Divinity 2: Ego Draconis/ Flames of Vengeance add-on/ Dragon Knight Saga info!

[Gratch]

Did anyone go with Dual Wield?  Maybe I'm missing something, but even with 5 points dumped into it, there is not even the smallest bit of damage increase.  In fact, I'm doing less damage than I was with sword/shield, but am dying faster because I don't have the shield defenses. 

Starting to wonder if I gimped my character too.  I dumped points into Strength & Vitality (as per normal melee character build protocol), but at level 12, I'm constantly getting destroyed by mobs of equal level.  I've even bumped it down to casual, and I'm still getting my ass handed to me on a regular basis.  FAQ's seem to be all over the map in regards to character building.  Some say to ignore Strength entirely and dump points into Intelligence, even for melee characters.  Some say the exact opposite.  Some say to keep a balance, other say to focus on one skill.  I've been trying to put points into whatever felt most logical, but it certainly hasn't paid off.

Open to any suggestions.

[CeeKay]

the whole description for dual wield seemed to make it look pretty weak, so i just with with Sword and Shield.  as for stats I keep bumping up Dex, Strength and Vitality, only occasionally dumping points in intelligence or spirit.

[Gratch]

Looks like I just had wussy weapons, which was causing my dual wield to suffer.  Made some great progress tonight (cleaned up most of Broken Valley and made it to Maxos Temple) and managed to pick up a couple significantly heftier weapons along the way.  Went from doing 15-25 damage to doing 50-70 in the span of about 10 minutes.    Still can't figure out how damage is calculated though.  Bought a couple weapons that I seemed to have higher stats, only to find out they had lower damage once I equipped them.  Strange.  I also put a couple points into Ghost to give me some healing between battles, which is proving to be a lifesaver.

Was pretty frustrated last night and almost quit...glad I stuck with it tonight.

[jersoc]

pfft, real players go mage.

[CeeKay]

pfft, real players go mage.

bald too.

[Razgon]

Meh, real men use fists all the way...

[Silky]

As a mage I like dual wield a lot.  I am able to stack + magic damage weapons which seems to really help out everything I cast.  Also the higher levels of dual wield rocks a lot.  When you start having +30% damage in your off hand and you purposely put your best weapon in the offhand I can see even a fighter type loving it.  As a fighter I would do my best to stack + physical damage weapons and let the whirlwind of bleeds kill everything.

[Gratch]

pfft, real players go mage.

Melee rulz, magic droolz!!   

Ever since I started playing RPG's, I've always gone for the melee types.  I find that playing a caster simply bores me, and typically avoid it unless absolutely necessary.  That said, I will be picking up at least a couple mage abilities, mainly just for quick ranged attacks.

[hepcat]

I maxed out dual wield last night and it does make a big difference at the upper levels.  I had my skill trainer push the max to 10, so it does take a while though. 

By the way

Spoiler for Hiden:

don't forget to mindread all your trainers in the fortress once you have access to it. they all give out skill points when doing so.

I did make a slight mistake by jumping straight into Broken Valley instead of staying in the fjords later in the game.  I maxed up to around 27 then realized I had a ton of stuff to do back in the fjords.  but now i'm basically a god, tearing through almost everything.  oh well, hopefully things will even out soon.

[CeeKay]

but now i'm basically a god, tearing through almost everything.  oh well, hopefully things will even out soon.

I've noticed the game do this with the Fjords.  I'm kind of at a loss what to do quest wise.  I found the quest to look for the three things, but other than

Spoiler for Hiden:

an airship under a shield and some tribe I laid waste to all I can find are portals that take me to flying fortresses with enemies about 10 levels higher than me.

[Gratch]

finally made it through the trials.  I've noticed there seems to be a crazy difference between weapons.  one I founc ealry on but couldn't use until I hit level 14 does about 100 more damage than other weapons I have, including ones I can't use yet.  I literally quadrupled my damage output once I hit 14.

I noticed this as well.  I have a weapon waiting in my inventory that I can use at level 14 which will take me from doing 50-69 total damage to doing 135-180.     That's craziness.  I got *this* close to dinging 14 last night, but had to hit the sack.  Can't wait to unlock that thing tonight.

[Greg Wak]

I am into the expansion now and here is how I did it for melee. I did go sword and shield simply because I was role playing and I liked it the most. In the expansion I respected my skills and dual wield is a bit easier and does tons more damage. I'm at 13 now and assume it goes to 15 but I can't find that trainer. I cranked up Strength and vitality with a bit in dex for ranged enemies. Also maxed the regen skill so I auto heal quickly. After I had my st and vit in the 80's I started upping my intel because it really helped the damage on the magic side of my weapons. In most situations in the game I could lay waste to most things. Ceekay those floating forts are a blast and you can really crank your stats up there. Here is the thing though, you cannot just wade into a fort, you have to do tons of kiting. May be tedious for some but I love the fighting in this game so I enjoyed it. Lots of goodies to be had as well.

[Tokek]

I'm trying out the Dual Wield character but my play time is pretty limited so I've only gotten to level 3 or 4.

What are the books for? Should I be keeping them after reading or just selling them? What about gems, are they good for anything or just for selling?

[Greg Wak]

The important books will either give you a skill point as soon as you click on them, be put under the quest file when you pick them up, or if neither of them, then you can get rid of them. Gems you need for potions and enchantments. Hang on to them.

[jersoc]

pfft, real players go mage.

Melee rulz, magic droolz!!   

Ever since I started playing RPG's, I've always gone for the melee types.  I find that playing a caster simply bores me, and typically avoid it unless absolutely necessary.  That said, I will be picking up at least a couple mage abilities, mainly just for quick ranged attacks.

I'm the complete opposite. I always play a caster cause melee is boring

[Gratch]

Methinks Divinity 2 has some slight balance issues.  Case in point:

-  Time it took to go from level 1-15?  12 hours.
-  Time it took to go from level 15-21 (after hitting Orburas Ford)?  1 hour.

Still really enjoying it though.  This new area has a bit of the "what the hell am I supposed to do next" feel to it, but that's about my only gripe.  Maxed out (as maxed as it gets without trainer access, anyways) Dual Wield is now absolutely devastating, especially mixed with Thousand Cuts or Whirlwind skills.  Pumped points into Life Leech, Regen, and a couple into Ghost, and I'm now an unstoppable swirling vortex of death.  Which means I'll probably run into some enemies that will clean my clock very soon.  

Two quick questions:

-  When do you get access to the Battle Tower?
-  I read something about being able to respec your character for 5K in gold.  Is that something done at the Battle Tower?

[hepcat]

Methinks Divinity 2 has some slight balance issues.  Case in point:

-  Time it took to go from level 1-15?  12 hours.
-  Time it took to go from level 15-21 (after hitting Orburas Ford)?  1 hour.

Still really enjoying it though.  This new area has a bit of the "what the hell am I supposed to do next" feel to it, but that's about my only gripe.  Maxed out (as maxed as it gets without trainer access, anyways) Dual Wield is now absolutely devastating, especially mixed with Thousand Cuts or Whirlwind skills.  Pumped points into Life Leech, Regen, and a couple into Ghost, and I'm now an unstoppable swirling vortex of death.  Which means I'll probably run into some enemies that will clean my clock very soon.  

Two quick questions:

-  When do you get access to the Battle Tower?
-  I read something about being able to respec your character for 5K in gold.  Is that something done at the Battle Tower?

Spoiler for Hiden:

-You'll be transported to Sentinel Island after working your way through Maxos temple and defeating the boss.  There you'll need to perform a few quests and choose your "helpers" for the various platforms within the battletower.  then you'll fight the necro who's occupying it and viola...you have a battletower.

- The skills trainer can reset your skills for 5k the first time.  then it goes up by 5k each time, i think.

[Razgon]

Methinks Divinity 2 has some slight balance issues.  Case in point:

-  Time it took to go from level 1-15?  12 hours.
-  Time it took to go from level 15-21 (after hitting Orburas Ford)?  1 hour.

Still really enjoying it though.  This new area has a bit of the "what the hell am I supposed to do next" feel to it, but that's about my only gripe.  Maxed out (as maxed as it gets without trainer access, anyways) Dual Wield is now absolutely devastating, especially mixed with Thousand Cuts or Whirlwind skills.  Pumped points into Life Leech, Regen, and a couple into Ghost, and I'm now an unstoppable swirling vortex of death.  Which means I'll probably run into some enemies that will clean my clock very soon.  

Two quick questions:

-  When do you get access to the Battle Tower?
-  I read something about being able to respec your character for 5K in gold.  Is that something done at the Battle Tower?

how the heck did you get to Orburas ford without the battle tower??? Are you sure you've not skipped something? And, is it even possible?

[CeeKay]

Methinks Divinity 2 has some slight balance issues.  Case in point:

-  Time it took to go from level 1-15?  12 hours.
-  Time it took to go from level 15-21 (after hitting Orburas Ford)?  1 hour.

yeah, the Fjord enemies are so high in level you get a lot more XP quicker than the lower level areas.

[CeeKay]

how the heck did you get to Orburas ford without the battle tower??? Are you sure you've not skipped something? And, is it even possible?

there's an exit to the Fjord you can get to without going to the battle tower first, but I imagine you're going to be rather limited as to how far you can get without the dragon form.

[Razgon]

how the heck did you get to Orburas ford without the battle tower??? Are you sure you've not skipped something? And, is it even possible?

there's an exit to the Fjord you can get to without going to the battle tower first, but I imagine you're going to be rather limited as to how far you can get without the dragon form.

oohhhh - thanks, didnt know that...

[CeeKay]

how the heck did you get to Orburas ford without the battle tower??? Are you sure you've not skipped something? And, is it even possible?

there's an exit to the Fjord you can get to without going to the battle tower first, but I imagine you're going to be rather limited as to how far you can get without the dragon form.

oohhhh - thanks, didnt know that...

if you look at the main map I believe the entrance will be near the soutwest corner.  I don't have it front of me so I'm going from memory.

[hepcat]

Methinks Divinity 2 has some slight balance issues.  Case in point:

-  Time it took to go from level 1-15?  12 hours.
-  Time it took to go from level 15-21 (after hitting Orburas Ford)?  1 hour.

Still really enjoying it though.  This new area has a bit of the "what the hell am I supposed to do next" feel to it, but that's about my only gripe.  Maxed out (as maxed as it gets without trainer access, anyways) Dual Wield is now absolutely devastating, especially mixed with Thousand Cuts or Whirlwind skills.  Pumped points into Life Leech, Regen, and a couple into Ghost, and I'm now an unstoppable swirling vortex of death.  Which means I'll probably run into some enemies that will clean my clock very soon.  

Two quick questions:

-  When do you get access to the Battle Tower?
-  I read something about being able to respec your character for 5K in gold.  Is that something done at the Battle Tower?

how the heck did you get to Orburas ford without the battle tower??? Are you sure you've not skipped something? And, is it even possible?

I took it to mean he was still in the broken valley area.  i think parts of it are referred to as the fjords.  however, if he's in dragon form and/or is now in the area with all the cliffs that is called the orburas fjord, and doesn't have access to the battletower i have no idea what's happened.  that would be a pretty huge bug in the game.

edit:  ceekay beat me to it yet again!  curse you, god poster!      

[Gratch]

Methinks Divinity 2 has some slight balance issues.  Case in point:

-  Time it took to go from level 1-15?  12 hours.
-  Time it took to go from level 15-21 (after hitting Orburas Ford)?  1 hour.

Still really enjoying it though.  This new area has a bit of the "what the hell am I supposed to do next" feel to it, but that's about my only gripe.  Maxed out (as maxed as it gets without trainer access, anyways) Dual Wield is now absolutely devastating, especially mixed with Thousand Cuts or Whirlwind skills.  Pumped points into Life Leech, Regen, and a couple into Ghost, and I'm now an unstoppable swirling vortex of death.  Which means I'll probably run into some enemies that will clean my clock very soon.  

Two quick questions:

-  When do you get access to the Battle Tower?
-  I read something about being able to respec your character for 5K in gold.  Is that something done at the Battle Tower?

Spoiler for Hiden:

-You'll be transported to Sentinel Island after working your way through Maxos temple and defeating the boss.  There you'll need to perform a few quests and choose your "helpers" for the various platforms within the battletower.  then you'll fight the necro who's occupying it and viola...you have a battletower.

- The skills trainer can reset your skills for 5k the first time.  then it goes up by 5k each time, i think.

Houston, we may have a problem.  I've gotten through the Maxos tower and defeated the boss...but nothing happened.  I certainly didn't get teleported anywhere.  I just ran back out of the tower, and the only place that I had access to go was south to the Fjords since I've completed every other quest in Broken Valley.   I don't have any dragon form (at least that I'm aware of), and there's only one quest in my log...it's one that breaks into 4 parts (Revelation, X Marks the Spot, Lock & Key, Come to No Harm).  Maybe I need to run back into the tower and see if I missed talking to someone or hit a teleporter to take me somewhere.

I was wondering why the hell I had to swim everywhere and what those weird towers were all over the place.

[CeeKay]

yep, there was a teleported in the temple.  IIRC, as your facing the corridor that you took to fight the dragon boss, it'll be the long corridor on your right.

I do see you said tower and not temple, perhaps you haven't found the temple yet.

[Razgon]

as far as I remember, you had to talk to a girl in the tower after defeating its owner, and run out on a platorm - or rather, she'll get you there?

[Gratch]

yep, there was a teleported in the temple.  IIRC, as your facing the corridor that you took to fight the dragon boss, it'll be the long corridor on your right.

I'll bet that's it.  That door was blocked by a forcefield prior to fighting the dragon, and I completely forgot to check it after the battle.

[Captain Caveman]

I bought this during the Steam sale. It was the most I paid for any game, and the one I was most looking forward to diving into. Unfortunately, I can't get the game to run smoothly. There is this peculiar choppiness that occurs during movement... it mostly looks like the movement of the ground skips frames while everything else looks ok. It's really disorienting. And the strangest thing is that it occurs independent of the graphic settings. Turning the resolution down, and limiting bells and whistles doesn't make a difference. I'm on a macbook pro w/ a geforce 9600m. Not the greatest set up, but definitely should be capable of running the game. I just played F:NV, alpha protocol and even mafia II w/o problems.

So, yeah... ugh. I probably should have tried the demo first.

[hepcat]

cc, do you have a pc you can try it on?  i believe if you buy the mac version, you have access to the pc version as well. 

[BuckeyeShane]

yep, there was a teleported in the temple.  IIRC, as your facing the corridor that you took to fight the dragon boss, it'll be the long corridor on your right.

I do see you said tower and not temple, perhaps you haven't found the temple yet.

How the hell do you beat this dragon boss, I currently stuck here?

[hepcat]

Spoiler for Hiden:

You need to get him back to human form first (if you haven't already).  You do that by reading from a book that you'll find in that area.  Then you just need to hack at him.  Kite him if you have to, he's not too bad once he's human again.

[Captain Caveman]

cc, do you have a pc you can try it on?  i believe if you buy the mac version, you have access to the pc version as well. 

I actually am running it on the pc side of my mac via bootcamp. Sorry I forgot to mention that...

Oh well, I have several other games in the backlog that seem to run fine. I guess I'll move on to those.

[jersoc]

finally took a night off wow(both chars to 85 ). man i just got to lord lovis' tower. was pretty refreshing to actually have to do puzzles again, albeit nothing spectacular. The music, writing and VA have been fantastic so far. So far this game is beating the shit out of dragon age in terms of, well, everything. I mean, there's actually meaningful loot!

Though I'm starting to rethink my mage idea, heh. Game is getting ridiculous as they like to throw a crap ton of guys at you at once. But nothing too serious yet.

I will say, it's extremely easy to exploit the terrain in this game as a ranged character.

[Captain Caveman]

Well, I found a workaround to get rid of most of the stutter. I tab out of the game, open up msconfig and assign "high priority" to the game. For whatever reason, that's made it playable.

I still have to run it at much lower settings than I would have hoped, but I'm actually killing goblins now!

[Greg Wak]

Can't wait for the group here to get into FoV. I still really like it, but some of the quest stuff gets frustratingly hard and obtuse. Including one bit that doesn't even show up in your quest log. thank god for forum help or I would not have been able to move forward in the game.

[Gratch]

I has a Battle Tower.    I really liked the whole Sentinel Island piece, and making some of those "who lives, who dies" choices were quite difficult.  I think that making that foray into the Fjords before doing the tower (and gaining 6 levels in the process) has made a huge difference.  The game is still challenging, but I don't have the feeling I'm going to die around every corner now.  Stitched together my pet late last night...can't wait to actually use him in battle.

The music, writing and VA have been fantastic so far. So far this game is beating the shit out of dragon age in terms of, well, everything. I mean, there's actually meaningful loot!

While I agree on the writing and voice acting, I think the music has been pretty awful.  I can appreciate that they tried to do something other than the standard LOTR-esque symphonic score, but the bulk of the music has simply felt very wrong for this setting.  I'd also disagree on Divinity 2 being better than DA, but I know yours and my opinions are at opposite ends of the spectrum in regards to DA.

[Gratch]

Can't wait for the group here to get into FoV. I still really like it, but some of the quest stuff gets frustratingly hard and obtuse. Including one bit that doesn't even show up in your quest log. thank god for forum help or I would not have been able to move forward in the game.

Not looking forward to that.  The one thing that will make me stop playing an RPG faster than anything else is that "now what do I do?" feeling.  Already run into it a number of times with the base game, and hearing that it actually gets worse is certainly not encouraging.  Thankfully, I have no qualms about hitting up a GameFAQ or getting solutions here.

[CeeKay]

I has a Battle Tower.    I really liked the whole Sentinel Island piece, and making some of those "who lives, who dies" choices were quite difficult. 

I thought they were pretty straightforward, most of them sorted themselves out on their own.

Spoiler for Hiden:

weapons trainer:  hot chick beat the other guy (she also beat him in combat too)
Alchemy: mindreading the one guy revealed he was a fraud
crafter: this one was maybe the one that needed the more thought, but I liked the drunk Irishman.
necromancer:  seriously, who's going to pass up having their own Igor?

[Gratch]

I has a Battle Tower.    I really liked the whole Sentinel Island piece, and making some of those "who lives, who dies" choices were quite difficult. 

I thought they were pretty straightforward, most of them sorted themselves out on their own.

Spoiler for Hiden:

weapons trainer:  hot chick beat the other guy (she also beat him in combat too)
Alchemy: mindreading the one guy revealed he was a fraud
crafter: this one was maybe the one that needed the more thought, but I liked the drunk Irishman.
necromancer:  seriously, who's going to pass up having their own Igor?

Spoiler for Hiden:

Weapons one was easy.  Hot chick, no question.
Alchemy guy may have been a fraud (my guess is that he still would have been able to create potions...kinda breaks the game if he can't), but the other guy was a total dick.  Can see him maybe turning on me at some point because I'm not enough of an intellectual.
Necro:  I actually went with the non-Igor guy because I wanted a melee range resistant pet and not a magic resistant one.
Crafter:  This one was the toughest, mainly because of the begging and pleading of the non-Irishman's wife.  I felt guilty killing him, but thought the other dude was better...and I wanted enchanted weapons instead of armor

[Gratch]

I'm amazed at how much momentum this game has lost once I got my dragon form and started flying around Obrorous Fjords.  I thought that it would add a fun new element, but between the constant invisible walls (figured how to turn off the first set, but baffled on how to deactivate the second one), the seemingly random teleporters, the rather lame quests, and the constant feeling of "now where the hell am I supposed to go?", things are really starting to turn for the worse.

And jumping puzzles?  Seriously?