Divinity: Original Sin II: Difference between revisions

== General Tips ==

* You have the choice between creating an Origin character or a custom character. The Origin characters have their own history with their own personal Tag allowing for custom interactions between the Origin character an NPC's, and their own individual quest, and they have a fixed name and gender (and a partly customizable appearance), but they can otherwise be customized as you choose. Origin characters don't have a personal tag or an individual quest, but can have their appearance fully customized.

* Character Presets are only suggestions. You can change almost everything from a preset. The only thing fixed by a preset, in fact, are the starting weapons found in the "Confiscated Weapons" chest.

* Certain quests are unable to be completed without the Scholar tag. That is the only tag which has such a restriction. Red Prince, Sebille, and Fane all start with the tag.

* Because of the physical and magical armor system, trying to have some physical and some magical damage dealers will make the game harder for you. It's better to go all one type, or hybridize--summoners can do either damage type, and scoundrels can shred magic armor, for instance. It's possible to bring casters with a physical group if they are summoners (neutral and blood incarnates do physical damage), supportive/buffing/healing rather than offensive elemental casters, and/or necromancers (necromancy does physical damage). Magic parties can have melee presence with staff wielders and summons, since warfare talents will scale with Int if you're wielding a staff.

* Damage to armor is affected by resistances. For example, an enemy with 50 Fire Resistance and 0 Air Resistance will lose more armor when hit by an air-damage spell than a fire-damage spell of the same power.

* Do not split your attribute points between two different damage-boosting abilities (Strength, Intelligence, Finesse), you can only deal damage in one way at a time (either physical or magical), and it cuts your damage output making you less effective at both than a specialist. Pick only one to focus on. (The only way splitting points can work is on a Lone Wolf run.)

* There is a hard cap of 40 on attributes. Since they start out at 10, that means you can only put a maximum of 30 points into any one attribute (or 15 level-ups worth). There is only about enough XP in the game to reach level 21 or 22, so it would take the majority of your points to cap an attribute.

* Characters start out with 3 Memory slots and gain one free slot every two levels, meaning with no investment into Memory, at level 21, you would have a total of 13 Memory slots. Only one Unique item in the game has a boost to Memory, it does not appear on any other item.

* Because of skill cooldowns, casters will naturally want more Memory than physical attackers. Regardless, a Memory of more than 20-25 probably means you're not investing enough points into attributes which boost your damage.

* All regular skills require only one Memory slot. Source skills which require 2 SP to cast require two Memory slots, Source skills which require 3 SP to cast require three Memory slots, but those are the most powerful ones.

* The most powerful skills (3 Source Point skills) only require a minimum of 5 points into any Skill school, so unless you specifically want the 3-Source Point skill for that school, you may want to consider leaving the school at 3 points, which allows you to learn all but one of the skills in that school (not counting crafted skills). That said, the 3 SP skills are some of the most powerful in the game.

* Warfare boosts all physical damage, even daggers, bows/crossbows, and Necromancy spells.

* Healing from Necromancy's passive bonus and skills is "neutral" and does not damage Undead. Living people under the Decaying status effect is similar, except for the Bloodsucker skill, which DOES still cause damage like regular healing.

* Avoid Retribution and Perseverance. They need to be maxed out to be of any use, which takes half your total Combat Ability points, crippling you everywhere else. Retribution is particularly crappy because enemies have much higher HP and armor than players, and even dealing 50% of their attack damage back to them isn't very effective. Perseverance is only triggered by a handful of status effects, and doesn't restore enough armor to matter without a crippling amount of points invested.

* Leadership grants decent bonuses to nearby allies, but it does nothing for the character who takes Leadership, and the 5-meter range requires other characters to be crammed very closely together. That limits the usefulness, and like the other defense abilities, heavy investment in Leadership sucks up a bunch of points which will lower your effectiveness at maximizing damage.

* If you want a character to be a summoner, rush their Summoning skill to 10 as soon as possible. Grab any gear you can find with +Summoning to this end. It's worth it. Summoning falls off in power in the late game, ('''Definitive Edition''') but in the Definitive Edition, Totems gain more power to keep up better.

* Prioritize getting movement abilities (Teleport, Cloak and Dagger, Phoenix Dive, Emergency Retreat, Spread Your Wings), they make combat significantly more fun.

* Civil Abilities cap at 5 base points, but can be increased over the cap with bonuses from items. You only get a total of 6 Civil ability points throughout an average playthrough, so you can only max out one of them, and its advised to stick with a different one for each party member, and max out the chosen ability first.

* If you plan on having your chosen main character talk to most of the people, it's advised that they take Persuasion as their chosen civil ability.

* With the Pet Pal Talent you can talk to animals, and sometimes they have persuasion checks, so Pet Pal is often suggested as a Talent for your Persuasion character, although perhaps not enough to make it mandatory.

* Avoid taking Sneaking and Telekinesis as Civil Ability points. Sneaking is of no use in combat, and not that difficult outside of combat, anyone can sneak without it. Telekinesis is only useful to invest in for a very specific gimmick build based around using TK to throw containers packed with as many things as possible at enemies to deal massive damage. If that's not your thing, skip it.

* Lucky Charm is shared party-wide, all other civil skills are not.

== Notable Talents ==

* If an item, when right-clicked, does not have "Combine" as one of the options in the pop-up menu, it is not usable in crafting. Feel free to sell it.

* Handy Recipes:

** Small Healing Potion + Small Healing Potion = Medium Healing Potion (Repeat for better versions. This also works for armor potions and poison potions)

** Small Rune + Small Rune (same type) + Pixie Dust = Medium Rune (Same Type. Repeat for better versions. the highest level rune will require Superior Pixie Dust)

** Nails + Any Footwear = Add Immune to Slipping property added to footwear.

** If one or both of the skillbooks is a Source skillbook, it makes a more powerful Source version of the skill, requiring 2 Memory slots and 2 points in each skill school.

== Vendors ==

* If there's a vendor you plan to use a lot, it's worthwhile to boost their attitude towards you up to 100. You do this by giving them things without asking for anything. The amount you have to pay is not a lot, and it's fixed based on the vendor's level. It starts at about 150 gold for vendors in Fort Joy, and goes up to about 4750 gold at level 20, which is really cheap. The discount for maxed attitude is a substantial 20%.

* Vendors stock new skillbooks starting at Player Levels 4, 9, and 16 (with a single second-tier Source Skill at level 13). It's not based on the vendor level.

* Vendors refresh when any party member gains a level, or if you wait an hour before interacting with them.