Mixed parties and divinity unleashed

[The_YellowBacon]

I’m on my first playthrough and I’ve been looking online at builds, it seems my current build isn’t very good because 2 members are physical, and 2 are magical. But I found some people say divinity unleashed is very good for this problem and polishes the combat in general, should I install it for my first playthrough?

[Dragonick]

I have been enjoying Unleashed alot. I could not stand the armor system.

[Chaoslink]

Mixed parties are actually better than parties focused on just one type, but they're a bit harder to use as a result. Your mages want to attack different targets than your physical attackers. As long as you're focusing the weaker armors, you shouldn't have too much of an issue.

I'm personally always an advocate of vanilla playthroughs the first time you play any game. If you don't, its hard to know what you're adding/changing with a mod since you don't know the base game to compare it to. Divinity Unleashed would classify as an overhaul mod, so it changes a LOT of the game.

Its ultimately up to you. If you want to use the mod, go for it. If not, the community here can help you tune your builds to be more damage efficient or offer advice to help you perform a bit better. Most of us are pretty active and can get back to you in a timely manner to help. Some things are easy, like getting better equipment or avoiding higher level enemies.

If you think your builds themselves aren't good, we can help with that too. If that's the case, just list out the characters you're using, their attributes and skills as you've invested and how you typically use them. We can take that information and tell you what stat points you probably want to move into other stats, such as removing Constitution points because its basically worthless or not having both strength and intelligence on a warrior or something. Some stats can be confusing too, such as Warfare adding 5% physical damage versus a weapon skill like dual wielding giving 5% damage and 1% dodge, but Warfare is the better stat to invest because of how the math works.

[RyukaRuki]

For a first playthrough, I'd say it's up to you. But I highly recommend that mod at some point since it improved upon the combat (and I liked the combat already, even though it felt like full magic or physical was the only good options (TV Tropes's YMMV seems to agree with that))

I guess I'd say, if the current combat feels kinda meh to you to the point you're considering stopping (especially since being underleveled in Unleashed is still somewhat winnable, and not an automatic death sentence), try Unleashed and see if that makes it better.

[yuzhonglu]

Run two rangers and two mages. Rangers can do both magic and physical damage with their arrows.

[Martial.Lore]

I have now easily beaten the game at tactician level difficulty (easily because of complete familiarity with the game after hundreds of hours) with parties comprised of all physical damage dealers, all magic damage dealers and a 50/50 mix. In fact, my first honor mode game was with a party of elven mages (with my created elf character, Sebile, a hired character, and Lohse with Fane's shapeshifter helmet).

While a mixed party allows you to focus on all enemies with different armor, a party comprised of all magic damage dealers, for instance, destroys enemies with no resistance to magic attacks (including very useful tools like love grenades, etc.), and allows your whole party to concentrate on the enemies with magic armor more quickly with four magic attacks going at once (which, with scoundrel's adrenaline spell, polymorph's skin graft skill, AND elves' flesh sacrifice ability— a total of at least 16 attacks in the first round alone— was supremely effective at quickly taking down the hardest enemies with the most armor protection).

Long story short, you can have a blast with vanilla before modding anything.