Larian Studios Forums Divinity II The Dragon Knight Saga / Flames of Vengeance (English) Divinity II - The Dragon Knight Saga Walkthrough for Maximum Value? [SPOILERS]

While there are a lot of walkthroughs for DKS, most of them seem to be along the lines of "do this if you want this, do this if you want this", especially when it comes to the choice of the servants for the dragon tower.

I am convinced there is an optimal path through this game. That is: Not only discovering all the secrets, but also choosing your skills in the optimal way, facing all the enemies at exactly the right level, choosing the right servants, mindreading only when necessary, and making all the quest choices such that they provide maximum benefit with regard to experience- and skill points.

So in this thread, I'd like to work out, together with you, that optimal route through the game. I hope we can create some kind of ultimate walkthrough this way: Rather than just telling where everything is, it should contain the perfect order in which to do all these things.

The focus is on the optimal sequencing; for the details on which action leads to which possible result, there are already plenty of other sources.

Consequently, this thread will be full of spoilers, so probably not something you'll want to look at when playing Ego Draconis / Flames of Vengeance for the very first time ;) .



Here's what I have so far:


Farglow
- Kill all the bunnies you can find.
- Mindread Edmund, Sarah, and Gerald before going into the arena for the first time. Gerald lowers his prices.
- Give Gerald the book Sarah's thoughts told you he wants to make him lower his prices a second time. Only now start buying weapons and/or potions.
- Start as a wizard, but pick a bow as your primary weapon. Most enemies you encounter at the beginning can only engage in melee combat, but do a lot of damage this way, so it's best to keep the distance.
- Go into the arena. If you did everything in this order so far, you will only have to fight the goblins once.
- Take Edmund's key from the fireplace and jump up the rocks to collect the skill book. Invest the skill point into picking locks.
- Now you can open both chests in the village and buy as many potions from Gerald as possible before you leave.

Now, since to my knowledge, the amount of experience you gain from combat is determined based on your level relative to that of the enemy, when in doubt it's better to kill enemies first and complete quests later.

Broken Valley
- Kill the boars and goblins along the road to the farm.
- Pull the lever where Max is, and mark on the map that you did so.
- Find the shrine at the chapel.
- Go into the small cave with the goblins, which are all around level 1 or 2. Make sure you kill these before doing any of the quests in the village. You can save Quentin while on the way.
- Prioritize picking locks as a skill whenever leveling up, so you don't miss any of the chests.

Village
- In the tavern: Get the quest from either Tim or Elsa. Chase away the soldiers, but don't betray them to the Lieutenant, so they will tell you about his secret lair later. Now, talk to Stan and Ollie; they tell you about the key to the miller's cellar.
- Mindread Locke to make him lower his prices, and get the money from Kunrath before buying from Locke for the first time. You can still get the password to his cart by mindreading it.
- As soon as your lockpicking skills are high enough to access all the rooms, go looking for Tim's series of books. Mindread him to gain access to his purse hidden in the bushes next to the church.
- Do not mindread Robin yet; 400 XP is a lot at this early stage, wait till you actually get to his lair. With the deserter, you're best-served with blackmailing him into giving you his gauntlets and not betraying him to Richard.
- Richard: Mindread him before giving him the first goblin heart, so you don't miss out on any money. Talk to him and Folo to gain both quests for the farm.
- The mill: You can mindread the soldier at the door if you want his mace (it's not really worth it, though). Is it necessary to mindread Linda to make her purse visible, or can it already be found in the church anyway? Whether you should keep the gold or give it to her and gain experience is up to what you're in greater need of at that point. Do not mindread the miller, it's not necessary. Just take the key from the cauldron, go down to the cellar, talk to Abanayabar, and then to the miller and to Linda to gain the assassin quest. Once again, you can postpone mindreading Abanayabar until you actually get to Buad's lair.
- The farm: Make sure to get Dana's letter and bring it to Derk, plus mindreading him, before you buy anything from him. Do not mindread Dana, it is not necessary to find the key inside Karl's home. Also, make sure Dana runs away to Derk before you deal with Karl, so that Derk can actually be thankful to you for it.
- Now go into Karl's cellar. Once you find his diary, it will probably give you more experience to kill Karl, rather than turning him over to the guard, since the quest can be completed either way.
- Both in Karl's and in Derk's cellar, there are chests which you may not be able to open yet, so leave a mark here for you to come back later.
- Mindread Lomax to chase him and his troops away, then talk to the pig Kevin and tell Max he can steal the grain.
- The barracks: Do not mindread Martis, and definitely do not ever tell the location and the password of the bandit camp to the Lieutenant. That guy really seems to be a quest-destroyer on legs! :) Get the bandit quests from the captain; go upstairs, find out about Ludwig's lair from the seekers, and climb to the top of the tower to get Pawel arrested.
- The merchant: Mindread him so you can buy the two malachite gems cheaper once you have enough gold.
- Talk to the priest to hear the information about Lovis and about the sight of the dragon. Talk to Folo's wife to find out the location of the assassins.
- Go out and kill the goblin tribes in the small part of the valley, including Hjalmar.
- Fight the assassin at the chapel to enable the encounter with the other assassin in the mill.
- Go up to the cave with Naberius and dispose of his skeleton guards.
- Now on the way back, you should also be ready to deal with the skeletons in Karl's dungeon where he hid Berold's dead body. Make sure to find the button at the last stone wall to get into the room behind.
- Return to the village, go into Ludwig's lair and deal with the skeletons. Then go into the mill and deal with Antumbra the assassin.
- Go back to the chapel and save Martis from his cell. He will tell you the password, but once again, do not tell it to the Lieutenant!
- Return to the village and tell Rhode about the whereabout of the dragon; go into the church and face the ghost of Lord Arben, so that you can proceed into the bigger part of Broken Valley.

To be continued...

I would say mindreads should be first, then combat, then completing quests. Going into XP debt means it takes longer to level, so you can get an XP bonus from combat (with higher level opponents) slightly longer.

With David, I didn't find his gloves to be that great. If you just suggest that you are planning to turn him in a couple times, you can get him to run away, and then later meet him to the far south west in Broken Valley (mountain path to the fjords), at which point he can be mindread for a stat point.

Linda's purse is only in the church after mindreading.

If you refuse Richard's second quest, he will head to the farm himself; going there and siding with Lomaxm, in the conversation with him afterwards (assuming he survives), you can mindread for a stat point. The quest experience early may be of more benefit, since this would need to be delayed until most of Broken Valley has been explored, so you can turn in all found goblin hearts.



Quoting myself from the topic Who's playing DKS on nightmare difficulty ?:

Great tipps, thanks a lot! I'ver never thought about XP debt as being beneficial that way!

Also, I never knew about the option of opposing Richard - because it just feels counter-intuitive to waste a quest there. I guess there isn't any way to complete the Goblin heart quest, anyway? Meaning either you kill Richard while siding with Lomax, or he is captured (and probably killed) later on when Damian pillages Broken Valley?

With regard to David running away... yeah, I think I did that one time, and met him again by accident... don't remember whether I mindread him, though .

With all that in mind, I'm going to start working my way through the larger Broken Valley again now... probably headed for the bandit camp first. I'll have to figure out the ideal time to face the Killer Bunny. And when all is said and done, I always run into the Orobas Fjords as a "pedestrian" and try to go as far as possible. Usually that journey ends down at the beach, but theoretically it's possible to go into the cave of the Patriarch, too.

Of course, in DC one could also switch to dragon form ahead of time and do the entire rest of the Fjords... but I'm talking about regular, non-cheating ways here . Since the Patriarch cave is difficult enough after Sentinel Island already, I doubt that attempt will be successful, least of all on the Nightmare rank... but on the other hand, should it work on Nightmare, then it should work on all difficulties.

It would be worth a try to level high enough to face the two dudes in the mine tower already before becoming a dragon... don't know if that's even possible or if anyone has ever done that before. But as I said, if the story itself doesn't offer new possible outcomes, one needs some goals for replaying, right?

Goblin hearts can only be turned in to Richard in Broken Valley. This will close the quest (or changes the colour, anyway), but they next heart collected (in Broken Valley) will open it again. If the quest is opened when Richard is no longer available, it can not be completed.

The killer bunny is level 22, so the maximum experience bonus you can get is at level 19 or below, with lower levels giving potentially lesser loot.

With my ranger character in DKS, I headed to the fjords at level 13; clearing just past the teleporter brought me to 14, I hit 15 part way down, and the first 2 opponents on the opposite beach when I got to the bottom got me to 16.
After that I went back to Broken Valley to go through the Temple of Doom (bandit camp) and Maxos Temple, then (on level 17) returned to the fjords, and got to level 18 after swimming over to the beach near the anti=dragon defences. Clearing the path past the depleted ore mine brought me to level 19, at which point went to go kill the last rabbit I needed to trigger the killer bunny.
The first level of the mine brought me up to level 20, and the remainder almost got me to level 21. I leveled after the first 2 opponents in the waterfall/Patriarch cave, and got half way to level 22 finishing off the accessible areas of the cave. Since I could not reach level 23 by turning in quests, I reloaded the save outside the waterfall, and (after turning in all quests to check experience in the level 21 save) figured out which quests to turn in to just reach level 22 after re-clearing the caves, to get the most experience possible with the first mindread on Sentinel Island.

In the original release of D2:ED you could get into the mining tower early. In DKS and D2:DC, the tower is locked until after you become a dragon knight.

Wow, great to know, Raze! Now you've made me ambitious to try this!

Overall though, it's debatable whether this approach is useful when it comes to getting the highest amount of experience possible across the whole game. After all, the entirety of Sentinel Island must have been a cakewalk for you then, so you will barely get any experience from the Dragon Elves, not even from fighting Laiken, I guess.

But I stopped my "walkthrough" at the beginning of the larger part of Broken Valley, so let me continue there first:

Generally, there are four types of enemies you encounter here:
- black goblins (level 7)
- skeletons (level 8)
- bandits (levels 9-10)
- members of the Black Ring (levels 10-11)

The "heroic" black goblins are a special case, you only meet them in two places really, one of which is only accessible once you've cleared the entirety of Broken Valley anyway - they are levels 11-13.

So ideally, you'll want to take care of all the black goblins first, then of all the skeletons, then the bandits, and then the Black Ring.

The problem however is that these types of enemies aren't really spread across the valley in that convenient order. For example, you'll have to get past a couple of skeletons to get on the West side of Lovis's tower, where you'll meet further black goblins.

There's a similar issue with Bellegar's shrines, because some of them are surrounded by bandits and Black Ring members, but depending on in which order you find them, the enemies you'll face within the shrine are going to be much weaker.

Finally, certain foes are quite easy to handle despite their high levels. Trolls for example are a complete joke if you only use range attacks (magic / bows). Demons can at least shoot some magical projectiles, but if they are the only enemy you are facing, it's easy to evade them. There are also some human enemies - like bandits, or the merchants at the south road - who are around level 10, but easy to handle at a distance.

So theoretically, you'd have to run past the higher level enemies without engaging in combat with them to make sure you take care of the weaker ones first .

I'll have to make up my mind about this again, I'm just pretty sure you should start with the goblins at the waterfall and clear a path up to the shrine of the goblin tribe next to Lovis's tower. But then, I went on to clear the road to the bandit camp, despite the bandits being level 9 and 10, rather than going into Lovis's tower with the level 8 skeletons first. The problem with skeletons is that they usually appear in higher quantities, making them harder to fight than bandits despite their lower levels.