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 Divinity: Original Sin and its sequel hold a special place in my heart. Divinity: Original Sin was released in June 2014, developed and published by Larian Studios (published by Focus Home Interactive for console releases). It was released to massive critical acclaim, garnering an 87 out of 100 on Metacritic, and that was despite it not exactly being a perfect game – some abilities were boring or unbalanced; some dungeons weren’t very imaginative; and the entire ending sequence amounted to little more than a wet fart. The game was released again as Divinity: Original Sin: Enhanced Edition in October of 2015 for free to whoever had purchased the original game, and this newer release addressed all of these criticisms, turning it into one of the greatest RPGs of the time and garnering an aggregate score of 97 out of 100. Larian Studios was quick to jump into their next project: a direct sequel to their smash hit, and, in September of 2017, they released Divinity: Original Sin 2. Everything got a massive overhaul: the gameplay; the mechanics; the story; the music and sound design; the presentation; it’s everything that its predecessor was, but made better, many times over. Although it’s received a lower aggregate score of 95, it has nonetheless garnered “universal acclaim,” with multiple critics and publications calling it “one of the greatest RPGs of all time.” It’s received too many awards and award nominations for me to bother to list for this OP. Larian Studios’ current project is the third instalment of the Baldur’s Gate series. That game is current in early access. I’ve logged in over 500 hours of play time and I’ve completed three playthroughs, plus many campaigns with friends that, like any proper D&D group, eventually fizzled out. I love this game to bits and I’m more than willing to put in an ungodly amount of work and hours to show the world just how good of a game Divinity: Original Sin 2 is. Participation: Divinity: Original Sin 2 is hugely influenced by Dungeons & Dragons and the sheer amount of flexibility that classic pen-and-paper tabletop game can provide. A big part of D&D is influencing the world around your characters, whether by performing actions that the DM might not be ready for, or by trying to persuade other NPCs into doing what you want. While Divinity: Original Sin 2 is restricted by its own internal rules and programming, most puzzles in the game have multiple solutions, and some NPCs can be persuaded into doing things for the player if the player is intimidating, or cunning, or charismatic enough. My goal with this LP is, when presented with options for us to perform, I will, as the LPer, present each of them to you, the reader, for you to decide on what we should do. Does that one NPC talk down to you and just plain ol’ look evil, but he’s making an offer that’s rather enticing? Can you escape a room by unlocking a door, or bashing down the door, or digging an alternate route out of there? When presented with two sides of a story, would you rather believe person A or person B? LPs survive primarily on their participation – as they should, it’s in the name ‘Let Us Play’ – so I’ll be doing everything that I can to try and make this a journey the we make together. It’ll involve a lot of saving and reloading, but I’ll do my best. Updates: 0) Character Creation Act 0: The Hold 1) Fresh Out Of The Crypt 2) A Peaceful Stroll (Part 2) 3) New Game Plus 4) The Death Of Us Act 1: Fort Joy 5) Pet Pal 6) Welcome To The Joy (Part 2) 7) Set Your Jaw (Part 2) 8) To Save A Life 9) All The Answers (Part 2) 10) Hedge Magic (Part 2) (Part 3) 11) Withermoore The Noxious (Part 2) (Part 3) 12) Beast Wins (Part 2) 13) Cured Of Something Entirely Dangerous (Part 2) (Part 3) 14) There's Loot Innit (Part 2) 15) The Best Baubles (Part 2) 16) The Most Powerful Sourcerer 17) Godwoken (Part 2) 18) The Sanctuary of Amadia (Part 2) 19) Source Infused (Part 2) 20) No Dogs Allowed (Part 2) 21) The Vault of Braccus Rex (Part 2) 22) The Tower of Braccus Rex (Part 2) 23) Dragon's Beach (Part 2) 24) The Champion's Arrival (Part 2) 25) The Battle for Divinity (Part 2) 26) The Arena of the One, Part One Act 1 Epilogue: The Lady Vengeance 27) The Lady Vengeance (Part 2) 28) Dallis The Hammer (Part 2) Act 2: Reaper's Coast 29) Welcome To Reaper's Coast 30) Penny For A Sick Dog (Part 2) 31) Chance To Hit (Part 2) 32) The Update With The Black Bull Tavern (Part 2) 33) The Update With The Fight In The Black Bull Tavern (Part 2) 34) The Arena of the One, Part Two 35) The Bone Zone (Part 2) 36) Prince Has A Bad Day (Part 2) 37) The Man of the Mansion 38) The Queen's Boudoir (Part 2) 39) A Shiny Wotsit (Part 2) 40) Anathema, Part One 41) Seasonal Aggression (Part 2) 42) Roost Anlon (Part 2) Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 01:49 on May 18, 2022 |
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Dec 25, 2020 21:17
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  As I said in the OP, I’ve put in over 500 hours of playtime in this game. When you make a new file, you’re first presented with which difficulty you’d like to play on: Explorer, Classic, Tactician, and Story. These difficulties are Easy, Normal, Hard, and For Baby modes. I’ll naturally be playing on Tactician. The AI is at its hardest, smartest, most overpowered, and most cunning on this mode. I love a challenge!  That said, I will not be playing on Honour mode, which is Iron Man. This is an LP, after all.  When we lock in our difficulty, we’re next brought to our character select/creation screen. There are six named playable characters in this story. Each of them has their own stories to tell within the grand scheme of things, and you, as the player, learn about them, their personal struggles, and their own journeys and destinations over the course of the game. However, while we can have a party of four, we can only have one of them as our avatar. Before I get to them, though: If we’d rather not play as a named character, and have our own Goony Goonerson in the game of Divinity: Original Sin 2, we can opt instead to play as any other race or gender as we’d like. We can even play as an undead, skeletal version of that race, if we’d like. Our options available to us are: human; dwarf; elf; and lizard. Whichever race we pick will impact our interactions with other races in the world, and each race comes with their own unique skills and talents. Every race comes with a Source skill (more on Sourcery later) called Dome of Protection, which grants heightened defense in a domed area around the caster. It’s a powerful defensive skill that never really loses its usefulness at any time in the game.  Humans get the skill Encourage, which grants a buff to all attributes to all allies within a very large radius. They get the talent Ingenious, which grants 5% additional Critical hit chance, and grants 10% additional Critical damage. They also get the talent Thrifty, which grants +1 to Bartering.  Elves get the skill Flesh Sacrifice, which grants one additional Action Point immediately as well as a 10% damage boost for two turns, at the cost of -1 Constitution. It also spawns a puddle of blood, which can be useful for many reasons. They also get the talent Corpse Eater, which allows them to consume body parts to gain the memories of the departed (often granted you new skills, or revealing answers to puzzles), as well as the talent Ancestral Knowledge, which gives them a +1 to Loremaster.  Dwarves get the skill Petrifying Touch, which can turn any target within arm’s reach of the caster to stone for one turn. They also get the talent Sturdy, which grants 10% additional maximum Vitality and a bonus 5% to Dodging (which is a bigger deal than it sounds on paper), as well as the talent Dwarven Guile, which grants +1 to Sneaking.  Lizards get the skill Dragon’s Blaze, which breaths a cone of fire directly in front of them, dealing fire-based damage that scales with the user’s Intelligence. They also get the talent Sophisticated, which grants 10% resistance to both fire and poison, as well as the talent Spellsong, which gives them an additional +1 to Persuasion. Lizards can also dig holes without the use of a shovel.  We can be any of the previously-listed races, and we can also become Undead. So, we can be an undead human, or an undead lizard, etc. Being undead replaces that race’s skill with Play Dead, which removes all aggro from the user, but pauses all cooldowns. Performing any action will cancel Play Dead. They also lose their secondary, stat-boosting talent in exchange for the talent Undead (which is a talent, apparently), which allows the user to heal off poison, and allows poison to seep through the user’s armour, but they take physical damage from healing spells instead. All undead characters can also use their bony fingers to pick locks without the need for lockpicks. Undead characters also get access to something a little different early in the game, but I’ll save that for if it comes up…. For whichever option we choose, we can build our character around a certain playstyle: we can make them anything from a Warrior or Knight, to a Rogue or Assassin, to a Witch/Warlock or Conjurer, to a Ranger or Metamorph. We can also choose their ‘tags,’ which make up their history and background, to be any of the following two:
These tags will come up during conversation, giving us alternative means to converse with – and persuade – NPCs within the game. Now that all the generic races and options are out of the way, let’s hear from our named characters and what they bring to the table. None of the named characters get Dome of Protection; they instead get something unique to them only.  Listen  : Famed, of course, for my unique red skin and unparalleled skills as a general of the House of War, I, the Red Prince, was raised within the vast palaces of the fabled Forbidden City. I was destined to become the next emperor, but my ambitions suffered a bit of a setback when I fell from grace for cavorting with demons. Now I’m exiled and hunted by assassins, but I assure you: I remain undaunted – and as determined as ever to claim my rightful throne!The Red Prince gets the skill Demonic Stare, which drains a target’s magic armour and adds it to his own. His canonical build is a Fighter (although we don’t have to go with that if we don’t want).  Listen  : I used to be a slave, kept under the thumb of the Master: the bastard that made me hunt down my own kin. How did he do that, you ask? With the living scar you see on my cheek, this horror that takes no more than a song sung by Master dearest to control my very thoughts. But now the tables have turned. I broke my shackles. And when I finally find him, I will make the Master sing a very different kind of song…Sebille gets the skill Break The Shackles, which heals her of a number of restrictive ailments that can be inflicted upon her – notably, an affliction called Shackles Of Pain, which has no counter other than Break The Shackles. Her canonical build is a Rogue.  Listen  : Once, I was a crusader for the Divine Order. I pledged my life to Lucian the Divine. But the war changed everything. He sent me to save the elves I grew up amongst. I arrived too late. Lucian ordered the use of Deathfog against the Black Ring, annihilating everyone I once knew in the process. Now, I’m a mercenary killer, one of the infamous Lone Wolves. And my next target is none other than Lucian’s own son…Ifan ben-Mezd gets the skill Summon Ifan’s Soul Wolf, which is a familiar that can perform some actions; draw aggro from Ifan; and generally just be a useful companion. His canonical build is a Wayfarer.  Listen  : I was just thinking about someone I used to know. My cousin. The queen, in fact. A tyrant. I tried to stop her, but – things don’t always go according to plan. She cast me out to a forgotten island, and made short work of my allies, too. Lucky for me, I was able to commandeer a ship, and began a new life for myself, out on the high seas. But I hear the Queen is at it again – and there’s something darker behind her madcap schemes this time. If I don’t stop her, I don’t know who will.Beast gets the skill Blinding Squall, which summons an icy storm to afflict Blinded on enemies in a target area, as well as doing air-based damage. His canonical build is a Battlemage.  Listen  : All my life I’ve been a performer, a musician; beloved and celebrated by all. But I have a secret: I’m also a playground for sprites and spirits and… worse. The voice that rings inside me now is darker than any that came before. Almost caused a bunch of my fans to rip each other to pieces… But you can trust me: I’ve got this under control. Step one: Find out who – or what – is trying to take control of my mind. Step two: Make it sorry it ever tried.Lohse gets the skill Maddening Song, which causes enemies in a target area to go Mad. Mad characters will attack whoever is closest, regardless of alignment. Her canonical build is an Enchanter.  Listen  : Oh, don’t stare. How would you look after aeons in some ghastly crypt? But your people are rather prone to death. Mine are not. And yet when I emerged from my completely unjustified imprisonment, I found them gone, our culture forgotten, any trace of the world I knew all but obliterated. That is how I wander this strange world, trying to uncover the truth about a history you primitive people never even knew existed.Fane gets the skill Time Warp, which allows any character it’s used on to have a second turn immediately after their next (once per combat). His canonical build is a Wizard. Finally, there’s one last touch: whichever character we pick – named or generic, regardless of race – we can have one of four instruments assigned to us. We can have the bansuri, a flute made of bamboo originated in India; a tambura, a long-necked plucked string instrument, also originating in India, that’s not meant to play its own melodies, but instead harmonizes and supports the melodies of other instruments; an oud, a short-necked lute with eleven strings that originated in the middle-east; and a cello, a bowed-string instrument that originated in Italy. This decision is purely flavour: whenever our character gets a kill in combat, the music will dramatically change to follow the tune of the instrument we picked. There’s one last vote I’d like you all to make. It’s a very important one that changes the entire game. I’m willing to play through the game with no mods (other than the Gift Bag stuff that Larian’s provided since the game was released). This LP would be faithful to the game and how it plays and the strategies involved. But there’s a very popular mod in the Steam workshop that completely overhauls the mechanics of the game, turning it into something similar, but streamlined; more fleshed out; faster; and immersive. The mod is called Divinity Unleashed. It’s been getting constant attention and improvements since its initial release. It rebalances the game; it reimagines some skills to have different uses entirely; and it adjusts the numbers and mechanics of how weapons and armour work. In the base game, your physical and your magic armour are considered two different health bars; in this mod, it’s all merged into one single health bar. This Google doc is a bit outdated and was created when the mod was first released, but it contains all the information you need to know about what’s being changed. As far as I know, this document shouldn’t contain any spoilers. I love this game and I’m willing to play it with or without this mod, but I feel the game is made better with it. If you’d like the ‘purer’ experience of this game being LP’d without it, I’m all for that! But if you’d like to see how some dedicated modders turned this game from something amazing into something immaculate, then I’d love to play through the game with the mod on as well. So, to recap: I need votes on:
Let me know by midnight on Saturday! Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Dec 28, 2020 |
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Dec 25, 2020 21:17
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custom lizard man Male summon focused caster Cello Vanilla One thing I love about divinity is that most games make the undead vulnerable to fire by making it flat out damage them more. Larian did it by encouraging them to coat themselves in poison that just so happens to violently explode when heated.
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Dec 25, 2020 21:43
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Sebille vanila I got this game last year and bounced off it hard, I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. Looking forward to seeing someone who knows how the game actually works have at it.
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Dec 25, 2020 21:46
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Fane bansuri mod This game is amazing, especially in co-op. Never seen the mod so that should be interesting. e: All named characters: Fane, Ifan, Sebille, Beast anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 11:48 on Dec 26, 2020 |
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Dec 25, 2020 22:50
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There's a 60% sale going on for this game in Steam right now, by the way. I've been debating picking it up for a long time and this might be what does it.
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Dec 25, 2020 23:00
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Fane Wizard Cello Mod I loved playing through this with friends. We never did a run with Fane for one reason or another, so I'd love to see what he brings to the table.
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Dec 25, 2020 23:03
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Fane Mixed Wizard / Melee DPS Oud Mod
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Dec 26, 2020 01:05
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Oh goodness, I was considering LP'ing this game a bit back but wimped out because as far as I could tell no one had created a script dump for it yet, and transcribing the loving oodly noodles of endless dialogue(which I largely like) in this game would make me shoot myself. All named characters Ifan Sebille Beast Lohse Because they're explicitly the ones I never did playthroughs with myself(mine were mostly Lone Wolf multiplayer playthroughs, though boo, they nerfed Lone Wolf). And I'd say No Mod. I feel the game deserves being shown off as the devs designed it, especially if the mod tunes down how many things will catch fire and explode.
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Dec 26, 2020 01:22
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Oh yeah, if we can vote for multiple then absolutely use Lohse too.
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Dec 26, 2020 01:48
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All named characters. Fane, Red Prince, Beast and Lohse. Cello. Sure, use the mod.
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Dec 26, 2020 05:31
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I just want to vote NOT playing an Origin character. If there is one sin this game has. It is basically giving nothing to Custom Characters and making you feel you're playing what should be someone else's story and I hate that. Even though odds are we're going to wind up with Fane over a custom character I'll vote for Human Male] Necromancy Two-hand build Cello Mod
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Dec 26, 2020 06:10
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Sebille, because elves in this setting are cool and I want to see some Django Unchained-level stuff as we rip our way through Rivellon looking for the Master. Rogue or Shadowblade, because their stabby fun-times are ridiculously fun and they get to get up close, dodgy, and shank people in the ribs. Tambura, for its sound is oaky like a tree. Mod rather than vanilla, because while the vanilla experience is fun and all, the mod makes status effects less binary than "strip armor, crowd control everything" as far as fight tactics go.
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Dec 26, 2020 06:27
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JT Jag posted:All named characters. Fane, Red Prince, Beast and Lohse. Cello. Sure, use the mod. You know, I was about to create my own reply? But yeah, this. Especially Red Prince.
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Dec 26, 2020 13:57
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Let's go Fane, and then whatever members you want, plus vanilla. I don't care much about class, I'm sure we'll have a good spread of stuff.
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Dec 26, 2020 15:35
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Full undead team led by Fane, any build but each with a minor in geomancy for obvious reasons. Instruments as you like but no more than one per. Vanilla.
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Dec 26, 2020 16:29
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Ifan Necromancy melee build Anything else is up to the OP
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Dec 26, 2020 17:27
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I played the whole game coop, so the only two characters I never got to see were Fane and Red Prince. I'd want one of them, the rest is gravy.
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Dec 26, 2020 18:18
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I really want Chuckles the Undead Eleven Jester with the rest as whoever will complement a laughing undead assassin.
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Dec 26, 2020 19:26
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Any premade character is fine Rest is up to OP.
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Dec 26, 2020 21:59
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Fane Vanilla game Cello This game's always interested me, though my interest lies more in the story than the gamey part. I always bounce off hard when I try to play this kind of genre myself, but seeing someone else go through it like this should give me satisfaction enough.
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Dec 26, 2020 22:14
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Custom elf necromancer/warfare guy, vanilla You know why.
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Dec 27, 2020 00:25
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anilEhilated posted:Fane This, for sure. I had no idea about this game somehow, despite loving some old Baldur's Gate. Fane's going to probably win (and he's such a good idea; Fane has no loving clue what is going on and neither do we :V), but I would also really like to see an Elf somewhere because cannibal-memory elves sounds SICK as hell.
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Dec 27, 2020 03:09
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Karma Guard posted:This, for sure. I had no idea about this game somehow, despite loving some old Baldur's Gate.
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Dec 27, 2020 03:17
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So, by my tally, our avatar is Fane. He'll be a necromancer/melee build that plays the cello. And the vote between vanilla and using the mod was very narrowly split, but using the mod wins by a narrow two-vote margin. Beast and Lohse were tied for second, with Ifan and Prince tied for fourth. Sorry, Sebille  But, with the exception of Fane, who is with us until the very end, we'll actually have plenty of opportunities to swap our party around... up until a point.
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Dec 27, 2020 05:42
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drat, too late to vote against the mod and for Lohse. 
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Dec 27, 2020 10:44
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 : Divinity: Original Sin 2 Main Theme As decided, we’re going with the named character Fane, the undead His journey will involve him bludgeoning people with large, two-handed weapons and then sucking the blood from their corpses in order to revitalize himself. Why need muscles when you have calcium?  Just because Fane is a named character, though, that doesn’t mean we can’t dress him up a little bit. None of the characters have their appearance locked in (other than their gender and their voice). This screen shows us all the default options that Fane has, but we can give him an entirely new face, and even some features like hair, facial hair, scars, etc.  We can play as this suave specimen if we wanted. Which I imagine we do, but I’d rather go with the default look for now, just so that we’re better acquainted with him. He is, after all, a named character. We’ll have plenty of time and opportunities to swap out his appearance at other points in the game.  Talents are changes to your character that, most of the time, help them in combat, but some of them are civil and social, too. Since we voted (narrowly) to use the Divinity Unleashed mod from the previous update, many of the skills have been upgraded or adjusted, since some of them weren’t the most balanced or interesting. For example, in the base game, Pet Pal is kind of an absolute necessity. It allows you to talk to animals, and animals make up a not-negligible amount of the game’s content, including quests and dialogue. To not have Pet Pal means removing yourself from an enormous amount of the game’s content, but it also means using up a talent slot (and you only get so many throughout the game), and you don’t get anything else for something that’s generally considered to be a necessity. It’s so important to the game that Larian themselves released an update to the game, via something they call “gift bags,” that includes a mod that gives everyone on your team Pet Pal for free (as an innate thing you have, rather than as a talent), and it refunds you the talent if you already have it. If you insist on keeping Pet Pal as a talent, then, as a bonus, it maxes out every animal’s attitude towards you. But Divinity Unleashed takes it a step further: if you have the Pet Pal perk, then you can summon one additional creature (up to 2 from 1), but they each have reduced vitality and strength. If one of them dies, then the summoner controlling them takes a nasty debuff. It’s a very give-and-take change that really mixes it up for summoners and puts more emphasis on keeping the summons alive, since they’re usually just sponges otherwise.  Divinity Unleashed also gives every single character, not just player characters, three talents for free: Opportunist; Savage Sortilege; and The Pawn. Opportunist allows a person to make an attack for free if an enemy enters, and then tries to leave, their melee range. Savage Sortilege gives magic a chance to critical hit equal to the caster’s melee chances (in the base game, magic cannot crit). The Pawn allows a person to move a small distance without costing them any Action Points – this one is especially important because positioning is more than half the strategy to combat, and Action Points are a fickle economy to begin with. There will be dozens of times in any given playthrough where you need to move just a little bit closer in order to do whatever it is you want, but it’ll cost you the AP to do it. The Pawn doesn’t remove that so that it never happens, but it’ll certainly help. Anyway, there are a ton of talents to choose from, but I’m not going to list them all unless they’re relevant. So, since I’m an inquisitor, it only makes sense that I take the Executioner perk:   Our build preset gives us some recommended load outs for our class. Since we’re focusing on melee and necromancy, we’ll generally want Strength for our swingin’ arms and Intelligence to back up our necromancy magic. This will split our stat-ups a little thin, but necromancy allows us to heal HP with every melee hit that we make, and since we’re also increasing our Constitution, that means we’ll be an all-in-one tank that’s main concern is beating the poo poo out of people. Us being undead also means that regular magic wouldn’t help us anyway. That said, Telekinesis is a pretty useless ability to have. It allows you to pick up objects, no matter how heavy, and the higher your Telekinesis, the farther away you can move them. Since we’re probably going to be the party’s heavy hitter, which means we’ll be putting lots of points into Strength, we’ll be able to move heavier objects around and toss them a great distance regardless. (Telekinesis is actually invaluable if you’re speedrunning the game. But we’re not)  If we’re not using Telekinesis, that gives us one extra point to use in our Civil abilities as we like. Since Fane is our avatar, we’re probably going to be doing a lot of our talking with him, so, it makes sense to me to put that point into Persuasion.  Since we’re a named character, we don’t get to choose their tags. Fane is human, male, undead, a mystic, and a scholar. Sometimes, dialogue choices will be unique to anyone with those tags (and “Fane” is a tag), which can unlock different conversation trees and can lead the discussion down a different path entirely.  And finally, as we agreed, Fane plays the cello.  The game helpfully reminds you that picking an undead character isn’t exactly going to be the most intuitive experience, especially if this is your first time playing. Luckily, it is not my first time.  Before I get started for real, let’s talk a little bit about the Larian Gift Bags. Despite how absolutely amazing and incredible this game is, the game wasn’t perfect. It had its fair share of complaints and issues, and Larian took those criticisms to heart. Why wait for a third instalment to address all these issues? They may not be able to make such grand, gigantic, sweeping changes to the game this long after its release, but they can still give us some officially-sanctioned mods to help us out. None of these are particularly essential or anything, but they enhance the experience of playing the game pretty substantially. They don’t require any external tools or community subscriptions or anything: they’re a part of the game directly. I’ll be taking most of them for this file.    I don’t want to get too in-depth on which options I’ve chosen because a handful of them involve events or abilities that come into play much later in the game. Just know that all of them are either quality-of-life stuff, such as Pet Pal being applied to everyone, or they add to the experience, such as more talents and crafting recipes to choose from. One thing I didn’t choose was the Combat Randomizer, which changes every single fight in the game to give one-or-more opponents a random perk that completely mixes the combat up. I consider myself pretty experienced at the game, and I wouldn’t mind the added challenge, but we’re already deviating pretty far off the main game’s ‘intended’ playstyle with the Divinity Unleashed mod, so I kept it off. But, I mean, I could be convinced to turn it on. Just know that, if we do, we can’t turn it off. Anyway. Let’s do this.   Click for the intro cinematic! : A Part Of Their Story   : Easy now. No need to hurry. Get your bearings, then report to me upstairs.   Our–   Normally, this skull next to our bed is silent as, well, as the dead – but because we’re playing as an undead ourselves, it’s feeling a little chattier. All that we currently know about Fane is that, despite him being a human skeleton (and him having the ‘human’ tag), he clearly is not human, and he and this skull are not cut of the same cloth.  : You’re a human skull, are you not? Is it… normal, for human remains to keep talking after death? : Heh, fresh out of the crypt, are you? No, we are… abnormal. It’s why we hide in the shadows. : My kind are built differently from you mortals. The voice you hear is a projection that I choose for them to hear. And that’s but a taste of the power than me and my ilk have.: So powerful that you’ve been overpowered by clowns in red capes and a glowing necklace? Well, colour me impressed!: Still, you’d best keep that mask on. The living don’t take kindly to seeing their future staring back at them. And, just like that, the skull falls silent once more.  The undead get access to something a little, shall we say, unique. Fane is already wearing the Mask of the Shapeshifter: a device that grants us the ability to transform into any race that we like with the press of a button.     : You look to your hands, your belly, your feet. Flesh you don’t know, molded into unfamiliar shapes. You cradle your aching head, where another’s memories and wisdoms mix with your own. Your fingers trace a line from your head to your face, feeling not the creases of the mask, but the porous surface of new skin. You lower your arm, blink twice, and step forward in this new guise. So, just like that, thanks to the Mask of the Shapeshifter, I can become any of the four races in the game – complete with flesh, muscle, and face. I am still Fane, and I am still an undead skeleton, but I am now also an elf, and I can pass by as an elf to anyone that asks. And this also gives me the racial traits of an elf – as an elf, I can consume the flesh of another mortal to absorb their memories, their skills, and their experiences. If I use the mask to turn into a lizard, my clawed hands will allow me to dig holes without the need of a shovel. I also get their skills. If I turn into a human, I immediately get the skill Encourage. If I turn into a dwarf, I get Petrifying Touch. I lose these skills if I ever swap out. The biggest trade off is that the Mask of the Shapeshifter requires I use it as my helmet, and it offers no perks or armour, so it’s totally useless in combat. But outside of combat, it’s an invaluable tool that will… well, they’ll allow me to converse with the mortals of the world without, you know, forcing them to deal with the fact that they’re talking with a skeleton.  I do some inventory management while it’s on my mind. For all the praise this game has gotten, there’s one massive sticking point that always, always, always comes up with it: managing your inventory and your hotbars sucks. Inventory gets crowded and confusing and the hotbars become an absolute bloated mess of colours and items and cooldowns. Personally, I have a system when it comes to hotbars: my first three hotbars are by school (so, in Fane’s case, hotbar one is necromancy and hotbar two is melee combat); hotbar four is combat-use items, such as grenades, scrolls, and elementary arrows; and hotbar five is potions, food, resurrection scrolls, and other, miscellaneous stuff, such as using the Mask of the Shapeshifter. I also try and keep them grouped by type – offense first, then defense, then support and sustain, for example. The fact that you have to spend so much of your time managing your hotbars and your inventory is a massive sticking point, and Larian tried to streamline things with a Gift Bag that gives you automatic sorting options – all weapons here, all crafting items here, all potions here, etc – but in my experience, that somehow made it worse. We just started the game, so there isn’t a lot to sort, but it’ll catch up in a hurry.  As we are undead, it’s imperative that, if we aren’t using the Mask of the Shapeshifter, we keep our body obscured at all times. We’ll cause a panic as soon as someone notices we’re a bony skeleman. You’ll notice that we’re wearing wrappings around our hands and feet. We also have a tattered cowl in our inventory. It too offers nothing in terms of defense, so it’s equally as useless as the Mask in combat, but it also doesn’t turn us into something we’re not.  It completes the ensemble a little better than the mask does, at least.  For players that prefer to see their heroes without them wearing funny helmets or masks, you can also toggle the helmet’s visibility. You’re still wearing it, and you still get all the effects and bonuses that a helmet would provide, but its visuals are simply turned off. We could waltz right up to a guy with this tattered cowl on with the helmet’s visuals turned off and he wouldn’t suspect a thing. Generally, I prefer to keep it off – some helmets look downright goofy, especially for lizards and elves – but in Fane’s case, I might make an exception.   Fane also has two books on him: his own personal journal….   … And an entry into Huwbert’s Encyclopaedia. Huwbert chronicles the world as he meets and understands it in his voluminous encyclopaedic entries, and this volume in particular focuses on Lucian and the Black Ring.  Finally, you may have noticed, but we also have a scroll in our possession. Scrolls give us one free use of that spell, and we don’t need to have any points in that school in order to cast it: Fane, for example, has an Electric Discharge spell, which is just your classic Lightning Bolt spell under a different name. But he has no points in Aerothurge. Thanks to this scroll, he can cast it once regardless. Scrolls still scale their damage on the user’s Intelligence stat, so having a dumb bruiser use scrolls isn’t as effective as a smartypants using it, but their utility is still unparalleled.    This being an RPG, you’re encouraged to rifle through every single chest, cupboard, desk, jug, and flower pot you find for loot. If you have the Lucky Charm civil skill, you’re encouraged to do it even moreso, because literally anything can start holding loot with increasing rarity. This medicine cabinet held a mug of water. We don’t have a throat to sate or a stomach to fill, but, down the hatch!    It ‘healed’ me for 5%. Since I’m undead, I actually took 5% damage. Remember to never hydrate, everyone. Stay thirsty, my friends. Or else.  Spinning the camera around and looting this desk gives us….  Hey, not bad.  Maybe this door is locked? There are lots of lockpicks in this game, and you can craft them yourself if you have the right tools… but one bonus that the undead get is that they can use their bony fingers as lockpicks for free. Undead make pretty good scoundrels thanks to this racial trait.   Unfortunately, we are not playing as a scoundrel.  Buckets are good for a number of things – mostly crafting, by holding various liquids that you can use for different recipes. But if you don’t have a helmet, then, well, if you’re willing to improvise….   Well, hey, now we have some physical armour to our name. If it’s dumb, but it works, then it’s not dumb.  We’re clearly on a ship right now, and this brig is something of a very small, six-room tutorial dungeon that introduces us to all the mechanics of the game. One such mechanic is physics-based puzzle solving. There is a crate in front of this door. By clicking and dragging the crate, you move it out of the way so you can progress. Easy.  drat, cleaning up a bit.    There’s a sheep here that, thanks to the Animal Empathy Gift Bag option I chose, I can now speak with. If I didn’t have that, I could still interact with the sheep, but it’d be nothing beyond an observation.   : Perhaps not, but you look like you’ve got more than enough meat on you for the both of us. : That maaaaaaaaay be so. But look at the flies, mbaaa. Baaaaarn wisdom. Flies know when a creature will die. And it’s around your head they’re buzzing, not mine…: With two shakes of her stumpy tail, the sheep turns away from you to peruse her hay-filled manger. I should hope that we outlive a sheep. But then again, I guess I’m already dead, so.  The puzzle this time is that this door is locked, meaning there should be a key somewhere nearby. In the corner of this room is a jar surrounded by crates – the intended solution is to move one of the crates aside to get to the jar, but you can just reach between them.  Wow, this has been a very lucky tutorial so far.    The next room is a simple hallway. It appears to be some kind of kitchenette – there’s a dining table with some food on it, as well as kitchen plates and utensils hanging off the walls on either side. There’s also a pile of firewood in the nearby corner. Everything is, of course, lootable.   Holding shift (by default) will highlight everything you can pick up or interact with within your character’s eyesight. You don’t have to click on the item precisely to interact with it – you can click on their name instead, which makes things world’s easier, considering how small some objects can get. There’s a letter on the table here. That’s probably important.  I tend to avoid picking up books (except Skillbooks) or letters if I can help it. They clutter up your inventory in a hurry. Instead, you can just right-click and hit Read to read the contents without adding it to your inventory.   So, our next puzzle involves two pressure plates. All we need to do is stick two things on the plates in order to open the next door. Off to the corner is a barrel, which, when we poke through it….   … Gives us our first weapon. Unfortunately, we’re hoping to be a two-handed brute of a skeleton, and one-handed knives scale off Finesse, not Strength. But, not only is it better than nothing, but the fact that we have an empty offhand means we get access to the innate skill Sucker Punch, which allows us to hit an opponent for only one AP, and also apply Knocked Down. In the base game, crowd control was such an important, all-pervasive strategy that many fights devolved into who can get the other guy Knocked Down/Stunned/Frozen first, because anyone with afflictions like those are forced to skip their next turn. Divinity Unleashed nerfed all these strategies so that they now apply a litany of debuffs instead, allowing the victim some form of countermeasure without outright removing them from the fight for a turn. You can still crowd control a person, but it requires a ton of focus fire and resources just to take out one person for one turn.  Anyway, there’s a toolbox behind this shelf. Moving the barrel and the toolbox onto the pressure plates causes the door to swing open.   The next room is a two-cell brig with a sleeping guardsman, one cellmate, and what looks like quite the spill.  Surfaces in this game are a big part of the strategy involved in combat, and each surface applies some different affliction when you walk through it – even water isn’t totally safe. Walking through oil causes us to be Slowed, which reduces our in-combat agility and in-and-out-of-combat movement speed to be harshly reduced. Oil can also be lit on fire for very large booms. Heading down the stairs causes the cellmate to try and get our attention.   : What did you do to get yourself locked in a cage like an animal in the first place? : Your guess is as good as mine. Someone screamed, loud as a banshee. After that? Pure pandemonium. They never even told me what I was accused of – just dragged me down here.: I’m… not sure if I’m willing to risk myself for someone the guards felt fit to lock up. What’s in it for me?: Set me free, and I’ll set you free. A fair trade, I should think?Hmm. Let’s think on that.    Seems like he’s just a bit sleepy, is all. For now, I’ll let sleeping dogs lie. What do YOU think we should do? Do we help Hemwar escape? Do we wake the guard? Do we ignore them both entirely? Moving onward for now….  Up the other side of the room is another locked door and a barrel. Scrounging around in the barrel gives us….  That’s a reasonably exciting thing to find, if we ever get an archer on our team. We also find a single lockpick, but since we’re undead, it’s wasted on us. Maybe someone else we meet will have a better use for them, since, as an inquisitor, we’d rather bash our poo poo in than try to finesse our way through a lock. That said, clearly, the game wants us to lockpick this door, so, we might as well humour it.    The next room over appears to be some kind of medicine room, or maybe a research laboratory. There’s a… well, it’s probably a torture device. There’s a torture device on one side of the room with a diagram of the human body next to it; there’s a comfy bed with a bedside table just past the curtain; and what good would a laboratory be without a toxic chemical spill?  Scrounging through the shelves nets us some empty bottles, which can be used for crafting all kinds of potions.  These two potions will drastically harm us if we ingest them, but surely they’ll have a purpose elsewhere down the line. No sense in letting a good potion go to waste.  Stepping onto the toxic sludge will restore our HP, as we are undead, and what helps, hinders, and what hinders, helps. The door beside us is also locked, but there is no key, and while we could use our bony fingers to pick the lock, the game clearly wants us to try something else. On either side of the poison puddle are lit candles. Interacting with them can light them up or put them out. And, it turns out, poison is highly flammable.    I will be the first to admit that I made a minor lapse in judgement. Also, maybe starting fires on a galleon is maybe not the best idea?  Fire will put itself out over time, but if you have water handy, such as from a spell, that’ll put it out faster. It’ll damage anything it touches, including doors, chairs, and ourselves, for as long as it burns.  Once it goes out, it leaves behind a smoke cloud that takes up the same surface area as the fire did. Walking through the smoke won’t hurt anybody, but it reduces your vision down to arm’s length, meaning any spells that require field-of-vision will be totally neutered if the caster stands inside it. And archers are just completely boned, since they can’t see past their own hands.  Clouds will also disappear on their own eventually, leaving the area as clean as a whistle. Fire is very good at cleaning things. The door, however, is left with 40 HP remaining. In that case, what we can do now is attack the door directly by holding control (by default) and selecting the door as our target.  Doing this will lower our current weapon’s durability, but weapons can be repaired, and you generally aren’t going to be going around whacking things enough times for a weapon to break before you find a better weapon to replace it with anyway.    We’re left with one final hallway with one final locked door, but beside it as a lever. And when we pull it, the door swings open.   And with that, we’ve cleared this tutorial dungeon! We just need to climb that ladder next to the desk, and we’ll be moving on to the rest of the ship. Well… almost. There’s still one last thing that needs doing. To recap: Do we help Hemwar escape? Do we wake the guard? Do we ignore them both entirely? Let me know by tomorrow! Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Dec 28, 2020 |
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Dec 27, 2020 21:35
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I played through this twice and I had no idea the brig section was there. Release the prisoner.
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Dec 27, 2020 22:04
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iirc it was added in the Definitive Edition update.
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Dec 27, 2020 22:08
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Don't help the prisoner escape, that seems like it'd be too much trouble Do boop the guard's nose if possible. Surely that won't wake them up and you get to probe it for weaknesses. Just in case.
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Dec 27, 2020 22:26
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It's basically a tutorial section that was added in.
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Dec 27, 2020 23:06
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BraveLittleToaster posted:Do boop the guard's nose if possible. And free the guy, what's the worst that could happen? (I actually don't remember, but it's usually the worst that can happen) Does any of the updates mark keys as used or something? I really didn't like carrying around a bag full of keys forever since I didn't know which ones had been used and which I might still need.
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Dec 28, 2020 00:09
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Wake the guard because he's sitting in some oil and that's dangerous 
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Dec 28, 2020 00:09
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Free the guy and Boop the guard's nose.
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Dec 28, 2020 00:22
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Kill em all I can't believe you wrote Telekinesis off as useless when it's the best combat skill in the game. Did the mod change that?
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Dec 28, 2020 02:56
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Kill em all It did: quote:Objects carrying more than their own weight cannot be thrown, eliminating the use of instant-kill-barrels with telekinesis.
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Dec 28, 2020 03:28
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Playing one of the premades is a bot weird to me because you eliminate the fun of actually talking to your companion, but at least you lock in Fane this way, since he's objectively the most important person. I can't imagine the game without him (or Red Prince, but that's entertainment value).
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Dec 28, 2020 12:10
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Not sure this is as much of an issue in this brave, modern age but those PNGs clock in at about 600 kB/image. You may want to use high-quality JPGs for the gameplay shots to keep the size down, especially for phone users. With PNGs you're going to end up with the occasional 100 MB+ thread page which is still quite a lot.
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Dec 28, 2020 13:34
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You're right, I should do that. It'd be doing baldurk a big favour too since he's the one hosting them. I'll see if I can't replace the two updates with jpgs.
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Dec 28, 2020 15:28
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THIS IS HOW HUMANS COMMUNICATE. SHOUT AT THE GUARD. Also, free the prisoner. We are all anti-cop here.
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Dec 28, 2020 20:44
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