually it's a pic of Gothic, which was awesome but far jankier than Risen)

Both of you are wrong. The picture was permanently replaced with a screenshot of Drakensang.

I haven't played any of those games, and don't care.  Tell me which classes are the best in Divinity and how to spec them, please.  That is all I want.

Still living by the Prima Strategy guide, I see.

The idea of that makes my neck hurt.

In completely unrelated related news, Sacred 3 is developed by Deep Silver which is owned by... Koch Media? Weird.

Anyway, Sacred 3 looks great.

Oh my god the writing in this game is actively painful.  At first i thought it was some veiled parody of fantasy tropes pulled from other books and movies due to all the over the top humor in the crafting books and exaggerated characters and whatnot (hello nine inch nails).  But for the main story,  after big reveal #1 I honestly think someone took this seriously.  Please someone, tell me it's intentional wank.

And the lack of hand holding is nice change of pace.  Can you imagine your average "WoW is the only rpg i've ever played" person thinking "wait, i have to go explore the whole town to find the legion commander?  Where's my quest arrow!?!"  while tromping right by a thinly hidden locked door next to a waterfall...

Different Koch.

It does look fun.  I guess I'll have to get it via Steam because I can't seem to find a PC box version in the US.   I think you might be able to pre-oder a box from the UK but I'm not sure.  If I get it in August I might have just enough time to get through a fair bit of it before Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is released (which I would probably get for the xbox). 

Well, the ones that actually offered useful information, yes.  So at least before 2000.

This game has difficulty level too, if you're really unsure and want to have fun - I'd say just pick whatever that looks interesting, get to the first combat and see how it plays out.
That said, I'm dropping this till they increase all animation speed, combat, movement etc takes a tad too long. It reminded me of running Heroes 5 for the first time watching those spells animations are neat, but after a while I just want to settle this combat within 2 mins.

I sort of think the writing is at least trying to be humorous, judging from the charmed she-orc thing you run into very early, but in fact most of the conversations. But I usually feel that the writing in European-made RPGs is weird or off in some fashion.

I like some of the little cute touches.  Like the cats roaming around and suddenly plop down on the floor, stick a back leg straight up in the air and twist around for some deep cleaning.  Mine do that all the time. 

I can't complete a quest now because I lost at Paper-Rock-Scissors.   :oh_i_see:

It failed the "Warming the Crowd" quest so I now cannot complete the "Headless Nick" quest.  So, I'm going to have that fucking thing in my quest log forever unless I murder the entire crowd and guards. YAY.   Lazy ass quest design.

Can you edit it?

:oh_i_see:

Divinity original sin is a really cool game. The fact that you have the alt-key and what it sees is tied to your perception stat means that calling it a pixel hunt game makes you an idiot or an ignoramus.

Does not have enough stats/skills to win quest in a good way -> Lazy quest design. Bull. Lazy player excuse for being bad at the game.

(http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/smiles/shunthenonbeliever.png) Euro is a religion of peace. Behead those who insult Euro!

I don't know about all that. It's pretty obtuse compared to Planescape: Torment, and there are children playing games these days that weren't born yet when that came out. I haven't found much here that is an advancement beyond that design. The writing is worse, but it's kind of nice to have a game like this now. Just by existing it's kind of fun.

But does it need to exist? Naw, probably not. I mean, we are getting Torment: Not Planescape soonish.

(I'd compare it to Baldur's Gate, but Planescape is better.)

(Don't trust the skull.)

The first time I protested about some silly comments about Europe (as if Europe and Europeans really were ONE thing, one people, one country, one culture instead of about many dozens extremely different from each others) was 8 yars ago and I was told that this is an American-centered (can't remember the exact words) message board so I shouldn't get too surprised or annoyed.

I suggest you do the same, it's hopeless.

First of all: Never give up never surrender. Beyond that, eurotrash seems to imply a lack of quality, which is what I'm objecting to. Unless you're saying americans mostly like shit games, can't really argue with calling risen eurotrash in that case.

What does Torment have to do with anything? I hope beyond hope that numenara will have "emergent gameplay" and combat as good as this, but it's not likely in the slightest. There are multiple subgenres of RPG's you know, PS:T was 100% story focused. This otoh, is gameplay focused. And there are precious few turn-based RPG's around and none in the last decade with a scope this big. Does it need to exist? Fucked if I know, but I'm damn glad it does. I don't even know what you're trying to say? Did planescape give you infinite retries if you failed a skill check? No, it mostly didn't. Failing would often lead to combat.

All I can say about lots (not all!) of US Americans is that they tend to think they know what's good and what's bad. What feels right and what feels odd. As an absolute. Globally. Worldwide. And soon enough galaxywide.

I'm apparently stuck in the tutorial dungeon. Two pressure plates. I stand on them both, a door opens. I try to move one of the character through the door, it closes.

No indication of how I should keep a trigger door open.

EDIT: Oh, I see. Those broken pieces of debris all around, previously shown to be of use in blocking vents, are also to be used in holding down pressure plates.

Well I'm glad the tutorial dungeon failed to explain that! Now I feel like a smartie, and I'm not at all rolling my eyes at the incomplete design of this tutorial dungeon.

(http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/36208974.jpg)

This isn't a patriotic conspiracy to shit on something, you donk. Eurotrash is a fucking genre at this point.

Jaedar, I'm not quoting that entire post on my phone, but you lost me at emergent gameplay.

RTFM?

Please specify the parameters of the eurotrash genre. Please note that "being made in europe" is not sufficient unless you're ok with it being dumb. Also, that's why I used the "" cause the term has been misused so much.

Well no, you should feel like a person who had a massive brainfart and decided to blame it on the devs instead of sucking up your own failure. Sheeit, not even Zelda feels the need to spell it out that objects can press switches.

I miss simpler puzzle like Skyrim's claw.
Goddamn that was good. I was stumped at first, then I read a journal, and examined the claw, using the close up function to rotate and zoom in - I managed to deduce the answer, rotate the stone pillar to the correct logos before I threw the switch.
Now that's GOOD tutorial design!

You guys act as if I've played a game like this.

Um, ever.

I have not.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but this game entirely unlike anything I've played since... maybe 1990?

But hey! At least you get to savor your sense of smug superiority. I'm sure that'll rack up the sales, bro.

[intelligence] if you are not familiar with games of this type, perhaps it would be a good idea to read the manual!

Rocket science, I know.

Thanks, Mr. 29-post, F13-newbie Divinity-fanboy!

I know, i know. It's desperately important to you that everyone in the world find your favorite game flawless and unquestionable, but maybe - just maybe - you might wish to recognize that games made in the last 20 years rarely rely on a manual. Particularly those sold through Steam.

I know, I'm simply some idiot noob, expecting a game to explain itself, as games have done for the past two decades. Again, please enjoy your sense of smug superiority. I assure you, I am deeply impressed, and your smugness has thoroughly convinced me of both my own idiocy and your pet game's supremacy.

Rest assured I now go to play a different game while crying bitter tears that I will never experience the rapture of Your Favorite Game.

Say hi to Cleve Blackmore for me.

Darth Roxor is clearly EUROPEAN cause he understands their language  :why_so_serious:

This thread.  First people getting angry for not understanding the term eurotrash games (hint, it's no more an insult than the term ameritrash is in the boardgame world).

And now this.

So happy I kickstartered this!   :awesome_for_real:

You didn't really need the manual though, you figured it out on your own. But if you want to get everything explained to you from the get go, that's probably a good place to look instead of complaining about the developers not shoving it in everyone's faces. Is your ego really so fragile that you need to blame even such a small failure on someone else?

I am happy too  :drill:

Admitting it is the first step.

Also, (http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/smiles/butthurt.png)


Will do.

I don't think anyone feels insulted, really. Especially not me, I hate flags, borders and the concept of "country", and I consider myself stateless (too bad the law doesn't). And it's not that I didn't really understand what Schild meant. The issue, in a way, is not understanding why "ameri-anything" makes sense*, while "euro-anything" doesn't.

See, not a single person living in Europe feels "European". See what I mean?

Anyway, end of the derail for me. Not an argument anyone can win, and definitely not a big deal anyway.



* although I still argue that it's messed up that citizens of the USA call themselves "American", but hey, whatever you like.

Usually the term is Eurojank, not Eurotrash. I guess thats why some people reacted badly to that newly coined term. More the -trash, less the Euro-

But yes, it is Eurojank through and through. If you are against that kind of thing you wouldn't enjoy it.

I am quite positive they tell you beforehand you can use crates/vases to trigger the treasure plates though, and even if not it is the next logical step after using one to trigger the mine in one of the previous rooms.

But that doesn't mean you are dumb, just that this isn't the game for you. Manipulating the environment seems to be a large part of it from what little I played (just exploring the first city).

Overall I'm enjoying this game, but I have very mixed feelings.

On the one hand, I enjoy the minimalism of the games structure, although I think describing games like this where information is fed to you in a more natural way as 'hard' is a bit misleading, it's not harder per se, it's just more of a chore. On the flip side, while less hand-holding is nice, I think there is a reason not many games like this are made any more, and I think they have gone a bit too far in making information opaque. Some examples:

 - Finding skill books for your class isn't intuitive or fun at all, you have to go around trading with random people (some of whom are not obvious vendors) until you find them. I haven't found any dialogue options that tell you where to buy skills. An example of an older game where skill training was done better was the older Elder Scrolls games (e.g. Morrowind or Oblivion). You were breadcrumbed towards the guilds early on, and inside the respective guilds you would find skill trainers.
 - Attribute descriptions are very vague. They say broadly what they do, but don't give any specifics. The most frustrating of these for me has been speed. It has taken a bit of googling to discover that you get 0.4 action points per level of speed, so it is quite possible (as I have done) to raise speed by two points and see no increase in AP, leading me to wonder if the skill was broken.
 - Crafting is arse. I've barely touched it. While finding the recipe books is rather fun, the descriptions are just a little too realistic and unhelpful. Adding in a crafting interface that allows you to search known recipes and discover others would be an improvement.
 - I still haven't worked out how to repair my own gear, and nobody seems interested in explaining how
 - Skills should show more than just the bonus for the next level, they should show all levels. I didn't realise you could get level three of magic skills until I finally invested points into level two, which I had been putting off because I didn't see a benefit.
 - Partly as a result of the last comment, it isn't clear whether it is better to specialise heavily, or make every character quite general. Abilities like Willpower, Bodybuilding, and Lucky Charm seem useful to everyone, should I be getting them on all classes? There doesn't seem to be an obvious downside to just getting a bit of everything in the early game, partly because there are so few skills to learn in any school (as far as I can see from the skill books, there are only about 4 skills before level 7 for any school).
 -

Gameplay wise, I like the game, but I have a few mixed thoughts:

 - Combat is fun, and I prefer the cooldown system for limiting spells over a resource system such as in Dragon Age. Chain chugging mana potions is not a mechanic I miss.
 - I like the environmental interactions
 - Writing is decent, the dialogue isn't quite as good as Dragon Age, but overall I'd say it's as good as Baldur's Gate
 - Moving out of the city for the first time is a bit of a fraught experience, I was barely level 3 from all the city quests I could find, and most of the mobs outside the city are 4+, so it took some careful exploring to find packs I could kill and level up. Not a totally bad thing, but perhaps a few more low-level fights would be nice.
 - Environmental puzzles are nice, but sometimes it is completely unclear what to do or why you should solve them
 - I wish I had more abilities
 - Itemisations is a little bland, but perhaps it picks up later.

Overall I'd rate this as a 7/10 game from my ~10 hours of play.
 - The fact that there only seem to be two companions in the starting area, and they coincidentally happen to be the EXACT same classes as the ones I built (what are the odds...) is a little bit of a let down. When I made my characters I assumed I would be able to find a rogue companion, or some sort of fire mage/witch/cleric, yet I now have two Knights and two Air/Water mages, which works, but is a little unvaried.

I was a bit stumped at first too, but actually on a quick replay, I missed the tutorial instruction that tells you that you can move objects like crates, barrels, broken vases. I thought the only thing you could do was break them. So it's there in the tutorial.

Wait.  There's a manual? 

Now there is.

This thread has taken an interesting turn.   :oh_i_see: 

Oh, Bloodbowl.  Heh.

Apparently, but I don't understand why reading the manual is somehow superior to actually presenting the information in game...

I've always thought of it as jank so I agree with this. The 3 idiots getting their panties in a wad over either term obviously need to admit they are idiot noobs that somehow don't know common game descriptor that Divinity is a poster child for.


*die extra words*

Takes less time/ resources to produce it. One guy and a word processor vs. art, animations, writing and planning how to relay everything. Unless you're talking just flyover tooltips, but then it's still a UI guy and someone to punch in the information/ code the tooltip.

Game shouldn't be equated to Baldur's Gate or even Torment. Reminds me much, much more of Eye of the Beholder/ Gold Box era games. It's hard and you need to familiarize yourself with the manual and the rules.  It's a modern antique and I love it so much for that.  I didn't know shit about D&D when first playing those and thought they were garbage until I'd read up on the rules. Then I had a lot more fun.

I'm not talking about from the dev's perspective, I'm talking about the argument about how users get the information. As a gamer, I'd far rather be given information in game than have to read a manual; there's nothing fun or interesting about reading a manual.

I mostly liked manuals for character creation and class choice, since most games of the infinity engine era were pretty shit about explaining classes and magic.  

I'll be specific about that quest I was griping about, it was "Warming the Crowd".  You're supposed to recruit a crowd warmer to go from one comedian's side to another.  Simple enough.  I tried one of the conversation choices, and lost at the Paper-Rock-Scissors mini-game (god, why couldn't this just be a skill check/roll).  Quest fails, but I don't notice that it fails and I just go do something else.  Well, both comedians still go on like the quest is active but you can't even bribe the quest warmer at this point.  You can't steal the head (which is your objective to help you complete Headless Nick).  Your other option at this point would be to murder the entire theater area.  :|  There are a lot of tools available in this game that could facilitate the completion of this quest, but those aren't available or possible given the rigidness of the design.   This is evident all over the damn place.  It's frustrating.  I just save a lot now (and the paper rock scissors algorithm is pretty obvious once you've done it a few times, the computer is predictable past the first go).

I'm liking the game, especially the combat (which could be a lot damn faster, please), but the jank is here, and I'm learning to cope with it.  It's making me miss the quest design and writing of a game like Arcanum a bit.  It's weird at how bad these are given the game's other strengths and available tools.

This is damning, backwards praise considering BG and Torment were improvements on a design, specifically the design of early D&D games.


Your adorable worldviews aside, your previous post is at odds with what you said.

Physical manuals sure, but when I'm having to alt-tab between the game and a pdf some of the magic is lost  :grin:

PROTIP: Read the text in the window next time you play the mini-game, then press space.

You're welcome.

That's not the point.

It might not have been the point you were going for, but it's certainly one of the major points of the post you wrote.

To be fair, I do agree that it feels like there is a solution missing to that quest. Fortunately it seems to be the only one like that.

Find a repair hammer (these seem to be kind of rare; I'm not sure where I picked up the one I have, but I think the Legion commander guy has some for trade sometimes) and use it, then target the gear needing repair.  On a character with sufficient...blacksmithing, I think it is.

I got one from a random basket, but the Wizard who hired you and lives above the Legion commander sells one, I believe.

Where did these touchy cunts come from? So much more enjoyable than the usual game release thread.

RPGCodex gonna RPGCodex. For extra fun, be sure to mention how much you love (or even better, worked on) Oblivion, Fallout3, and Mass Effect!  :why_so_serious:

... anyway, I am really enjoying this game, the combat gameplay is really good (in fact, I wouldn't mind playing a "tactics" spinoff at some point). The weakest point is the writing imo, but even that is above typical RPG fare made by non-native speakers. It also helps that they are going for the lighthearted / goofy approach instead of srs bsns.

oh noes

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/829607/daily/55/05.jpg)

looks like steve is dead now.
all alone against so many monster.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/829607/daily/55/07.jpg)

*throws candlebra at oil*

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/829607/daily/55/08.jpg)

(http://www.thephysicsmill.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/psy_walks_away_from_an_explosion.png)

Not too far into the game (actually surprised you haven't encountered it yet at 10 hours) you get access to a vendor that sells a variety of hirelings.

^ This.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPekmA9tcvg

This thread smells like 1990's gaming.

Because 1999 was the worst year for gaming ever.

The last fight (or what I assume is) in the first area was a bit easier than I expected.  


Game's fun.  I don't agree with people that are putting it on the same pedestal as the top tier infinity engine games, but it's definitely worth playing.  The price tag is nice as well, as there seems to be a lot of hours here for what you pay.   Still wish the combat was faster, because it eats through a 2 hour gaming session like nothing.   Reminds me of the Witcher in that respect, but at least you just aren't running around the entire time  (yay ports).

This is bafflingly unintuitive.


That aside though, now that I'm level 7.5 on all my characters and have found some skills, I'm really getting into the game.

Jan - May did not compare to Jun - Dec.

Just saying. It was practically 2000 before things got shithot.

k9, you're way over-thinking the 2nd Pyramid. That's all I'm going to say.

The End of Time stuff will cause your teleport icon to glow green any time something changes there.

For the pyramid, read the book on what they do and it makes more sense. But so far I've also never actually used the silly things.

They're useful in a some places.  You know that rope on the dock blocking a chest, where your character says something like, 'The greatest warriors in Rivellon can't cross a rope?'  Well, it strikes me as a sort of 'training spot' to point out how to think about and use the pyramids, although it's not really obvious about it.

I just teleported the chest to the other side of the rope.

I like that you can get creative in this game  :awesome_for_real:

Teleport is THE most broken/ fun/ useful skill in game.  It's also essential for solving several puzzles from what I've found.  I worry it will be nerfed by giving it an even longer cool-down.

8 Turns is very long in combat.

I've experimented with town killing and no, there is no global rep to worry about. You will never be hunted down by guards, as long as you don't slaughter them in full view of their friends.
I killed all the jailers in the barrack's basement. I killed the two civilian in the inn's 2nd storey. I also killed the first legionnaires who fought off the orcs at the start.
And the town is still going 'Hello! Source Hunter! How are you today?'
Completed a quest and decided to kill the quest giver as well. 750 EXP is nice after the 1800 EXP turn in.
Also headed out of city after 2 hour mucking about - westwards - encounter first zombie group. Not hard, but the Gate Legionnaries want to help. Heheh.
OK. We handled the ghouls handily, then we killed them too. For EXP, of course.

Also, you can make fries.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/829607/daily/57/EoCApp%202014-07-08%2022-50-39-85.jpg)

Potato + Knife = Sliced Potatoes
Find a mobile cooking place. Or combine cooking pot with campfire.
Slice potato + Mobile Cooking Pit = Fries. Yum.  :drill:

I am enjoying this a lot, even if i don't have the hours long sessions of time available i feel like i need.  There is a LOT to do in this first town side quest wise, plus talking to so many people and messing with the crafting and pack rat loot acquisition.  I get the feeling i wont know how to make a character i am happy with until half way through the game, so i'm torn between doing all i can now, knowing i may end up restarting.

BTW, when buying and selling is it really too much to ask for combine the party gold rather than have each character maintain there own wallet in a single player game?

I completely agree with you, its the consideration for co-op. But I find co-op is like playing co-op bloodbowl. It really doesnt make the game better in combat.

I literally have no idea why anyone would ever want to play a game like this Co-op.

Has anyone found a good way to bridge the level gap between the first and second areas? I just started the second area and it seems that I have gone from mobs that are max level 9 in Cyseal to mobs that are minimum level 13 in Luculla. I feel like I'm missing an area or quest chain with level 11ish mobs that I can fight and level up on.

Plenty of things in this game remain pretty unintuitive and arcane, but I'm still having tons of fun.

I was 11 or 12  before I left the first area

I think I'm level 10/11 at the moment. The opening quests in the second area send me off to face level 14 mobs though  :oh_i_see:

Maybe I need to poke around Cyseal some more.

Hm..I'm not sure what starter quests you're doing.  I haven't been able to play since Sunday morning, but I don't remember doing more than the escort quest vs. level 10 mobs and then a few quests in the city, also vs. level 10-11 mobs.

If you dive right into the main quest you'll...


Also the ogre subquest seems to be higher level.

I haven't done the mine subquests, perhaps that has more appropriate level content.  

I've done a good amount of the second area, and I'm only level 12.   You can do most of the level 13 content at 11 with little problems, and unless you missed a lot in Cyseal, you should be 11 or close to 11 there.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/829607/daily/54/08.jpg)

Subsequent Jailbreak (http://youtu.be/xSt-bq0qDY8)

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/829607/daily/58/le-exp.jpg)

Patch with new AI personalities coming today (but I think we won't be able to change them on the fly with an ongoing game):

https://twitter.com/LarAtLarian/status/489053185836064768


Nexus opened an Original Sin section:

http://www.nexusmods.com/divinityoriginalsin/?

You can imagine what mods are being created first  :grin: (but there are a couple of interesting ones, like font replacement and a fix for missing recipes)

You can have underboob. 

Thanks!

Patch is out; looooong list (yep, you can only select the AI personality at character creation):

http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=519960

Wow.  That IS a long patch.  I wonder if the patch will interfere with our underboobs.   :ye_gods:

That list is so long, it makes you wonder if this game is really out of Early Access after all.

wow

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/divinity-original-sin (add the 9.0 IGN just published)

Yup, it's been that long since someone made a game like this.

Prediction: This will go down as one of the more overrated games in the 2010-2020 era.

Early access my eye. This is a good game at the start when you know nothing and tried everything.
Once everything falls into place and I'm just going through the motions in combat clearing trash and encounters with precise efficiency, I lost interest completely in the game.
A lot of these issues stem from dev being too lazy to balance their game - I think it's because of Single Player factor, or they think a lot of people have tendency to 'self police' when it comes to overpowered skills. I just can't see how Lv.1 Air Spell, Teleport being so easily abused gets ignored completely during testing. It's just too damn good.

So when I read the complaints of 'game too difficult' I just attribute it to players not willing to try or explore the non-traditional skill sets and stick to conventional Fighter, Mage, Rogue, Cleric builds, which is fine, but will test you in several 'hard' encounters.

Still enjoying it, despite the glacial pacing.  I actually hope we see some decent mods made with the toolset; the engine itself is good (if a little slow) so the story and level designs could be completely redone.  I actually dont mind the static mob levels, but it does tend to golden path you - if you havent done enough side quests, dont bother trying to move the main quest.  As usual, mob bosses are just damage sponges that are immunity to all the fun status effects which is not my preference, but a least those fights are rare.

BTW, if hate the rock-paper-scissor mini-game when dealing with NPCs, just change your active character to someone else in the party, then change back to your speaker and it will act like you won the minigame.  Hope the patch didnt fix that.  :)

Oh, big flaming boulders are still fun.

Looks like its a 50+ hours game, which is practically unheard of nowdays. I'm glad it exists, flaws and all.

You could shave 10 hours off by doubling the run speed though.  :-P

It is fucking glacial.

The run speed is 100% the worst thing in the game.

I don't know, the story/writing is about as drab as the run speed. They're basically lucky they left the combat completely broken.

Yeah you can name your protagonists after bastketball stars, give them Air Magic Lv 1 and just play NBA 2014 Shut up and Jam: The Air Mage Divinity Edition.

I've already put 40 hours into the game.   :ye_gods: I think more than half of that has been waiting for AI turns to finish.    I keep forgetting I have teleport.  I really should get another one. 

2 mages, 2 warriors.  Seems to work OK, but you could probably get by pretty easily with 4 mages.  Although with 2 warriors, you can do some disgusting damage if you knock something over.

Notice no one gave a fuck about the scoundrel/marksman.
It's hard to get mileage from those builds. It can be effective with creative backstab setups or Guerilla build (Stealth Attack = 2x dmg) but honestly, why bother when mage just open up with Alpha strike outside combat?

I'm only a little into the game so far, but my guy is a Ranger/Marksman build.  Sounds like I'm in for fun!   :awesome_for_real:

I made the girl an enchantress and left everything default.  She has that teleport spell at level 1 everybody is raving about, so guess I should be happy about that.

Ranger skill set is decent - at level 1. But it seems to go downhill till Lv 10. Then you start getting useful ones again.
Just remember Tactical Retreat can be used offensively or defensively.

But really, since your main selling point is Special Arrows - turn one of your char into the primary crafter and stock up frequently.
Silver Arrows' Armor Reduction are great for bosses - if you have summons and henchman bashing it down, the damage adds up.
Other elemental arrows are situational - and remember the special arrows can never, ever miss.
Marksman's direct damage skill like Ricochet also can't miss, hence using a high damage Crossbow might be beneficial - but your regular shot takes 6AP with X-Bow to compensate for raw damage (poor balancing IMO).

Aside from that - you should reserve your skill slot for Stances. Power's 25% damage boost / -10% toHit is great when hitting Stunned/Knocked Down enemies since you always land a hit on KD/Stunned foes. While Precision's +30% to hit is great for clutch shots from distance. Alternate freely between the two since it's a free action in combat.

All I was saying is that if your post-release patch reads like a novel, maybe you should've tested the game a little more before officially launching it.  Then again, most major releases do that anyway, so the Early Access title doesn't mean as much as it probably should.

I'm enjoying the game now that I've gotten comfortable with how the mechanics work, and I stumbled across the Rock, Paper, Scissors exploit yesterday by accident, which made me pretty happy.  It's nice to know that I'll eventually be able to respec, too, since I absolutely hate wasting skillpoints in these kinds of games.

I seem to be having some issue with save games, I can't quick load, and any time I quit and reopen the game any new saves are missing...

Arse

They just released a hotfix: from the looks of it, it might address the problem you're experiencing:

Glad I chose to wait.

Still waiting.

(http://media0.giphy.com/media/86Ru4rNYwgnok/giphy.gif)

Fanbois (i.e. kickstarter testers), typically have different pain levels than the normal run of the mill consumer.  Things that they might put up with or ignore are frequently major gripes for mass market releases.

Reason 7,243 I don't play the whole pay us extra for beta/alpha/gamma access.

Do like I did and find a sucker friend who Kickstarted it and will give you a bonus copy for free.

There was a switch I encountered that could only be pushed if I unlocked the camera rotation.  Quality QA.  I'm guessing the backers didn't get to take a shot at that one.

Lucalla has some really weird mob placement. I just had an epic fight against a bunch of level 11 mobs after besting a level 16 boss fight.   :oh_i_see:  ONWARD.

Restarted with scoundrels to test out rogue skill sets more.

Thievery  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=51y-3geakKw)

Underboob intact.

Thank goodness

Messed around with gorilla attack (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6kePQ8tGq8)

I was expecting a pack of screaming Gorillas =( 

Quick Question :

Is this good and worth the purchase ?

I am enjoying it, fun puzzles, turned base combat is good.  there are LOTS of cheezy powergaming combos but as a single player game you don't have to use them.

What he said. I didn't regret backing this on Kickstarter yet.

Ninja-ing barrel to the boss is fun shit.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4aeUvvjs72g) :drill:

So I should be investing more points in sneaking, yes?

Yeah, it's pretty good for ranged character.
Not so much for melee though.

So, yeah, quicksave.

Also, don't go digging in some shiters garden just for fun when you haven't saved in a couple of hours.

No reason.

I know exactly what you just did.  That sucks.

It's apparently random, but yeah...

I remember the early days of marriage too.

Not if he dug up the one I'm thinking of, the one outside the doctors place. It gives you an "are you sure you want to do this" warning then...   Heh. 

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/829607/daily/60/learn2font.png)

The story gets better too...

Surely that was a cue for a dickbutt joke ?

For anyone worried about a 1h/shield build, it gets pretty ridiculous towards the end (at least I think I'm that far).  There's a weapon that drops that turns you into a crit/crippling machine, and your defensive stats will get to the point where you're near immune to everything (this is partially lucky drops) while blocking 70% (could be higher) of the time.

There a trash fight in the 3rd area that's harder than any of the bosses/encounters in the game.  You think you're under geared/shitty after trying that fight and then you just mop the floor with the shit that actually looks scary.  Heh.

What he says is true actually.
If everything else fails, please check your bag for 1049235792 consumables.
Charm Arrows
Knockdown Arrows.
Invis Potions.
Please. USE THEM.

I should have made that annoying hillbilly an archer.  I still could considering I have a ton of gold.   Right now as a 2 handed warrior all she does it get slapped around a lot and occasionally knock something down.

One turn of invisibility is a turn of free action where the AI does jack all.
You are literally untargetable unless the AI has AoE.

So, uh, how BIG is this game ?  I got to the end boss, only to find out he's not the end boss at all.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy, but I'm left wondering 'Hey, am I actually gonna get value for money here ?' and being surprised.

Been playing it non stop since I bought it and I love it.  Some of it is utter shit, of course, but mostly it's good.  (Awful Gear, I'm looking at YOU.)

My wee Backstabber Rogue is a total rocket and also has about 400 arrows of various flavours that he's just never got around to using.  Imagine Hawkeye from the movies, except instead of One of those quivers, he has about 8 strapped to his back.

You should try those charm arrows. Hell, I even knocked down Bracchus Rex with Knockdown arrow fired from a DEX 5 Bow.
Those consumable arrows are really perfect for versatile ranger builds.
Backstabbing rogue claims they're king of DPS, but cries when the opponent switches target to them.
Guerrilla rangers just control the battlefield whenever. If you want extra lulz. Have your lone rogue fire a charm arrow as opener and hit stealth before engaging. Watch every mob blow cooldown on the lone charmed mob THEN drop the party on top of them.

My fav. party mix is Hide in Shadow Ranger gets in, drop a poison barrel, get out, fire arrow to detonate.
It gets them every damn time.

Speaking of which, I looked at that video linked above, the stealthy barrel chucker - I can't seem to lift those fucking things.  What's the requirements of STR and how many can you carry ?

Telekinesis is your friend.
My memory is fuzzy, but my ST 10 Warrior has no issue picking it up.
It weights 60 stones ea.
Also they have this funny 'ignorant boss speech' attitude if you switch to your partner while in convo with Big Bad
Barrel Diplomacy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8zY5P_5YwM)

That's hugely broken.

Also, Hilarious.

Yes, it is.

As RK hinted, though, Telekenesis is what you want to move giant shit around. My Cleric has a TK of 4 and she moves things my 13 str warrior says "I can't throw/ carry that."  Not to mention snagging goodies that might be in the middle of a fire someplace.

I'm also finding that Teleport is getting less useful at ~13. Mobs just aren't taking as much damage when thrown, and one guy took a whole 9 points off his 1000 point HP bar, so that's fairly useless.

My biggest problem right now is finding someone with enough cash to take all the things I want to dump off.  Skillbooks are a great expendeture, but I'm still at 80-90% carrying capacity on all my characters because vendors have so little cash.  RPG problems.

3 of my characters are empty and one is pretty much humping EVERYTHING.  It's kinda funny.  I do tend to clear out after every dungeon like an OCD obsessed asshole though.

I've also found little to no use for the 'Send to HomeHearth' button.  It might be different if I could reaccess it easily...

Yeah, the "this is not my chest, therefore I can't open it" that's built for multiplayer really hampers you in single player.

Wait


Christ, that's rather nice, if true.

Yeah, sometimes it's a common problem with this kind of RPGs (especially the less balanced RPGs of the past): accumulation of resources (gold, items or whatever) or unbalances in the late game.

For example, in Baldur's Gate 1, I dumped all the money I had before the last fight in potions and piercing arrows, so the enounter was quite easy considering how overpowered archers were; Same with the original Divine Divinity. I'm (AT LAST!!!) almost done with it, but I have a shit-ton of stuff that is just laying in a chest and will never be used.
---

By the way, speaking of Divine Divinity (the 2002 one), I have a spare code, and giving it away for free thanks to my D:OS KS collector's edition.

Who wants it?  QUICK!!!  :grin: (your mileage may vary, but expect a min. 35-40 hrs long game if you rush through it, but more likely around 60-80, if not more)

ME !

Ok  :drill:...For all the others, DON'T DESPAIR  :why_so_serious:

Beside Steam, GOG often discounts all the series titles as well.

You can also purchase them on Larian Vault, including the Divine Anthology (Divinity, Beyond, D2 Developer's Cut, which includes the expansion; box version is sold out, at the moment) for $19.99:

https://www.larianvault.com/index.php
http://www.divinityanthology.com/games.php

Now, with all the games coming out, digital platform discounts and whatnot, it makes sense to wait, but one thing is for sure: you'll get an above average (to say the least) hrs played/money spent ratio  :grin:

Uhh, they're one shot.  But they restock every time you level.

 :headscratch:

ooookay.

So, read both once per char then ?  Or... or what ?

( I Hope I've Not Just Wasted Mine on Doofus.)

One use total.  1 ability point, 3 skill points.  I'm not sure if they restock when anyone levels or just when one or both mains do.  Needs more testing.

Skill points are really the thing you never have enough of.  I'd make sure to buy that one every chance you get.

Sir. we found a barrel. It's full of oil.
Send it to the homestead.
Another barrel it's full of go-
Send it to the homestead.
It's another bar-
SEND ALL BARREL TO HOMESTEAD.

At 19 it's still doing roughly 300-400 damage.

Drop people on other people for AOE dmg.

I don't know how far in you are but I find that named Immaculates tend to have a ton of gold each. You may need to Charm/Reason/Intimidate them before you can trade, but you can always kill them afterwards, or not, it's up to you.

There's also a vendor at the start of Act III who pretty much cleaned me out of tradeable items and some gold, his stock was so good.

Still having lots of fun with this game, although their inclusion of "hunt the tiny hidden switch to proceed" type puzzles is irking me a bit  :oh_i_see:

Beat it.  Last fight is a slog.  Holy shit.  My Madora had a base 14% chance to hit the last boss.  :awesome_for_real:  Good thing my indestructible, sword/board warrior could just face tank it while everyone else busied themselves with the trash.  Miniboss was kind of a joke.

More thoughts later, perhaps.

I thought they patched out being able to buy the Attribute and Skill Point books every level?

Maybe they did.

Vendors restock when you level.  I didn't have any problems buying the skill/attribute books from like 15-20.   They were always single use as I was playing through.   If they patched it out in the last day, I wouldn't know.  The last fight took about an hour yesterday.  
Ohh, I see:


Hmm.  I could have sworn my is all patched up (checked, it is).  Maybe only on a new save game?  


I'd say a majority of the time I'm just stuck in a room, it's because I can't see the tiny switch or lever in the grass until Google tells me exactly where it is. I really wish that crap (and chests) would show up when you hold ALT as long as you've passed a perception check and have been by the button.

They do work on perception check, but the killer is that perception checks don't re-check.  I know this because when you free the pig in Hiberhelm and he tells you about the buried mounds, I failed 2 perception checks and never found the mound when the pig said, "DIG HERE."  I still can't find them to dig them up now that I've got a guy with PER 10.

I'm relatively certain they highlight because the buttons in the church at Cyrax lit up for me when holding alt.

I'm kinda dragged around in co-op most of the time.
I hate the game post Cyseal.
So I usually just let my co-op partner take the lead and I click on the pyramid every 10-15 seconds to stay where the action is.
Also another friend played and shared a joke over steam.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/829607/daily/62/adventureofsirkoony.jpg)

I checked and was able to repurchase the Attribute and Skill Point books, so even though they said they were going to patch that out, it looks like they haven't.

Hah. I held back and didn't do it XD tooo easy.
Goddamn all the resist are max at lvl 15ish.
It feels wrong.

Also, this game takes a turn for grimdark midway when I fireballed rat in town for 90XP (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KqovjNgFho&feature=youtu.be)

wtf?

Curious what you're doing to max resists.  Spells or equipment?

Essences. I think you need crafting for this. Fire gives fire resist etc. So if you boost your defensive gears you get a ton of resists.
Also, rubies is auto +20 to all. Experiment a bit.

Jesus, I'm terrible at this game.  Was looking for a break from the in-town stuff, so I took my 4 level 3 dudes out and ran outside to poke around.  Ran into a group of 6 level 3 undead.  10 reloads later....

You're probably thinking of doing the classic DND whack and win right?
Try to play with the environmental effect.

See those water barrels? Break it, then electrocute it.
Sending a lone fighter to melee is probably going to just end in misery. If things too crazy, you can easily lure them back to the guards., the North Western Cyseal has no gate. :)

That was definitely part of it. But even bigger was me not appreciating how important gear is. I went back to town and did a few quests that resulted in a piece or two for everybody (but no more levels). Then I went back to fight that pack and it was like night and day.

It's actually quite easy to craft early too.  It can net you some 'stuffs'.

Oh yeah, if you find that you like to have a hybrid build - and feel it's too powerful - don't feel too guilty about it.
This game is like that by design.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/829607/daily/65/dearwoody.jpg)

NO.  NO NO NO NO NO.

You are catering for a fucking audience of OCD Cunts.  Do NOT and I repeat DO NOT put quests in an area that will ASSPLODE and not be returnable to.

Fucking reloading that hour and a half.

Hm. The trial area?

On crafting, anyone know if you can add more than elemental damage to things you make? I haven't Googled it but from what I've been trying it looks like the only way to get +stats on items is to find them.  Which sucks as I've only been finding motherfucking bows and crossbows so my 2h line are using items 4-5 levels behind themselves.  It's taking me 2-3 hits to kill shit mobs now and that's just unacceptable.

Yes. You use the essences.  Be aware they overwrite each other.

Later on, you can add Tenebrium damage on top of standard and elemental damage.  It's a nice bonus.

Is the skill still bugged though ? 

Yeah I got that, but I was looking for +2-hand or +str like you find on the green, blue and orange magic weapons. It seems all you can do is create a Vanilla weapon with +fire/water/earth damage (and later +tenebrium)

I suppose if I fall enough behind I can go with that, but the loss of 10% damage due to lower 2-h and +damage from strength might not be enough at this point.

When you make weapons with level 5 crafting/blacksmithing, certain combinations get bonuses to strength.  Don't think there's a way to craft +weapon skills, though.

The scissors-rock-paper thing is dumb as all hell, but I assume that will be modded away.  Otherwise, this game is the frickin' bees knees; I've been playing obsessively.  The skill system is a little opaque and a lot annoying (books), but that's fixable already with the character editor (and makes it feel even more like a classic 90s game!).

When the mini-game comes up, just select another character.  Then go back to the one that's in the conversation.  It'll auto-win the mini-game for you.

I thought they patched that out?

There is an enchant you can place on your weapon for +2 STR & DEX.
I would also recommend mages to ignore staff altogether and instead go find a shield and good one hander for additional enchant slot on their shield.

Worked all the way through the game for me.

 :heart:

Still is.
QA totally missed that part cause they probably didn't make it that far in.
I dunno what the fuck convinced them it's a good idea.

Which pretty much ruins Merusks plan.

I'm still reeling at whoever thought that would be a good late game idea.

It's not.

I would wager the average reviewer played this for 3 hours. Tops.

Did you just imply that there are reviewers that actually play any game for more than a couple of hours prior to writing their review?

That's even better than the "win once then spacebar" thing.


Yeah it does, but it's all good. I found an orange scythe and a blue axe last night that are both a level below me but superior to crafted items in damage and stats so I'm all set again.   Hooray for useless crafting!

Weapons are for the Weak anyway.

 :grin:

Maybe I built him wrong or I haven't found the right skillbooks but my mage just doesn't fuck things up the way my melee chars do. The 2h guys take full 1/4 to 1/2 bars of health with one swing, even on named guys. (Except names with gold spikes. those vary)  The spells and spell effects whittle shit down in an unsatisfactory way.

Mage is level 5 Aeromancy and 4 Pyromancy and 13 int. He just can't compete.

I find my 2 hander will literally chop the heads off anyone they meet in one go;  but due to the high strength and Con, they end up having low speed and not many action points.  It's usually bulrush, Chib, then stand about like a prick until challenged or a mage teleports some cunt on top of her.

My Rogue, on the other hand, is a MILLION AP running and slicing machine who can backstab a dude to death in two hits.  He also teleports behind them.   :uhrr: :ye_gods:

My mages usually just do 'the funny stuff'.  Bleeding, blinding and generally chuckleworthy stuff that might not rank huge in terms of instant kills, but is just hugely amusing in terms of humiliation of enemies.

It's counter-intuitive, but put the Glass Cannon and Leech perks on your two-hander and buff his elemental resists.  You'll have a ton of extra AP at the cost of some HP but Leech and the resists mean that blood and most elements will heal him.  You'll still be unkillable.

For some reason toward the end of the game, your melee guys will end up having shit percentages for hitting the harder mobs. Majora was relegated to trash duty because even with buffs, she wasn't going to be hitting the end boss.  Mages really pull a lot of weight then.  The AE blizzard spell you get later hits for a truck if the RNG gods are kind.


Of course, knockdown + bully trait is a lot of fun.  That boulder drop spell is fantastic. (There seems to be a bug with being able to scribe it to a blank earth book, so, keep that in mind while shopping)  It has great range, poisons, and it's a reliable knockdown.  It's great to precast that bitch and then follow up with a fireball.

There's a lot of things I'd like to try, but the game is just too fucking long to replay. Although, this time I imagine I'd spend less time running around wondering what the fuck to do.

I have leech on my witch (and she uses the bleed spell A LOT) and my Rogue.  Alas, I've found other talents to be much more useful to my Warrior and she has a metric fuckton of HP anyway...

For end game, Madora will still deliver the goods as long you get CC support from your mages. Stunned/Knocked Down enemies have 0 evasion and take full damage.
Divine Light from Warrior lowered willpower and simply stun with 3 AP shocking grasp.

There are very few genuinely 'GOOD' perks.
I'd recommend to cheese the game and trade the perk point for 10 ability points (moar spells)
When you have 2-3 elemental touch spells that does CC per round - your warrior will just demolish everything without a sweat.

Larian is back from vacation, and they just released a small patch, with more stuff coming in the next few weeks:

UI scaling is full retard.
One slider to control everything from font, portrait, hotbar, and frigging chat log window.
C'mon boy, you can do this.  :uhrr:

I hit a wall or something with this game where I just seem to have suddenly lost interest.  I played it for hours and hours but now haven't touched it for a week or two.  Fired it up last night, played for like 10 minute before one of my character decided the best path was to walk through the lava the rest of the group was walking around and quit playing for the night.

Somehow I didn't even make it through the tutorial area.

It begins to test your patience for esoteric bullshit.  I'm trying to make whiskey for one of the quests, but I've sold/ destroyed all the barley you can use. So I'm stuck on that quest unless I hunt down whichever vendor I sold it to.  Because allowing selling of quest items is a good idea.

There's roots of a good RPG here as it engaged me at first, but it's really obvious how much bullshit was smoothed in the beta as I've been progressing.  I'm going to stop until they catch up and fix the rest.

I found the first two hours of this game almost killed it for me. The tutorial dungeon was meh and town seemed like a real slog trying to accomplish anything. Came back and tried again, got to level three, found a companion, and unlocked the hirelings so I could actually leave the gates and get in a fight. Doing that stupid fight with the zombies four or five times outside the front gate hooked me.

I don't normally like hard games, but the hard fights in this come across more like puzzles to me - figuring out the tactics needed to get by them. And I love loot and this game hands out loot like candy.

Currently 7th, using a Rogue with bow backup and a sword and board Cleric as my mains, Fire/Air/Earth wizard and Madora as my followers. Rogue is over 3m per AP on movement. I trigger haste and then next round run 18 meters across the screen to get behind the annoying Shaman, with six AP to spare. Which is enough to backstab him six times.

One question, if I ever find a replacement for Madora, do I have to strip her down before kicking her aside (she bitches to much about magic), or will the game do that for me?

These are questions that they invented quicksave/load for.

IIRC it didn't strip her equipment the time I tried. I decided it wasn't worth the hassle at the time since henchmen weren't leveling-up when joining.

Sometimes i think the open world non-hand holding design works against it.  Speaking of the tutorial dungeon, one my initial go, i only did the very first area of it and must have missed a hall/door or something, b/c after going to town and leveling up a bit, i ended up doing it backwards.  I saw the locked door under the waterfall, leveled up my lockpicking, open it and was promptly at the "boss fight" of the tutorial dungeon, killed him easily since i was level 3 at that point, and ran through the rest in reverse order until i figured out "hey, this is the end of tutorial dungeon".

Some people would think that poor design and horrible Q&A that you could actually "break the game" by doing things like that.  Other people look at something like that and leads them to experiment with what else they can do and enjoy the flexibility.  YMMV.

Personally, quirks and all this is one of my favorite games in months - not the best or GOTY, but it's the closest thing to a good turn based combat old school RPG i can think of.  By the time im fully done with it, Wasterland2 should be out :)

Normally Sky is into that sort of shit, I think we need a deep analysis of what's gone wrong here.  :why_so_serious:

Wasteland 2 sucked.
Sorry to blow your bubble.

I need more context.  Do you generally like the Fallout games or do they not apply to Wasteland?  I like played nothing of the original Wasteland, I just know it was somewhat of an inspiration for the series.

I'll do a review once the game is out prolly, but my impression of the game based on a 2 hour gameplay length is meh.
I can understand people getting frustrated by difficult or the eurotrash nature of D:OS but Wastelands 2 is a massive disappointment for me.

1. User interface
Didn't feel polished at all. Lots of menu seems too small. Camera just zooms in by default for nothing.
There were no shortcut markings on the buttons, so I have to check the redefine keys menu to figure them out.
C'mon this is 2014, we have 1600x900 pixels to occupy and yet this is what I get
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/829607/daily/68/ui-nitpicking.jpg)

No categorization I had to scroll down till I find what I wanted.

2. Combat
Combat felt so basic because there were no aimed shots, special skills like knockdowns, disarms non-existent, after having a jolly good fun breaking Divinity with Teleportation, Telekinesis, Stealth backstabs, Elemental Combos etc - going back to basic combat felt boring.

In WL2 your moves in combat are simply: Shoot , Use Item, Crouch (Increase to Hit% & Evade), Walk, Ambush.
That's it. You can't move while crouched, you can't go prone. High initiative allows you to Ambush earlier, waiting for people to get closer and open fire. Etc.

My motivation to continue dropped tremendously after I cleared the first area of investigation.
There's nothing grabbing me. I searched so hard to find anything good to say about it, but there's scant consolation: Probably... it doesn't crash? It runs OK on my system? Clearly explained stat systems? For a game that promises so much there seem to be very little to hype about except it being functional and has the word Wastelands on it.

For the record, I did not play Wastelands, so I'm coming into the game just looking for fun and couldn't find much of it.
I backed this on kickstarter and felt disappointed, anyone who plunged $50 on it is just being ripped off IMO.
If you want a tactical squad shooter - grab Jagged Alliance 2.

My tolerance level for WL2 is going to be pretty high since the original was a favorite back in the day.  Since i already bought it on sale, it would have to suck pretty hard to not play beyond 5 hours.
"Magic" in a game setting really spoils you for choice in combat options - hopefully WL2 will have grenades, lasers and whatnot but they might take a while to appear.
Still cautiously optimistic for now.

WL2 will be shit. Just read the interview back on page 2 (?). Or watch their awful video.

I bought Divinity but it looks like my laptop is too old to do much with it, maybe. It was also late at night and I was overwhelmed with the usual 'here are 500 skills you can customise your character with, most of them are probably shit but we aren't saying!' stuff.

Just take air magic for everyone. Teleport, Blitz bolt.
And rain.
And slam dunk. (http://youtu.be/umjeXwHNMME)

My dudes don't really feel like they're getting much more powerful when they go up a level.

I think that's because the whole 'scaling of power per pt is just 5% debuff chance added and 5% ability dmg'
To me, additional skill picks creates more 'power' than anything else in the game.
Yes, a high INT wizard is effective - but one that focuses on a single-high level school wouldn't be as good as 2-medium level schools.

Earth is awesome knockdown but seems lacking without Fire, Water is Freeze Freeze Freeze - or Chain Stun Paradise with Air.
Recommended Combo
Earth/Fire Wizard
Water/Air Wizard

Those two are ridiculously good at just chaining off their spell combos.
While the 'jack of all trades' can choose to go for Water (Free Rain = Wet) or Air (Teleport - Versatile - No Saving Throw!) or Witchcraft (Oath for 50% bonus dmg on AOE skills!)

Favorite Battle Application:
Rain > Lightning Bolt
Earth Boulder > Fireball
Rain > Water Elemental

I don't seem to have the option to put 2nd points into things mostly. I should probably find a faq or something.

It costs 2 points for the second point so if you haven't got 2 to spare the plussie won't even show up next to the stat.

I wanted to like this game. I started and stopped half a dozen times with different builds but I can't get through the town stuff. It's just too boring for me.

Yeah, it takes as many points as the next rank in a skill to skill-up, to a cap of 5 points.  With magic skills this lets you learn 3, 5, 7, 9, All skills.

The increasing point cost is why I was so adamant about not giving-up the +skill weapons I'd found.  I could invest another 9 points in 2h/ armor/ whatever oooor I could just suck it up and deal with less damage but more utility by spreading those 9 points around.  Easy choice.

The town portion really, really, REALLY sucks. Not enough dungeon runs in general in the game.

Oh, well crap. I assumed I just wasn't high enough level to get 2nd ranks in things. The idea of starting over annoys me.

Yeah, they never explain that and if I hadn't read about the game's mechanics a ton before getting more than 1 hour into a playthrough it probably would've made me quit.  But they do let you reallocate skills a few hours in, so it's not that bad.

Which will cause you to lose any skills you've learned.  So, hope you didn't buy many.

I need a game to fit what my life has become and this seems perfect. Any advice for someone who's only skimmed the thread enough to be inspired to buy it?

 :why_so_serious: Are you sure? Y/N?

Ha. Yea, can't be something I think about between unpredictable sessions of unpredictable duration, but more than bullshit mobile apps that offer nothing more than check in mechanics and notifications. I have Godus and Clash of Clans for that noise :-)

Eh, should say I want a game like this in particular, a meaty single player RPG. Just so happens it fits my current lifestyle...

This is a long game where it takes a long time to do anything.  Factor that in.

I hate to say this game kinda lost momentum past the midway point.
Early game - so many power opportunities and experiment.
But midgame just kinda suck cause most basic tricks are still effective.
So you ended up cheesing through most encounters.

A really long time. Like multiple minutes to walk across town to get to the vendor you need long. If I don't have at least an hour to sink into it I don't fire it up. Hell, the initial load time is long.

Eurotrash. Eurotrash never changes.

I kind of enjoyed the late game where you could sneak up on an unsuspecting group of enemies and rain a bunch of fireballs down on them to initiate the fight.  I didn't even do any powergaming, though I could see how it could end up being pretty silly.

Cool ok. I like the old school vibe, but yea, may not be a fit long haul.

New patch today (still no new companions, unfortunately; I'll keep waiting for the "serious" playthrough I wanna start):

Notes (bold is mine:  :uhrr: :why_so_serious:)

Loving this. Exactly the kind of game I need. Only thing I'm waiting for some modder to make is a better inventory management system. Everything else is perfect for me.

Had to throw this up; in an earlier post i had mentioned how i had done the tutorial dungeon backwards by accident after lock picking the door you come out of and starting with the boss fight.  This freedom is a bit of a two edged sword.  I finally am in the last 10% of the game, and ran up against a door that can only be opened if you have collected a minimum number of star stones.  Apparently, i am one short.  So my options are now, either go back through all of the 16 spots where i should have gotten one to find the one i missed, which could take a long time.  Or try to beat the door down for 30 minutes.

Considering at least 1 of the stones was just lying on the ground in the wilderness near a dead body, i don't think this last door was well designed :)  It's crap like that which makes me hope people will take the engine and game and just do a better job with the plot and story....

New patch has just been deployed on Steam:


Later today, the DLC with 2 new companions will be available to everyone for free (new companions are a Rogue and a Ranger).

Finally started playing. Enjoying so far. Didn't realise you need to save skill points to get to level two but no big deal.

I love combat in this game. They need an ultra hard mode though.

Agreed. Most abilities need rebalancing.

Yea I typically have one untrained point per character at any given time. I'm working hard to not theorycraft it out of game. I feel like it'd be easy to gimp oneself, so I'm just sticking to the classic archetypes. Wish I had started with some type of archer though. Started with a Battle Mage and Wizard only then to meet a Wizard. Eventually found Madora. Haven't figured out Aggro much though.

Thing I didn't realize is that it seems balanced to a party of four. I turned down Jahan and Madora at first because I didn't like their extremist views, and I figured eh if these two want to join me, surely there'll be others in Cyseal.

As far as I can tell, that is not the case. There isn't anyone else early on, and you won't be getting much north of Cyseal without them.

There ARE future characters that show up though right? I only just got to Silverglen, then went back to Cyseal to finish up areas and quests I missed. 30 hours in and I'm still in the newb zone  :grin:

There are two more with the recent patch. But you'd need to restart.

You can also buy companions once you wind up meeting the Imp. It's not explained in the best manner but you have to barter with the guy who mentions showing you the other heroes. 

You can always respec http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=521295&page=4

Oh thanks! I'll check with him.

Lamaros: thanks, I saw that in a patch note. No way I'm restarting, but I'll see if I started after that patch by checking on the Ranger.

Edit: nope, don't have the new characters; however, did find guy in Hall of Heroes. Wow quite a lot of options..

The real problem with the skills in this game is actually the attributes. If you're a Mage you just need int and can go all in on more than one school. If you're a fighter or scoundrel, bad luck, it's strength or dex and not both - or you just stuff your ability to get enough speed or constitution. And you don't even get much cross over benefit when you do do that, because the weapons are ether/or.

Plus the two dex classes don't overlap either.

So you can throw a few points in int and then use any an all of the spell school, while others are left with no options but to get diminishing returns on the one stat and skill they already choose.

Int 8 warrior disagrees
St 8 scoundrels get the benefit of a light shield. Pop an enchant on shield for added resist.
Sarongs are 8 int required.
Low speed chars are shit.

You're agreeing with me, shield scoundrel aside (which isn't very good IMO). There is no point to o anything other than wizard, or wizard/scoundrel, wizard/warrior. There's no warrior/scoundrel value.

Int and speed goes with everything, dex and str only really go with their builds, con is just a little bonus if you have nothing better to do and perception is just crap.

So, role playing aside, all this interesting character build choices come from 'what spells do I want to mix with this'.

There's no point in role playing shit in this game.
The game doesn't acknowledge your knightly behavior or magey behavior.
It's a powergaming fun the only biggest flaw is Scoundrel having only certain limited spell choices - and having to hybrid over to Marksman skill pool which isn't half bad cause Guerilla with 5 Sneak is 1 point at 15 metre double damage.

One of the biggest problems I noticed with non-spellcasters is that cooldowns for spells decrease with high Int, but cooldowns for non-spellcasters remain static no matter your str/dex/speed/whatever.  So a mage with high enough Int can just spam their best spells very very often, while a warrior or something else is stuck with the original cooldown on their skills.

Another reason why mid game kinda suck is definitely because the high AP high level spells are just not up to scratch in terms of performance vs investment.
You will learn this painful lesson when the final battle commence.

Yes that's what I said.

I prefer backstabbing for the damage though. Single target damage not much else comes close, vulnerabilities aside. Plus it's more fun teleporting about the place stabbing stuff than turning in to a rock or tree and shooting arrows.

They could fix some of these issues by making the good spells require at the least a three level commitment to the ability. As it is you can get so many good ones at 2 point that it makese no sense to go all in. Needing to spend 30 of your 49 ability points to be a serious Mage would bring a bit more diversity to character options.

I'm finally doing a proper playthrough (almost reached level 5). Party is:

- Wayfarer (Marksman/Geomancer/Hydro)
- Shadowblade (Scoundrel/Witchcraft)
- Madora
- Jahan

It's a good mix: I just added Jahan, gave him Pyro beside his starting skills. Oh, and given the conflicting personalities I gave to my "mains", he didn't want to join, then I read you just need to talk with him alone with one of your characters :P

Anyway, what a fantastic game; some lazy design issues here and there ( confusing dialog trees, for example, and it's a pity they didn't manage to complete NPC schedules paired with Day/Night cycles), but they don't lower the overall value of the product, IMO.

Yeah, I don't know. For the last year the only things that hook me are minecraft, the occasional Rift/TOR jaunt and minecraft. Somehow during this great renaissance of my favorite genre of games (isometric tbrpg) I'm completely uninterested in them. It's been a weird year.
The game won't give you your imagination. You especially should understand this. Or go ahead and powergame it and complain that it's too easy.

Running with a Battle Mage, Wizard, Jahan and Madora, was becoming a struggle :-) After Merusk mentioned the guy at Homestead, I dabble with swapping Jahan out for a few others, settling on a Ranger. Part of the problem was by then I was level 8. There were better options but they were either much higher level or too low. Wish I knew about that guy sooner  :-P

Been going ok so far.

Recruit whoever you like, then kick them out of your party.  They'll hang around the homestead near the character vendor, and when you talk to the character, you can re-recruit them at your current level.

oooh. Did NOT know that. Thanks!

One of the mages starts with three points in aero at level 1. Plus 1 pyro  and something else. Yay for 3 free ability points.

He is a badass to be sure, but nothing comes even remotely close to the damage output of my scoundrel with a legendary dagger and spice fire enchant. About 150 damage per two AP, before taking backstab in to account, etc. at level 7. She has the swiftness perk too. Once haste is popped she fills up ap every round and can move over the whole battlefield in only a couple of ap. the movement skills are just used to jump fire and poison they're so inefficient, likewise the aero chain stun.

Edit: the dagger also causes blindness and cursed. Blindness btw stops the enemy from doing attacks of opportunity.

Blindness stops them from doing anything.

I thought they could still attack things next to them? Either way it is good.

Also on why backstab is great - the trait to make it +20% is not to sneeze at. Especially when you have Bully and a way to slow or cripple with other chars.

If I was going to play through with two lone wolves I'd go with one being scoundrel mage for this single target damage bohemoth and crowd control, and the other a man at arms pyromancer with all the area effect fun. Given how little the followers have in the way of personality I don't see why not.

The problem is when one of them gets hit by crowd control.  :grin:
I suppose the problem goes away once you pop a hard counter buff. But having 4x AP Pool adds a little bit of lee-way when facing those CC Situations.
Madora is strong in battle with her perks - while the Sorcerer has easy synergy and useful crafting perk.
We haven't even covered crafting invisibility pots that took 3 AP to consume but render the character effectively 'ignored' in battle for 5 turns till any action breaks it.
I think the game suffers a lot of 'boring' when you play through it in Lone Wolf, lesser options leads to one-track solution to most battles.

Oh, have you discovered the pyramids? I find it immensely useful for the slow fighters to just teleport to the scoundrel in melee.

Slow fighters I think get value from going one point in to marksman (and scoundrel at level 10) for retreat, if you can spare it. With that and the charge you do ok. Plus you can teleport guys to their front door with another character.

For CC the only problem I think is when you don't have imitative. Otherwise scoundrel or potion invis after haste means you can wait and set up a perfect move with all your cc to take them out. There's nothing really hard in this game if you use everything you have, potions and scrolls etc.

I mostly use the pyramid to port quickly to the crafting tools (I've never tried to pick them up, just assumed you can't).

Rain is one of the most powerful spells at times. Wet gives you such a boost against fire, and makes ranged stun and freeze cc even easier. Pick your battle near a water source, teleport any ranged guys and melee smash, while electrified water stops melee doing anything.

Still, more fun to just try new things. Fire resist tank with self immolation and explode is fun. Haste then invis (fire shield if lots of melee enemies). Then battering ram, immolate then explode (12 ap). Maybe not as great as just doing stuff from ranged, but more fun.

Regarding combat, I didn't expect to like it so much honestly, mostly because I'm in the RTwP party. Its mix of satisfying visual feedback, combinations and yes, even unbalanced powers, makes it for a very funny and rewarding experience. At least at the beginning, there are instances where you look up a monster party and think "OMG they are too many and powerful", only to find it wasn't so bad after all.

I've played all previous Divinity titles by Larian, so I knew exactly what to expect dialog and story wise (the goofyness of it all), but so far I'm pleased. For a different approach, I'm sure Eternity and Torment will provide a more "serious" experience.

The "Bad", IMO, it's a sum of all those little imperfections you can find: inventory management is hellish, a true "old school" experience that the OCD in you will love/hate :P . Dialogue trees are confusing and the immersive storyfag in me doesn't like the fact that it's always like you meet that person for the first time each time you talk with him/her; minimap and world map zoom always reset, DAMNIT. They made huge progressions on the animation of the characters since alpha (well, of course :P), but they still feel awkward and a little slow. A little too attention has been placed toward having as many AP as possible (speed) in order to be really effective, but hey, AP are the heart of the TB combat, in this case.

But, umm, that's all the bad I can find in this title, honestly, especially when I realize that in no way they wanted to provide the ultimate polished grimdarkmature and balanced experience (which is not a bad thing per se, yes)

But yeah, it's a gem and GOTY material.

If Obsidion could take this basic combat and system and give it decent story, followers, etc then it would be great. I worry Eternity will be the reverse of Divinity though.

Story is the one thing I trust Obsidian to do well.  Non-buggy gameplay however ...  :why_so_serious:

 :awesome_for_real: modders will fix it... (for bethesda and cryo engine games only)  :why_so_serious:

New patch.

http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=557734#Post557734

Rather large number of changes. Nothing earth shattering though.

The Larian guys are simply the best (hilarious video about the italian translation, just patched in) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzgR9cWhADE

Wow. Amazing, for real.

I played this one for a bit before my interest just petered out. The fight mechanics were fine, just that the story was kinda out there.

Now I understand how collaborative programming works!

Thanks Larian!

From Dec 2014, their last Kickstarter update

Divinity: Original Sin - Update #66: PC Game of the Year  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXAvcqsPlfQ)

It's worth a watch, but longish (16 mins), so I made a summary of what is still to come for D:OS:

• Controller Support
• Some stuff that's 'secret'
• Hardcore mode - creatures get new skills, fights changed, "real hardcore mode - not just some formulas that have been switched, big change in game-play"
• Economy change, value of drops modified "We are not happy with people being required to rob all the paintings
• Another guy working on something "they can't tell"
• Writing changes 1 "We know there were some weaker parts in the story." "We are revamping the way the main story is presented to the players."
• Writing changes 2 Companies being more fleshed out, have more own story, more party banter.
• Sven "Brat..Hi. Well, where is that Linux version?" Brat: "Good question..." Sven: "And where is it?" Brat: "We are working on it...", issues with middle ware, now solved, already compiling.
• Engine changes 1 - optimizing for quad+ core CPUs in the works
• Engine changes 2 - Multi-player server and client will be uncoupled, server will run as stand alone programme, "like small persistent campaign settings that keeps running and friends can log in" "But we are not making an MMO!"
• New RPG coming in 2015, based on the Divinity:OS engine

Really hats of to them. Is there any other Dev studio right now that treats their games like this post release?  :Love_Letters:

Back to kickstarter for D:OS 2 (http://www.lar.net/2015/08/12/returning-to-kickstarter/)

Campaign starts August 26th.

Woot. I'll make a thread for it!

They have a page for players to suggest goals and pledge rewards for the kickstarter.

This suggestion made me snicker:


(https://i.imgur.com/JkXM0Rx.png)

A tad unlikely maybe, but oh God, an Obsidian-Larian game. *drools*   :grin:

Feel free to subsidize this for me, suckers.  :awesome_for_real:

^^^
It's like social wealth redistribution in reverse.

Why would you kickstart the sequel to a very successful game? Don't you have money now? Anyone putting in anything beyond a preorder value is an idiot.

Why gamble your own money when you can gamble someone elses?

Well sure, I know why they are doing it.

Swen Vincke spoke about crowdfunding on the company blog and the idea was that they planned to make their future game on their own with quite a lot of negative responses. On his next blog entry he finished with the following:
As you can see by the reactions most fans were in favor of going the kickstarter route again.
http://www.lar.net/2014/10/01/the-halo-effect/

I'm happy they found a way to sell the game that allows them more developmental freedom. Say what you want about KS'd video games, folks like Larian are using it in a way I support. A clearer execution of the studio's vision with less pressure to shove it out the door.

And that's pretty much the answer, the same reason they KS'd the first game though they didn't have to. I wonder how many great studios would still be around if they had been able to self-publish with crowdfunding?

I also wonder if Larian shouldn't just go RSI and open their own crowdfunding site directly. I'd certainly back their next game ahead of time.

But can I run a tavern? And breed horses?

Only in Star Citizen

Can I build a feta-pult?

How much is it worth to you to be able to do so?

I dunno, maybe I can con talk some suckers backers in to ponying up another 5k each?

KS for the sequel is up.  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/larianstudios/divinity-original-sin-2

Looks pretty awesome 4 player, if we could ever coordinate multiplayer outside of Blood Bowl here  :why_so_serious:

Divinity 2 Kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/larianstudios/divinity-original-sin-2) is live.

It's basically a pre-order: 25 USD for the game (plus alpha/beta builds, but I wont spoiler myself with those).

Seems fine to me really.

Edit: When I started composing this post Sky's one wasn't there yet...

Edit 2: Re multi-player, this seems worth pointing out [emphasis mine]:

I don't have the first one so I went with the $50 tier that gets you both games for essentially $25 each.  Not bad considering D:OS is still selling for around $40 and we're getting the enhanced version (hopefully meaning with all the DLC included) of the game.

Sequel does not belong on Kickstarter. Fuck them.

At least they didn't move to the retarded Fig platform. For that alone they deserved my money.

Also, quite some RPGs on Kickstarter are sequel of sorts, don't have a problem with that approach.

Tempted by the $50 pledge to get the original and this one. Will I have to wait until this is released to get the first one if I do?

Doubtful. Larian is awesome and more developers should be like them.

(https://i.imgur.com/lNawQHN.png)

Go ahead and get it.  :-)

Damn now I am running out of excuses.

Did I call it or what?  *smug grin*  


(http://i.imgur.com/XoCrHec.jpg)


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/larianstudios/divinity-original-sin-2/posts/1363117 (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/larianstudios/divinity-original-sin-2/posts/1363117)


Reads like the will be only responsible for (some of?) the origin stories. But nevertheless... Can only be good.  :heart: :heart:


Aside from that, 12 hours left on Kickstarter. So they are doing a 24 hour Twitch stream  (http://www.twitch.tv/larianstudios)

Oh...and they very close to the last stretch goal, Dungeon/Game Master



I like!

Larian released a new update on the original game of the Original Sin game series. Short video showing the difference between the original Original Sin and Enhanced Original Sin.

DOS:EE - Before & After Enhancing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEn0B31burcl)

Looks like a ton of nice improvements.

A news post on the D:OS Steam Store page says that if you purchased D:OS you'll get D:OS:EE for free (as a separate item in your Steam Library) when it launches.  Yay.

Double Yay!

Sweet, I like how they have a hard mode with a refined skill system, I look forward to playing it again.

I could never get too far into D:OS because I kept feeling overwhelmed by the skill system and afraid that I was fucking up a character. Here's hoping refined skills help with that a bit.

This became available today. Looking forward to giving it another go with the wife with the new 'Explorer' difficulty setting. We gave up on the last run because shit just took forever, everything else we liked. I know the tactics are one of the cool things about this game but I could care less, just want to play through the story and see what there is to see. Anyway... free for those of us that already purchased is the right price for me to check what they've changed up.

Still no increased combat speed toggle and the annoyance of having only one hot bar on display.

It probably goes without saying, but the controller UI (which is what the game defaults to if you happen to have one plugged in already) is terrible.

Everything feels so kludgy, and it lacks basic functionality console RPGs (both Western and Eastern) have had for many years, such as being able to use shoulder buttons to tab between party members when you have something a paperdoll or skill list open.

Ah well. I was interested in checking it out co-op on the big screen with 2 controllers, sounds like we'll just stick to playing on the PCs. My wife was bugging me to find a game we can play together again and requested I reinstall Neverwinter Nights. I figured this EE was a more interesting option at this point.

It's possibly fine with two people, as that's what the controller UI was designed for, but trying to control 2-4 characters with a single pad is kind of nightmarish.

I've been playing this, and it is noticeably more awesome (I'm not even to the lighthouse yet). Some of the skill changes alone are pretty nice and in turn buffed some of the previously "weaker" class types, and the changes to skills being both level and mastery based instead of just level based is a good change. Every encounter vs intended enemies (and not just my guard killing for the free xp) has been different with new enemies popping in.

I still don't like the crafting in this game. There are too few ability points and the crafting UI (which does make crafting nicer) is still lacking. 

But yeah, here's the changelog, which is pretty impressive:
http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=572102

Been playing this recently and while I'm only in the first area still the game does feel more polished than last time around. However second area is where it fell apart for me last times, so not sure yet. Arhu is now more clearly a furry creep, though...

Also I am sick to death of RPGs with superhero storylines. Why can't we have a good old fashioned "you gotta kill a big fucking dragon" and not the "weaver of time" blah blah crap. At least save that shit for the end when I've already mentally checked out.

OK, so it appears that I am terrible at these sorts of games.

Esmerelda is dead, the grave digger is dead, the Mortician is dead, even the dog at the graveyard is dead... I had to blow-up a suspect's house because hers was the only one left...and that's me playing as a friendly "what's all this then" sort of constable.

Naturally I hate the whole first murder mystery part... once I made it into the creepy outdoors, my natural talents for friendly death and destruction seemed much better suited to everyone's objectives.

I know, but its the journey...

New Kickstarter update for Divinity 2: I am a Youtube video! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsmjKEFwUms)


The gist is that they have a new composer as the one who was responsible for all their previous games (Kirill Pokrovsky) died.

That's the new guy:

(https://i.imgur.com/kK9iBfu.png)

As seen his OST resume is Crysis 2 + 3, Two Worlds II, Ryse and work on Gothic 3 and Risen.

Haven't played any that selection myself...is he good?

Not to speak ill of the dead, but I didn't particularly enjoy a majority of D:OS's soundtrack.  Some of the battle music was just plain annoying.

I liked the new guy's work on the Gothic/Risen stuff. Probably a bit more than Kirill's stuff. Neither up to Witcher 3 levels imo.

Divinity: Original Sin surely made enough money they didn't need to do a kickstarter again. This is a case where the powers that be at KS should call shenanigans, you are now a well-funded business, get the fuck outta here (but then their paycheck goes away, oh noooooo).

I turned the music off in Original Sin. And almost every other RPG since the SNES/Black Isle days (where it's an option).

You probably don't know this but here we go again; Larian Studio originally said that they wouldn't use kickstarter for Divinity: Origin Sin 2. Fans complained about it and said that they wanted them to do a kickstarter for the sequel, they listened to the people complaining and went to kickstarter even though they didn't have to.

Should you listen to fans that wants to throw money at you or should you ignore them in favor of people that can still purchase it the regular way?

I liked the kickstarter because I managed to pick up both the first game and the sequel at discounted rates.  Pretty much the best pre-order I could ask for.

How does doing a kickstarter in any way impact people who want to buy it the traditional way?

An update, this is now available on Steam as an early access game.  I generally don't care for EA but these guys have a proven track record so I'm not too worried about them screwing it up.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/435150/

Divinity Original Sin 2 will be released on 14th September.

My birthday! The game is going to be good. :heart:

Close enough to mine for a day 1 pickup. I had issues with 1, but it was overall a pretty enjoyable experience.

Yeah, I've been having difficulty holding off getting the early release on this, so I'm glad to see there's finally a release date.

I liked the combat and skills systems a lot, but disliked the stat system and story (never finished the game). Will be interesting to see where this one goes. Will def play it. Hopefully they got better writers and a better plot.

I bought the alpha.

Some of the same stuff as before, but overall a better game so far.

Worth it. Looking forward to full release.

I just hit a point I didn't want to play the game anymore because it just stopped entertaining me. That's sad but there it is. I'll pick it up in a few years on discount because while it was fun at the outset, I didn't even make it past the first challenge when you get to the astral fortress or whatever it was.

After barely making it anywhere in D:OS, a couple hours into Pillars and only about halfway through Torment, I've decided I'm not into isometric rpg anymore. Funny how that happened, used to be my favorite genre/style.

I'm with you there. I can't decide if it was the lack of options in those days, the abundance of time on my part, or my unfamiliarity with the worlds in the new iso games.  They just don't click with me like they once did.

Might have something to do with the ridiculous complexity of the systems in those games.  I found the first half hour of Divinity: Original Sin to be both perplexing and daunting due to the number of stats and lack of tutorial.  They could all stand to be more user-friendly, IMO.

To be honest, D:OS, Pillars and I'm guessing Torment (given that inXile completely sucks and Fargo is nothing more than a nostalgia farmer) aren't that good of games.  At least I enjoyed playing D:OS more than Pillars. The story was awful, the combat balance is kind of shitty, the pacing was horrid, but the combat system and interactivity of the combat environment were decent. It was enjoyable enough to finish, while I felt like I was stuck in a sunk-cost loop with Pillars.

I will probably play this at some point. Even given its shortcomings, I enjoyed the experience of D:OS to want to play its sequel. It showed potential and it showed a development team that was trying to do something special rather than just pull on your heartstrings and wallet simultaneously.

I've recently played through BG1 & 2. In full.

D:OS2 combat is more fun, though the systems are shallower. In every other respect BG2 is better, still, (DOS2 only wins combat because of the whole 'everything is about mages' annoyance that combat becomes in BG).

PoE is just a flat out crap game.

I imagine D:OS will get stupid at some point, because the writers are insipid and dull, and it moves way too quickly into the naff 'you are a Divine god, read our lore that makes Metzen look deep'... But so far it's doing a bit better for me on that front (not t the end of alpha areas).

But even BG2 had bits of that, and D:OS2 at least has loot and combat fun before you get bored. And yeah, I gave up D:OS1 halfway into the second area too.

So far D:OS2 is boring me more slowly.

The UI is fucking awful though. A consolised piece of shit in a game I'd kill myself before playing on a console. Camera is too tight also.

I prefer pillars of eternity over Divinity: OS, I like 6-man groups over 4-man groups and pausable combat much more than a strict turn-based system. Its good that they go for a single character mode for D:OS2, playing two main characters when doing it solo was a very odd experience.

I do like these types of games but they could do much more with the combat system. They also need to hire an asshole as editor that cuts down on the amount of texts with random information that dilutes the writing. Quality over quantity but I suppose that's heresy when its come to fantasy writers.

Paid the kickstarter but haven't touched the game on steam yet, waiting for the finished experienced before i get started.

The dual character thing bothered me, too. I might be over party-based solo games? I had about the same playtime in Beyond Divinity that I did in D:OS, but finished Divine Divinity (it was sooo good) and Divinity II is on my Steam top ten.

Pretty much the opposite direction for me.  I used to hate these types of games (heresy, I know), every time I won an encounter it felt like I should have lost and I only beat it by exploiting some glitch or because of lucky RNG.  It always felt like I was playing "wrong", that my choices were cheese or die.  The new games (of which I've only played Pillars and Tyranny) at least I mostly feel like I get why things are happening and the systems feel like they work together.

DOS2 seems to be going for more of the BG style companion business. They've got a lot of ground to make up, but they've moved in the right direction with the Alpha IMO.

And yeah, I think they could use a better story and writing editor. They get into the naff side of things a fair bit more often than is required.

I'm having a lot of fun with DOS2. I've already finished one playthrough and am working on another. I'm surprised there isn't more talk about this here.

It came up in the What are you playing? thread. A few of us have been enjoying it at least.

I'm enjoying it as well, though I haven't gotten very far.  I keep running into fights that kick my ass and rage quitting.

I found the previous Divinity game incredibly boring. I never made it out of the first town. I doubt very much that I'll give this one a chance - not at full price anyway.

Some fights are still really awful. Yah, lets stick 3 teleporting bugs on high ground that do 70 damage per round while you're being attacked by a necromancer and a ton of zombies.  :angryfist:

However, the game is rather good. It's just got some difficulty level inconsistencies. There's also this annoying issue that I can't talk to this one NPC or he automatically moves the plot forward before I want him to. So, jankiness, that's part of the bargain.

The writing and plot so far are a lot better than the original.

I stick teleportation on all my guys as soon as I can. The fact that it bypasses armor is broken. If you're not prepared to minmax the shit out of the game I would stay far away from tactician, and even classic is quite difficult at times.

My first playthrough I played classic as Lohse and took Sebille, Fane, and Ifan. Now I'm taking the Red Prince, Beast, Lohse, and a custom elf into tactician mode. All the companions are pretty great.

The game has a lot of jankiness with the journal in the final act of the game. A fairly major spoiler was revealed in my journal as if I had discovered the information when I didn't do anything of the sort. That was a bit annoying.

I just ran two Lone Wolves. Fane's Time Warp broke most encounters.
Turn 1: Time Warp 2 AP End Turn
Turn 2: Start with 6 + 4 AP
Late game combo:
Overpower 2AP > Shackle 2AP > Living on the Edge 3AP > Adrenaline +2AP > Healing Potion 1670 HP/ea x 5 = 8350 Damage inflicted

That teleporting bug fight was the toughest one I've had in chapter one. Finally beat it by sneaking most of my crew in and having them hide on the outcrops the bugs appear on, then sending my teleporting rogue in to trigger the conversation with the witch. The key to winning it for me though, was using consumables to restore magic armor throughout the fight, which made the bugs far less of a problem.

The game is really balanced around you not trying to take on fights where the critters out level you - it scales very quickly.

One level seems to make a tremendous difference.  I just beat the teleporting bug fight last night after leaving it alone to explore the rest of the island first.  I parked all my guys on the first pillar and started the fight by plinking the witch with some arrows.  Ended the night trying to find a way to counter Hellfire status on an NPC and learning from the internet that I need someone with Necromancy 1 to cast Rain of Blood and I have neither the skill nor an item which grants it.

Co-op, with friends, is pretty awesome this time around.

I heard there is a mod that helps with the camera and I'm seriously considering it even though it fucks up achievements.  I hate this camera!  HATE.

The game is really great in the first act, and the story and writing stay good throughout.  But it runs into some serious scaling issues later in the game.  The combats are really fun though and reward creative thinking, even if the the drudgery of gear collection and inventory management detract somewhat from he overall experience.

I was lucky that my co-op partner is a min-maxer and a loot whore.
So he took care of the chores himself, and the clutter of sorting gear is halved when you picked Lone Wolves to slash the party size to 2.
I spent most of the time thieving gears that I need and kept pace with the bloat with my summons.
The bloat was real. Saw no less than 8000 physical armor on a generic town guard at lvl 20.  :uhrr:
At this point I'm just pushing through to the end.

It wasn't so bad from lvl 1-9 fights can be hard, challenging but we pulled through with some clutch tactics, not just raw damage.
It got crazy and never went sane post Act 1 onwards.

I think it is generally agreed that dual Lone Wolf parties are stronger than a full party.

Finished it last weekend.
Didn't like obvious troll way of ending a co-op session with that kind of finale.

Still a good game.

I keep getting my ass kicked.  Considering starting over with a different party, but maybe it's just me.

My advice is to start it safe with a Lone Wolf character, more HP, more AP as long your party size is just 2.
Newbie friendly build:
Max STR
Warfare 1
Polymorph 1

Skill picks:
Warfare
- Battle Stomp - Knockdown
- Battering Ram - Knockdown

Polymorph
- Lash - Hardhitting attack that inflicts atropy, forcing the enemy to unequip his weapon.

Remember that debuffs are blocked by respective armor, so you must ensure the attack damage will penetrate the enemy's vitality or else the CC will not land.
E.g Battering Ram, tooltip 10-12 damage will land a knockdown against:
Enemy with  9 PA / 60 MA - Yes
Enemy with 13 PA / 0 MA - No

Going to have to figure out a way to cheese the Alexander fight.  The surprise visit in it keeps kicking my ass. Fight would be completely manageable otherwise.

As a sort of revenge, I've been clearing the town of all magister presence.  :awesome_for_real:

I had to lure the close-combat guys out of the ruin through the gate at the top, then get lucky that none of my guys got focused on after the second round.  The archer and mage tend not to follow until it's too late and I was able to heal and then resume the fight to clean up.

I actually did get on a roll again last night, but I assume I'm only an hour or so from another fight that will wreck me.

Limit their vision on your characters. Aggro with the toughest guy. Have the other 3 be out of combat. That'll break up their rhythm a bit.

How fights start is always really important. If one person is talking with somebody you're pretty sure you're going to fight you can cycle to another party member and position your whole party while the first guy is in dialogue mode. You can also put as many buffs as possible on the dialogue guy as the time on them doesn't tick down until you finish talking.

I am still working my way through my tactician playthrough, but I am hearing really good things about some of the balance mods, particularly the "no scaling mod" which makes gear relevant and interesting throughout the game.

I saw this (the first one) on sale for $13 over the weekend so I grabbed it. I'm pretty early on; any mods recommended that really improve the game?