How the War was Won and Where It Got Us

I just finished reading "How the War was Won" by Phillips Payson O'Brien. I think I first heard about this during an interview with Paul Krugman, and was sufficiently motivated to pick it up. The book's main thesis is that World War 2 was primarily won by the US and the UK applying overwhelming naval and air power, and not so much as a result of large land battles. The book ended up being more technical and less narrative than I expected: there are a lot of tables and charts, and long paragraphs in which O'Brien rattles off facts like the numbers and prices of pieces of equipment produced by different countries in various years. I'm not complaining: the book is really good, just written a bit differently than I was expecting.

 

I do appreciate when he tells illustrative stories, which are a smaller part of the book but placed well and generally help reinforce the data-based arguments he primarily focuses on. One example is Saburō Sakai, a very talented Japanese pilot who was wounded in combat, redirected to training new pilots, pressed back into service due to a shortage of experienced pilots, and tried to lead a squadron from the home islands into combat. Bad weather, training and equipment kept them from making it in time for the battle, and many planes were lost along the way. This neatly lines up with O'Brien's arguments about the danger of deployment and the loss of material: throughout the war, and increasingly as it went on, far more equipment was destroyed off the battlefield than on the battlefield.

I think the author is writing to people towards the upper side of the Dunning-Kruger curve, while I'm to the left of that. As an American who has a middling grasp of World War 2 from secondary school and erratic reading as an adult, I tend to associate the war with events like Pearl Harbor, D-Day and Hiroshima. O'Brien isn't so much writing to me: he's writing to address fellow professional historians, who have the view that WW2 was largely decided by fighting on the Eastern Front, particularly battles like Stalingrad and Kursk that caused massive casualties for Germany and the Soviet Union. O'Brien spends quite a bit of time at the start of the book summarizing the arguments and citing experts who disagree with his thesis, which I actually hugely appreciated, as I was personally not very familiar with the dominant thinking. I've read other books (Erik Loomins's "A History of America in Ten Strikes" comes to mind) where I feel like I've wandered into the middle of a long-running argument and I have no idea what people are talking about or why.

It seems like the push for massive investment in air power was mostly driven by the political leaders of the countries (Roosevelt, Churchill, Hitler) and not so much the military establishment, which I thought was interesting, and does line up with other things I've read like Erik Larson's "The Splendid and the Vile." It also makes me think a little of Abraham Lincoln, who didn't have a military background but studied military topics thoroughly and ended up with a better understanding of strategy than many of his generals. Part of this may be the tendency of militaries to fight the last war, applying the lessons of the past instead of anticipating the effects of more recent technological advances. I got the impression from this book that generals and admirals didn't necessarily disbelieve the power of air, but it took outside political pressure to take resources away from existing services and put them towards the new ones. (Of course, many would say that the Air Force learned this lesson too well!)

A crystallizing statement O'Brien makes is something like "The United Kingdom essentially traded expensive equipment for human lives." Throughout the war, the UK lost something like 47,000 members of the RAF, either during offensive and defensive missions or when being targeted by the Luftwaffe. That 47,000 sounds like a huge number, but it was fewer men than the UK lost in the first two days of the Battle of the Somme in World War 1. The UK was fighting for survival: not in the abstract sense of remaining an independent political entity, but in the literal sense of letting the human beings on that island continue to live past the war. So, by building expensive airplanes and bombing factories making tanks, the UK ensured that those tanks wouldn't face British soldiers on the battlefield. Likewise for the US, many pilots and sailors lost their lives attacking merchant shipping in the Pacific, but one result of that was that only a handful of Japanese tanks made it to the Philippines, and most of those were bombed before their first combat, so when American ground troops did land they had a much easier time fighting than they would have otherwise.

I was surprised to learn that Germany had about as many civilians working on aircraft construction as the US did. But Germany produced far fewer planes, mostly because of the hostile conditions generated by the RAF. Germany had to disperse its factories into smaller installations scattered throughout the Reich so any single bombing run would be less catastrophic; later, they moved factories into caves and even hollowed-out mountains. That let production continue, but much more slowly, and less reliably, with far more flaws in the finished aircraft. In contrast, America could build huge, sprawling industrial complexes, organized rationally and optimized for speed, without any concern about the defensibility of their factories.

O'Brien acknowledges that there were many acts of heroism in WW2, but also argues that heroism didn't win the war: the fact that the Allies were able to out-build and out-deploy the Axis won the war. Another crystallizing nugget for me: the Battle of Midway was one of the most consequential engagements of the Pacific Theater, with about 250 Japanese planes destroyed during this battle. And yet, at this time Japan was building approximately 100 planes each day, so this great battle only set them back by about three days. What made far more of an impact were the planes that America denied Japan from even constructing in the first place: by destroying shipments of bauxite and oil while being shipped on the seas, by bombing factories that were assembling planes, by picking off finished planes while they were deploying en route to their forward operating bases. These actions were less exciting and heroic than Midway, but had a far bigger impact in defeating Japan.

For most of the first part of the book O'Brien is persuasive in arguing for the importance of equipment, but he does not look at alternative arguments, about the importance of territory and manpower. He explicitly says at one point that this book doesn't take manpower into account, but I think you do have to consider it if you're arguing that equipment is more important. Conceptually, I can see how one human being in the cockpit of a bomber has more destructive power than one human being holding a rifle, and I can kind of intuit how looking at the armed forces through the lens of expenses versus enrollment is valid. But at the end of the day, you do need a pilot in that plane: in the 1940s they weren't flying themselves.

For most of the book O'Brien kind of erases humans from the picture altogether. This does change more later in the book, as he not only looks at the role of people, but also acknowledging hat they aren't all interchangeable. One great example is Japan: they had many talented pilots early in the war, later on Japan still made a lot of planes (even more than before, as they gained access to bauxite from the Dutch East Indies which allowed them to make more aluminum and thus more planes), but they had considerably fewer experienced pilots, and as a result most of these brand-new planes never even made it to the front. O'Brien doesn't seem to really look at the experience of Allied forces, other than the implicit contrast with the poorly-trained late-war Axis forces.

Turning back to the question of the Eastern Front, O'Brien shows how the Reich was forced to deploy most of its air force on the western front to defend against RAF raids, which significantly lightened the air pressure it could deploy to the Eastern Front. This kept Germany from achieving air superiority during battles like Stalingrad and Kursk, which immensely helped the Soviets. But I think you do need to look at the counter-argument as well: 80% of the German army was fighting on the Eastern front, and if they weren't there, then they would have been available for other operations in places like North Africa, the Middle East, and possibly even the UK. O'Brien does eventually address this question of the significance and utility of ground forces, but not until much later in the book.

Outside of combatants, he does write a little bit about human resources. For example, large numbers of German workers had to be redirected to repairing the damage from "strategic" bombing of industry, which made those workers unavailable for new production. Also, Hitler ordered a large increase in the manufacture of anti-aircraft flak guns, which he thought were more effective than fighter planes; these new guns required large numbers of people redirected from factory work to manning AA guns. Later on, as we get into 1944 O'Brien talks more explicitly about the manpower demands on the German population. Men were being taken from factories and put into military service, which caused a spiraling decline in German production, which further harmed the effectiveness of the military, increasing their losses and requiring still more manpower (which was taken from the factories, and so on and so forth). It took a while to get here, but I did like this zoomed-out look at allocation of human resources between military and industrial roles.

Later on, he gives a strong focus on transportation and maneuvering, which contemporary writing confusingly calls "communication". After D-Day, Germany had divisions earmarked to rush to the French coast to repel the invaders; but even groups stationed in France often couldn't get to the front for nearly a month, due to Allied destruction of railroads and bridges, and aerial bombing during the day forced the movements to move during the (short summer) nights, often on foot or occasionally with nearby vehicles. In the last chapter O'Brien colorful writes that, while Germany had a large number of well-trained troops with superior land equipment, who in theory should have been able to drive the Allies back to the sea; but without maneuverability, they weren't able to meet their opponents in force, and instead were slowly fed into a meat grinder that slaughtered the Axis soldiers. For me, this finally kind of closes the circle on how air and sea power were more important than land combat in the war: if land units can't maneuver, they are kind of irrelevant to the outcome of the war, even on top of the reduced power land units have from lacking material, ammunition, vehicles, fuel, and other resources they were deprived of by the air and sea war.

I really liked the look at personalities driving strategy in the war. Ernest King, the head of the US Navy, stands out for being particularly obstinate and bull-headed. He single-handed caused disaster at the start of the US entry into the war. King was determined to focus on Japan, while all the other military and political leaders wanted a Germany-first strategy. King also deeply distrusted the British, so he wanted the US Navy to operate independently of them. Because of these biases, King kept a huge naval presence in the Pacific, which in turn allowed German U-Boats to operate directly off the American East Coast, causing enormous losses in shipments of vital war supplies to the UK. There were only six U-Boats operating along the coast, and they had a field day, which they called the "Happy Time."

King refused to bring destroyers back from the Pacific, so the problem wasn't solved until enough new ships were constructed to defend the coast; even then, he directed the majority of new ships to the Pacific. King even brazenly lied to the UK during their conferences, stating that 15% of American force was in the Pacific and needed to be higher, when it was actually more like 80% of the Navy.

But in the end, the Navy did prove extremely effective and were able to accomplish their goals, including the smart "Central Pacific" strategy: instead of the original plan of gradual land battles through New Guinea, the Dutch East Indies, Borneo, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma and China before attacking Japan, the Navy island-hopped to come within range of Japan; because of this, they could cut off all support for the deployed Japanese military forces to the south, and not need to fight them at all.

There are lots of things in this book that are probably well-known to people who have studied World War 2, but are pretty new to me personally. One is the difference between US and UK aims in the war. The US had a very clear plan for action - they wanted to defeat Germany and Japan as quickly as possible - and only a hazy idea of what they wanted after the war, just a general sense of a more peaceful and democratic order. In contrast, the UK had a very clear goal for what they wanted after the war - maintaining the power of the British Empire - and were relatively vague and ambivalent about what actions to take during the war, but always kept that goal in mind. That's a big part of why Churchill was so reluctant to commit to a ground invasion of France, and also why he opposed Roosevelt's suggestions to give India a freer hand.

The Americans were pushing hard for a 1943 invasion of France, while Churchill argued strongly for a Mediterranean mission instead. O'Brien seems to suggest that invading France in 1943 probably would have been better. The Allies did occupy more territory in 1943, but gained no land that was really critical for the outcome of the war against Germany. They managed to destroy a decent amount of German production, but production remained high, peaking in 1944. Ultimately the Normandy beaches were far more strongly fortified in 1944 than they were in 1943, so the delay probably hurt at least as much as it helped.

While the Mediterranean fighting had little influence on the ultimate outcome of the war, the Battle of the Atlantic was very impactful. O'Brien says that, when Admiral Doenitz withdrew his U-Boats from the Atlantic, Germany lost any hope of winning the war. They could still make offensive movements and win battles, but after that time they could no longer deny the production and deployment of enemy war equipment, so it was inevitable that the Allies would succeed. As O'Brien writes, "The Germans would continue to fight for two more years, inflict a huge amount of damage and, at times, mount successful operations - but all it was doing was forestalling the inevitable."

In the course of reading this book, I cam to understand how World War 2 required an entirely different conception of war. One fairly straightforward example is the ability to destroy or divert material outside of traditional combat: instead of blowing up tanks while the tanks are trying to blow up you, you can sink the boat that's carrying the tanks into theater, or bomb the tanks while they're in the maintenance yard, or bomb the factory that's building the tanks, or bomb the railroads carrying iron into the factories. But another conceptual shift was requiring the enemy to build up a certain kind of defense, requiring an investment that diminished their strength in other areas. For example, the Germans directly sunk a lot of cargo in the Atlantic early in the war. Later on America built up the Atlantic fleet, stemmed the losses thanks to their escort system, and eventually drove out the U-Boats. That's all great. But building up the escort fleet was very expensive and took a ton of resources that could have gone into aircraft or other production.

The Allies ended up over-shooting their needs, laying down many more destroyers than ended up actually being needed (remember, this all started due to a mere six U-Boats operating off the coast). This is particularly tricky for ships, since they are so capital-intensive and require such a long lead-time compared to other material, so if you turn off the production faucet at some point you still have years' worth of investments that are just lost. So, while the Allies won the battle of the Atlantic, it was also one of the most effective battles that the Germans waged, in terms of requiring big investments from their adversaries.

There are lots of other examples of seeing the war through the lens of expense and investment rather than casualties and territory. The Allies hammered U-Boat pens for years, and never damaged any of them because they were so well constructed. This seems like a sort of victory for the Reich, as they denied the Allies their war goal. But, the pens required massive amounts of concrete, and the concrete used there was concrete not used in beachhead bunkers or factory fortifications. So by making those targets "hot", the Allies drew resources away from other targets they would pursue in the future.

The strategic bombing of German industrial centers incurred huge costs: in some missions beyond the range of fighter protection, something like 30% of bomber craft were shot down, which was seen as an unacceptable loss and led to the canceling of those missions. But having those factories become vulnerable forced the Germans to disperse their production, which led to productivity declines of around 50%. The response to the bombing caused inefficiencies that ended up doing more harm to their production than direct losses from the initial bombing had incurred. Once again, making your opponent respond in a certain way had a bigger impact than the action itself did.

These frequent raids also meant that the Germans had to put all of their air investment into fighter planes to help defend German airspace, which meant they couldn't go on the offensive in the Eastern Front or in North Africa. Anyways, this is an interesting conception: where a traditional analysis would say that one side lost due to incurring more casualties or destruction of equipment, but in the new conception the enemy's response to defend against that action results in an overall superior outcome to your side.

The prose in this book can be a bit dry at times, so I really appreciated it when something punchy lands. Hidden away on page 259 is one of my favorite sentences: "Fighting on water, a substance upon which human beings cannot walk, has always made sea warfare technologically more sophisticated than that on land." Ha!

MacArthur isn't mentioned at all early and late in the book when O'Brien is introducing the key figures in Anglo-American strategy, but he towers over the chapter on the war in the Pacific. O'Brien really slams MacArthur, who seems bad all around. He has political ambitions, and uses political threats to extract support for his military desires, threatening to torpedo Roosevelt's re-election if he doesn't get free reign (and human lives) to do as he pleases. O'Brien bluntly says that MacArthur was "not fit for command" at this time, due to his self-declared top priorities being personal vindication and honor: these are not appropriate priorities for generals in a constitutional democracy.

The big debate in this chapter is a three-way argument between the navy, army and army air force. The navy, under Ernest King, wanted a Central Pacific thrust that would take islands in basically a straight line from Hawaii to Japan. The army, under MacArthur, wanted a Southern Pacific thrust that would liberate the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines. And the army air force wanted to liberate China and start bombing Japan from the mainland. Since the US is a democracy and all of the services had large egos and political constituencies, and since the US had the luxury of lots of resources and manpower, Roosevelt never selected a single strategy and all three ended up being pursued simultaneously.

MacArthur's insistence on the Southern Pacific thrust ended up being extremely costly in American lives and didn't achieve any strategic gains. The long duration of this campaign gave Japan plenty of time to reinforce and fortify their positions, making the invasions very challenging, even with strong sea and air superiority. And it didn't gain anything: American already had access to the Japanese home islands through the Marianas and had severed access to the Philippines and other southerly imperial holdings. The death toll of Filipino civilians was much greater as a result of the fighting than it would have been under uncontested Japanese occupation, even considering how brutal the Japanese were.

This book gave me much better understanding of the context behind the rise of kamikaze pilots. At the start of World War 2, Japan had arguably the best planes and the best pilots in the world, and they were extremely effective in combat. It's rational to use these planes and pilots conventionally, so they can fly many missions and do a great deal of damage over time. By late 1944 and through 1945, though, extreme shortages of fuel meant that Japan had to cut back on flying missions, and in particular they slashed the amount of time new pilots had to train: there just wasn't enough fuel to fly as many practice flights as they wanted to. Inexperienced pilots going into combat are very unlikely to survive their first mission, so in this context kamikaze is rational, since it will at least maximize the damage they do in their one and only mission.

I like that O'Brien has a point of view. He never covers the underlying issues in the war or ideologies (other than the UK's desire to preserve the empire), but he will casually use phrasing like "fortunately" when describing a way in which the Allies gained an advantage, or "sadly" when describing where they fell short or where the Axis advanced. He is an American living in the UK, so it's natural that he would be aligned with the Anglo-American powers, and I would think that people interested enough in World War 2 to read a technical book like this already understand why the Nazis and imperialist Japan were bad. (Of course, I'm also saddened to think that a pro-Roosevelt, anti-Hitler bias may become controversial in the not-too-distant future.)

O'Brien avoids ethical discussions for most of the book before finally addressing them near the very end. This is specifically raised by the firebombing campaigns such as Dresden and Tokyo in 1945, as well as the decision to use atomic bombs, but he briefly looks at ethics as a whole. He recounts the various positions people have taken, both contemporary and modern: interestingly, even major figures within the strategic high command such as Leahy opposed both the use of atomic weapons, seeing them as a barbaric throwback to Genghis Khan-era terrorization of civilians, and invasion of the Japanese home islands, which would cause huge losses for both sides.

O'Brien seems to believe that the most ethical course is the one that ends the war most quickly. It's debatable whether dropping the atomic bomb was necessary to end the war, but if it was, the 100,000 direct casualties were certainly fewer than the indirect casualties that would have been incurred if the war had continued for many more months.

He has an interesting brief aside comparing the end of WW2 to WW1. In World War 1, once Germany realized that it had no hope for victory, it surrendered, which saved an enormous number of German lives that would otherwise have been meaninglessly lost. In World War 2, O'Brien thinks Germany lost all hope for victory after withdrawing from the Battle of the Atlantic in 1943, and by late 1944 it was overwhelmingly obvious that it had no hope of winning. Japan had lost any hope of victory once the Marianas islands had been taken, as its high military commanders all recognized. And yet Hitler and the Japanese military insisted on continuing to fight. The ultimate ethical responsibility lay on the side of the Axis for failing to accept reality and making their own soldiers and civilians pay the price for their leaders' hubris.

The book closes with a conclusion that is brief and excellent, recapping the big strategic ideas of the book and the various personalities who shaped the Anglo-American war effort. His last sentence is very clear: "Only by stopping an enemy's movement can you hope to win a war." I think that's a great summary of his rejoinder to the traditional land-centric understanding of World War 2: the Allies won the big battles because they were able to prevent the Axis from moving, thanks to depriving them of fuel, vehicles, bridges, daylight passage and so on. The Allies were able to accomplish these things thanks to effective domination of the air-sea super-battlefield, destroying equipment on the battlefield, en route to the battlefield, while being constructed and as raw materials being shipped.

This focus on movement is also a nod to the challenges the American military has faced in the asymmetric wars we've mostly fought since World War 2: we can win every traditional land battle we engage in, but we can't keep our adversaries from falling back, regrouping and attacking again, which kept us from politically winning wars like Vietnam. That's a whole huge other topic that O'Brien references in this last section but doesn't even begin to explore, and which could easily be its own book

So, yeah! This book ended up being much longer and a little drier than I expected, but I still found it fascinating and persuasive. The reams of data O'Brien presents make it more authoritative than an opinion piece, and he does a good job at finding illustrative vignettes and some colorful personalities that bring home the visceral reality of the war, beyond the abstract spreadsheet-esque focus on production. It looks like O'Brien has written a few other books on aspects of World War 2, and is regularly commenting on current topics like the Ukraine War, and I'll be interested in checking out more of his writing in the future.

Seven Original Sins

Well, that didn't take (too much) long(er)! I've enjoyed jamming on Divinity: Original Sin and cruised through the final act. To summarize up front: it was a lot of fun. I think D:OS2 is better, but this prequel is already a great game, and they already had really strong systems that would later be perfected in the sequel. And the unique mechanics in D:OS1, particularly the dual-protagonist design, let it breathe and be its own thing, so even playing this after D:OS2 doesn't feel like a step backwards.

 

 

As usual, let's start with a few technical and gameplay notes before venturing into plot-land!

 

 

One thing I neglected to mention in my last post was a change that had a big impact on my experience playing the game. I've whined in the past about fully-voiced isometric RPGs. The "classic" ones like Baldur's Gate were partially voiced, so if a character spoke a paragraph, you would hear the first line voiced, and the rest were merely printed in the dialogue box. This was almost certainly a financial and technical constraint: those games shipped on CDs, and the audio files were competing with space against the pre-rendered backgrounds. But I really like the effect, since the voice gives a strong impression of the character, while you can still read at your own pace. In more modern AAA games like Dragon Age Inquisition, all dialogue is fully voiced, not printed in a box, so it's more like watching a movie than reading a book. Some of the recent resurgence of isometric RPGs like Divinity and Wasteland try to combine those streams, with both full voicing for all lines and on-screen dialogue boxes, and... I kind of hate it. The voice acting itself is very high-quality, but I can read more quickly than I can listen, and I just get so impatient, so I'm either waiting for the dialogue to catch up or I'm awkwardly skipping through the audio.

 

 

ANYWAYS, I kind of resolved this in D:OS EE by opening the Controls menu and dragging the "Voice" audio slider all the way to the left. That effectively turns off the voice-over dialogue, which noticeably improved my enjoyment of the game, making it more like a low-budget-but-well-written CRPG. It isn't perfect; in particular, I would have appreciated continuing to hear combat barks and ambient dialogue while just skipping full conversational dialogue, but I'm very happy with my choice regardless.

 

 

A correction to my previous post: I had mentioned that when crafting you can only have upgrade one of each type of "slot" for a given piece of equipment. This isn't necessarily true. I think I'd gotten that impression since, if you try to add a Tormented Soul to a weapon that already had a Tormented Soul it will consume that second Soul but not upgrade the stats on the weapon again. But if, say, a piece of armor already has Water Resist on it, and then you add a Ruby, the ruby will add to the Water Resist in addition to the other elemental types, not replace/overwrite the existing Water Resist. It's probably more accurate to say that you can only add each specific upgrade once... or, rather, you only get the benefit the first time you add it. There may be some other exceptions, I haven't done extensive testing around it.

But speaking of upgrades, I will say that you're probably best off upgrading equipment whenever you have the opportunity. I'd been saving Tormented Souls for end-game gear, but I finished the game with maybe 8-10 or so spare Tormented Souls, and I'd stopped buying new ones from merchants when they randomly appeared in stock. It's a mild bummer to upgrade a piece that you know will be replaced, but on average I was probably only upgrading pieces maybe every 4 levels or so, so you will get a lot of use out of an upgrade (and you won't for surplus inventory that never gets used). The one potential exception that comes to mind are rubies: they do seem to be genuinely rare, I hoarded them all game and only had maybe 4-5 at the end, which I slapped onto my Level 19/20 equipment heading into the endgame. But most other things will show up eventually at vendors, so go ahead and use it.

 

 

As I mentioned previously, I followed a very useful GameFAQ on profitably crafting and selling to get a lot of money. It worked very well, perhaps a bit too well, and by the end of the game I probably had around 400k pieces of gold, despite buying everything I wanted, even expensive pieces that were only marginal improvements over what I already had. Looking back over the game, I think my time would have been most usefully spent crafting equipment for myself in the early levels (like making my own belts, amulets, etc. maybe around levels 2-10); then following the guide to craft for sale in the medium levels (maybe 10-17 or so) and buying all the stuff I wanted along the way. By the final act, you're finding tons of Legendary and Divine pieces that aren't useful to you and sell for a lot of money, and you have really good equipment already that doesn't necessarily need to be upgraded, so it's probably best to just focus on selling loot and ignore crafting new items. By then the shopping/crafting/selling loop was a deeply-ingrained habit that I was unable to kick, though.

I don't have hard measurements for this, but based on my impressions, this is how my time in this game was spent, ranked from most time to least time:

1. Traveling back to places I had previously visited
2. Futzing around in inventory menus
3. Futzing around in vendor menus
4. Futzing around in the crafting interface
5. Exploring/looting new places
   
6. Combat
7. Dialogue/plot
8. Leveling/outfitting characters

 

 

And here's how much I enjoyed these aspects of the game, ranked from most enjoyable to least enjoyable:

1. Combat
2. Exploring/looting new places
3. Dialogue/plot
4. Leveling/outfitting characters
5. Futzing around in vendor menus
6. Traveling back to places I had previously visited
7. Futzing around in the crafting interface
8. Futzing around in inventory menus

 

 

None of this was bad - I felt more resigned than exasperated about inventory management, and got into a sort of zen rhythm with the crafting and vendoring that, while not exactly fun, was at least relaxing. But still, I'm struck by how much of the game - or not even this game, more RPGs in general - is spent doing things that I personally don't find very fun. Which is probably part of why I have such a soft spot for Disco Elysium and the Harebrained Shadowrun games, as they completely eschew some of these complex systems and focus on doing a few things very well.

I avoided any walkthroughs for my playthrough, but did generally follow the build guidance of the GameFAQ, and so had a kind of min-max-y build. I tried to do all of the sidequests I could, but probably had about a dozen left in my log at the end of the game - I think maybe half of those were basically complete but not removed, while the others were things I just never figured out. I think I hit Level 21 shortly before the point of no return; from what I've seen online, you can finish the game at Level 23 for a totally completionist playthrough (which includes a lot of unnecessary slaughter).

 

 

Anyways, with my min-max-y build combat was feeling really easy in the final act of the game. The tipping point is getting access to Master-level Skills. Casting something like Meteor Storm or Hail Storm can completely obliterate a whole group of powerful enemies. You can't always do this, but if you have multiple Master-level abilities odds are you have something that can ruin your opponents, and even very powerful bosses tend to go down after a couple of these skills. Which, if you have high enough Initiative, means that boss fights end up being underwhelming.

 

 

I generally have mixed feelings about this. It does make the game feel a bit more boring; after so many well-tuned battles that require careful thinking and strategy and that feel risky and exciting, you start to feel like you have a "Click To Win" button that just deletes enemies and ends battles. But, I mostly have myself to blame for that: nobody forced me to pick a min-max-y build (or, really, four min-max-y builds for my entire party). And I'd been doing all these side quests, and spending time earning lots of money and buying the best gear. The whole point of getting XP and gold is to be better at combat, and my dreams were coming true in a spectacular way, just not a way that felt especially fun.

Without going too deep into spoilers, they do a good job at mixing this up in the finale. While some early bosses still go down easily, later boss fights have phases of invulnerability, or multiple waves of enemies, or other mechanics that force the battle to stretch out over multiple turns. I really appreciated this, in no small part because it's a good excuse to use things like Haste and summons that are kind of pointless in one-turn fights. Interestingly, there isn't much of an environmental angle to these late fights. Quite a few other RPGs lean on you figuring out some puzzle aspect to beat enemies, like destroying pillars or venting poison gas or lighting crystals or whatever; and earlier battles in D:OS often benefit heavily from making use of nearby water or poison or other surfaces. Here, the last battles have mechanics but (at least from what I saw) they're all based on the characters and not the environment, which, again, I kind of like: it doesn't feel at all gimmicky.

It did make me think back to my own Shadowrun campaigns and the occasional criticism I get about them - in particular, multiple people are annoyed at the use of multiple waves of enemies in CalFree in Chains. I think playing D:OS has made it even clearer to me why these sort of turn-based games with cooldown-based abilities almost demand the use of waves, since otherwise you'll just pop all the abilities on your first turn and end the combat before it starts.

The final fights also gave me a chance to use a couple of the hundred-plus scrolls and potions I'd hoarded over the course of the game. This is partly because of phases where all the enemies were unreachable and I still had AP to burn, but I still appreciated the opportunity. I also got to use some to clear negative status effects, although that surfaced an annoying micro-managing issue: while I split Healing Potions and Resurrection Scrolls between party members, otherwise my lead character ended up carrying all of the party's scrolls and potions, so if, say, he got petrified or stunned during a turn, none of the other characters would be able to restore him.

Not specifically talking about plot, but plot-related: I'd alluded to this before, but while there aren't many branching-plot decision points, you are constantly making choices throughout the game, which get reflected in your character's Traits. These are things like Independent vs. Obedient, Romantic vs. Pragmatic, Cautious vs. Bold, and so on. There are direct gameplay effects as a result of this, like Cautious boosting your Sneaking while Bold boosts your Initiative. Later on in the game, there are indirect influences as well: the game recognizes your characters' traits, and the solutions to certain puzzles will vary based on your prior choices. You are "playing a role", and rewarded for how consistently you follow that role and how well you recognize the role you're playing, regardless of what specific role you've chosen for yourself.

MEGA SPOILERS

I was a little surprised by just how puzzle-heavy the latter part of the game is. There are puzzles scattered throughout the whole game, but most of them are optional or have alternate solutions, while the ones in the Temple of the Dead, the Source Temple and the nightmare King Crab Inn will absolutely block your progress. I peeked at a few hints online when I was feeling stuck; I was able to get most of them figured out, but didn't have endless patience. In a few cases I felt silly - "Oh, yeah, I totally can teleport someone through that portcullis" - but in a few cases I knew there was no way I would have figured it out on my own.

 

 

I have mixed feelings on the use of Perception in this game. If your character has a high enough Perception to spot something, they'll say "I see something!" and it will be highlighted on your screen, along with a label if you hold down Alt. This could be a trap, but also could be some valuable treasure (like a diamond), or a hidden button or switch to progress in a puzzle. That thing is still visible on the screen and interactable if you don't have the Perception; I, and probably most players, won't notice it, but if you've played the game before or are following a guide you can manually sweep your mouse over it to disable the trap, pick up the golden goblet, open the exit door, or whatever. So it feels like you're playing the old game of Hunt The Pixel with low Perception, and having a streamlined experience with high Perception.

 

 

That all feels good and balanced to me for traps and treasure, but did annoy me when it comes to puzzles. By the end of the game I had gotten in the habit of manually inspecting walls and floors when I felt stuck and was unsure how to proceed. Again, if this was one of several ways to proceed (like opening a locked chest via lockpicking, bashing, or searching for the key) then it wouldn't bother me, but often times it seemed like a hard gate.

 

 

Going back to choices: I said before that there aren't many branching choices, but you do have quite a few as you approach the end of Act 3 and throughout the finale. As a side note, I'm not really counting whether to complete a quest or not as a choice, but that's another thing that can impact the progress of the game. One of the first real branches I noticed was deciding what to do with Arhu after he had been imprisoned by Cassandra. I opted to use the spell to keep him in cat form, and defeated Cassandra. I am curious what would change if you went another way; presumably he wouldn't show up at all in the finale if he was still in her cage; if you turned him human, perhaps he would appear in that form, or maybe Cassandra would join you in a revenge/redemption arc over the wrongs done to her by Braccus Rex?

 

 

Somewhat similarly, near the end of the game you choose whether to trust Icara to restore the Soul Forge between her and Leandra, or follow Zandalor's warning and keep them separate. I opted to restore the bond. I really liked how this decision played out. The reunited twin is more powerful, and she helps you out during the battles in the First Garden; but during a particularly long and challenging fight against various Death Knights, Leandra takes over for a few turns and transforms her from an ally into an enemy. I really like how this choice resulted in a gameplay impact, but not a clear "superior" solution: indeed, as Zandalor warned, it's risky to forge them together, but that risk comes with some strong advantages as well.

 

The meta-story as a whole turned out to be one of redemption. Your dual protagonists are basically the reincarnations of the Guardians, who millennia ago failed in their duty and allowed the Void Dragon to escape. You put that wrong back to right by defeating the tricky Trife who unleashed the chain of events (after a particularly nightmarish and suitably creepy sequence - Larian does pretty darn good horror when they put their minds to it), freeing the goddess Astarte, and working with her to defeat the Void Dragon, re-chain him and return him to the Godbox.

 

 

I was a bit surprised by just how directly the storyline ended up adhering to Judeo-Christian theology. As you learn more of the backstory, a lot revolves around a trickster convincing an innocent to release evil upon the world; that's the Adam and Eve story, but also the story of Pandora and other mythologies. But there's a lot about The First Garden, and you see that it's explicitly labeled "Eden". I'm not sure exactly what to make of that, it kind of reminds me of 90s Japanese anime and RPGs lifting names and tropes from Western religion in the same way we lift names and tropes from Norse and Greek mythology. But, again, Larian is Belgian, so I don't know exactly what to make of it.

 

 

After posting this, I'll probably poke around to see what variations are possible in the ending. I do like how all of your companions show up to briefly chat in the end, and it was nice to see everyone, even Bairdotr and Wolgraff, acknowledge having done their personal quests. At the very very end, Zixzax says that the two Redeemers parted ways and never spoke to one another again; I'm curious if that's just based on our very last dialogue (where Rion said that he wanted to relax while Noor wanted to hunt and crush evil), or if it tracked the overall divergence in their traits, or some earlier plot decision, or if that's just a fixed outcome.

 

 

END SPOILERS

I did have a blast with this game, and am really happy to have finally returned to finish it after all these years. Larian has been tight-lipped on what they've been working on since Baldur's Gate 3, but most people suspect that one of their games is Divinity: Original Sin 3, and if so, playing this makes me even more excited to see that come true. There aren't really any major plot or character continuities between DOS1 or DOS2, which tends to be my main motivation in following a sequel, but these games are so well-crafted, with such extremely entertaining combat, amazing environments, a unique sense of style and humor, that I can't wait to see what would come next in this series.

The Awkward Middle Part

I just hit what I think is probably about the 2/3 mark in Divinity: Original Sin: Enhanced Edition, so I thought this would be a good point for me to pause and capture my thoughts and feelings thus far. Bottom line up front: I'm having a blast, enjoying this game a ton. I recently got back from a nice week-and-a-half-long vacation, and an embarrassingly long part of that vacation was spent daydreaming about getting back to play more Divinity.

 

 

Party and mechanical updates first:

I just gained access to what's probably the last major zone of the game, and semi-coincidentally just hit Level 17. I've been taking a mostly-completionist playthrough, exhausting all the side-quests that I can and taking nearly all of the optional fights; but I'm not following a walkthrough so I'm sure there are at least a few quests that I haven't discovered or have failed to complete. I'm also not squeezing out every last bit of combat XP (such as by attacking friendlies).

 

 

I'm mostly following the build guide from the excellent FAQ, particularly where it comes to attributes, talents and skills. Recapping my particular loadout here:

Rion is my party face and archer. As the guide notes, archers don't synergize as well as other classes so you'll likely have spare ability points; I've given him an extra point in Bartering, several in Leadership, and recently even a little Charisma. He has relatively high Perception and Initiative so he usually goes first in combat, and with some Loremaster he can inspect the enemies to determine their strengths and weaknesses.

 

 

Combat tangent: once you get a few levels into the game and have multiple combat skills on your characters, it's pretty much always worth activating things like Melee Power Stance or Ranged Power Stance. These boost your damage at the expense of your chance-to-hit. But importantly, your activated Skills can never miss, but they are boosted by the Power Stance, so there really isn't a tradeoff. (For Archers, you furthermore have the many special Arrows, which also can't miss.) You should have a few low-cooldown skills like Ricochet or Crippling Blow that can come off cooldown every turn or two, and enough other skills to use your Action Points on guaranteed-hit skills.

 

 

Back to Rion: I now have Rain of Arrows, an amazing Level 15 Master Skill, which does insane damage to every enemy in a large AOE: incredibly, even if there's only a single enemy I'm better off using this skill (even in damage-per-AP calculation). That's one of the fresh and surprising things about the Divinity combat engine: in every other RPG I can think of, archers are single-target damage dealers, while in D:OS:EE they are probably the best AOE damage dealers, more so than mages.

Other skills Rion has, in roughly descending order of coolness:

• Flurry unleashes a huge number of arrows in a 45 degree cone. This is incredible against large bosses: if you can make them all hit, even the strongest enemy is likely to go down in one turn. It's also good against a group of enemies, again if they are positioned well enough so not too many arrows are wasted.
• Splintered Arrow is a versatile attack that does high damage which is divided over every enemy in an AOE. Somewhat counter-intuitively, it is usually better to position the arrow so only a single enemy is struck. Unlike Rain of Arrows, which does the same damage to every enemy depending on how many are present, Splintered Arrow will do more damage to a single enemy than to multiple ones, and prior to getting the Master Skills it's probably the highest single-target damage you can deal. There are some times where the AOE is better though, if you're facing a large number of weak foes. I think that due to how armor works in the game, though, the results can be disappointing if you divide the damage against just a couple of high-armor enemies.
• Ricochet is a great bread-and-butter attack. It can bounce between multiple enemies if they're close enough. Even if there's only a single enemy, though, it does more damage than your basic attack, and is guaranteed to hit. 
• Barrage fires three arrows against a single enemy. Pretty good, though again I feel like the armor system means it does less total damage than a single 3x attack would inflict.
• Special arrows can be really helpful, though honestly I'm not using them very much at this point of the game. Early on arrows like Knockdown can be huge for crowd control. Quite a few fights have gimicks where specific arrows could come in handy: enemies being very vulnerable to a particular damage type, say, or a fire that needs to be put out, or some wooden furniture blocking an exit that you'd like to blow up.
• Fast Track is a generically useful minor Scoundrel Skill. You basically give up 2AP in your current turn to gain 2AP in each of the next two turns for a net gain of 2AP. Worth toggling for longer fights, or if you just have a few AP left and nothing to spend it on.
• Conversely, Adrenaline will give you 1/2 of next turn's AP immediately, but take away 3/4 of the AP on your next turn. This is a net loss of AP... but taking actions now is much more important than taking actions later. These days I often finish entire battles on the first turn, often before the enemy gets a chance to move. And even if a battle does stretch on to multiple turns, getting to completely eliminate an enemy (via death or CC) can make up for essentially skipping your next turn.
• Outside of combat, Walk in Shadows is very useful. You can steal anything without getting caught while you're invisible. You can also interact with forbidden (red) object, enter forbidden zones, or walk by (potentially invincible) enemies without being noticed. I rarely use it in combat, but it does allow you to avoid attack-of-opportunity if you ever need to relocate while next to a foe, and makes it a lot easier to Escape if you need to flee a combat for some reason.
• Other skills that Rion has which I almost never use: Doctor (minor heal and specific status effect clears), Farseer (boosts chance to hit - as noted above, skills can never miss), Infect (haven't tried it yet, maybe it's good), Wildfire, Firefly, Burn My Eyes, Oath of Desecration (very useful but I usually cast from another character), Summon Undead Warrior, Malediction.

I've prioritized taking the Traits that relate to Archery, including ones to reclaim special arrows (which I regret - I'm swimming in special arrows) and Elemental Range.

Rion's Leadership has been extremely helpful. With gear he is now at Leadership 6. This gives big bonuses to everyone else in the party, including enough Initiative that we always get to go before the enemy, deal extra damage, avoid negative status effects, etc.

 

 

My second PC is Noor, a mage who has mostly specialized in Pyrokinetic and Geomancy magic, although she's also skilled in Witchcraft and currently advancing her Aerothurge and Hydrosophist skills. She knows a lot more skills than Rion, and her role in combat varies more depending on the enemy and the battlefield. Her top priority is typically CC, though. Most often she will use something like Blitz Bolt to close the gap with enemies, then try to follow that up with Static Touch on anyone nearby who isn't stunned yet, followed by Freezing Touch and Bitter Colt. She'll also use Burning Touch to try and inflict a flame DOT. But again this is all situational, obviously if we're fighting fire monsters who are healed by fire damage then she won't do that.

 

 

There was a point in the game when Summons were feeling really strong, so she would often summon a Poison Spider or a Wolf or something. Just having another body on the battlefield could be really helpful, as enemies will waste their limited abilities on that summon and leave the rest of us to do our thing. More recently, though, I haven't really bothered summoning in most battles. It feels like I'm better off just dealing direct damage.

As mentioned above, one of the surprising things about D:OS is that mages generally have less AOE than archers. That's definitely true at the Novice level, and even mostly at the Adept level, with a handful of exceptions like Fireball. Once you finally get to the Master level then this opens up and you do get really powerful AOE spells, like Hailstorm (which does huge damage and has a great chance at additionally freezing enemies) and Meteor Shower (also huge damage, likely to inflict Burning, and creates a big fire surface that will inflict more damage when enemies path across it).

I do really love how different the various spells are. As one specific example, many ranged spells like Flare will travel from your caster to the target. These can be obstructed by the environment, so even if you can see them and are in range you may not be able to hit them. Different spells have different paths, with some traveling in straight lines and others arcing, so if one spell can't path another one may. Then there are some spells like Headvice that don't path at all, and just require you to be able to see the target - but if you had previously hit them with Fireball and they are now standing in a cloud of smoke or steam, you won't be able to see them to target them! But then there is good ole' Boulder Bash, a novice Geomancer spell that sends a big ole' rock crashing down onto a point on the ground. Since this drops from right above, it can't be blocked; and you can unleash it even if you can't see the target. It is somewhat balanced by doing less damage than other elemental spells of the same level. Anyways, it's great to have such a big toolkit of options for fightin' in this game.

 

 

Gosh... I wasn't going to list all of Noor's abilities, but I'll go ahead and shout out some of my favorites:

• Blitz Bolt. Fantastic combination of caster mobility and enemy CC. Would be great even if it didn't do damage, and the damage is respectable. I put this on my fighter as well.
  
• Headvice. Great for straight-up damage. Blindness is a surprisingly great status effect - it isn't technically a turn-skip like Stunned or Frozen, but blind enemies almost always end up not able to do anything, so it accomplishes the same thing.
• Burning Touch, Shocking Touch, Freezing Touch. All great, low-AP, decent damage, quick cooldowns, can inflict great status effects.
• Bitter Cold. Can disable an enemy for 3AP at range. Crazily cheap spell. (A lot of Aerothurge ones in here!).
• Boulder Bash. As noted above, this is really useful for getting at hard-to-reach enemies; can pair with Fire to set the oil surface on fire for more damage. Great when an enemy is almost dead and needs to be finished off.
• Rain. Used more out-of-combat but sometimes during a fight. Incredibly useful spell, cheap way to disable a bad status effect on your dudes, and can wreak havoc with a lot of fire-themed enemies. I love the huge range, too.
• Regeneration. Heals are great! Again, used more out of combat, but can be handy inside it. Remember that healing magic damages zombie enemies - not every undead is a zombie, but there are quite a few, especially at the start of the game.
• Vampiric Touch. I always forget I have this, but it's great: a rare non-elemental damage type, and you get a free heal as a bonys.
• Oath of Desecration. I'll put this on my warrior, either for fights where mages aren't much use, or if I have spare AP. Great damage boost for them.
• Destroy Summon. There seem to be fewer summons later in the game, but they still happen, and this is a custom-made counter.
• Mute. Silence an enemy caster. Incredibly helpful against some powerful bosses.
• And, more recently, Hail Storm and Meteor Shower for insane damage. I have to admit I've cheesed a few fights lately by casting one of these as an opener - they cost 11AP, so typically you would have to save points and wait for the second turn to cast, but if you cast out of combat they are essentially free.

One non-magic skill I like on Noor: 

• Winged Feet. This is only useful in a couple of places, but is very useful when needed. This lets you completely ignore any surface, including lava as well as fire, snow/ice, electrified water, etc.
  

As my Gamefaq guide notes, due to the limited number of Ability Points in the game, if you were to bring your magic schools up to 5 then you would be able to learn 2 Master spells from those schools, but would only be able to max out 2 schools; if you go to 4, then you still can learn 1 Master spell, but can cover 4-5 schools. That gives you the same number of Master spells, as well as all the Adept and Novice spells, giving far more versatility. So anyways, that's what I've been building towards.

Noor is also my go-to for Pickpocketing and Lockpicking. I think I've pickpocketed a single person in the entire game, which was necessary to solve a quest. She got the required points from a Trait and temporarily swapping in gear. Likewise, she carries some rings to put on when we need to pick a lock, which is basically never. There's almost always a key you can find nearby to open the lock, or you can bash it open or otherwise bypass it.

I'm also usually traveling with Jahan, another mage who starts off with Aerothurge and Hydrosophist skills. I'm building him very similarly to Noor, but focusing on the opposing skills. Jahan is also my dedicated crafter; this only required a couple of Ability Points, he starts with the Scientist trait and the rest can be handled from gear.

In combat I use him similarly to Noor. It is really nice to have two mages - if one of them fails to inflict Stun, I have another chance from my backup mage. Or if we have enemies coming from multiple directions they can split up and handle things on either side. If one of my mages gets CC'd, I have a fallback who can try to clear status effects, and so on.

Finally, Madora is my melee fighter. I continue to use her like I did in my first play-through. She'll activate Melee Power Stance for the above-listed reasons, then usually close the gap with Battering Ram or Thunder Jump, ideally incapacitating a couple of enemies but at the least inflicting damage and saving AP on movement. For a follow-up she will Whirlwind if there are a bunch of enemies nearby, or else Flurry or Crippling Blow if there is only one. 

 

 

Thanks to her high Strength, Madora is also the packmule for the party. She lugs around a couple of barrels that may come in handy (Ooze, Oil and Water), and on longer excursions she'll schlep back the heavy armor and large weapons I want to sell. (Rion, as my main character, usually ends up carrying most items, but he'll offload pieces as needed. Jahan gets all the raw crafting ingredients, except for heavy ores that get sent directly to the Homestead or that Madora carries. Noor carries some specific items like keys, plot books, and all the grenades I carry and never use but that Might Come In Handy One Day). Madora also has items for Telekenesis, which like Pickpocketing and Lockpicking is almost never necessary and isn't worth investing Ability Points in but sometimes can be handy.

Let's chat about crafting!

 

 

I've written a lot already about my mixed feelings about crafting in D:OS. It is much much better in the EE than in the classic version, with discovered recipes automatically added to an interface. It's an activity that can feel tedious - you need to collect a ton of random low-value items, hold onto them in your inventory, then spend time doing stuff with them. You'll likely need to adjust gear along the way too; it isn't worth maxing out your Crafting and Blacksmithing abilities, so you'll probably just invest a few points and get the last with gear, but that does mean more micro-managing before and after crafting sessions. And not everything you can craft is worthwhile. Crafting isn't really required at all for the game; outside of maybe a couple of quests where you need to craft a unique item, it's mostly an add-on.

All that said, crafting can have really significant benefits, and for me it has been worth the investment of time. The main advantage is money. There is a finite and limited amount of XP in the game, but there is an infinite amount of gold available, if you buy raw ingredients from merchants and craft profitable recipes. Infinite money in turn lets you buy top-notch gear, which in some cases can be even more meaningful than additional levels. I've been following the crafting guide in that one Gamefaq, with the caveat that I don't really bother with the Magic Needle and Thread or its constituent ingredients, since it isn't consumed on crafting. My recent habit has been to do a crafting cycle each time I reach a new level: travel back to my crafting station, craft everything I can, then do the circuit of visiting merchants to sell my wares, buy additional raw ingredients, and window-shop for worthwhile gear. I mostly do this on level-up since all the gear you craft will be at a higher level and thus more valuable; also merchants reset their inventory on level-up, and you'll see higher-level gear from them.

While I don't spend as much time doing this, crafting can also be useful for making a few specific items to use. The main examples I've found are magical amulets and belts. I recently made Rion a whole set of Charisma-boosting items so he could more consistently complete some persuasion minigames without reloading. At lower levels you'll be able to craft magic amulets long before they appear in loot tables, so making them makes a noticeable difference.

 

 

While it feels a bit different than the making-new-items form of crafting, you also use the crafting interface to enhance existing gear. The main things I do are:

•  If I have a really good sword for my fighter or bow for my archer, add a Tormented Soul to set +2 STR and +2 DEX to it. These are fairly rare, but they do periodically show up in merchant inventories, and rarely while questing, so don't hoard them all for Level 20.
• Add Metal Scraps to good metal chest plates you want to wear for an extra +10 armor. Similarly you can add leader scraps to gambions and so on.
• Use a metal chest piece at an Anvil to remove the movement penalty and turn it into a slight speed boost.

There are a few other things you can do, like using Essences to change the elemental damage bonus of a weapon, or using Nine Inch Nails to make boots slip-proof, but I rarely do those.

A quick note on crafting that wasn't immediately obvious to me: I think that each piece of gear has a potential "slot" for each available type of modification. You can do different types of modifications on an item and those will stack, but different instances of the same type of modification will overwrite the previous one. For example, if you add Air Essence to a sword it will add Electrical damage; if you add Fire Essence to that same sword it will remove the Electrical and add Fire damage. If you then add a Tormented Soul you'll keep the Fire damage but additionally gain the STR and DEX stat bonuses. The crafting UI will happily let you overwrite an upgrade with the same upgrade, so you could burn all of your Tormented Souls on a single Sword and still just get the basic +2 effect. Just looking at an item's stats doesn't reveal which "slot"(s) have been used.

 

 

I mentioned before about how I go through a crafting/selling/buying circuit on each level-up. I think I only started doing that around maybe Level 10 or so, though it probably would have been better to start earlier. The great thing about buying gear is that you get a lot more looks at good items than you do from loot. You'll definitely be able to find good gear while questing, but you're very likely to see better gear while shopping.

Making gear decisions is pretty decent in D:OS. In some RPGs it's really straightforward, with a single stat like "Armor" to max. In some games you can just look at something like the Gold Value to judge the relative worth of two pieces.At the other extreme, some games have extremely specialized and situationally useful stats, incentivizing you to hold on to everything in case it's useful; or they surface mathematical values without clear underlying formulas and leave you to figure it out (are you better off with an item that gives +10 flat damage, +10% critical hit chance, or +20% critical hit damage?). D:OS has a pretty wide range of available bonuses and stats, but also a comprehensible system, so after putting some time into the game I can now pretty quickly and easily judge whether a particular gear item improves on a previous item. Without further fanfare, here is my priority list for gearing:

• Attribute boosts are the most important. These are usually prioritized before anything else.
• Within this, your character's primary attribute is the most important: DEX for rogues, STR for warriors and INT for mages. These have huge impacts in your chance to use skills successfully, the damage you do, and the cooldown of your skills. These linearly scale up with benefits until 23, and any excess over 23 is wasted. I'm finally starting to bump up against 23 at level 17 so it takes a while to get there.
• Once you're finally able to reach 23 in your primary stat, next focus on Speed, then Constitution, then Perception. All of these boost your Action Points which are the main economy in combat. Speed gives additional AP each turn, CON limits the maximum number of AP you can have (so if your CON is too low then your high SPD is wasted), and PER boosts your starting AP in the critical first turn. All of these have very useful secondary benefits as well: movement for SPD, vitality (hit) points for CON, initiative and spotting secrets for PER.
• You can ignore (not value) other attribute boosts. STR is basically useless on a rogue or mage.
• Next, relevant abilities that you use in combat. These are actually pretty rare, but occasionally you will see something with +1 Bow; more often you might see a bonus to Willpower or Body Building or something. 
• You'll probably want to carry, but not necessarily wear, gear with boosts for out of combat, like Crafting, Blacksmithing, Pickpocketing, Lockpicking, etc. These aren't worth buying from shops, you'll find enough while questing.
• Armor value on chest pieces or damage numbers on weapons. Higher is better, natch.
• Bonus (elemental) damage on weapons. Having is better than not having, higher is better than lower.
• Higher item levels. It's better to have high attributes on a low-level item than low attributes on a high-level item; but particularly for weapons, damage can scale off the level, so higher is better.
• The rarity tier by itself isn't important, but higher tiers will have more stat bonuses, which can result in a better item, but other times only adds more cost. It isn't worth buying a Divine Belt for your mage that boosts Shield, Lockpicking, Stealth and Dexterity.
  

Let's dip into the story a bit!

MINI SPOILERS

So, this game is all about "source" and "sourcery". Your two PCs are "Source Hunters", members of an organization devoted to finding people and monsters who practice Source magic and eliminating them. Kind of like the Inquisition, I guess. In the first few hours of the game, there are quite a few times that you run across a person who practices Source magic and seems harmless: genial, pleasant, maybe a bit apathetic. There may be some dialogue along the lines of "I'm not bothering anybody, why are you persecuting me?" which seems like a very reasonable question. In every single case, though, the Sourcerer turns out to be A Very Bad Person, and in-game you are always better off attacking them ASAP instead of trying to use diplomacy. This felt a little jarring at first, as I am the nice guy who always wants to be nice to the nice people, but was also very effective, as it communicates "Sourcery = Bad" far more effectively than mere exposition would. You know Sourcery is bad, because every Sourceror you have met has tried to do bad things to you.

 

 

It's a bit surprising when much later in the game you finally meet up with Icara the White Witch and learn that she also practices Sourcery. There have been a whole bunch of times up until now that we've heard "Maybe Sourcery isn't as bad as you thought it was", but now it seems like that may actually be true. I'll probably write more about this in my final blog post, but my current understanding is that Source is very dangerous but not necessarily inherently evil. Like, I dunno, maybe nuclear fission or something. It nearly destroyed the world years ago so everyone is understandably very leery of it.

 

 

As a side note, the word "Sourcery" keeps tripping me up. It is not "Sorcery". Confusingly, "Sorcery" and "Sorcerer" are also used in the game, but far less frequently, and they have their standard meaning of an individual with innate magical talent. I am mildly curious if all this makes more sense in the original... I presume Flemish?

I appreciate the level of lore in this game. I've complained in the past about being overloaded by encountering a brand-new fully-fleshed-out fantasy world every time I want to play an RPG, with a complete new history, list of deities, unique races, nations, system of magic, etc. The series Divinity has its lore, but it's mostly lurking in the background, not demanding your attention like Elder Scrolls or Pillars of Eternity do. There are various books you can find in libraries, like in many of these games, but they're just as likely to have a funny little story or a slice-of-life vignette as a bit of history. And those books are usually just 1-2 pages long, exactly what my attention span is these days for RPG lore.

 

 

One thing that did catch my attention is a reference to all of the gods disappearing thousands of years ago, and nobody knowing how or why that happened. I think that might be a callback to one of the previous Divinity games, or possibly a call-forward to D:OS 2. These games are all set thousands of years apart, which is pretty great, since they don't need to worry much about continuity between them. I imagine that in some game you can make a big decision about What Happens To All The Gods, and that all gets collapsed into this pithy little sentence sitting on a shelf in this game.

 

 

Jumping around a lot: I really love the End of Time, which serves as your main base of operations in this game. It's a bit like the Pocket Plane in Throne of Bhaal or the Labyrinth in Torment Tides of Numenara: it's a location out of space and time that you can travel to at will. It's visually really cool, suspended amidst a beautiful star field.  It has great mechanics too: throughout your quests, but especially as you advance the main plot, you discover Blood Stones that turn into Star Stones. Each time a Star Stone is reclaimed, a medium-sized new area will unlock in the End of Time. These new areas are all useful in unique ways: access to limitless storage, a character redesign and respec, a convenient place to stash companions out of your party, a way to hire new mercenaries, a variety of new shops, a crafting forge, and so on.

As noted above and in my previous post, I've been traveling with Madora the fighter and Jahan the mage, the same as in my original Classic Edition game. In this go-round, I went ahead and recruited the other two companions Bairdotr the archer and Wolgraff the thief, just so I could do their companion quests. I think I've now completed Bairdotr's and gotten a ways into Wolgraff's, and... it doesn't really feel worth it. Per the guide I've peeked at, there are only maybe 3 or so plot points that advance their personal quest. The dialogues can be interesting, but your mechanical reward is really just that one quest that might give something like 3000 XP, which is trivial in the scope of the game. I think the quests would feel meaningful if you were traveling with them all the time, but since they aren't usually in your party, you're missing out on the far more common reactive dialogues that occur during main-plot story beats and exploring areas. I don't regret doing their quests, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to others: it's more fun to just stick with your core party and not micro-manage swapping people in and out. It's probably better to save the other two (whoever your other two end up being) for a potential future playthrough.

Some other quests have really weird pacing. In Silverglen, which is around level 11 or 12, you get a quest from Brandon to get some Tenebrium ore from the Troll King. But getting access to the Troll King requires going through Maradino's hideout, which is much much much further into the map. By the time you do that, you will almost definitely have already reached Sacred Stone, which has a ton of Tenebrium, as well as a book that teaches you Tenebrium, which is the main reward from Brandon's quest. When you do get access to the Troll King's real lair, everyone is Level 15. It's just weird - I do appreciate the game's relentless flexibility in progressing in any order you like, but it does feel like something was changed during development that still feels awkward. I felt similarly about the SparkMaster quest from Act I.

A few other quests are odd or underwhelming. It doesn't hurt the game, though. There is so much going on, and I never felt like I was wasting my time or not being rewarded.

For the main plot:

For the record, I'm considering "Act 2" to basically be everything in Lucella Forest and Hyberholm. (Having an "Act 1.5" now seems like it may be a marquee Larian thing, like Lathandar's Monastery in BG3.) It basically picks up after defeating the resurrected Bracchus Rex. Some of the main story beats I remember are:

• Searching for the White Witch, who you eventually learn is Icara. She is the sister of Leandra, aka The Conduit, who seems to be the main villain(ess) of the game.
• Along the way you encounter the Immaculates, a sect that eventually proves to be more of a cult, all cheery and helpful on the surface but with some sinister stuff underneath.
• The Immaculates have converted much of the town of Silverglen, a small hamlet in Lucella Forest that has historically supported nearby mines. These days most of the mines are overrun by goblins or trolls. There is a particular interest in mining Tenebrium, a unique ore that is in high demand but causes a high physical toll on humans who come into contact with it.
• As you infiltrate the Immaculates, you come to learn their philosophy. It's essentially that lower beings should serve higher beings. For example, a human is higher than a chicken, so it's right that a human eat the chicken to support and strengthen himself. As initiates rise higher in the cult, they learn the extrapolations of those teachings: that some people are better than others, and it's right and good to sacrifice lesser humans to support greater humans. And ultimately, the Immaculates should sacrifice themselves to support the greatest being, the Conduit.
• This ultimately ties in to bigger plot stuff. I'll probably cover that in my next post.
• But I'll note that Leandry/The Conduit has been using Tenebrium to create immortal beings named Death Knights. Originally designed by Bracchus Rex but "perfected" by her, they will form an unstoppable army that will conquer and then destroy the world.
• The Conduit and her cohort seem to ultimately be nihilists. They want to unmake the universe, to return to an original state of amorphous void.
• Leandra and Icara were both sourcerers and used to be close. It seems like all of this may have started over jealousy - Leandra loved a man who loved Icara. This led to a rupture in their relationship, and may have sent Leandra down this dark path.
• I'm trying to remember now what the big story beats in Hyberholm were. There's a subplot where the King of Winter took control from his seasonal siblings and covered the land in snow and ice. (Bring solid footwear!) There's something to do with imps, and parties of Immaculates searching for something, and I think Leandra is trying to make something in the Elemental Forge but I can't remember now what it was.
• You eventually find a way to disable the Death Knights' immortality, thanks to exploiting a failsafe Leandra built into them when she designed them. You also learn that the mage... Maradino, I think? ... should know Leandra's whereabouts, which points you in the direction of the Phantom Forest and Hunter's Edge, where I'm going to say Act 3 kicks off. 

 

 END SPOILERS

That's probably a good point to hit "Publish" on this post! It's been hard to refrain from playing this game for long enough to write this up!