Divine Divinity

Character Advice

• Classes only differ in their starting skills, their one unique move, and their attribute scaling. Warrior is a safe choice if you're not sure what you want to do, since it's easier to make a Warrior a good caster than to make a Wizard good in melee.

• Stealth is not really a viable playstyle in the game, and sneaking is basically made redundant by the invisibility spell Fade From Sight. The main draw of the Survivor class is that they're very hard to hit in melee at high Agility levels.

• Most skills worth picking either do their job at rank 1 like Repair which lets you fix gear anywhere for free, or they're worth committing to all the way. There's no way to retrain your character, but you get quite a lot of skill points so a few "wasted" points aren't a big deal.
  • Lockpicking is worth getting to at least rank 3, and some quests give free points in it. Identify is nice to eventually have at around rank 3 as well, merchants can identify the rarer stuff. One mid-game quest requires a rank in Pickpocketing.
  • One rank in the Alchemy skill lets you combine minor healing and mana potions into Minor Restoration Potions that always restore 50% of your health/mana, and with three Alchemy ranks you can make standard size Restoration Potions that restore both to 100%. These are much better than relying on normal potions.

• Most gear has Agility and (especially) Strength requirements to equip them, so even a spellcaster should spend levels on them. Constitution and Intelligence aren't very important past the early game anyway, as flat item bonuses to Health and Mana are more efficient.

• The game has a fairly large amount of "trap skills" that are weak enough they might as well do nothing (Wisdom, Survivor's Instinct), are made redundant by better skills (Embrace Shadows vs. Fade From Sight, Ranger's Sight vs. Elven Sight, Withering Curse vs. Curse), or literally don't work (True Shot, NecroShift).

Early Game Advice

• It's possible to heal both of the wounded guards in the starting village which nets you a free skill point in Restoration, but make sure to heal both before talking to the healers again, or it'll be treated as having only saved one.

• You can also fight Zombie Jake twice in the starting village, though finding the other takes a bit of creative thinking. A ranged attack like a bow or Meteorstrike spell is almost necessary to be able to beat him, but he's worth a ton of early experience if you manage it.

• The pair of Teleportation Stones you get early on have a lot of handy uses. At first you can leave one next to a bed for easy resting, later on a handy spot is near the teleporter in Rivertown which is the main merchant hub. The pre-set "Drop & Use" option is handy if you intend to return to your current location, but don't forget to pick it back up when you do.

• Orc Drummers are a major nuisance early on, as they heal themselves and other orcs periodically while also having very high HP and damage. Repeated use of the Freeze spell is one way to lock them down.

General Advice

• Combining two bundles of hay in your inventory creates a portable straw bed which lets you rest anywhere by just clicking on it in your inventory.

• Quicksave often - there is no autosave and many stronger enemies can kill you in one or two hits, especially if you've neglected your defenses. The Survivor skill Know Creature helps identify major threats ahead of time.

• A couple of sections force you to temporarily give up all your belongings, which can be annoying to click back to your inventory afterwards. An unavoidable one is shortly after entering Stormfist Castle, and a later recurring one is whenever you want to visit throne room in the Dwarven Halls. The latter can be bypassed by tossing a teleporter stone past the guards and warping to it.

• Hold ALT to highlight treasure and hidden doors and CTRL to target the nearest enemy. Hold Shift to scroll the screen or Caps Lock to detach it from your character. You can always pause with Space. The function keys (F1-F12) work as ability/item hotkeys, including with Shift/Ctrl/Alt.

• Merchants restock every few days, including their money for buying your stuff, so sleeping regularly as you adventure helps pass days quicker for more frequent restocks. After a while non-magical gear probably isn't worth the weight it takes to carry anyway.

• Quest items are not separated from generic loot in your inventory, and some like "Exquisite Wine" and "Magical Lockpicks" are easy to mix up and lose or sell by accident. Most books and manuscripts are generics, but a few are quest items, primarily notes with information relevant to the quest you're doing. Generic gems are only for selling.

• Unless you're looking to break the game, the Deadly Gift skill should probably be avoided as it's either weak or comically overpowered if used with Scorpion Traps, which spawn scorpions with levels in the hundreds (and can be brought with you with the Aura of Command skill). An even bigger gamebreaker are weapons with the "Frost" attribute as they don't check for resistances, and so freeze any enemy in the game on every hit.

• The game automatically sets red flag pins on your map for various important locations and quest-related places, but things like quest giver locations are worth marking yourself as well so you remember where to return.

• Most modern computers can run the game in Software mode largely trouble-free, while the Direct3D mode has better graphical effects but also some compatibility issues. There are various workarounds available, such as the one available here. Using this method works 98% of the time, but messes up the game's (three) cutscenes and crashes it at a certain mid-game point when you're tasked to scry on people, so you probably need to switch to Software mode for these parts.

• A fan-made font size increasing mod is also recommended if playing on modern resolutions, although anything higher than 1920x1080 makes the game world itself very small.