The (Snarky) Beginners Guide to DOS2

[deaconw]

So, if you like playing turn-based RPG's and think DOS2 will be fun, here is some short advice I've developed after nearly 200 hours of gameplay to help improve your enjoyment of the game (I am, after all still playing it, so jokes on me, I suppose). And, to be clear, this guide is for the non "min-max-git-gud" players. You know, people who play games for fun.

1. The combat system isn't balanced like DOS. Just end that expectation now and avoid a lot of disappointment.

2. This game has a different interpretation of difficulty levels (but it does provide the option to change it on the fly, so there is that).

Story = Easy - I think. Never tried it. EDIT after completing game - how to do the last fight without massive frustration.
Explorer = Normal Minus - just easy enough to make combat somewhat boring
Classic = Hard Plus - just hard enough to make combat frustrating
and Tactician = I dunno. I'll never play it in that mode, Just like I don't smash my toes with a hammer regularly for "fun".

3. Player level doesn't mean what you think it does in this game. A baddie of equivalent level to you is really a +2 in comparison other games. So, if you see three LVL 15 baddies against your four LVL 15 characters in Classic mode, that means you *might* have a fighting chance (at least until the other four baddies you didn't know were there "spawn" in to make it "challenging"). To make things "interesting", the game also makes it really hard to farm enough XP to get ahead of this balance problem. To solve this, just play in Explorer Mode which makes each battle now just easy enough to be unsatisfying.

4. The game is not designed for single survival play through. It is designed to make you savescum a lot before encounters and then have you do the battle *at least* three times. First to get surprised by crap you didn't know was there, or experience a new Jedi ability some of the baddies have. Second time is to figure out where you *should* have positioned your characters and what initial attacks and defenses you should have used, now that you've seen the battle once. And third(or fourth, or fifth...), to finally figure out the fight enough to win. Repetition is apparently part of the "fun" in this game. But good news! Rule 5 below can help you reduce the number or retries to a minimum.

5. Larian apparently has stock in Google, because you'll be using it a lot to figure out how to win fights and how to complete obtuse and un-informative quests. (So, props to those who post the how-to's to the wiki sites and forums!) I now view it as part of the game. A virtual "lore book", if you will. If you like to really try and figure things out on your own...well, that's how you get to nearly 200 hours of gameplay and only be at the end of Act II...

Anyway...hope this helps someone enjoy the game! And if you don't find the above at least a bit amusing, well, I guess your DOS2 experience has been very different than mine...carry on, Godwoken.

[HEY]

Bruh, trying to give advice while playing on classic is kind of silly. Tactician is easy once you have played the game a bit and understand the basics of combat.

Yeah the game does need a bit of trial and error for the average player, so I would recommend to play tactician with the fort joy magic mirror, so you can fully respec at any time to try out different setups.

[Gilver Redgrave]

About point 1.

I find DOS1 much harder. Its also very easy there completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ up your build. Teleportation also makes DOS2 really easy and cheese some places and fights with it. In DOS1 you only had the Ice Wall and that could only cheese fights.

All in all DOS2 is much more balanced and improved compared to DOS1. DOS1 is rough and really punishing. I mean my very first playtrough turned into a nightmare when i reached Braccus Rex. He was so hard in fact that i really looked for a cheese around to be done with him.

[deaconw]

My original post is half tongue-in-cheek, but as if to illustrate my points, I just tried to engage the witch, Alice Alisceon in Act II. She is level 15. All my characters are level 15. I engaged in conversation and *won* the Persuasion check...she still attacks. So the convo options are pointless(cue the Viva La Dirt League video on the topic here). And, as I painfully discovered, on the first round of any attempt to engage her, she can basically one-shot one of your team. My "tank" has over 1800 health and over 700 armor combined. After her first *set* of shots/actions (she apparently gets a dozen AP's to start, I guess), in which she spawns four fire totems, my tank now has 57 health, zero magic armor, 261 physical armor and has four applied states, including Cursed, Resistances Nullified, Alice's Pain, and Necrofire (because she teleported him). So he'll die before he gets another round. In what other RPG gaming context does an equivalent level character get to one shot another on the first round? I've certainly never been able to one-shot an opponent in this game. All I can do is laugh at this point, and then execute rule 5 to find whatever the "trick" is that I need to beat the witch.

[deaconw]

Well, at least the wiki validated that Alice is OP and, to be fair, I can see how I could have figured out one or maybe two of the strategies thinking more about it (or continuing to execute Rule 4...lol) , but most are just cheesing it,from my perspective.

[HEY]

Originally posted by deaconw:

My original post is half tongue-in-cheek, but as if to illustrate my points, I just tried to engage the witch, Alice Alisceon in Act II. She is level 15. All my characters are level 15. I engaged in conversation and *won* the Persuasion check...she still attacks. So the convo options are pointless(cue the Viva La Dirt League video on the topic here). And, as I painfully discovered, on the first round of any attempt to engage her, she can basically one-shot one of your team. My "tank" has over 1800 health and over 700 armor combined. After her first *set* of shots/actions (she apparently gets a dozen AP's to start, I guess), in which she spawns four fire totems, my tank now has 57 health, zero magic armor, 261 physical armor and has four applied states, including Cursed, Resistances Nullified, Alice's Pain, and Necrofire (because she teleported him). So he'll die before he gets another round. In what other RPG gaming context does an equivalent level character get to one shot another on the first round? I've certainly never been able to one-shot an opponent in this game. All I can do is laugh at this point, and then execute rule 5 to find whatever the "trick" is that I need to beat the witch.

Dude, your playing the game wrong if you have a tank. dos2 is dps centric asin you will have the easiest time with 4 dps chars.

[HEY]

Now if you want to make tanks and have proper rpg roles/mechanics, I would highly recommend looking up Epic Encounters. Its a full combat overhaul, that changes a lot of the issues the game has. After playing Epic Encounters i cant go back to vanilla anymore.

[HEY]

Originally posted by deaconw:

Well, at least the wiki validated that Alice is OP and, to be fair, I can see how I could have figured out one or maybe two of the strategies thinking more about it (or continuing to execute Rule 4...lol) , but most are just cheesing it,from my perspective.

You dont need to cheese anything to beat the game on tactician, just need to have good/decent builds.

[Janthis]

Story = Easy - I think. Never tried it.
Explorer = Normal Minus - just easy enough to make combat boring
Classic = Hard Plus - just hard enough to make combat frustrating
and Tactician = I dunno. I'll never play it in that mode, Just like I don't smash my toes with a hammer regularly for "fun".

Just wanted to address this and say I actually had fun during my Explorer playthrough. As someone who wasn't interested in either min-maxing nor cheesing the game, it was perfect for me. Yes, it got somewhat easy for the most part, but I'd rather have that than my supposedly legendary badass adventurers getting trounced by Random Guard #27.

[deaconw]

Originally posted by HEY:

Originally posted by deaconw:

Dude, your playing the game wrong if you have a tank. dos2 is dps centric asin you will have the easiest time with 4 dps chars.

Note the quotes. I was just illustrating with my strongest character.

[deaconw]

Originally posted by HEY:

Originally posted by deaconw:

Well, at least the wiki validated that Alice is OP and, to be fair, I can see how I could have figured out one or maybe two of the strategies thinking more about it (or continuing to execute Rule 4...lol) , but most are just cheesing it,from my perspective.

You dont need to cheese anything to beat the game on tactician, just need to have good/decent builds.

Note this sentence in my original post, "And, to be clear, this guide is for the non "min-max-git-gud" players. You know, people who play games for fun."

Also, read the wiki on how to beat her and tell me a number of those aren't cheesy.

[baggybaf]

Originally posted by deaconw:

Originally posted by HEY:

You dont need to cheese anything to beat the game on tactician, just need to have good/decent builds.

Note this sentence in my original post, "And, to be clear, this guide is for the non "min-max-git-gud" players. You know, people who play games for fun."

Also, read the wiki on how to beat her and tell me a number of those aren't cheesy.

what is your definition of cheesy or min-max for this game?
it's clear that at the beginning you have struggle to win (on tactician of course) but with experience (i.e. not 200 hours of play) you can kill all the bosses easily.
It's nice to want to give advice but I think you don't know enough about the game for that.
or else these are tips that any player will understand after a few hours of play.
do another 1000 hours and come back :)

[Pass The Peas]

Using the alice fight as an example, it's one of the things in game that teaches you to approach things cautiously, i beat her on my second try on classic at level 14 just by spreading my party out a little and using the examine feature to see her strengths and weaknesse. Ie she's undead so healing spells damage her physical armour etc.

Having a one-shot mechanic/power level on harder 'bosses' is super common across sooooo many games, its just whether you wander in bunched up and/or don't have any backup plans for when a character dies...
Also, you definitely will be one shotting things yourself soon enough if your builds and gear are decent, especially with archers and mages.

I get the tongue in cheek nature of some of this, and agree that it feels a bit lame if you have to reload a few times for a lot of fights, but if you spread out and realise that you can flee a battle fairly easily with teleport skills you shouldn't have to do that most of the time.
Again i can think of tons of games where ive had to reload and do certain challenges and fights more than once...

[inosk0pedjfk]

that was cute

[Witch ~]

Yeah playing combat in a normal way in this game is the fastest path to feel scammed. Balancing is so low in the gutter the game basically begs you to exploit every cheese, bug and snarky tactic. Teleport enemy into the middle of town or on a different island, exploit the convo bugs and buff the talking character into oblivion, carry a whole ship full of deathfog... if you play it "honorable" you will ragequit fast. And the easier difficuilties are simple too easy lol

[Witch ~]

Originally posted by Johnny_B_80:

Story = Easy - I think. Never tried it.
Explorer = Normal Minus - just easy enough to make combat boring
Classic = Hard Plus - just hard enough to make combat frustrating
and Tactician = I dunno. I'll never play it in that mode, Just like I don't smash my toes with a hammer regularly for "fun".

Just wanted to address this and say I actually had fun during my Explorer playthrough. As someone who wasn't interested in either min-maxing nor cheesing the game, it was perfect for me. Yes, it got somewhat easy for the most part, but I'd rather have that than my supposedly legendary badass adventurers getting trounced by Random Guard #27.

This tbh. It gets tiring to minmax and prepare every single encounter like a huge bossfight