Pick an Origin Story
Divinity: Original Sin 2 Beginner’s Tips
New in Divinity: Original Sin 2 is the ability to pick an Origin Story for your character. You can still create a custom character of your own, but trust me, the Origins are a lot more interesting, and open up a bunch of dialogue options for you in many conversations. These Origin Stories will give your characters a special backstory, and add a new layer of depth to them as they all have their own individual motivations and personal quests to pursue. These Origins also shape your character’s personality, and when you interact with other NPCs in the world, you’ll sometimes have access to Origin-specific dialogue options that might offer you an alternate way of getting a quest done or just getting an NPC to react to you differently.
Origin Stories will also affect how other NPCs behave around you, and this makes party management that much more engaging.
And, just a tip: while being an Undead does sound pretty cool, I recommend staying away from that race if you’re not foo familiar with CRPGs. The game becomes quite different playing as an Undead, not to mention the fact that healing spells and restoration items won’t work on you.
Look for the Other Origin Characters
Divinity: Original Sin 2 Beginner’s Tips
Once you’ve picked an Origin Story, the Origins that you didn’t pick will become available as party members in the world that are available for recruitment. While you won’t have access to their personal quests, you can still recruit them and control them if you wish. Once you’ve located all of the Origin characters available in the game, make sure to talk to every NPC in the game to see how they react to your different party members. Some Origin characters might be better equipped to persuade a stubborn NPC than your own character is, so I advise swapping between them every now and then.
Having all these characters with differing personalities in one party can also create conflict, so make sure you manage their needs and priorities accordingly while you’re adventuring in Divinity: Original Sin 2.
You can only have a total of four characters in your party as well, but don’t be afraid to leave someone behind if you need to make room for a mage or some other class that you don’t already have.
Make Sure Everyone Invests in Different Skills
Divinity: Original Sin 2 Beginner’s Tips
This is a pretty basic tip, but it’s one that’s worth repeating again. When leveling up your characters and choosing different traits for them, make sure that every character in your party specializes in a different area. For instance, you’ll want to have someone focusing on the Loremaster trait, and another character focusing on persuasion, bartering, and speech skills. This will make your party a lot more efficient, and well-rounded. When you come across hard-headed NPCs that refuse to budge, consider backing out of the conversation and letting a more charming party member do the talking instead. You might yield better results this way.
In terms of combat, Divinity: Original Sin 2 is pretty forgiving in the sense that every character takes on a different battle class, so you’ll definitely be able to hold your own when it comes to utilizing different abilities to deal with your foes.
Watch Your Positioning and Use the Environment
Divinity: Original Sin 2 Beginner’s Tips
When engaging your enemies in battle, make sure to space out your characters so that AoE attacks won’t damage your entire party in one go. You’ll want to keep an eye out for explosive barrels and nearby bodies of water too. A frozen ally should be moved somewhere warm immediately, as putting them near water will only slow down their recovery process. When using an AoE attack of your own, make sure that your allies aren’t in the way of your move either. Try luring your enemies towards you and into traps whenever you can; your abilities have cooldown periods, so it might be more efficient to use environmental hazards to damage your foes instead of wasting all your abilities on them.
You can get a teleportation glove fairly early on in the game by beating some crocodiles off the coast of Fort Joy. Use the spell to teleport your enemies down to where you can hit them, or place them in a pit of fire.
Also, remember that characters perched on higher ground will be harder to hit, so this might be a good tactic to keep in mind when you’re trying to decide on where to place your mages and archers. If a battle proves too much for you to handle, don’t forget that you always have the option to flee.
Talk to Everyone, Click on Everything
Divinity: Original Sin 2 Beginner’s Tips
In order to make progress in your quests in Divinity: Original Sin 2, make sure you talk to as many people as you can in the game. A lot of times, you might get unique story hints just from listening in on an errant conversation between two warriors at a campfire. If you see any dialogue lines popping up near you, be sure to head over there and interact with the NPCs around as well. You won’t always get hints on how to progress in the main quest, but you just might unlock brand new side quests that you can embark on.
While you’re at it, you’ll also want to click on every single object in the game. If you have a shovel with you, you might stumble upon areas with hidden paths, or even hidden treasure holes. Loot everything in the game, and sell all your valuable goods. You can also press and hold the left Alt button to see all available items in your vicinity.
Quick Save
Divinity: Original Sin 2 Beginner’s Tips
It’s very easy to screw up an optional quest because of something you said. There will be multiple ways of completing quests, so there’s no need to fear even if you piss off an NPC by accident. However, if you’re afraid of making people angry, don’t forget that you can quick save by hitting F5 on your keyboard. That way, you can reload your previous save quickly if you happen to screw something up.
I also recommend quick saving each time before you enter a battle. If you’re playing on Classic mode, battles can be pretty unforgiving, and you don’t want to end up losing minutes of valuable story progress because you messed up a battle position or something.