Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Character Creation and Beginner's Tips
Here are a few tips to help you create a character you love and start the fantastic journey off on a good foot.
The first Divinity: Original Sin was a deep experience that offered players a lot of options as they fought through over 40 hours of gameplay. That hour count is not counting the likely handful of restarts as players became more familiar with gameplay mechanics and the characters they encounter, tooling away in the character creator accordingly. Thanks to some significant design changes in Divinity: Original Sin 2 and a few tips, you can jump into this fantasy world with confidence.
Character Creation and Recruitment
One of the most significant improvements to Divinity: Original Sins 2 involves creating and welcoming new characters into your group. Previously, you could certainly create whatever you wanted but the class, talents, stats, and such could potentially clash with one of the recruitable characters. When playing on higher difficulties, poor chemistry across skills and talents could spell doom for your progress and even push you to use characters you're not very fond of.
In Original Sin 2, the characters your recruit in-game give you a handful of dialogue choices once they decide to join you and you can shape them any way that you wish. While some characters may end up not getting along with each other, this freedom to mold their class and abilities gives you the opportunity to develop a well-balanced team filled with the personalities you love.
Knowing all this, create whatever you desire at the beginning of your experience. If you decide to make an undead Elf battlemage adept at thievery, it won’t be difficult at all to shape one of the characters you encounter into something that addresses your weaknesses in exploration or combat.
Be Cautious When Choosing An Undead Character
There’s a reason you’ll have to go through an additional prompt if you choose to play the game with an undead lead character. Divinity’s world is dynamic and perceptive, ever aware of your character’s appearance and actions. With that said, it’s no surprise that NPCs will react and respond to you differently if they see that you’re an undead being just meandering around like everything is fine. Thankfully, you’ll gain the ability to rip the faces off of deceased elves, dwarves, humans, or lizards. Yes...you read that correctly.
The Face Ripper is a tool that you gain early in the game and when you use it and wear the face of a specific race, you will be perceived in the world as that race. Beyond using this feature to keep from weirding out the NPCs you come across, you can use this mechanic to manipulate relationships and interactions that can be swayed by different races.
A downfall of the Undead is the fact that healing spells and potions will actually hurt your character but this segues into a couple unique benefits. If you want to recover health, poison potions and spells will heal your undead character or characters. Since you’re already dead, you’ll be able to traverse Deathfog which instantly kills living characters when they make contact with it. These elements all present additional new strategies and concerns when moving through the world and engaging in combat, but the possibilities are certainly interesting.
One final benefit of having an undead character is lock picking. Living characters will have to use the lock-picks that they’ve found or crafted but the undead will use their bony fingers. You’ll still have to raise your Thievery skill but you’ll have infinite lockpicks at your disposal.
Steal Paintings and Gold Cups...All of Them
This tip is a holdover from the first title. The world’s currency will be hard to come by earlier in the game, but you’ll regularly come across dwellings and establishments with paintings hanging on the walls or gold cups sitting around. When you do, snatch them all up. Be careful when you do so or you’ll attract attention you don’t want, but the paintings and cups will pad your pockets with a lot of money after you sell them and will help you along a great deal in your journey.
Protect The Black Cat
After the opening segment aboard a ship, you’ll wake up on the shores of Fort Joy. After wandering around a bit, you’ll notice a black cat that starts to follow you. If you have the Pet Pal ability, you’ll engage in an interesting bit of conversation with this curious creature but the key is making sure your new tagalong survives Fort Joy.
The cat will run from conflict typically and return after but, if you pass by a group of mean Magisters in the Fort Joy area, they will loose an arrow and take the cat out without a 2nd thought.
If the cat survives your trip and you speak to it outside of Fort Joy, however, you’ll receive the Summon Cat Familiar ability. This new trick will give you some added maneuverability around battlegrounds. The cat will move around as if part of the squad and has the ability to jump to destination points deftly. After doing so, it has another ability that allows the familiar to switch places with its master and give you a potential strategic leg up in the conflict. Even if you don't want to summon the cat and put it in harm's way, at least you can continue forward knowing you saved it from the perils of Fort Joy.
