Help picking a beginning character and class traits

[WarChariot]

Hi, i picked up this game after reading its sterling reviews and, having never really played any turn based RPG before, was immediately overwhelmed by the character customisation choices. i googled a good starting build and was recommended some fane shadowblade build or other. i started on the classic difficulty and the first fight i got into, below the decks of the ship against the magisters, i kept losing and i also lost to the bug things on deck when i avoided the magisters below. suffice to say i have very little clue about what i am doing at the moment and just want some idea of an optimal starting character and traits to pick to make the learning curve a bit smoother. Also i dont really want to drop the difficulty because i dont like playing games on easy.

[Chaoslink]

The ship isn’t too bad, just bear in mind that the early game is well known as the hardest part.

A personal build doesn’t matter much, you want one that works with the whole party. You haven’t gotten to that point yet however. To get through the ship, talk to everyone and collect everything. Try getting lucky charm as a civil trait at character creation and you should find some gold in random crates on the ship. Talking to literally everyone, you’ll find a little button on the dialogue window that allows you to barter. You might be able to get some basic supplies off of them. Then the ship kinda... explodes. In a chest behind the table, will be weapons you can use. Simply using your weapon and starting abilities, you’ll be able to get through the ship part and hit the beach.

On the beach, you’ll be able to get companions for your party which will help greatly. You don’t need to leave them as their default classes either. Any character can play any role just as well as another in most cases. Their stats will change depending on what you ask them to be. Any combination can be made to work, but the best advice I can give you is that four damage dealers beats the traditional tank/healer/damage roles. You want to focus on keeping either two physical damage dealers like warriors or archers and two magic damage characters, OR stacking all physical damage or all magic damage. A split party is stronger, but harder to use effectively, so stacking up might be your best bet. I still recommend splitting between magic and physical as the variety keeps things interesting.

Other than that, gear is life. Find and keep all gear at your level when possible. Buy, scavenge or steal what you can to get by early on.

Anything else you want advice on specifically, let me know and I’ll try to do what I can for you.

[hairyscotsman]

If you've never played a turn based RPG, play on Explorer to start with. Seriously

[WarChariot]

thank you for your detailed answer. i will let you know if i need help again. and i will try your damage dealer setup

[Lampros]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Their stats will change depending on what you ask them to be. Any combination can be made to work, but the best advice I can give you is that four damage dealers beats the traditional tank/healer/damage roles.

Indeed. I started with 1 melee DPS, 1 archer DPS, 1 pure tank, and 1 tank/support. I switched the pure tank to pure melee DPS, because I was beginning to have a tough time stripping armor fast enough. Now I think I have found a perfect balance.

[Illuminary]

Finding that premade builds are not too shabby. I am using Lohse, Sebille, Fane, and Beast. My first play through I had little idea what I was doing too, and my party wasn't very good, but still finished the game.

Lohse is an Inquisitor and my main character, but I use mostly warefare abilities. Built with max warfare, strength and two hand she is a heavy hitter. Tanking isn't really useful in this game as enemies target your characters for specific reasons. Pure knight or some kind of physical warfare build is good. Knock down is a useful crowd control.

Sebille comes as a rogue, but I turned her into a shadowblade by way of taking poly for additional attributes. She is built max warfare, finesse, high scoundrel, and medium poly. Poly is good for crowd control, knock off physical armor, turn the enemy into a chicken for a bit. She also is an absolute killing machine, generally killing one enemy during her turn. Elf makes good scoundrel beacuse of flesh sacrifice and the skill adrenaline. You get three action points additional. Keep high wits on the rogue to always get the first turn and reduce the number of opponents on the battle field, or crowd control them.

Fane is a wizard using pyro/geo making explosion combos with oil and fire spells, plus poison. Leaving poison skills on Fane as undead is useful as poison heals undead in this game. So, if Fane is hurt just drop poison and stand in it. But, enemies will try to heal Fane as that hurts. I have max pryo, geo, intelligence, and decent constitution and memory. Some geo spells also remove debuffs. Fane has a wand and shield for survivability.

Beast is a battle mage by default, but I made him an enchanter, which uses hydro/aero. Hydro has healing spells which come in handy, and other spells that remove debuffs. Beast has max aero, hydro, intelligence, and decent memory and constitution. Enchanter sets up by casting rain and using air or ice attacks to freeze or stun keeping enemies from taking turns. Also using a wand and shield for survivability.

There are other utility skills that are worth getting, like fortify, peace of mind, teleport, any kind of healing spell, or any kind of movement spell besides teleport to close gaps or create spaces. It is possible to invest no points, or little points depending on gear, to use these skills.

This particular play through is much simpler than the previous one.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by abuffardi77:

...Tanking isn't really useful in this game as enemies target your characters for specific reasons...

Fane is a wizard using pyro/geo making explosion combos with oil and fire spells...

Beast is a battle mage by default, but I made him an enchanter, which uses hydro/aero...

Mostly good advice, but I did want to touch on a few things. Tanking in this game is actually useful, but it comes in a different manner. A "tank" isn't going to be the high health shield wearing tough guy that you would think of. Instead, a tank in DOS2 is actually quite the opposite. They're squishy, or some level of vulnerable that makes enemies target them. Glass Cannon talent does this pretty well, especially when mixed with living armor, high Necro and the perseverance skill. What this does, is create a character that can still deal decent damage as you'd still stack STR or whatever (Generally a warfare build is needed for the talent that offers health per warfare point).

Basically, the character wants to be focused and takes talents and skills that let them do just that. The key is to have very strong recovery. Living Armor restores 35% (or so) magic armor for all healing recieved. Perseverance is 5% armor restored per point when you recover from a CC effect. So having a perseverance skill of 10 means that you gain 50% of your armor back when you get up from a knock down, or 50% magic armor back when you recover from being stunned or frozen. Being a Glass cannon means enemies will CC you all the time. However, this doesn't proc only when you naturally recover. If you use magic shell to cure a stun for instance, you'll gain the armor from the spell, as well as the normal 50% boost from perseverance. Then that character deals some damage as they're no longer CC'd and Necro's passive healing will restore even more armor using Living Armor. As long as every one of your characters has some sort of ability or scroll to help your "tank" recover from their CC, they'll rarely lose a turn and you get the bonus AP from Glass Cannon to make up for when you do.

I also quoted your two mages above. I did this only to point out that a more advanced tactic/suggestion would be to never build your team like that. The reason being, you're running both Pyro/Geo and Aero/Hydro. Its better to run both as the same build. Pyro gains benefits from oil or poison surfaces getting hit by fire as well as a 10% damage boost from enemies with burning status effect (15% for necrofire), whereas Air mages gain a 20% damage boost from wet, Hydro gains 10% boost from wet and shock or chill + wet instant stuns/freezes instead of having to get two of those statuses out. Fire clears wet statuses and does less damage to wet targets, as well as clearing water surfaces (though making steam can be useful for air mages). Water will wash away oil or poison in addition to putting out a Pyro mage's fire.

Basically, both mage types hinder one another quite significantly. You might argue that having both is good though, because then you have characters with all the heals or buffs like fortify or magic shell and all that stuff. However, I recommend you have those abilities on every character as is, through scrolls or directly through the skill. Sure, they won't have a high level of Geo for that 5% bonus per level, but given thats 5% of the base value, which could be seen as 100% to begin with, one point in Geo makes it 105%. The difference between a max Geo and none at all is only half as much as the difference between having the ability or not in the first place. So you don't need a dedicated build just for that reason, especially as by having it spread out means any character can cast it when needed instead of watching your character die because the fortify charcter was two turns away. Most of the rest of the buffs don't benefit from a higher skill anyways either.

So... Just my two cents on that...

[Illuminary]

That's the good part about Divinity OS2. People can play the game the way they want without any real issue. Your suggestions compared to mine show how there are various ways to be successful in combat and complete the game. You might not find them optimal, but as long as there aren't any serious road blocks they are still effective. I have yet to see the issues with fire vs water magic, but I don't doubt the possibilitly. I am looking forward to a third play through and will consider these or any options for a two party lone wolf.

And, I already made note of necessary skills no matter what, just didn't say fully.