Divinity: Original Sin 2's complexity can be daunting at first, and not everything is explained in detail. The good news is that a lot of early decisions can be taken back—you'll have a chance to respec later in the game—but just getting through the first few fights can be rough, even on Classic mode.
To settle your nerves, we've compiled a few tips to help ensure you're set to adventure by the time you leave Fort Joy. (Speaking of, here's our, if you need extra guidance.)Minor spoilers ahead for the first several hours, of course. These tips were last updated on September 29.Pick an origin characterOriginal Sin 2’s robust character creator lets you cook up all manner of heroes and weirdos, but for the richest experience you’ll absolutely want to choose one of the origin characters. They are just as customisable as any other character you might make, but come with an origin story, extra voice acting and their own personal quests. The ones you don’t choose then become companions who can join you.That said, don't fret too much if you prefer to play as a character of your own.
You can initiate dialogue with non-party NPCs using any of your party members, meaning you'll have chances to experience some of their unique dialogue options if you want. It isn't quite the same, but you'll be able to follow their stories either way, and you'll pick up new character tags throughout your adventures that give your custom character a bit of unique personality.Get a healer in your partyWhen you recruit new party members, you have the option to assign them different class presets than their defaults. If your character doesn't have any healing abilities, it's a good idea to request that one of them take the role of Cleric. Money is tight in the early game, so relying on potions to heal will make it tough to afford new armor and weapons.Original Sin 2's class system is very flexible, so don't worry if you'd prefer your chosen healer be something else down the line. As a Cleric they'll get points in Hydrosophist and Necromancer, both of which support lots of cool, non-healing related spells. And you can completely change their specialization down the line and, say, build them into a rogue if you want.How to earn money and gear upFirst of all, click on everything. You never know who or what is important in Original Sin 2 at first glance.
Every NPC could be a potential quest-giver, holder of important knowledge, or maybe they just have some hilarious jokes they’re waiting to rattle off. And a random piece of tat you find on the beach or in an otherwise empty barrel could be the key to solving a mystery, or maybe it’s just worth a few quid to the right buyer (but think carefully before selling items that might be quest-related). If it isn't red, you can snag it without being attacked for stealing. Essentially, you’ll want to treat it like an adventure game.Also, remember to complete your quests. Even a simple thing, like talking down a few thugs, can result in earning experience, gold, and items—but you have to go talk to the quest giver to get your reward. Check your journal to see if you have any outstanding quests to complete.All that said, money is going to be tight for a while. Quality armor and weapons are hard to come by in the early game.
To help a little, check to see who in your party has the highest Bartering level, and make sure they cozy up to traders and get on their good side—even saving 20 gold here and there is worth it.You can trade with many NPCs even if they don't offerIf an NPC is marked as a 'trader,' you won't always be able to get to the trade screen through dialogue. Even if you're on good terms and you've spent gold with them before, they'll sometimes get stuck repeating one line of dialogue, or just stop offering, which can be frustrating if you haven't yet noticed the easy-to-miss button on the upper left side of the dialogue box (see the screenshot above). Click it to open the trade screen.Save money on lockpicks, get a skeletonIf you’re not going to play as Fane, the Undead origin character, then you should at least bring him as a companion. He’s excellent company, being the source of a lot of biting sarcasm and camp, pantomime menace, and his boney digits are unexpectedly handy. Fane, and indeed any Undead character, is a walking skeleton key, able to use their fingers to unlock doors and chests, as long as they have the appropriate skill level.Get the Pet Pal talentIf you’ve got the Pet Pal talent (or someone in your party does) you can talk to animals, and it’s not just for laughs—animals frequently offer advice, spill secrets and occasionally give out quests. These conversations are also the source of many great character moments. Anyone can get the Pet Pal talent, and you can also choose it during character creation.
If you recruit The Red Prince, he has it by default.Protect the black catSpeaking of animals, early on you’ll find yourself followed by a black cat. He can’t be harmed in combat, but if you walk past the guards in front of the gate to Fort Joy Prison, east of the camp, one of the archers will murder the innocent kitty.
Keep him alive, however, and when you escape the camp, he’ll join the party as a summon, allowing you to switch places with him in battle.Make liberal use of quicksaveDivinity: Original Sin 2 is hard. Even on the default Classic Mode, battles are brutal, and in the first act you’ll often find your squishy party a bit underprepared. Resurrection scrolls are also incredibly pricey, though you can occasionally loot them.
This isn’t helped by an autosave feature that kicks in when a battle begins, not before, so you won’t be able to prepare any better. So whenever you think you’re about to duke it out, hit that quicksave button.It's also a good idea to quicksave before entering a new area, or initiating any major quest dialogue. Unless you're going for a one life, no take-backsies game (in which case we salute you), you'll find that what you say and do can have big consequences that you may want to take back.Retreating is fineAlternatively, and especially if you're avoiding save scumming, you can always flee. Once a character is out of range of the enemy, you can click flee, and they’ll respawn at the nearest waypoint. In the middle of a battle, it can be tricky to get far enough away from foes, so it’s worth investing in tricks that make escape easier. Teleportation, flight and the Tactical Retreat ability are all boons when you just need to get the hell out of there.Environmental effects are handy and deadlyFights are often won by the group best able to manipulate the environment with magic and elemental weapons.
Cast rain on a group of enemies, and then a spell that applies chill, and you might end up with frozen enemies and slippery surfaces. These environmental effects make great traps—and also obstacles—but they can help you as well as hindering enemies. A Necromancer, for instance, can make it rain blood and then cast a healing spell that soaks up all of the puddles to increase their vitality.And don't forget: undead characters heal from poison. Be careful not to accidentally do them any favors (unless it's Fane) by leaving poison puddles around.
Divinity Original Sin Playable Races
You can use healing abilities on them to do damage, too.Grab a bedroll as soon as possibleWhile healing potions and spells are important when you’re in a fight, the best way to heal outside of battle is by taking a quick nap. That’s only possible if there’s a bed nearby, however, and you won’t find many of them out in the wilderness.
That’s why it’s so important to pick up the first bedroll you encounter. You’ll be able to take it with you everywhere, and clicking on it heals every character almost instantly. You'll find one in the first beach area near the entrance to Fort Joy, on top of a ruined wall. There's a shovel there, too.
You should grab the shovel.Don’t forget to rotate the cameraIt seems so obvious, but it’s easy to forget that you can rotate the camera to get a clearer picture of the area you’re marching through. Often, the angle can hide entrances, caves, chests and secret paths that become clear when you change your perspective. I spent about 30 minutes looking for a cave, only to discover that I’d passed it a dozen times, but until I changed the camera, I only saw the hill behind it. It's not a bad idea to have a character with high Wits, either, as they'll call out secrets when they see them.Divinity: Original Sin 2 is so expansive and elaborate that even with this list, there’s going to be a lot for you to learn, but the most important lesson is just to experiment.
That might mean using the teleportation spell creatively to loot corpses that are out of reach, for instance. If it seems like you can do something, there's a good chance you can, so you may as well try.
Although in my game, she has purple hair.The first time I died, it was because I didn't think crocodiles could fly. In Divinity: Original Sin 2, that's a big mistake. Any enemy you underestimate is probably going to be the next enemy to kill you, or sap your magic armor, brainwash you, and make you watch helplessly as your character drinks the potions you've been hoarding and uses your best scrolls. An early fight with teleporting crocodiles drove home that I should be prepared for the unexpected, and that I'd need a stockpile of resurrection scrolls to bring party members back from the dead.Almost four months later, with nearly 100 hours of game time behind me, my co-op buddies and I had nearly finished this insanely long, ambitious RPG. We each controlled a character, selected from Original Sin 2's presets.
There was Fane, the undead wizard and thief. He got us in a lot of fights by pickpocketing people who didn't like getting their shit stolen. There was Beast, the dwarven pirate who maxed out persuasion to sweet talk our party through sticky situations. And I was Lohse, the traveling minstrel who just happened to be possessed by an incredibly powerful demon. At this point, it was pretty rare for me to die in battle. I'd been stacking constitution until I was built like a brick wall, and could crit for almost 3,000 damage with a two-handed hammer.
I had a pretty badass cape. But I wasn't ready for what would happen when we finally faced down my demon.Spoiler warning: Full-on spoilers from this point forward.
If you haven't finished Divinity: Original Sin 2 and intend to, you've been warned!He'd been toying with me over that 100 hours. Where my friends saw their races' gods in the Hall of Echoes, I saw my demon, who wanted to take over my body and use my power as a Godwoken for his own means. At the end of the game, nearly all our other questlines wrapped up, we faced down Adramahlikh, who would've been tough if he were just more powerful than any other enemy we'd faced, with something in the range of 20,000 armor and magic armor and nearly that much health. But he didn't play by the rules. Four turns into our fight, he broke the mind of the character I'd been playing for four months and irreversibly brainwashed her. She was dead for good.Or would've been, if Divinity: Original Sin 2 wasn't a game built for save scumming. It's a ludicrously open-ended RPG, letting you play—and screw up—in so many different ways.
We saved and reloaded often, to sneak our way past an obstacle we blundered into, to deal with bugs that got us stuck in annoying situations, to undo turning a crank that says 'doomsday device' to avoid murdering an entire city (smooth one, Steven). But one constant for the entire 100 hours, one circumstance we never save scummed to avoid, was dealing with the deaths of our own characters.
They're revivable, so we'd live with the consequences, buying or stealing enough resurrection scrolls to bring the fallen back after a tough fight.Suddenly, here was a stunning twist. Lohse was permanently possessed. I had no control over her as she started using her polymorph abilities on my friends, chugging strength potions to deal more damage. So we did the only sensible thing: killed her, thinking a good old resurrection scroll would set everything right.
But her ghostly, revivable spirit didn't appear. She was no longer mine to control.I hadn't just failed the unique character quest I'd been pursuing for the entire game. I failed it in a way that held Adramahlikh up as a genuinely imposing villain.
He broke the rules of the game as I understood them. The closer we got to facing him, the more we were told don't fuck with this guy. He's too powerful. But it'd been too long since we'd had a real challenge, and we thought we could handle anything he threw at us. And maybe we could have, but taking Lohse away after just a few turns proved he was ruthless beyond any other enemy in the game.We reloaded the save, of course, but that didn't lessen the impression that moment left on me—the power of an RPG teaching you the rules of its world, only to upend them at the 100 hour mark. You could argue the moment would've had a heavier emotional impact if we were playing on Honor difficulty, which is harder and only gives you a single save, autosaves after death, and erases itself if your whole party dies. I would've been devastated.
But to me, the beauty of Divinity is in how it lets you manipulate its systems to achieve a new outcome. Naturally, we got revenge.The key to saving Lohse from Adramahlikh's possession was to make sure she was dead already. He couldn't target her if she wasn't in battle. But it was a tough fight, so we wanted Lohse's damage output for the first couple turns. Instead of killing her, we did the next best thing: we beat her up, then buffed the shit out of her.Lohse entered the battle with about 20 percent HP, hopped up on a strength potion, hasted and clear-minded, spells that gave her more action points and yet more strength. Living on the Edge ensured her health couldn't drop below 1 HP for two turns, and we comboed that with Death Wish, which gives a damage buff for every percent of HP missing. I changed Lohse's armor to make her more vulnerable but bump her crit chance up to more than 50 percent, for good measure.The first time, Adramahlikh murdered Lohse and we'd barely touched him five turns into the fight.
The second time, she wailed on him with her hammer like King Kong swinging a redwood, crushing all of his armor in a few hits. That opened him up to Lohse's incredibly powerful polymorph skill Forced Exchange, which swaps HP values with an enemy. Suddenly, Lohse had 17,000 HP and he was sitting at a measly 3,000. I considered it a poetic way to beat an enemy who'd been possessing my body for his own use. The whole fight took three turns.That's the essence of Divinity: Original Sin 2. First it surprises you, and probably kicks your ass.
Divinity Original Sin 2 Review
The second time you break it wide open, and damn does it ever feel good.