Overpowered gear in the early game?
 

I just started playing the steam version of DKS and I found an ax that adds 40 magic damage in my first dungeon, followed by a mace in the small cave near the necromancer that adds 40 physical. Dual-wielded, my level 6 char is doing ~100 points of damage on every attack and basically annihilating everything without breaking a sweat. This is on 'Hard' difficultly.

This seems silly to me and I'm wondering if anyone else is experiencing this. Maybe the developers meant +4 damage and made a typo?

It's possible that it's a bugged item, or should I say a group of bugged items.

Might be worth bringing it up on the Larian forums because very few items (Even in D2:ED) were that powerful.

Thanks, I posted over in their forums. Hopefully this isn't an indication that DKS suffers from the same cavalier approach to balancing that afflicted Div 1 (anyone remember the Level 99 scorpion traps?)…because otherwise this game just oozes charm and polish.

I've found some crazy sets so far, one of which has me a bit OP atm. Overall, I'm glad they revamped the itemization, many of the random exploration areas are worth finding now.

@Rockstronaut, were those weapons found in chests, or dropped by enemies? Also, are items in chests randomized or fixed in DKS? Just curious because this is probably the next crpg I'm going to purchase.

I've put in about 13 hours in the past two days with this game and have thoroughly enjoyed it. I didn't play Divinity 2 before this, but Divine Divinity only. I believe items in containers are randomized to a point for most containers. I will say that it appears that the 3 sets of armor through the steam version appear to be overpowered, but I'm having a great time so far. It's not a totally open world roleplaying game, but it'll do till Two Worlds 2 comes, I hope by next week or the one thereafter.

@JDR, it appears that early set armor has static drop points, but otherwise it's the old random system they had initially. Unique items seem to have static placement.

Does anyone know whether the Amazon-exclusive armor is in DKS, too ?

Found the first weapon in the first chest I opened in the first dungeon I entered. Went from 2-4 damage to 50+ damage. Pretty sure it's mostly random item placement. Haven't found any weapons off of enemies, but still in early game. In general there's not that much loot, well there's lots of potions and reagents, but it's not diablo style where you end up carrying 17 different axes after clearing out a dungeon.

Someone on the larian forums playing the 360 version posted that they haven't been finding the same hefty bonuses on weapons in the early game, so it might be a bug rather than by design.

I think the enchantments are random, so you can end up with a plus 65 normal damage sword out of the gate, which seems a tad strong :)

Ok, so I've restarted and resisted all temptation to use the various +20/+30/+40 weapons and it's forced me to actually apply tactics to combat. I'm using polymorph and charm to my advantage, distracting with summons, etc.

Anyway, aside from the goofy weapon issue, which is easily rectified using a bit of self control, this game is excellent.

It's a shame when you have to use a self-imposed handicap to make a game challenging. I still plan on giving DKS a try though.

The enchantments do seem to be random, my guess is that there is a bug for the random enchantments and they are going on to lower level items then they were supposed to. One of things I have noticed on the Steam exclusive sets, the weapon enchants are random, I have started over a few times and every time the enchants were different, even at one time the warrior weapon had a +60 to normal damage enchant on it.

Other then that bug the game has been a lot of fun, though I am going to start over again now that I know that the enchant thing is a bug and I want to play without using them.

As far as I can tell, it's actually the enchantments themselves that have been rescaled. If you look at the damage enchantment table from ego draconis:

http://guides.gamepressure.com/divin…de.asp?ID=8320

You can see that they're much more moderate bonuses. But now instead of +1, +3, +6 and so on, someone at Larian changed the values to +10, +20, +30, etc.

A minor (or lesser?) enchantment formula of increase damage, which you can buy in the first town, now adds +20, instead of +3 as it likely did in ego draconis.

@JDR13: I hate self-handicapping too, but I'm having a lot of fun with the game and would highly recommend giving it a chance.

Just a mere speculation, nothing more …

Could it be that this "overpoewered gear" was meant for thosde who insist on playing "hard" mode but are not willing to back to easier modes because of their pride once they've been badly hit, because "easy modes is for wussies" ?

Just a thought. And I do already know that I'm overthinking things too much. ;)

Ha. Last night I found a "Legendary" mace in a basket in the mill at the beginning of the game. It does 4-4 damage, +1 melee damage.

So much for "Legendary."

Who knows? But I'm sure the ED's perceived difficulty had something to do with it…

Anyway, the lead developer (Lars?) has stated in the forums that they're adding a "nightmare mode" in the next patch due to many complaints about hard being a cakewalk with the new dmg modifiers. Personally, I'd rather they just got rid of the super-weapons lying around everywhere, but at least it's nice to see them being so responsive to user complaints.

Yes, they do listen to users - as far as they can, of course, because they are a small team and have lots of things to do (international releases, patches, Monkey Labs etc. …)

OK, I found the overpowered stuff. Got a +40 magical damage sword that one-shots almost everything at level 8. Plus, it ups the power of magic missile to one-shot almost everything.

I bought it at a vendor to try out. The weirder thing is that a sword with nearly identical stats minus the +40 damage costs about the same price.

What were they thinking?

This sounds more and more strange to me.
But anyway, no-one forces you to actually use it … ;)