Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before Playing This Game

[Mr. Moyer]

I'm just going to toss out some information about certain skills, a couple of bugged quests that you might accidentally screw up, and unlisted game controls. This is all stuff that I had to discover on my own, by playing the game and re-starting several times to get things right. It's very annoying to get halfway into a game and be forced to re-start, so maybe some of you will find this information useful in saving you a lot of wasted time and skill points.

0. When you install this game, it includes a copy of the game's manual. It is a pdf file that gets stored in the game directory "...Steam\Steamapps\Common\DivineDivinity\dd_manual.pdf"

1. Weapon Mastery skills are a bit broken. You may find from an online search that there is a patch for this game that changes the weapon skills from a set damage (such as 5 + 35, which means it may add anywhere between 5 and 40) to a percentage of its original damage. Steam and Larian websites DO NOT have that patch so the only weapon that gets a percentage boost instead of a set number of damage boost is the mace. Also, DO NOT get Sword Mastery level 5. It only gives you a tiny bit of extra damage, but you lose the speed boost so your sword attacks become very slow. Stop boosting sword master at level 4. Also, the bow mastery skill only improves the speed between shots, there is no damage bonus for the bow. The crossbow mastery skill has a small damage boost but no significant speed boost until you get it up to level 5 and even then it is still very slow.

2. The arrow skills REPLACE your regular bow/crossbow shots. So if you have a bow that can do 32 - 112 damage and you use an elemental shot skill for 8 - 32 damage, your bolt will only do 8 - 32; it does not get added to your normal shot damage. Also, the True Shot skill is supposed to add a small amount of damage to your bow/crossbow attacks but it seems to be broken so it does NOTHING. Another broken skill is the Assassin's Kiss, which has a small chance to do "backstab" if you use a dagger. It does not work with any other weapon. The "backstab" attack is supposed to make the dagger attack do double damage. However, that does not seem to actually increase the damage at all; it does the same amount of damage as a regular attack.

3. The Deathblow attack, whether it is attached to your weapon or if you get it from the skill, is a little bit glitched. When you do Deathblow to kill an enemy, their corpse still registers as having some health remaining so they stay on your map as red dots. Also, you cannot revive an enemy that died from Deathblow using the Ressurect spell. They are dead, but the game treats them like they are just permanently paralyzed. The elemental damage you can find on melee weapons only adds a little bit of damage (but every bit counts) so if you get one of those it's good but don't waste time looking for them specifically. The best melee weapon boosters are Freeze and Stun. EVERY enemy is vulnerable to freeze if it is on a weapon (the magic spell only works on enemies with low spirit resistance though) and it does just what you think it should... it freezes the enemy and it lasts for several seconds. The stun attack is also nice because it hits pretty often and it paralyzes the enemy for one to two seconds which means you can hit them but they can't hit you.

4. The Poison Weapon skill works by letting you drag a bottle of poison potion onto a weapon. This gives it a certain number of poison attacks. The level of Poison Weapon skill only determines how many attacks you do before the poison wears off. Small poison potion does a little bit of poison damage; medium potions do a little more damage; and super poison potions do quite a bit of damage. The Super Poison Potion version seems to do more damage than a Poison (5) weapon spell. You can use Poison Weapon on a bow, and that seems to do more damage than the Poison Arrow skill. Poison Skin is similar but it coats your skin in poison so enemies who hit you take poison damage.

5. You can throw items (boulders, barrels, etc.) at enemies. Click to pick them up, drag them across the screen and drop them in a place where their flight will cause them to hit an enemy. They don't do very much damage but it's funny to watch once or twice. You cannot directly target enemies so it's mostly based on how lucky you are with your aim. You can also throw potions this way (or drag and toss them from your inventory) which is quite useful with the poison potion, which breaks to release a small cloud of poison gas.

6. You can throw spears. Equip a spear and set the Spear Mastery skill as your active skill. Then you can right click to throw the spear. The spear does a certain percent of its original damage when you throw it; the amount is determined by your level of spear master skill. You can toss the spear as often as you want to without losing it. It costs a little bit of mana to throw the spear, as indicated by the spear master skill description. However, spears do not function with the warrior's special attack that spins you around to hit all enemies near you.

7. If you are stealing from a house or a shop, do not let anyone see you or they will call the guards and your reputation will go down. Pickpocket will also send your reputation down if you get caught. Lockpick will not make anyone mad, it is only if you put items from the house or shop or NPC's pocket into your backpack that triggers the criminal reaction. If you get arrested, you can either bribe the guard to let you out, or you can just wait until the sentence is over. I never waited so I don't know what happens then. If you visit the jail, you can also drop some lockpicks into your cell so next time you get arrested you can pick them up and use them to escape.

8. You can scroll the screen without moving yourself. Hold SHIFT and move the mouse to the edge of the screen to look around. Release SHIFT to bring it back to yourself. I think CAPSLOCK is like a scroll toggle switch, too.

9. As soon as you leave Aleroth (the first little village where you start) either by going out the village gate or by climbing the ladder near Smiruk the Orc in the Catacombs, you will meet the knight Seth. Seth will ask you to tell the healers to go to Rivertown to help cure a plague (which you will end up dealing with yourself anyway) and then he will ask you to go see the general to arrange for some soldiers to escort the healers so they don't all get killed by orcs in the woods. This is the only mission in the game that is on a timer. You have something like seven days, from the time Seth or Lanilor the Elf asks you to go get the soldiers, to get from Aleroth to the Rivertown Army Barracks and talk with General Alix. If you take too long, Alix yells at you when you finally get there and you do not get the XP reward for the quest, plus you fail the quest. However, you still receive the next mission to deliver the letter to Mitox, who will then ask you to be a commando-style raider against the orc army as usual. So, be careful when you're chasing rabbits around Aleroth because they might lead you out the gate!

10. The higher your level is, the less experience you will get from killing enemies. At some point, rabbits/frogs/rats will stop giving you any XP at all. So, the way to maximize your XP and get the highest level in this game, is to kill all the low-level enemies early. When you see your XP bar about to fill up to the next level, that is the best time to kill a very strong enemy so you still get the best possible XP from them and they might cause you to gain more than one level-up. After all the enemies are dead, then you can go talk to people about solving quests since the XP reward from quests does not decrease when you level-up.

11. The higher your level is, the better chances you have of finding good items and bigger piles of gold from dead enemies and various containers.

12. There is ONLY one way to increase the damage from magic attacks: spend your skill points to buy higher levels in that magic attack skill or learn it from a spell book. Increasing your intelligence will not boost your magic attack power; it only boosts the amount of magic you have available to cast spells. Luckily, there is no spell cooldown in this game so you can cast spells just as fast as you can right-click on your mouse as long as you have enough magic.

13. Blue and red potions heal a set amount of vitality or magic, so once your vitality and magic get up above 200, those potions become useless by themselves. With Alchemy skill level 1, you can combine a red and blue potion to make a white potion. The white potions will heal a percentage of your maximum vitality AND magic. Small ones are good for half of your maximum; medium and super white potions both fill the entire vitality and magic bar for you. The yellow potions also restore a percentage of your maximum stamina (the yellow bar), with the small ones filling half of the bar and the medium and super ones filling the entire bar.

14. After you get a high enough Alchemy skill level, you can drag and drop empty flasks onto plants to make potions. Level 2 lets you make small potions, level 3 lets you make medium potions, and level 4 lets you make super potions. Green plants, grey mushrooms, garbage, and rotten food will let you make poison potions. Red plants let you make healing potions. Blue plants let you make magic potions. Yellow plants let you make stamina potions. The Drudanae plants in Lanilor the Elf's garden will let you make Drugs. Drugs will boost your Poison Resistance by a TON but they will drop your Spirit Resistance by a TON. If you try to make a potion by dragging a bottle over a plant, but your Alchemy level is too low, the plant will disappear but you get no potion. Once you use a plant, it is gone forever. Alchemy level 5 will let you drag a small or medium potion onto the Augmentor plants to make a bigger potion from it.

15. The Resurrect spell is a little bit glitched. If you cast it on a dead person or enemy, it brings them back to life and they will basically just stand around looking stupid unless another enemy gets close to them and then they will attack it. If you want them to follow you then after Resurrect you will need to cast Aura of Command on them. If you leave a resurrected zombie in place and walk far enough away, the game forgets that they were resurrected as friendly and they revert to enemy again so you can kill them multiple times for more XP and additional chances that they might drop something you can use. However, boss-type enemies will not revert to enemy they remain as friendly ghosts. This includes people (humans, dwarves, and elves), the orc camp leader, the assassins sent by Doctor Elrath, and any enemies with individual names. Sometimes you can click on the ghost of a friendly person and still talk/trade with them. If a resurrected ghost gets killed while they are still in ghost form, they do not leave a corpse and you cannot resurrect them again. So if you want to kill them a few times you have to kill them, resurrect them, walk far away, come back and kill them again, resurrect them again, walk far away, ... etc.

16. The Knowledge Skill, which adds a tiny percentage to XP gained from monster kills and quest rewards, is less useful than you might think. If you have Knowledge level 5 through the ENTIRE game you will only gain an additional 1 or maybe 2 levels, and since you should finish the game at around level 50-something anyway it really is not worth wasting your skill points to get Knowledge.

17. If you want a little extra XP and you don't mind being very evil, or if you want to steal from a house but there are too many people around, try this. Most attack spells require a valid enemy target. Poison Cloud does not. You still cannot directly target friendly people but you can cast the spell at their feet and they will take damage just like an enemy would. They won't get mad at you and your reputation will not go down. They will just get sick and gradually die. If the spell does kill them, you get XP for the kill and they might drop some stuff. WARNING: picking up dropped stuff from a dead friendly person is just like stealing from a house, if someone else sees you doing it they will get mad and call the guards. The spell does very little damage though so it may take a few casts before you kill someone. Guards will usually just stand there and let you kill them. Sometimes you can get a big group of them together and hit all of them with a single cloud. Citizens, poor citizens, merchants, and other regular people will start running around when they get poisoned but they will still take damage for a few seconds before it wears off. If you try to cast the cloud too fast and it hits someone before the previous cloud's effects wear off, the second cloud will not hurt them. Citizens and guards take 4 damage per hit, and there are several hits before the poison wears off. The various dwarves in Glenborus have some poison resistance so they only take 2 damage per hit. Increasing the spell's skill level does not increase the damage per hit, it only makes the target take more hits before the poison effects wear off.

18. General Alix gives you a letter for Mitox. You can click it to read it if you want to but it doesn't say anything that you can't figure out on your own. Certainly nothing important. It basically says that local politics are preventing Alix from sending reinforcements for another week, so Mitox just has to hold out for a week and then reinforcements will be available; and it says Mitox should use you to do the jobs that nobody else can do. If you read the note, Mitox gets mad but it has no actual effect on anything. If you don't read it, Mitox will like you better but that also has no actual effect on anything.

19. Once you get to Rivertown, in the market area there is a quest that is a little bit bugged. Here is the best way to do that quest to make sure you get the right XP from everyone involved. First, talk to Marcus the merchant who always stays outdoors and sells mostly food. He'll ask you to go look for his delivery cart. Head south-east from the Dwarven Bread Inn then and talk to both cart drivers, who will ask you to get them a new wheel. Go back to Marcus and have him give you the wheel (you can ask about a reward and he'll give you 50 gold now, too) and then go back to the cart to find that it has been destroyed. You can drop the cart wheel now, you're finished with it and it is heavy. Follow the blood on the road north and then east into the woods until you reach the dead bodies of the cart drivers. Click on both bodies. Follow the gold and at the end of that trail you should find a cave. You will have to kill two bandits inside. There is a lever that opens the cage and the bandits drop the keys to the chests inside the cage. Also make sure you read AND TAKE the note on the table. Now go back to Marcus and tell him what happened. Visit Tingalf outside the blacksmith shop and talk to him until he mentions a secret stash of goods. Go to the west side of the market and speak to Lt. Robin the guard about Tingalf. Go back and talk to Marcus about Tingalf. Now you can go into the sewer grate in the middle of the market. Go east a bit and you should be approached by some shady people. There is no actual password; you just have to kill them all. Read AND TAKE the note they drop. You can also open some chests in their pile of goods if you have enough Lockpick skill. Go back up to the market and tell Lt. Ralph what you found, then mention that Tingalf was involved. Then go back to Marcus and tell him what happened. Now, when you get to Verdistis and get into the Merchant Guild, the guild master will ask you to investigate a Rivertown merchant. At that point you can just tell him that Tingalf has already been arrested and ask him about a reward.

[raubrey]

Oh yes, the frog statuettes are the bomb and that is something good to add to this thread. I didn't even recognize their utility much on the first playthrough (not desiring to be a frog) and belatedly found out about it.

[Pax]

Sheesh! Well of course. I had an attack of stupid. Sorry, Raze, thanks for the refresher. Knew about all of that except the lockpicks.

Never knew whether to go earlier or later to the castle, usually opt for later so as not to lose my pyramids, but felt I was doing it wrong. Glad to know that's what you do, too. Also, was wondering what the benefits of using those statues could be!

"friendly fire," LOL The only fluffy I befriend is the cat, raubrey. :) Every new char I say, "Not this time," but can't resist befriending it again anyway.

[Raze_Larian]

There are 4 types of statuettes; one is unique, the other 3 can be found, dropped or bought:

Frog - lets you move fast, even when encumbered

Cat - useless... so just like real life

Spider - can be used to scout around or pass through orc territory, etc, or chase merchants out of their shops to loot (except Kistandalius), as long as you are careful about transforming out of sight and avoiding guards

Beetle - like the spider form it can be used to attack NPCs. It can only be found if you kill the talking tree in the Dark Forest, using Buad's tea, which can be found in the potion seller's house in Verdistis.

[Pax]

Oops! Was just selling the statues I found for 2,000gp@, wish I'd kept one of those frogs now.

Hey! Kitties aren't useless, they've played an integral part in saving our hero's life more than once, don't knock the furballs, they have their perks. (grin)

Beetle... hmmm. Never killed the tree or discovered the Baud's Tea. NOW I understand what that odd conversation with the Healer was about!

[Zero]

(replying to spoiler) Well, Divinity series always approved evil ways :D

[Pax]

LOL Maybe, Piechur, but Larian did build punishments for being evil (if you're caught) into the game: Fame hit and disapproval of good-aligned NPCs, making it harder to sell loot. Probably even resulting in less $$ for loot, but just guessing on that.

[raubrey]

Originally posted by _Pax_:

LOL Maybe, Piechur, but Larian did build punishments for being evil (if you're caught) into the game: Fame hit and disapproval of good-aligned NPCs, making it harder to sell loot. Probably even resulting in less $$ for loot, but just guessing on that.

I believe you are correct on that, that it is less dollars for loot -- at the very least stuff cost more.

I remember noticing the hit after what's his name bratty kid Duke demon cursed you with a bad reputation.

[Pax]

Right, raubrey, think that's when I noticed it, too. Try to build Trader's Tongue to off-set. On Easy and Normal building side perk-skills is no problem but, on Hard level, it's not easy to find a spot I can afford to spend those points.

[Raze_Larian]

The NPCs that you trade with a lot are going to get up to a 100 opinion of you, eventually, which will mitigate or eliminate the effect of any reputation drop in the mid to late game, at least with them. That is one reason to put off going to the castle for awhile.

Early in the game a few evil acts can get your reputation low enough that NPCs can refuse to speak with you, and possibly even get guards to attack you on sight.
The original disk version had friendly thieves in the Verdistis sewers. If you don't join the thieves' guild and take their exit into the sewers, and don't have your mini-map open to see the green crosses, and don't notice the -2 reputation drop notice after killing each thief... a couple people had issues after clearing the sewers. A later patch removed the friendly thieves from new games created in the disk version (was never an issue in the download version).

[Pax]

Really, Raze? Maybe I'm not doing something right then. Have only ever got up to 100 with Marcus and Kistandalius (not counting the Aleroth Healers). Do a LOT of business with Blake, but have never gotten anywhere near 100, maybe 10 above Fame is it. Walker's always a cold fish, staying even with my Fame. Geoff goes up a little, but not much, no matter how much I deal with him. Don't really deal with the armorer.

Trader's Tongue seems to level the field, though, especially with what Blake pays for loot. Walker does match Mardaneus on what he pays for certain loot (potions, jewelry, statues, charms) from the first. Kistandalius being at 100 is nice, but Lvl 5 Trader's Tongue means the best prices I hope to pay for charm stones from him, though his other prices vary even then. At Lvl5 TT Kistandalius pays as well as Mardaneus on all the loot I have to sell.

Glad I didn't have to deal with avoiding killing the friendly thieves, never had anything but the download (Steam) version of DD.

[raubrey]

I have the same experience as Pax -- with the same two vendors being the only ones I was at/near 100 with -- outside Aleroth. I waited awhile (longer in one game) to do the castle so it wasn't terrible -- just noticable.

But my main point was that reputation (good/evil) does have financial consequences (offsetting them another topic) ...when someone mentioned that "evil pays" -- some evil may pay and some may cost ya. And of course early in the game when funds are more limited you have a tougher juggling act. (i.e. do you steal herbs etc. whereas being good might seem a worse repercussion with one vendor on a particular quest)

Anyway, I don't disagree -- just saying I didn't find the merchant system that easy to increase (nor particularly difficult either). Overall it felt balanced enough and I was fine with that.

[Pax]

Balanced, exactly, raubrey. No complaints from me, other than concerning my own failings. Finally making it through on Hard though, so hope it'll satisfy my need to conquer DD. LOL

It's made my nostalgia for UO act up something fierce. Lord British WOULD pick now to come out with a new version.

[Raze_Larian]

Checking my save before hitting the gong (base rep 51), Blake was only at 86 (sold stuff to him, but didn't buy much) and Walker 61 (didn't sell much to him). Grisha was at 91, while Corinna, Mpenzak and Kistandalius were at 100.

With the disk version the sell price was the same regardless of merchant or reputation. When that was changed in the download version, the maybe the rate that merchants raised their opinions was altered, as well.

[Pax]

Ashamed to admit, but never checked Grisha, Mpenzak or Corinna, the elven bowyer either. Corinna had excellent prices, though, when I finally thought to see what she had. :) Stumbled into her house by accident the first time. Killed her demon then (and with every char after), but have never done her quest, not interested in learning Summoning. A guide said you can learn Banish from her, that's more interesting, but it's not what she offers for completing her quest.

Did they change a lot of things for the download version? Have noticed some online guides list incorrect XP/rewards for some quests, that must be why. One guide sounded as if they were talking about a different game with the same NPC quest-givers.

[Raze_Larian]

The elven merchant isn't very convenient to get to, so I rarely checked him, either. Grisha was a little better, but I still only went by if I was in the area anyway, or was specifically looking for something or trying to sell off loot.

Corinna does teach you Banish. Besides, what difference would it make if she did teach a useless skill for your build? You'd still get the experience, and there is another quest in the Dark Forest that would direct you to the talking tree, anyway.
I reloaded during the imp council member quest a couple times to try it both ways, and again to complete it without any accidental casualties (from the warrior's spin attack) so the queen bee would teach me a level of a spell I had no intention of using (Aura of Command).

The few differences in the download version are pretty minor (aside from the widescreen and higher resolution support). Quest experience depends on the character level (more at higher levels), so if you go through doing things in a different order, you are going to see different values for a lot of quests.