We just downloaded this game, having heard good things about it, but I don't know anything about the setting. Can anyone give me a rundown of the character classes and how they relate to D&D/PF classes? I get that Wayfinder looks like a druid, and Fighter, Cleric, Ranger and Rogue ought to be self-explanatory. But then they have Wizard, Witch, and Enchanter, and I'm not sure the differences between them.
It's a good idea to just dive in... there's a lot of options, and you're not really tied to any choice (the classes are more guidelines than actual rules, for instance) so it's hard for anyone to tell you what you'll enjoy.
I'm not very far into the game, but my advice would be to not worry about it too much. Pick two characters that sounds like they might be fun, and go explore. And steal all the paintings you can. ;)
I second hamas, just dont worry about it and jump in. I am having alot of fun with this. My first character was a cleric amd sorcerer combo and my current character is a rogue/fighter combo. Its alot of fun and just jump in and learn as u go.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
If you're like me and Hama's recommendations are NOT half the fun but would just serve to piss you off and make you stop playing the game, you can find advice and guides online. Here's one that seems pretty comprehensive, though I'm not sure where the class explanations are in the various headings.
I got this game during the Steam Sale and haven't gotten around to playing it myself; I for one am glad to learn it's not very straightforward so I can research as needed in advance before I discover it the hard way, end up beating my head against a wall in frustration, and eventually write the game off as a minor loss (given how inexpensive it was due to the sale).
I may have had the patience for obtuse games with indecipherable mechanics and "figuring it out as I go" back when I was in my teens, but those days are long gone and I find myself having zero fun if I have no idea what the @&(#^% I'm doing and it results in me dying repeatedly.
We just downloaded this game, having heard good things about it, but I don't know anything about the setting. Can anyone give me a rundown of the character classes and how they relate to D&D/PF classes? I get that Wayfinder looks like a druid, and Fighter, Cleric, Ranger and Rogue ought to be self-explanatory. But then they have Wizard, Witch, and Enchanter, and I'm not sure the differences between them.
the 'classes' you will see in DOS (my acroynm for it from here on out, yay old computer reference for an old franchise)as effectively just pre skill chosen archtypes, and not an actual 'class' like PF would have it. Mechanically it is like Fallout, and Elder scrolls (skyrim, morrowwind, etc) in that you pick skills as you level or increase ranks in skills. Any character can be built to any direction, as desired.
That being said. Mousing over a given skill on the list will give you a short recap of what that skill covers. Multiple skills give access to healing, and multiple skills give access to summons (tho not all at level 1 values) Skill range from rank 1 to rank 5 as the game progresses and will increment in cost. It will cost 1 skill point to get any skill at rank 1, and 2 skill points to raise a skill from rank 1 to rank 2.
The Witchcraft skill is effectively curses and debuffs. Its line weakens enemies and makes them easier to deal with, but doesn't usually have kill it with damage stuff. There are also 4 elemental magic skills. Pyromancy, Hydromancy, Geomancy, and Aeromancy. The Wizard-premade has 2 of those and the Enchanter-premade has chosen the other 2. (i forget which has which offhand)
There are some skills that will be useful to have starting out, and others that can easily be picked up after play. You also have 2 extra slots for NPC's in your party, and there are several in the first town you can snag almost immediately. NPC's can be freely cycled in and out once you have them, so you 'can' find a crafter heavy NPC and add him to the group when you want to craft stuff, and set him aside for a more combat focused fellow when you are done with him as an example. I'll list skill details in my next post.
There are items free to be picked up/looted and there are items that are owned by npc's. If the item is red on a mouseover, it is owned by an NPC. If you click on or loot an owned item while in sight of any NPC's, you are 'seen doing a crime' and can be confronted/forced to return it the first time, with increasing results in later times. you can 'steal' owned items by taking advantage of stealth, or the invisibility spell. (paintings in particular tend to have a high GP value as mentioned above)
OK.
When you take a Skill at creation, you will have access to 3 powers that that skill 'unlocks'. However, you will start play with a total of 3 powers period. so in example, if you make 'supermage' and take air magic 1, fire magic 1, and water magic 1, you still have to narrow down your starter choice to "all 3 fire spells", "2 fire and 1 water spells", "1 fire, 1 water and 1 air spells".
The same is true of the non magic combat skills like men at arms, marksmanship, etc. Once the game starts you can find, steal, and/or buy skill powers in book form, adding to your skill sets. A skill book will have a skill rank minimum AKA "requires pyromancy rank 3 to learn". Just hold onto ones you can't scribe, there will be plenty of opportunities to gain and raise skills. You can get to level 20 IIRC.
Once the game starts, you will encounter social situations. In addition to normal NPC interactions/quest related text, there will be times when you trigger a inter party dialogue by discovering something, or after some plot point happens. This is handled by a series of dialoge options for both of your 2 created characters, allowing you to choose in a vague example, a statement that leans towards Intimidation, Charm, or Reason as a preference, and the 2nd character gets a reply to what is said with a similar set of options. The 'category' taken will grant a character a social skill award and a bonus to certain skills based on it.
Example: in the early game, you find a corpse that fell from a cliff. if you choose a logical/skeptical tack in replies, you gain 'pragmatic' as a social award, which adds +1 to crafting/blacksmithing on that character. if you take a more wondering/thrillseeker tack in replies, you gain a social award that increases that characters 'luck' skill. Note that you can have the 2 characters choose different tacks of answers and each can get a different bonus if desired.
This also applies to PC vs NPC interactions at times. The game uses a rock-paper-scissor style mechanic to resolve social 'battle', where each side has 10 'points' and based on their own skills and stats gains X many points on a win. in a standard example, a win will net 3 points, so you have to win 4 out of 7 to have it go your way. Sometimes you will have an advantage, and get 4 points on a win while the other party only gains 2, or be at a disadvantage with the reverse. The skill Charisma helps boost you in social rolls and enables extra NPC chat options at times.
Door and Chests. If a door or chest on mouseover has a not-generic name."Chest" and "Door" as opposed to "Theylren's Home Door" or "Asara's Chest", there will be a key in a room somewhere that will unlock it. All named doors and chests are usually red on mouseover, meaning they are typically considered 'stolen' if you open it in view of others, including looting the keys. Stealth/invis is your friend there. The Lockpicking skill allows you to open things you haven't found the keys for. it's a useful skill to have. Lockpicks are 1 use items and are destroyed on use. various vendors carry them for purchase, and they can be found as treasure.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Starting Choices will vary by player preference. My friends who have played all used different builds for their starter set pair. Some of the more common/useful things i see taken include...:
1 melee type and 1 distance type.
Shield = better survival for a melee tank type. Does not need ranks to equip.
Geomancy 1 allows a pet summon as a combat option right out the gate.
Men at Arms 1 and Hydromancy 1 both have access to a heal.
Men at arms 1 also has Meteor Rush, which has a small AE/Knockdown effect useful for closing distance/basic crowd control
Scoundrel 1 has access to Invisibility (steal everything you want)
Lockpicking 1 will allow access to most not-named portals in the starter town.(i only found one not-unique door i couldn't open at rank 1.)
Charisma 1 gives you an edge in several social NPC convos in the early game.
Leadership 1 gives you an extra buff for the early game and can result in a small edge that could make the difference in a close fight.
Other Notes
Bodybuilding and Willpower are resistance skills, and while are very useful as the game progresses, are not critical for the game start. I recommend waiting on those til later levels.
Armor Mastery and Shield Mastery i would say follow similar logic, but they do have a direct impact on mitigation if taking at start is desired. (i typically wait til 3rd or 4th before i start snagging them)
Craft i typically skip for level 1, since you can snag it from a social test early and the same with Lucky.
Hope this is found helpful/useful to some, and i'll check back in case there's more questions or comments.
All this has been very helpful and detailed. Honestly had not given Divinity much consideration, but given the information it certainly has now piqued my interest. So thanks for that.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I've printed out this guide from Kotaku (it's 11 A4 pages with the images and comments taken out). It's not quite as hardcore as some of the guides out there and covers the bases without spoiling everything.
The game has that thing that XCOM has of almost encouraging you to mess up first time out to learn more stuff for your 'proper' playthrough. Which is great if you have 200 hours to spare on the game, not so much if you don't. The Kotaku guide is useful for pointing out basic things so you don't completely gimp your party to the point of unplayability before the game even starts (which is quite possible without any advice). For example, you can pick up a tank character and a water/air mage pretty quickly in the game, so the Kotaku writer focused on an earth/fire mage who doubles as the main party spokesperson and trader, and a sneak-oriented bowman and crafter as their primaries.
Crafting seems to be vitally important, as your equipment degrades in the game (bows more than anything else). Being able to fix stuff is vital. It's also a great idea to find a spade ASAP as a lot of loot is buried and the game is ridiculously frugal with spades later on. It's also a good idea to get the invisibility stealth skill for the aforementioned painting thefts and the Pet Pal skill to talk to the animals. This sounds bizarre, but apparently there's a ton of side-quests and potential ways to finish other quests by talking to animals and getting them on your side. It's also hilarious.
It's also worth noting that the game's UI is rather unintuitive. Each character actually has 3 hotbars. There's tiny little arrows to the left of each hotbar which cycles through them. Also, you inventory is bigger than you think and scrollbars will appear when you reach the bottom of the grid. You can also press 'Alt' to highlight usable things on the screen (a bit like Ctrl in the Infinity Engine games) which can be quite useful.
Important safety tip: blood conducts electricity. So if a fight's been going on for a while and everyone's splattered with blood, letting off a lightning bolt is a really bad idea.
With Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale, at least I had the advantage of already knowing the 2e rules. ;)
Thanks to everyone for the info, particularly Rathender, and for the links to guides.
|
So is this game good? I keep hearing rave reviews about it, but then I went to it's website and watched a couple of videos that really stressed the fact that there's loot but there aren't classes, which isn't what I really care about in an RPG.
Is the story interesting? are the characters? is the voice acting good? how is dialog handled? Is the setting good?
Also, if desired, i found this youtube series helpful to get a general idea for the game, without really spoiling much at all. 1st part covers general character creation and some skill advice, 2nd part covers some basic combat and world interaction in the tutorial dungeon, and part 3 shows some social conversation stuff in the very first town as well as the owned/stolen interactions.
1st vid is this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYXwHW-yOXE
Encountered a sentient clam on the shores of the sea.
"Call me Ishamashell..."
I booted it into the sea.
Game of the Year.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Been doing odd jobs in Cyseal, got another level in and recruited my two NPC party members. My current quest is trying to set up the inn's tomcat and the mayor's rare-breed feline who are desperately in love but tragically divided by class inequality.
Also saving the world from a gateway to oblivion that is threatening to destroy the universe, but the cat thing is my top priority at the moment.
The toughness of this game cannot be overestimated. It's suggested that you do everything you can in town before leaving (they recommend getting to Level 3, but at 3 this only reduces the threats outside town to 'rage-inducingly difficult' than 'totally impossible') and they are not kidding. Killing two zombies (named 'Rob' and 'Zombie') within sight of the town gates with four characters was a bit touch-and-go, and dealing with five orcs at once a bit up the beach (one of them a shaman) is still apparently beyond my party's ability. Instead have plundered the town cemetary and descended into the lesser-undead-infested catacombs underneath, which are more manageable.
I also encountered a dog whose owner had died and he was sitting next to the grave Greyfriars Bobby-style. However, when I talked to him the dog reported this wasn't out of dumb loyalty but because the smell from the grave is wrong. It turns out the original body has been stolen and replaced with a sheep corpse! A fresh mystery and quest awaits!
Oh yeah, in other news I found a mystical stone that opens the gateways between universes and has given me access to an interdimensional base of operations from where I can commune with a woman representing the entire tapestry of time and history, who has suggested that my characters are the reincarnations of once-powerful guardians of all of creation and it is our destiny to seal off the Void that is threatening to consume everything. But whatever, I'm still trying to help out the cat romance thing and now this dog quest has come up as well.
Definitely get the Pet Pal talent, the game is so much more fun with it. I found a clairvoyant bull ("Bull") who could foretell the future but when I asked what my future held, it screamed and tried to run off. It's friend ("Bill") helped him get over the shock and advised I give him time to recover.
I find it... difficult to play a melee-focused scoundrel type character. I like the benefits of focusing on Dexterity over Strength, but the actual in game difference seems to be a character that hits for a few points of damage eight times every turn, vs. a guy who oneshots roughly everything everywhere.
The main problem is that almost everything you fight are undead, and daggers are doing squat against skeletons, and your bleed/poison attacks aren't particular handy either.
I've played three or four groups to level 7 by now, and I still don't have a formula for a scoundrel-style melee guy that I feel works.
On the flipside, a full-caster elementalist-style guy works wonderfully well.
Melee works, but only if you really focus on it to the exclusion of everything else (most other character types you can divide into two focuses, like stealth/archer, but diverting attention from pure melee to anything else seems to just gimp melee). It also doesn't really fit in with the ethos of using the environment or terraforming the environment mid-battle with magic, since then you're just going to splatter your melee character with the enemy.
I use my archer to soften up the enemy at range (and Ricochet to deal out multiple hits) whilst my main mage slows them with oil slicks and then blows up said oil slick with fire (which can also slow them down), then my secondary mage (Jahan) shocks them with lightning. For fire-based enemies I switch to a Rain/Lightning combo which has the same effect, or just free them. Medora I keep in reserve for when the enemies reach the party, which hopefully is rarely. Also having her stand out front means she acts like a damage soak, with potions and the two mages able to keep her going.
I made the mistake of making my first character (for multiplayer) a Lone Wolf, and have had a really hard time playing anything else, since then. Those perks are just so useful!
Is archery working out for you? It kinda leaves me with the same impression as scoundrel melee: it doesn't seem terrible good against undead, and even the specialty arrows still comes with the baggage of having to find/make/collect those arrows and worry about bow durability, that casters just don't have to worry about (while also blowing everything to heck).
In my multiplayer game, we're a caster/archer duo and we're just worlds apart.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Kickstarter for the sequel, looks great
In late game, melee rogues become ridiculously OP. Put 5 points in Sneak and max out agility and constitution. By level 20, your rogue should have upwards of 23+ action points which translate to seven sneak attacks in a round (1 AP to enter stealth and 2 AP to attack). You swing twice automatically with each sneak attack (as long as you are one handed), and if you are positioned carefully (the tooltip will change to a hand clutching a dagger), you will be doing double damage plus auto-crit with each swing (assuming you have the guerrilla and backstab perks). My rogue singlehandedly killed the last boss in two rounds, while my two mages buffed him and twiddled their thumbs.
For build order, I would recommend rushing to Sneak 5 (through items if possible). Next, you want to boost your One Handed skill. Once there, your life becomes much easier as you can enter stealth with 1 AP. Raise Dex only enough to equip the dagger/rapier of your choice. Put all of your points in Agility and Constitution instead to max your AP. At around level 5, get glass cannon in order to double your AP. Look for armor/trinkets that increase Agility or Constitution.
TL;DR: Melee rogues have the highest DPS by the end of the game, bar none.