The most important question - difficulty

Originally Posted by azarhal
… Explorer…
For some reasons, the enemies just kept focusing on the party member with the shield. It was a bit weird really.

Trashmobs AI adapts to difficulty - lesser the difficulty, more AI stupidity.

Originally Posted by crpgnut
Has anyone tried purposely luring the enemies with low/no physical?
… peruse most battlefields before I ever trigger the fight on purpose. I move barrels around, not oil hazards, find a nice spot of poison for my undead to stand in, etc.

Setting a trap then luring enemies into it - I do it all the time (when possible).
No sneaking, I prepare my battlefield nearby then use one crewmember to wave at trashmobs, they start chasin him and die miserably among containers/chairs/globes/paintings barricade I prepared.

Originally Posted by crpgnut
In my fight with level 2 Fane solo against the arena … I knew where the chests were that I wanted to loot before battle was over.

Sadly, loot in those chests was pathetic.

Originally Posted by joxer
Trashmobs AI adapts to difficulty - lesser the difficulty, more AI stupidity.

Sadly, loot in those chests was pathetic.

Yeah, I didn't understand that. That was the hardest battle in Chapter 1 for me and you get nothing.

BTW, I accidentally escaped Fort Joy several times before I want to leave. I keep having to reload old saves when I escape. One thing is for sure: there are GOBS of ways to escape the fort. The hard part is not escaping. You wonder how they have any prisoners at all

Originally Posted by crpgnut
Yeah, I didn't understand that. That was the hardest battle in Chapter 1 for me and you get nothing.

What's not to understand? Random loot was always my biggest gripe with all Divinity games.

Originally Posted by crpgnut
BTW, I accidentally escaped Fort Joy several times before I want to leave. I keep having to reload old saves when I escape. One thing is for sure: there are GOBS of ways to escape the fort. The hard part is not escaping. You wonder how they have any prisoners at all

last year, Swen mentioned there were 7 ways.

7?
For all I know there are 4 different passages by foot (or teleport) plus boat in the dungeon as 5th. What are other two?

Or he ment strategy of escape (befriending, sneaking, fighting, etc)?

I!

The party is about level 10 now. Act 2 has had a lot of easy XP up for grabs and, so far, has been quite relaxing compared to the struggle in act1. I suppose I have some sort of idea what I'm doing now and with the respec on the ship I have made no mistakes.

Also, as a Conjurer, act2 has seen my Summoning reach level 10 and the incarnate is now quite a powerful and adaptable unit who towers over everyone else. The water one can heal and they can all Taunt.

I decided I wanted wings so I respeced my 2 points back out of pyromancy and put them into polymorph which has given me a summon oil blob spell. I also decided I don't make use of the 20 INT I have since I've been using 1h+shield since I found the Viper sword at the start of the game. I'm thinking about a respec to STR and a couple of levels of warfare, but I might just give him a wand. Most his AP is used up summoning a totem every round so there's almost no point worrying about his main attack. Gets plenty of damage from the summons even if his nuke is a little weak compared to a pure element like lightning.

Is anyone NOT running a Summoner in their party?

Originally Posted by joxer
7?
For all I know there are 4 different passages by foot (or teleport) plus boat in the dungeon as 5th. What are other two?

Or he ment strategy of escape (befriending, sneaking, fighting, etc)?

I've walked out the sewer drain, scaled the wall near the source preacher, been offered a boat ride, taken a cave passage to the swamps so far…I haven't done anyone's quests yet except Lohse. I haven't even talked to anyone but her yet. Level 5….

@SirJames I'm not running a summoner nor a dedicated healer.
However, you said it yourself - respec in act 2 is the king.

Example, my current party setup level 9 couldn't win a certain undead 4 heroes level 11 group at the graveyard as these when killed respawn as a harder version. This means what? I'm gonna respec them all to water/summon with heals for that particular fight. Why I didn't do that yet? Because I didn't steal enough healing skillbooks yet. Shops restock per hour so I'll be exploring some more…
Oh and there is a bone troll on that same graveyard… Dunno if it's undead but it instakills anyone it touches. Serves me right for exploring sidecontent before proceeding with the main story. I still didn't save the "witch" from gallows!

Finding act 2 very very difficult in tacky mode. First made a wrong turn and started to see level 13 critters but managed to backtrack and in the process found some chests with a few items of level 13; so my part of level 10 has better equipment now (found a massive 180 shield); but still very very hard. thinking i should start over but will give it another day or two to see if i get past the 'hump'…

Well glad I am playing on Explorer as I doubt I would survive anything harder. Battles are definitely getting much harder for me and much longer. Its fun as long as I don't ever have to repeat them.

Originally Posted by Aerth
There are some small elements on top of hp
http://divinityoriginalsin.wiki.fext…fficulty+Modes

But yes you are right Classic is at it was meant to be played for the 'designed' experience

That's what I read which made me pick Tactician at first. But according to several forum posters that's not accurate at the moment, the enemies have increased stats by roughly 50% and increased armor by the same amount. And as far as some experienced players could find no extra skills, AI or anything else of the sort, apart from some enemies blowing up on kill (which is only annoying…). I'm pretty sure I'll go Tactician anyway on my second run when I'm more aware of the mechanics, but right now it didn't feel fun, just grindy.

Well, hopefully the inevitable Enhanced Edition will overhaul Tactician.

Playing on tactician and to make it more challenging I am also playing without deaths and without saving/loading within the fight.

So…. I absolutely adored tactician mode in DOS1. Everything about it. The enhanced skills, enhanced mobs spawning, the smarter AI. I didn't care if the AI virtually cheated or if the battles took 20min.

In DOS2 I cant find any new skills. All of act 1 (went thru twice) couldnt find any new abilities. It seems to be just HP and Armor bloat. I'd love someone to prove me wrong, but given my experience that would be tough. I truly hope they restore the tougher AI. Even if they don't, I'm happy with the game the way it is now.

For anyone that complains the battles are hard, put the game on Explorer mode. Pretending you are hardcore but then complaining its hard just gives you frustration.

Blew my freaking OS SSD today…. apparently I get a forced DOS2 break….

That sucks. Did you have cloud saves, or is all progress lost?

Originally Posted by Maylander
That sucks. Did you have cloud saves, or is all progress lost?

Well he said the OS drive, the one that boots windows. Hopefully the saved games are stored in another drive.

Originally Posted by wolfing
Well he said the OS drive, the one that boots windows. Hopefully the saved games are stored in another drive.

These days, a lot of my games actually default to the user profile location, which is on the OS disc.

For the record, the saves are indeed located on the OS drive by default:
C:\Users\xxx\Documents\Larian Studios\Divinity Original Sin 2\PlayerProfiles\xxx\Savegames

At least on Win7; don't see it being any different in latter Windows versions.