Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks best starter party?

Hello, I ve just started the game and already regret the classes I give to my characters. I want to do the classic tank+mage+assassin+healer, and wanted to know which classes are the best in each area. Also I would like to know if later I can change the classes (to avoid starting all over again), and if I ll lose experience or something on doing that. Thanks!

Don't go tank + healer, doesn't work in this game.

I suggest:

Dwarf 2H melee, Elf shadowblade (because of the flesh sacrifice + skin graft + adrenaline synergy), Human wayfarer, Lizard summoner + air / hydro support

Do the following with your civil abilities:

Dwarf gets lucky charm
Elf gets thievery (max this out at all costs - add the "All Skilled Up"-talent at level 3, to get it as high as possible early, otherwise the first act will be very jolty because of constant lack of gold!)
Human gets bartering
Lizard gets persuasion (PLUS pet pal) - you'll know why I suggest this soon

One of your characters MUST have the "scholar" tag, if you have the Red Prince in your party you're doing fine.

Use the "FortJoyRespec" mod, too. And remove it as soon as you have setup your party properly. Reason being that the companion class presets are... well... lets say they are just bad.

Also:

* Don't kill ANY trader in the Joy until you have bought / stole everything from them which they get at level 4 (especially: don't let this teleporter guy leave too early, he is the only early game Aerothurge trader)

* Get 2 points into polymorph for all your characters asap

* Every character needs - NEEDS - one movement skill, because combat in this game is a lot about controlling the battlefield

In addition to the above:

Tanks would require skills to reliably taunt enemies with, and these don't exist in this game.
Healer alone is worthless. If you want, make a healer / supporter / disabler type magician.

Incarnates are good, up to the endgame, so taking summoning early with at least one character will help you immensely.

As it was said before, make sure that everyone has some form of fast movement (tactical retreat and spread your wings are available at lvl 4 in Fort Joy, the rest comes later)

I prefer taking Aero 2 with all my characters regardless of other skills, for Teleportartion, Uncanny Evasion, Nether Swap (the latter IIRC is not immediately available at lvl 4)

Make sure all characters have a way to CC enemies after they have been stripped off physical / magical armor. There are several magic spells, warfare skills, scoundrel skills etc. for this. Craft / buy / steal knockdown arrows for your archers, these are the most important special arrows in the game. Give any archer type character some shocking / charming arrows for the rare occasions where they have to deal with a no magic armor enemy.

The nicest early cc skills are Battle Stomp, Battle Ram, Chicken Claw for enemies w/o physical and Fossil Strike and chloroform for enemies w/o magical armor. Fossil Strike is good in general because oil will slow enemies no matter what.

Physical damage dealers will be superior in this game on the long run, because of generic weapon damage and elemental resistances. To be honest, I'd go with three archers and a summoner / melee type character as an initial setup, steal enough stuff to set them up (items boosting warfare and aero, also summoning on my summoner).

Unless you use mods, be prepared to return to the traders every hour. Stealing helps immensely early game, however you can only rob every character just once. So get Thievery to at least 3 before starting to steal. Either take thievery with your main character or take along Fane (if you're not using mods: the shadowblade class will start with thievery).

Bartering and bribing traders is also very helpful. Ifan or Lohse can be your barterer (there are a number of classes that come with this skill - e.g. warrior, cleric, wayfarer).

You will be able to respec later on as often as you want, with all characters at no cost and no penalties, but the early game might be tricky at first on a higher difficulty.

Because of the physical and magical armor in the game there are two ways in my opinion to create a party if you don't like it too harsh: let all do the same damage or make it two+two. There is no dedicated healer in the game, I propose healing abilities on all or most of your chars.

To use cc and to damage health you need to get rid of the armor as fast as possible. It does not make the biggest sense to apply both physical and magical damage to the same target. If you are pure damage, it's straight, if you are two+two apply the according damage to the target with the weaker armor. Melee enemies usually have weak magical armor, mages have weak physical and archers are in between.

I don't like mages, in all of my games, so it was easy and natural for me to go all physical, I did it without a thought. My group in the beginning was cleric (main), twohanded warrior, ranger and summoner. I have the rule to only have the teleport ability on one of my group members (so I never skilled Aerotheurge), with more teleport it gets a lot easier.
You can also go all magical damage, you then are better in aoe damage but weaker in single target damage.

In the first act the path of leveling for me is the most important, not the class and not so much the items. You have to be on par in level with the enemies. And difficulty matters, I propose to start with Classic and go to Tactician only after the 1st act.

To the items/skills: level 4 is a magical number. New skillbooks appear at the vendors. At level 4 was one of the two times in the game that I used pickpocket because the higher skillbooks are really expensive. And you need them.

BTW I never killed a vendor or civilian and had no problems with leveling, there is enough xp around. Don't hesitate to look into a walkthrough if you feel stuck.

Its possible to go with a tank like character. Maybe not exactly in the traditional way but its definately viable. 1h+shield with warfare skills like knockdowns, cripple, provoke, shield throw (does okish damage) and armor restores/providers from geo + whatever that armor explosion skill is called. Positioning is the key to use tank and to have that provoke ready when needed. Using a "tank" is maybe not the most efficient way to play the game but it is most definately viable in any difficulty.

Also, if you do decide to go with tank character you should probably go pure phys group to really get advantage using all that knockdown and such. If you want to still use int focused character you can do int necro with warfare and make him tankish too. The rest of the characters you can spec into dw daggers (scoundrel) and whatever you want for the last spot.

Cleric Necromancer seems viable as a healer tank. Living armor talent plus shield. Necromancer skills are very strong with warfare combo. Not so far in to the game so far but Beast dark cleric is, well, beast mode.

Add physical damage dealers like ranger and rogue to strip physical defence from casters. Geo pyro mage to strip magic defence.

[quote=Firesong]Don't go tank + healer, doesn't work in this game.

I suggest:

Dwarf 2H melee, Elf shadowblade (because of the flesh sacrifice + skin graft + adrenaline synergy), Human wayfarer, Lizard summoner + air / hydro support
[/quote]Why a dwarf ? Isn't their abilit resisted by magic?

Yes, but they also get 10% extra health and 10% extra dodge chance, which is good for a melee build.

Contrary to the above I would suggest using dwarf as your dual wielding rogue due to dodge bonus and stack up on dual wielding skill and items for high dodge total dodge. Elf as necromancer due to racial ability flesh sacrifice makes for an easy way to leverage the elemental affinity talent. Elf as archer due to above reason leveraging elemental ranger.