Essential Tips and Tricks - Divinity: Original Sin Guide - IGN (2024)

Some aspects of Divinity: Original Sin are either not explained, explained poorly, or simply hidden. This page is a living page seeking to provide a litany of tips to get the most out of your experience. Feel free to submit your own that are not covered elsewhere on the wiki!

The tips presented here may be limited in usefulness, depending on what kind of party you have. However, they're all something to keep in mind when playing.

Early Gameplay

Restarting is Natural

You will most likely screw up your first two characters. This is not a bad thing.

At its core, Divinity: Original Sin is a bit of a sandbox that encourages experimentation to see what the engine is capable of. As such, while you might start off with a particular game plan, it's likely that you'll back yourself into a corner pretty early. Don't hesitate to restart if you think a different set of Source Hunters would better serve you.

Of note, you'll be fighting a lot of undead in the first few hours. Zombies are strong against all melee, and skeletons are strong against bladed melee. If one (or both) of your first characters prefers swords, you will be at a disadvantage from the outset, and the game will feel more difficult as a result. However, once the undead threat is over with, the game is a bit more balanced, and your swordsmen will start to feel their true power. You should roll up your first two characters with that in mind: do you want to slaughter the undead really easily, or will you go for a more long-term solution while understanding that the game will be pretty tough to start as a result?

Strapped For Cash

There is very, very little money to be had early on in the game. This is not indicative of Divinity: Original Sin as a whole. Eventually, you'll pretty much be bleeding treasure, especially if you do all the quests and explore everywhere.

Those early hours will be pretty tough however. Most players generally take a dark side approach: it's ridiculously easy to steal in this game, and you can even sell stolen items back to their original owners without penalty. There is no morality meter, so stealing and fencing your goods is only profitable for you, assuming you're not caught in the act..

It is possible to get away with not stealing, and playing the game as a metaphorical white knight. Many players do it just for the challenge, while others do it to role-play. Whatever you reason, it's perfectly fine to avoid stealing and just play the game “straight.” However, you will also make things far more challenging for yourself.

If you do decide to steal, note that paintings of all kinds are incredibly valuable, and there are a ton of them in Cyseal.

General Gameplay

Save Early, Save Often

It's a motto that gamers have been familiar with for decades, and Divinity: Original Sin really makes you work with it. Depending on your options in the menu, you can have rolling quick saves (default is five), rather than being limited to just one. Quick loading loads your most recent quick save, but the others stay on call for manual loading.

As a result, this is the best tip we can give, so important that we'll bold it:

Quick save the instant every single battle starts, no matter how minor it seems; quick save immediately after every battle where you like the results no matter how minor it seems.

Battles can occur anywhere, sometimes when you least expect them too. It's entirely too common to have a simple fight, let your guard down, and suddenly get destroyed a moment later. If you run through the tutorial dungeon in Part 1, you might feel a false sense of security in how the battles generally go. It's never that easy again.

Further, battles don't always go the same way. There is a rather liberal random number generator at work, and quick loading a lost cause of a battle will sometimes be enough to give you a different edge. If nothing else, getting obliterated in a fight might lead you to see openings in the environment you didn't see before.

Attributes and Abilities Level Up Differently

One of the most confusing aspects of Divinity: Original Sin is how to level up properly. There is no information in-game on it; it's just trial and error. We're here to minimize your error.

The most blatantly oddity in the rules of the game come from leveling up. When you gain a level, you gain one point each to put into Attributes and Abilities. Your Attributes are things like Strength and Dexterity, which determine the base damage or defense you do. Every level of each Attribute costs exactly one point.

Abilities are things like how good you are at using a particular weapon. Leveling up Abilities make you do more damage with a particular thing, and it makes advanced Skills in that category cost fewer action points, making them more efficient. However, leveling up Abilities is far more expensive than leveling up Attributes: it costs as many points to level as that level represents.

That means in order to go from 0 to 1 in any ability, it costs 1 Ability Point. To go from 1 to 2 in an ability, it costs 2 more Ability Points, for a total of 3. To go from 2 to 3, it costs 3 Ability Points, for a total of 6.

You don't have to spend any points when you level. (You don't even have to spend your Attribute Point right away, although there is no reason to hold off.) That means there will be many times where you'll want to save up your Ability Point for the next level up. If you make a front-line swordsman (like if you're using the Knight Preset Class), and you're making him a tank, you'll want to save up his first few Ability Points so you can spend them on making him an Armor Specialist. Putting those points elsewhere is just a waste unless you have a specific plan.

Always think ahead when leveling up. At the end-game, specialists will be more valuable than jacks-of-all-trades.

Enemy Strength Is Static

All enemies in Divinity: Original Sin have a specific level and specific strength. This means that it's possible for your party to advance a little too quickly and run into enemies that are too strong, thus telling you that you shouldn't be at that area yet. Conversely, it's possible that if you missed a dungeon once and find it later, you'll be able to run through it with impunity.

As such, the game isn't exactly open world. It's designed that you take certain objectives in a relatively specific order. There is some wiggle room, but if an area just seems too strong for you, it's likely that you shouldn't be there yet. Explore elsewhere first.

For the most part, if you are on the same level as the enemies, you should be able to defeat them. If you're even one level down, you'll be in for a serious challenge. If you're more than one level down, you'll probably get destroyed no matter what tactics you try.

Immediately Win Any RPS Game

When characters need to debate, they will trigger a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors. Generally winning either gives better rewards, or allows you to complete a quest a different way.

Your character's negotiation skill depends on his Abilities, Traits, and bonuses. However, there's a way to completely cheat the system and “win” the debate without any effort. When the window comes up to play, press right bracket ( ] ) to change to your next character, then press left bracket ( [ ) to change back. That instantly wins the RPS game with no repercussions.

Stay Well Fed

Food is cheap, and good meals will increase your Attributes. Sure, food effects are temporary, but any boost is a good boost, especially given the difficulty level of the battles.

All characters can cook without any additional Abilities. Consult the Food Recipes page to see some of the available meals you can make!

Quest Confusion

It's possible to take a quest that does not have a solution until much later. Our Walkthrough will attempt to mitigate confusion as much as possible, but it is a work in progress. Sometimes, a quest will simply be impossible to complete for a while, and there is never a guarantee that you'll be able to finish it in your current area.

Unlike other role-playing games, quest items are not necessarily out in the open or signaled overtly. Some may be in bookshelves or in chests, others may be in an otherwise innocuous place. (In the tutorial dungeon, you'll find a locked chest, and the key for it is in a nearby vase that just looks like all the other vases in the level.) When on a quest, the journal will give you a general idea where to look, but you may need to search through every container in the area to find it.

Being Bad for Fun and Profit

Murdering an NPC allows you to take all of his possessions, even if you had bartered with him previously. You can attack anyone by holding CTRL and left-clicking your target, though attacking a friendly in the middle of town is ill-advised. Also, it's possible to kill a quest-giver and shut down the quest entirely.

A middle solution if you don't mind being a little bad is to steal. Characters are generally aware of everything that's going on their homes unless they are speaking. A common tactic is to have one Source Hunter start a conversation with a mark, then take control of the other Source Hunter. Have the second one start sneaking, and you'll see most of the world go grayscale, except for a cone of color in the eyesight of the target. See the screenshot below.

Have the second Source Hunter loot the house or perform a pickpocket. As long as you stay in the area with washed out colors, you will not be caught!

NPCs cannot detect stolen items. It's entirely possible to steal an item and sell it right back to the person you stole it from. Paintings are especially useful early in the game, especially considering their value-to-weight ratio.

Ice Walk

Characters slip often on ice, which becomes a real pain when you discover an ice-themed area. To avoid slipping out of combat, you'll need to walk. There is no dedicated button to do so, but if you move by holding the left mouse button while the cursor is near your character, he or she will walk rather than run.

In combat, if a character (whether that's you or the enemy) walks on ice, there is always a chance he will slip and fall, making himself vulnerable (with a 100% chance of being hit until he gets back up), and forfeiting the rest of his turn. You can create ice by finding water (or creating it), then casting a Chill spell on the puddle.

If you're forced to deal with the ice, you can always cast a fire spell of some kind to melt it.

bring a stack of candles

Sheathe Weapons

By pressing Tab, you can draw or sheathe your weapon. Generally, only the character under your direct control have have his weapon out outside of combat. Be sure to sheathe your weapon when you want to talk to someone, or you'll take a hit to their disposition to you.

Interface Tips

Character Inventory Management

Right-clicking a party member portrait brings up his or her inventory screen. These screens can be dragged around, and multiple inventories can be open at once. This can be useful when you need to give items from one member to another, because click-dragging an item out of an inventory onto the character himself on the game world usually results in a “There's no room” message. This is referring to the fact that the game thinks you're trying to place the item on the ground, rather than giving it away, and it can't finish that command since there is a person standing there.

Instead, either drag the item from one inventory window to another, or drag the item from an inventory window onto the portrait of whoever you want to receive it.

Also note that during the bartering process, only one character will receive the items being bartered, and only the character who initiated it gets to compare gear stats. If a vendor has equipment that different characters may benefit from (say, he carries a Bow that works for one character and a Sword for another), you may want to barter twice (once with each character) just to make sure the characters will benefit from the trade.

Items Aplenty

Holding down the ALT key will create tool tip boxes for every item that is on the ground. You'll want to use this often to make sure you pick up every piece of loot, especially in a crowded area.

Crafting

Generally in order to craft an item, open your inventory, then just drag one ingredient onto another. Some simple recipes include:

• Empty Potion Bottle + Penny Bun Mushroom = Healing Potion
• Empty Potion Bottle + Fly Agaric Mushroom = Poison
• Branch + Knife = Arrow Shaft
• Arrow Shaft + Poison = Poison Arrow
• Nine Inch Nails + Hammer = Lockpick

As the Poison Arrow above shows, it's common for crafted ingredients to be further crafted into more useful items. Arrow shafts can be combined with a wide variety of elemental items to create elemental arrows.

For more information on crafting, please see our page.

Tactical Camera

By default, the Tactical Camera is toggled by pressing the B key. This moves the camera to a top-down perspective, essentially turning the game into two dimensions. This is incredibly helpful when you need to carefully walk around poison or fire, or even out of combat when you can't quite grasp the perspective of a cluttered room.

Map Notes

Pressing M brings up your map. You can then set a map note (denoted by a red flag) by double-clicking any area of the map, allowing you to mark areas for whatever reason you wish. Useful if you're just randomly exploring, but encounter an area too strong for you, allowing you to quickly find it later once you've leveled up sufficiently.

This is incredibly useful for buildings especially. Most buildings get automatic marks on your map only after you walk inside them. Some don't, and others you might want to mark before you can enter them. You can make as many map notes as you want.

Hot Bars

Characters have multiple hot bars that can be swapped with small arrow buttons near them, or hot keyed with F and R.