Divinity: Original Sin exploration thread

Onin

Edit history:

Onin: 2014-07-04 02:05:37 pm

Onin: 2014-07-04 02:03:23 pm

Onin: 2014-07-04 10:34:03 am

2014-07-04 09:04:48 am

So, this game is pretty amazing, best RPG since Baldur's Gate 2 by miles. Sadly, it doesn't seem at first glance nearly as speedrunable as the old engine RPGs. The main issue is the sheer linearity of the core questline (and, well, the extremely lengthy combat). In order to make an acceptable run out of this, we'll need to find a lot of tech.

~~Unless we can find a way around it, all 15 Star Stones are required.~~ Most of these are along the main questline, a few of them are in major sidequests. I should probably create a list with every Star Stone's location, I guess, for a 100%-esque run.
Aside that, I'm not certain but I believe saving the White Witch is also required. This game really does not allow you to skip major elements of the game, hell even missing a single cutscene will stop all later scripts from proceeding until you trigger it.
And then there's the void dragon fight which is incredibly lengthy but not that difficult if you're at level.

Luckily, there are a few mechanics that are insanely abusable:
- You can run from combat, basically at any time. Any fight that doesn't have required drops, triggers, or is just in your path to progress, can be skipped.
- High Telekinesis skill can allow you to grab items from far enough range to skip triggers. I hear you can even grab stuff through walls.
- The Air skill Teleport can get you past a lot of obstacles and can get you past fight triggers that would've been in your path.
- The teleport pyramids can do the same. In addition, you can throw them through magical barriers (though not solid doors) to skip certain quest points.
- Sneaking seems pretty abusable as well.

So, if someone can find a star stone duping glitch, we'll be golden. Infinite experience would be useful too. If not, it's gonna be a ~~pretty lengthy run~~ matter of running straight to the end.

Thread title:

So, this game is pretty amazing, best RPG since Baldur's Gate 2 by miles. Sadly, it doesn't seem at first glance nearly as speedrunable as the old engine RPGs. The main issue is the sheer linearity of the core questline (and, well, the extremely lengthy combat). In order to make an acceptable run out of this, we'll need to find a lot of tech.

[s]Unless we can find a way around it, all 15 Star Stones are required.[/s] Most of these are along the main questline, a few of them are in major sidequests. I should probably create a list with every Star Stone's location, I guess, [i]for a 100%-esque run[/i].
Aside that, I'm not certain but I believe saving the White Witch is also required. This game really does not allow you to skip major elements of the game, hell even missing a single cutscene will stop all later scripts from proceeding until you trigger it. 
And then there's the void dragon fight which is incredibly lengthy but not that difficult if you're at level.

Luckily, there are a few mechanics that are insanely abusable:
- You can run from combat, basically at any time. Any fight that doesn't have required drops, triggers, or is just in your path to progress, can be skipped.
- High Telekinesis skill can allow you to grab items from far enough range to skip triggers. I hear you can even grab stuff through walls.
- The Air skill Teleport can get you past a lot of obstacles and can get you past fight triggers that would've been in your path.
- The teleport pyramids can do the same. In addition, you can throw them through magical barriers (though not solid doors) to skip certain quest points.
- Sneaking seems pretty abusable as well.

So, if someone can find a star stone duping glitch, we'll be golden. Infinite experience would be useful too. If not, it's gonna be a [s]pretty lengthy run[/s] matter of running straight to the end.

SeductiveSpatula

2014-07-04 09:52:46 am

I'm currently downloading the game and was just thinking about how a game that appears so open in terms of how you can approach situations could have a bunch of cool ways to speed up your progression.

Too bad it currently seems there aren't any ways to avoid all the Star Stones (whatever they may be :P).

By the way, do you think the game would be faster coop?

Onin

2014-07-04 10:30:55 am

I don't think there's anything you could do in coop that you couldn't do in singleplayer. That said, coop would be a bit faster because it's quicker to flee combat one after another than having to switch over to the next character.
And of course there's the possibility of coop-only glitches, but we'd have to find those first.

ogam

Edit history:

ogam: 2014-07-04 12:27:05 pm

ogam: 2014-07-04 12:26:43 pm

ogam: 2014-07-04 12:01:17 pm

2014-07-04 11:57:09 am

You don't need to collect all of them. At the Source Temple door that asks for you to become whole, you can drop a pyramid then through it through the door. This way during void dragon fight you can get free party revive/full heals with the extra stones from Loic's basement.

Source Temple Door:

Onin

Edit history:

Onin: 2014-07-04 12:43:20 pm

Onin: 2014-07-04 12:39:09 pm

2014-07-04 12:09:06 pm

I tried that, didn't work for me. Mind recording?

Cool, didn't think it'd reach all the way to the stairs. Seems like it's a pretty small spot where you can toss it, let's hope it doesn't get patched.

ogam

Edit history:

ogam: 2014-07-04 12:47:08 pm

2014-07-04 12:17:07 pm

As for levels in damage, you can use perfect voodoo dolls on void dragon, does ~220 (~330 with Oath of Desecration 50% damage buff), mass producing those especially underleveled. So having one of your guys 100% stacked on resists should be able to solo it. Voodoo Doll doesn't seem to scale with damage stances though

Onin

2014-07-04 12:46:48 pm

Getting 100% resistances, especially 100% Tenebrium resistance, is gonna be difficult. You can have the goddess tank the void dragon for you if you can keep her healed up, but dealing with the adds at the same time would be more difficult. 4 times 250 damage per round is pretty sick though.

ogam

Edit history:

ogam: 2014-07-04 12:58:27 pm

ogam: 2014-07-04 12:49:31 pm

2014-07-04 12:48:07 pm

Voodoo dolls doesn't use any AP so as long as you have 25 with a buff up you can 1 turn the dragon. Really just need to not get CC or 1 shot during the dragon's initial turn on for the guy doing the poking.

Looks like doll scales with base character level, so might not work out. Damage average above was at level 19.

Onin

2014-07-04 01:23:08 pm

I'll have a look how far you can get with just running straight to the Phantom Forest. Probably won't be able to skip the poison barrier, but getting the amulet from Zendalar shouldn't take long. Then the question is how to get up to the temple unscathed; I'm thinking the southern entrance, stealth past most encounters, drop the Dread Lord into his own lava pool, run for the temple entrance?

There might be more quests in the way (may have to save the earth spirit) but we'll find out.

ogam

Edit history:

ogam: 2014-07-04 02:09:04 pm

ogam: 2014-07-04 01:53:53 pm

ogam: 2014-07-04 01:42:36 pm

ogam: 2014-07-04 01:42:32 pm

ogam: 2014-07-04 01:42:31 pm

ogam: 2014-07-04 01:34:20 pm

2014-07-04 01:31:11 pm

You can skip the poison barrier, but you'll have to pay the troll 600 gold to get pass him. Using a pyramid, teleportation, phoenix dive or tactical retreat can get you up. One spot is directly right of the donation statue and troll. You'll land infront of a bunch of skeletons and a jack-o-lantern guy (153,70). Another is up a steep hill (175, 78).

During alpha when phoenix dive was broken and allowed you to go OOBs easily, all of the terrain including interior buildings were on the same scene as exterior for the most part. If that's still possible another way then that might help with other skips.

You can clip through the candle room book case also in source temple with pyramids.

Onin

2014-07-04 03:54:45 pm

Alright, I did some, well, running.

With the Scoundrel's Walk in Shadows ability you can skip practically every single fight. Except for one: the orcs landing at the beach need to be killed in order for the gates to be unlocked by Ahru. Don't think you can teleport through.
I'm not sure about the fastest route through Luculla, there may very well be neat teleportation paths, but I know at least you can teleport across the river to Sacred Stones and use the "backdoor" without passing any trolls.

Best of all, you can make it all the way to the Temple door in a single invisibility, as long as you Sneak just as it wears off.

Bad news is: You still need the rune stone that you get from the earth elemental chick. Which requires combat. Blargh.

ogam

Edit history:

ogam: 2014-07-04 11:17:57 pm

ogam: 2014-07-04 08:34:42 pm

ogam: 2014-07-04 04:42:08 pm

2014-07-04 04:30:40 pm

Did a bit of testing with OOBs again, looks like it works the same as it did in alpha still, just the map is more focused on the building you're in so mostly going throughout the rest of the terrain blind. Might be able to go source temple without having to cross the terrain and just spam teleport pyramids to avoid that fight for the stone needed to get into source temple. Only problem with OOBs is the characters can't pathfind to any point you click on unless it was generated for the OOBs area so it'll mostly be throwing pyramids to get across.

Nevermind about source temple OOBs, that scene is by itself and isn't connected to dark forest.

Death punch is pretty amazing if you can get multiple scrolls of it so you don't need to be 16 to use it.

Early game you can probably just use high strength with telekinesis with every box and barrel you find stacked on each other, when tossed at enemies it should do a crap ton of damage early on to clear out trash.

Onin

Edit history:

Onin: 2014-07-05 07:59:43 am

Onin: 2014-07-05 05:50:18 am

2014-07-05 02:30:14 am

If you want to use the Scoundrel spells (and, well, run singlesegment), you need to invest in Dex to prevent fumbles. If you're gonna go for heavy segmenting, I guess you could stock everything in strength and roll with that.

Worth noting that just running straight for the abandoned shack in phantom forest will get you to level 3, so that's how far you can get "for free". Anything higher than that requires extra quest completions.

Also gotta figure where to get any of the money you'd need for buying things. The cyseal abandoned house might be a good one. Also there's 3200 gold worth of golden plates at the Hall of Heroes.

I'm looking through all of the starting classes. Since you can pick any skills for any class, the only difference in that choice is what items you start with. Physical classes only get a corresponding weapon and maybe some stats on their gear. Casters get different scrolls:
Shadowblade: Blind
Wayfarer: Immune to Poison
Witch: Summon Undead Warrior
Wizard: Fireball
Battlemage: Fireball
Enchanter: Summon Ice Elemental

Seems to me the Enchanter scroll might be the most useful.

If you want to use the Scoundrel spells (and, well, run singlesegment), you need to invest in Dex to prevent fumbles. If you're gonna go for heavy segmenting, I guess you could stock everything in strength and roll with that.

Worth noting that just running straight for the abandoned shack in phantom forest will get you to level 3, so that's how far you can get "for free". Anything higher than that requires extra quest completions.

Also gotta figure where to get any of the money you'd need for buying things. The cyseal abandoned house might be a good one. Also there's 3200 gold worth of golden plates at the Hall of Heroes.

I'm looking through all of the starting classes. Since you can pick any skills for any class, the only difference in that choice is what items you start with. Physical classes only get a corresponding weapon and maybe some stats on their gear. Casters get different scrolls:
Shadowblade: Blind
Wayfarer: Immune to Poison
Witch: Summon Undead Warrior
Wizard: Fireball
Battlemage: Fireball
Enchanter: Summon Ice Elemental

Seems to me the Enchanter scroll might be the most useful.

ogam

Edit history:

ogam: 2014-07-05 10:09:21 am

2014-07-05 10:08:50 am

If you take a detour in dark forest towards the town to the skeleton shop keeper, you can kill him and sell off all the uniques he drops. Also get any extra experience by killing the town with heavy objects. Also paintings from the mayor's room since you get the second pyramid there also.

Onin

2014-07-05 10:16:28 am

Yeah, I don't think money will be much of an issue. So the question is really what to do with it all.

I've thought about perhaps pickpocketing the demon's rune stone but I can't test that, rushing a character down there doesn't have enough skill to pickpocket him. As for actually fighting him, it's slowly possible by teleporting him into a cage, then either killing the 4 cyclopses or teleporting them into the cage as well, while killing off the souls so you can actually damage him. Really really slow, but it'd be possible. Only problem so far is that the mage cyclops kinda wrecks me.

I tried murdering some random people in that room, the earth spirit and mysterious stranger don't drop/give anything when killed.

ogam

2014-07-05 10:47:07 am

If you bring a wine barrel with you and toss it back and forth it's 500 damage per hit, due to it's size it can hit a bunch of stuff per toss. You can get a bunch of levels killing people at hunter's edge to earn enough pickpocket.

Onin

2014-07-05 12:14:29 pm

Oh, I found a neat glitch. If you initiate a rock-paper-scissors dialogue, you can just switch to the other character, switch back, and you've automatically won. No other requirement, just tab out, tab back in, win.

GiraffeeDreams

2014-07-05 12:26:42 pm

Transatlantic Gamer

I've been eyeing up this game since I first saw it, a friend and myself will be picking it up soon so I look forward to seeing your guys runs, might even run this myself too.

Onin

2014-07-05 12:33:01 pm

I don't know how much strength you need to carry a wine barrel, but the 12 I can give a starting character isn't enough. Other barrels only do 50-60 damage per hit which isn't enough to kill anyone before they go aggro on me.

Side that, I don't really understand the throwing mechanics. I can only throw stuff just next to people, at which point it MAY connect and deal damage. Is there any way to make throwing just do consistent damage?

ogam

2014-07-05 12:43:04 pm

It's the same as teleportation it has to be really close to the target, if you stay sneaked you can hit them repeatedly without being caught. Some enemies aren't affected by thrown objects like the guy carrying the source temple door stone.

Onin

2014-07-05 02:14:37 pm

6 skills Pickpocketing isn't enough to pickpocket the demon. 14 Strength isn't enough to carry wine barrels. 5 Telekinesis is enough to move them around, but you can't pocket them.

ogam

Edit history:

ogam: 2014-07-05 02:20:38 pm

2014-07-05 02:17:19 pm

Pack mule makes it so every 1 str is 40 weight capacity vs 10. Makes a big difference, also you don't need to carry it around on the runner, leave one guy in the back somewhere then transfer it back and forth if you can't run with it if you don't want to pyramid hop.

Onin

2014-07-05 02:23:16 pm

If I can't get the wine barrel in my inventory then I can't carry it to either the demon or even eventually the void dragon. And with the experience I can grind easily (that's up to lvl 7), I can't put it in my inventory.

ogam

Edit history:

ogam: 2014-07-05 02:26:04 pm

ogam: 2014-07-05 02:25:46 pm

2014-07-05 02:24:35 pm

Ah i was able to pick it up with 4 telekinesis, just clicking on it instead of dragging into inventory.
Did a bit of memory editing to determine if we can pickpocket the demon, it requires 15 pick pocketing so that's a no go since soft cap is 5.

Onin

2014-07-05 02:28:21 pm

Well, that sucks.

If we have to end up fighting him, the easiest way to cheese him is to teleport him into the earth spirit's room, keep your party on top part of the area until all the cyclopses have been summoned, and I hope you'll be able to despawn those and then slowly beat him.

Or perhaps we'll just have to kill the fire demon guy somehow, that'd probably take a lot less effort IF it's possible.