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Hello. I searched for another thread but couldn't really find one, so I decided to start this one. I'm going to use this for all questions that I have as I am playing Divine Divinity for the first time.

Question #1 - I am getting to a point in the starting village where the loot I'm picking up is quickly getting too heavy to carry. I have quite a few axes and things I don't want to sell yet, because the healers in the village don't have enough gold to offer me for them. So my question is, what the heck do I do with all this junk? Do I drop it in a chest somewhere? Is there some sort of player storage I haven't found yet? I'm still in the tutorial dungeon and haven't ventured outside the healer village yet.

Question 2 - Is it possible to screw up your build? I am a Warrior and giving my stat points to Strength and Constitution mainly, but also quite a bit in Agility, too. My skills have come from the Survivor skill trees thus far, except for a passive damage reducing skill from the Warrior trees. Will this come back to bite me in the butt later on? The Survivor skills so far have just been too sweet to pass up…

Question 3 - Is it normal to run into enemies that are too difficult for you? I ran into a giant spider that took 19 health potions and I still didn't kill him :(. So, should I just remember he's there and come back in a few levels? There's no level scaling in this game, right?

That's all for now, but I'll probably have more questions later. Going to try to finish this tutorial dungeon and see some of the world if I can.
 
I don't remember things that much anymore, but about Number 3 : They are seemingly supposed to be some kinds of "obstacles", hindering you from enterin areas with higher level enemies which you obviously wouln't survive.

Gothic 1 uses a similar method.


Remember : Do so much stuff with the things you find within this world ! Divinity 1 is the only game I personally know where you can make honey ...

You can throw stones as if they were wapons, too.
I did this only at a later part within the game.

Changing tactics helps, too.
Plus, always having a few health potions ...
 
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Question 2 - Is it possible to screw up your build?
Unfortunately yes, at least according to my experience. I played a mage and put a lot of points into intelligence and magic and was actually gimping my character. Some battles are EXTREMELY difficult if you have a bad build. A true life saver was the ability to make potions so I would highly recommend you to select that one.

I do think that Divine Divinity is an exception and it is not common for other games to have such high dependency on character build. But I am not an "expert" on this game so perhaps others can give you better advice.
 
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1.Just trade them for whatever pots and gold they got even much under price.
2.Yes DD tends to get hard at some points so put some thought into your build but it's not like you have to have most efficient build possible you can still make interesting hybrid builds and complete game just make sure what you do have work well together and also if you go for mage in my experience glass cannon build doesn't work that well in DD you have to have some survivability
3.If you haven't gone too far in game and it's getting too hard try starting with mage from my experience it's lot easier with him especially in beginning.
 
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I don't remember things that much anymore, but about Number 3 : They are seemingly supposed to be some kinds of "obstacles", hindering you from enterin areas with higher level enemies which you obviously wouln't survive.

Gothic 1 uses a similar method.


Remember : Do so much stuff with the things you find within this world ! Divinity 1 is the only game I personally know where you can make honey …

You can throw stones as if they were wapons, too.
I did this only at a later part within the game.

Changing tactics helps, too.
Plus, always having a few health potions …

Thanks for the tips.

The area wasn't blocked off or anything, it was simply a loose floor tile that went down to an area with treasure, but the enemy was a giant spider and was mauling me. As I said, I drank 19 light health potions and still couldn't kill the thing. He was almost dead, but I ran out of potions and died. Maybe I'll try again now that I leveled up and have some super healing potions.

Unfortunately yes, at least according to my experience. I played a mage and put a lot of points into intelligence and magic and was actually gimping my character. Some battles are EXTREMELY difficult if you have a bad build. A true life saver was the ability to make potions so I would highly recommend you to select that one.

I do think that Divine Divinity is an exception and it is not common for other games to have such high dependency on character build. But I am not an "expert" on this game so perhaps others can give you better advice.

This is what I'm worried about. Even the tutorial dungeon has some tough critters, but I was able to survive by guzzling large amounts of health potions. I know to keep a full stock of potions on hand, so that should help. We'll just play it and see what happens...
 
I am getting to a point in the starting village where the loot I'm picking up is quickly getting too heavy to carry. I have quite a few axes and things I don't want to sell yet, because the healers in the village don't have enough gold to offer me for them. So my question is, what the heck do I do with all this junk? Do I drop it in a chest somewhere? Is there some sort of player storage I haven't found yet? I'm still in the tutorial dungeon and haven't ventured outside the healer village yet.


You can store things in chests indefinitely. I liked to use the chest that's in the room where you start the game. If you feel that you might want to try some of those weapons later, or you simply don't need the money now, store them away for later.
 
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I just found a centrally located area outside and just dropped stuff in piles. No one takes anything on the ground. In this way you can organize stuff into related piles, for stuff you're not sure whether to keep or not.
 
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You can collect a few chests to sort out your loot. I kept a chest for crappy loot (to trade for potions, etc, early in the game), another for full durability equipment (to trade with after finding better merchants) and one for equipment that needed to be repaired (to get the full value). Eventually I added more chests to sort out charms, equipment I might use but didn't meet the requirements for yet or with skill bonuses that might come in handy occasionally, traps or extra lockpicks / food I could potentially use sometime but didn't want to carry around too much of, etc.

I just stayed in Joram's house at first (with some stuff upstairs, as well), though there are empty houses in Aleroth you can take over. Eventually I moved somewhere with more room and a closer teleporter pad.


Most warriors end up averaging 2 stat points per level into strength and agility and 1 into constitution. You'll boost constitution more at the start of the game, then eventually stop when equipment bonuses, etc, give you enough hit points that a strong opponent can not kill you in a couple good hits. This will also vary based on the requirements or bonuses on equipment you find/buy.

If you are using a melee weapon a fair bit of the time, the passive Stun skill is quite helpful at higher levels.

Warriors tend to have plenty of skill points, especially if they rely on skill books for mage skills.


Free skills, and spell books you can buy

Early Starter Tips (NON-Spoiler Version)


The only way I could defeat that spider (without coming back later, at a higher level or with better equipment) was using Burning Wall, which I learned from a spell book (random find in Mardaneus' house).

Eventually you'll want to switch to using restoration potions.

The game can be challenging at the start, but tends to get easier as it progresses. Once you get out of Aleroth you'll also usually have a lot of flexibility in where you explore, so (especially if you make periodic saves) you can switch directions if you start having problems in a particular area.
 
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The area wasn't blocked off or anything, it was simply a loose floor tile that went down to an area with treasure, but the enemy was a giant spider and was mauling me.

The critter was the "blocker". ;)
You'll find this concept in Gothic 1 at least again.
 
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And Gothic II too. Gothic III is massive and for its size doesn't have as many of these, but because it is large, it does have them. (In GIII, they actually push you from one part of the land to another before reaching the third one, but if you really want, you could get to the third one immediately.)
 
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The critter was the "blocker". ;)
You'll find this concept in Gothic 1 at least again.

Same idea as in Risen, too? I remember getting to an island and seeing a nice chest and some loot being guarded by a scorpion. Couldn't kill the thing but I did manage to sneak past it, grab the loot and run away :).
 
You can collect a few chests to sort out your loot. I kept a chest for crappy loot (to trade for potions, etc, early in the game), another for full durability equipment (to trade with after finding better merchants) and one for equipment that needed to be repaired (to get the full value). Eventually I added more chests to sort out charms, equipment I might use but didn't meet the requirements for yet or with skill bonuses that might come in handy occasionally, traps or extra lockpicks / food I could potentially use sometime but didn't want to carry around too much of, etc.

I just stayed in Joram's house at first (with some stuff upstairs, as well), though there are empty houses in Aleroth you can take over. Eventually I moved somewhere with more room and a closer teleporter pad.


Most warriors end up averaging 2 stat points per level into strength and agility and 1 into constitution. You'll boost constitution more at the start of the game, then eventually stop when equipment bonuses, etc, give you enough hit points that a strong opponent can not kill you in a couple good hits. This will also vary based on the requirements or bonuses on equipment you find/buy.

If you are using a melee weapon a fair bit of the time, the passive Stun skill is quite helpful at higher levels.

Warriors tend to have plenty of skill points, especially if they rely on skill books for mage skills.


Free skills, and spell books you can buy

Early Starter Tips (NON-Spoiler Version)


The only way I could defeat that spider (without coming back later, at a higher level or with better equipment) was using Burning Wall, which I learned from a spell book (random find in Mardaneus' house).

Eventually you'll want to switch to using restoration potions.

The game can be challenging at the start, but tends to get easier as it progresses. Once you get out of Aleroth you'll also usually have a lot of flexibility in where you explore, so (especially if you make periodic saves) you can switch directions if you start having problems in a particular area.

Thanks! Very useful stuff here. Will definitely come in handy.

I've since gotten out of the initial dungeon and explored a bit of the world. Map seems pretty big - is this map the only map in the game? Or are there other areas? Just curious.

About to fire up the game now and play more. Being a PC gamer is pretty sweet :)
 
There are a few more maps. But the first one (outside the dungeon) is the most interesting and I think the biggest. Maybe the southern one is comparable?
 
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Same idea as in Risen, too? I remember getting to an island and seeing a nice chest and some loot being guarded by a scorpion. Couldn't kill the thing but I did manage to sneak past it, grab the loot and run away :).

That's exactly the core of Gothic, G2 and Risen. You can go almost everywhere if you're clever enough. Exploration is rewarded.
Gothic and G2 are better at that than Risen though.
 
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Cool. Can't wait to check out Gothic. I was one of the few that really did like the console port of Risen. It was solid and had a lot of good things going for it, like the attention to detail and the static game-world. If Gothic is even better than I'm going to be giddy as a schoolgirl. :)
 
A traveler just shared with me some of the poems of Alrik Fassbaeur, lol. Didn't know you were in video games, Alrik ;). It was a good poem, too.

I seem to be running into "blockers" everywhere I go. Frankly, I'm just not sure where to go next.

I am able to fully immerse myself in the exploration and the non-combat stuff. Trading with various people and finding my way around the farmlands and the towns is fine. But when it comes to combat, that's where I'm having trouble.

It just seems that certain enemy types that are popping up are too strong for me. I run out of my entire stock of potions and still can't kill the tougher critters.

Guess I will just keep looking around and see if I can level up on weaker enemies before tackling the tough ones.

Is it common at lower levels to exhaust an entire stock of potions fighting one enemy? That seems to be my experience so far. It makes it slightly tedious to use all my potions against one enemy and then have to backtrack to various traders to find more potions. I guess I also have to activate some of those transporters but I haven't found them either. Oh well.

Onwards we go!

Edit - I do think I'm getting the hang of it. You really have to explore areas that you are capable of killing things in, get all the experience from those areas, then later on move to the harder parts. Hopefully I don't run out of areas where I can kill in :).
 
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At lower levels you can use food to top off your health (meat/bread) and mana (chicken) after fights. If you are burning through a lot of potions during combat, though, you should try a different location.

If you've cleared the area around Aleroth, west of the river, and explored around the farmlands, the next easiest area would be to the north east, then the north west (the cursed abbey should probably be left until you are in the high teens or early twenties, but the zombies in the surrounding area are not terribly difficult for a mage/archer; melee characters would benefit from SpellShield, as it absorbs the poison damage, so your character's offence and defence are not dropped by its effect). After that south east would probably be easier than south west.

Have you gotten to Ars Magicana yet, north east of the farmlands, to the far east of the cursed abbey? There are merchants there where you may be able to find better equipment, etc.

Appropriate levels by Area?

The Aleroth teleporter is outside the town's fence, near the south west corner.
 
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Thanks!

It might sound silly, but I don't really want to look at a guide or anything. I want to just get by by myself or just with the help of useful tips you guys have given. Hopefully those tips don't turn into spoilers or anything, but so far so good.

If I really get stuck I will consult a guide, but so far I'm managing pretty well through trial and error and what not. It's getting a little easier now that I know I need to clear our certain areas first before venturing into the harder zones.

Is Ars Magicana the place where Doctor Elrath lives? If so, I've been there. It was nice to find some legitimate traders with lots of gold and equipment.

Thanks for telling me where that teleporter is, that will come in very handy.

On we go..
 
I just discovered something about PC gaming. Don't mess around. I just lost all 3 of my save files because I clicked "run as administrator" to try and clean up some of the small lag I was experiencing in certain areas. Completely wiped out my save games. :(

Back to the beginning I go.
 
The saves may not be gone; running the game as administrator may simply have changed where the game is looking. Did you exit and run the game again not as administrator?

Normally each save is a separate subfolder in the '..\Divine Divinity\savegames' folder. Under Vista/7, depending on how the user accounts are set up, if you install the game to the Program Files path, Windows can create separate savegame folders for each user, and then map that folder to the game's savegame folder (so it will just see the saves for the relevant user).
C:\Users\ %account name% \AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Divine Divinity\savegames

If running as administrator changes that behaviour, you may just have to copy/move the save files from the original location to what the game expects now.


EDIT:
If the saves did get deleted somehow, then for Vista/7/8, check if Windows made shadow copies of the saved games. You might be able to recover something with a program like Recuva, but the more you use the drive the saves are on the less likely that becomes.

Recover deleted files with Windows 7 shadow copies

Recover lost or deleted files

ShadowExplorer
 
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