Divinity Original Sin 2 is a vast game with a lot of things to do and many difficulties to overcome. It will almost certainly be overwhelming for some players and this guide is here to help you out. There is not one way to play the game so I will do my best to give very general advice and remember, this is not the only way to play the game.

This guide will cover all the basics of the game split into different sections so if you are interested only in one specific topic feel free to skip to the desired section.

Let's start!

Whether you play alone or with other people, the first step is always the character creation. In this game, you create by default only 1 character per player in the game at the start. Those characters created at the very beginning are called Avatars by the game. It is how the game differentiate the main character(s) from companion(s). Avatars and companions will react differently depending on the situation. You see the story from the point of view of your avatar(s) while the companion(s) are here to make the journey with you.

The first thing you decide for your character is whether you want it to be custom or to be an origin story. Custom characters, as the name implies, are characters you tailor yourself by choosing a race, gender and their backstory while origin stories are fully fledged characters with a developed background and a past. Origin stories offer specific content related to their adventures throughout the game as they all pursue a specific goal. While you can help them achieve their goals as companions (as stated above) if you play them as avatar(s) you will have full control over your dialogue options and your decisions.

Let's start with the origin stories and then detail the customisation options in general.
There are 6 different origin stories to choose from:

• Ifan ben-Mezd, a male human
  
• Lohse, a female human
  
• The Red Prince, a male lizard
  
• Sebille, a female elf
  
• Beast, a male dwarf
  
• Fane, a male undead eternal (an ancient race not existing in the world of Rivellon anymore)

I won't get into the details of their stories as you can see them in the character creation screen but know that you can customise both their appearance and skills entirely, only their back-story and sex are pre-determined so your Lohse may look entirely different from another player's Lohse!

So after choosing what type of character you want you can choose the appearance of your character which has no impact on the gameplay, it is only cosmetic.

Then comes the choice of your preset. Each preset are pre-made archetypes to help you start the game with a somehow organised character. You can fully customise your starting attributes and skills and go entirely away from the preset if you want. I would still strongly recommend that you pick the preset closest to your desired character as the starting weapons are influenced by it.

You can then customise your starting attributes, abilities and skills.
Attributes are your typical stat points you find in most RPG. There are 6 attributes in DOS2, here is the listing of the attributes and their effect:

• Strength: each point gives +5% for all strength-based weapons
  
• Finesse: each point gives +5% for all finesse-based weapons and skills and +1% chance to dodge physical attacks
  
• Intelligence: each point gives +5% of all intelligence-based weapons and skills
  
• Constitution: each point improves your vitality (maximum health points) by 7%
  
• Memory: each point gives a new memory slot to learn new spells, the stronger the spell the more memory slots are required
  
• Wits: each point gives +1% of critical chance and +1 Initiative on top of giving a better chance to detect hidden traps and treasures

Attributes in this game are interesting because they are both rather easy to understand and pretty impactful. I recommend you focus mainly on one of the 4 first stats depending on what type of character you want to build and then add Memory and Wits whenever you need. If you start to feel you need to broaden your tactical range but don't have enough memory slots then get enough Memory to do so and never forget that Wits affect your Initiative (which determines the turns order in battle, the highest initiative goes first). You don't want to let the opposition controlling the battlefield before you can even play your first turn or you may get in trouble very quickly.
Some builds can balance a bit more Attributes but to begin with, I really suggest you try to focus your strategy for your character on one specific thing (depending on what you like to do).
You will get 2 Attributes points per level for the rest of the game.

Abilities determine what your character can do and are of two types: Combat Abilities and Civil Abilities. You have two Combat Ability points and one Civil Ability point to spend when you create your character and can't transfer points from one type of ability to another.
Combat Abilities can do two things:

• They can give you access to a skill school in the case of Skill Abilities (for example you need at least 1 point in Hydroshophist to learn Regeneration)
  
• They give you a bonus perk for each point spent no matter the type of Combat Ability (including skill abilities!). In our Hydrosophist example, each point spent gives +10% of healing effectiveness and +10% of magical armour given through the use of skills.

I recommend when you start the game to focus on only one type of weapon per character and to begin with a maximum of 2 types of skills to build a cohesive strategy. You can later pickup other skill schools to get access to some specific spells that go well with your initial idea but it is best that you first focus on one articulated strategy for your character.
There are no true bad combinations of skill schools thanks to how the battles are handled but you need to know what your goal is for your character or you will end up going in all directions and be good at nothing.

Civil Abilities are used mostly outside of battle for your interactions with your environment whether it is having better prices when you trade, persuading others, stealing etc. Overall you never want to have the same civil abilities on two different characters unless you have a very specific idea in mind. It is best to have one good Lore-master, one good barterer and so on. When you play in Multiplayer it is best that you make sure that you are working along with your comrades to avoid having 4 characters all very average in everything and not gaining any benefit from Civil Abilities (such as better prices in the shop, better items found in the wild etc.).

Skills are pretty straightforward: you can pick up to 3 skills from the one or two skill schools you chose just before in your Combat Abilities. As always it is best to have an idea in mind as to what your character will be doing in battle. If you are meant to do a lot of physical damage try to pick skills that do physical damage and inflict effects when the physical armour of enemies is down (more on that in the combat section of the guide).

You also automatically acquires two spells based on your race and your type of character. Each origin character gets its very own spell while all custom characters share the same. These unique spells are Source spells (check the combat section for more info on what a source spell is) and therefore are not used as often as other spells but have stronger effects. Racial skills, on the other hand, are regular skills that can be used during every fight and are pretty decent. I still suggest you choose your character because you like it and not because of its special racial and story skills as they are not a game changer and can be used on any-build one-way or another!

Talents are strong passive perks that can modify your character in many ways, be very careful when you pick those as you gain new talents very rarely during the game and some can have a very drastic effect (Zombie, for example, transform any healing into damage and poison damage into healing).

Finally, Tags allow you to choose what type of background your character has in the case of a custom character (origin stories have predetermined ones) which leads to brand new dialogue options that can sometimes drastically change how people see you.

Combat in DOS2 are turn-based. Each character plays according to the timeline at the top of the screen with the character with the highest initiative going first.

During each turn, characters can perform a variety of actions costing Action Points (AP). Those actions are mainly: attacks, skills, movements and the use of items. You can do actions in any order as long as you have enough AP to act. Your turn ends whenever you are out of AP or when you press End Turn. By default, every character gets 4 AP at the start of each turn. It is possible to keep some AP for your next turn to do more actions than for a maximum of 6 AP (this limit can go higher with special actions such as the skill Adrenaline or Flesh Sacrifice).

In most cases you win a battle simply by defeating all your opponents but sometimes some specific events may end the battle (for example if you used force to calm down a possessed character after a dialog).

Making sure that your party is at the right place at the right moment is key to avoid quick and painful death. Obviously you don't want your party to stay in fire, poison and other bad effects when they are sensitive to it. That being said there is a lot more special things to know about positioning.

Highground is a bonus that applies to all ranged attacks and skills (including magic spells) whenever you are placed higher enough than your target. Not only it gives a bonus damage effect to your action but it also enhances substantially your range to use your attack or skill. If you are placed below your target you will suffer a damage penalty so try to always place your ranged characters as high as possible with a good visibility on the battlefield.



Here is an example of Highground bonus on the skill Marksman's Fang. The green symbols show the extra range gained thanks to Highground. In this example the target is at about 17m instead of the normal 13m allowed by the weapon equipped.

Keep in mind that projectiles get stopped by the environment both when you attack or when you try to mitigate enemies attack. If you find yourself taking a lot of damage from ranged enemies try to make use of walls, rocks, pillars, etc. to completely ruin the line of sights of your enemies and force them to waste action points on movement to get a better view.

Lastly be aware that some skills interact with the direction in which targets are looking and any dagger wielder has guaranteed critical hits whenever he hits his target from behind.

Here you can see our fancy Red Prince with more magical armor than physical armor.

DOS2 battle system is pretty unique and features a very interesting interaction between Health, armour, and Crowd Control effects. The idea is that every character has a Vitality score which translates to a number of Health Points and whenever they reach 0 the character dies. But on top of that Vitality armour is protecting your character. There are two types of armour: Physical armour and Magical armour. Both work as a barrier to sponge damage before reaching your Health Points. If you received Physical damage your Physical armour will have to go down before it reaches your Health Points (same for the Magical armour). Typically every character tends to have one type of armour much higher than the other or an average mix of the two. Obviously, you want to take advantage of the weakness of each enemy and destroy the weakest of their two armour types to kill them as fast as possible.

This is even more interesting because of how Crowd Control (CC) work. CC are effects that will affect your targets negatively whether by slowing them down, knocking them down or applying very unique effects. The catch is that CC work against saving throws. The idea is that each type of CC is connected to one type of armour or the other and as long as that armour is intact the CC won't take effect. For example, the skill Hail Strike chills any target hit by it if their Magical armour is down. This means that not only your target will start taking damage when you get rid of at least one of their armour but it will also become sensitive to all associated CC, those effects can potentially make a target completely harmless!

Many strategies can work but I would suggest when you start the game to have 1 party member focused on physical damage (targeting low physical armour enemies), 1 party member focused on magical damage (targeting low magical armour enemies), 1 supportive party member that will make sure to help allies whether at getting rid of enemies or protecting them (giving them more armour, healing etc.) and 1 last party member that will cover his allies to avoid them being CCed.
Be careful as enemies will most of the time used your weaknesses against you and any target with a dangerously low armour will become an easy target and very likely become disabled soon enough.
Make sure to also balance your skills that are mostly meant to do heavy damage and skills that have particularly strong CC effects. For example a Rogue with Scoundrel and Polymorph will first use Throwing Knives to get rid of his target's armour (as it is a high damage skill with no CC associated to it) and then use Chicken Claw on his target only when his Physical armour is down as this skill does no damage but turns the target into a chicken for 1 turn as long as it doesn't have Physical armour.

Note that the CC applies after the damage are dealt which means that if you deal 10 damage and the target has 5 armour the CC effect will work so you can use Skills with CC effect on low armour targets if you can destroy it at the same time (Tentacle Lash from the Polymorph is a good example of a decent mix of damage and good CC effect).

I don't want to go too much into details with the elemental fields as they are actually pretty intuitive but they still are extremely important and can turn the tides radically whether for good or for worse. The elements can effect not only the characters but also the environment. A harmless pool of water can quickly turn into a deadly area if you cast an electric spell in it. Elemental fields can be there because of the environment or created by characters in combat (works outside of combat too and has impacts in many puzzles). In DOS2 as you can expect if you read the previous section elemental fields work in relation with armour. Most elemental fields are connected to the Magical armour (not every though, Ice is Physical for instance) and moving in a harmful field will both deal Magical Damage and eventually CC you depending on the field. There is so much to say about fields that I won't add too much (a full guide on fields should be required and I will do it if you are interested) but note that there is one major addition to DOS2 concerning fields that DOS1 didn't have which is the effect of Bless and Curse.
Bless and Curse are effects (and also spells, let's make it simple for now) that will transform a field entirely to modify its effects. If you bless a field of fire it will turn into a blue Holy Fire that will not only remove all burning effects but also heals characters in it. Overall Bless will turn any field into a positive effect and Curse will create very destructive and impairing fields. Fire for example will turn into Necrofire which can't be extinguished by normal means and requires to wait its natural end or to use Bless on it to counter the effects.

Here is an example of fire turned into holy fire, note the blue butterflies as a visual clue to tell you this is a good field (because obviously butterflies are your friends right?)

Those two effects start to be available towards the end of the first Act and can change drastically your strategies. They can be used both on a single target (which will then transform the fields it walks inside) or on a specific field to affect this one only. Be very careful with those effects as both affect enemies and allies alike!

The game is over whenever all your party members die in combat. As trivial as it sounds in Divinity Original Sin 2 it has interesting interactions in combat. First of all, it is really important to not be overly aggressive but also have decent defensive options to avoid death. This is particularly crucial during fights where you are meant to be at a disadvantage (ambushes for example). Try to get at least one good mobility option for each of your party members so they can get out of trouble if needed (Cloak and Dagger, Tactical Retreat, Phoenix Dive, Nether Swap, Spread your Wings are some strong options but there is more). On top of mobility, it is good to balance out your defensive skills across your team even if one character is more inclined to defend and support the team. The reason behind it is simply that if your supportive character gets heavily focused by the enemy you still have the option to defend yourself and survive thanks to the support of the rest of the team.

One very important factor in Divinity Original Sin 2 combats is armours as you already know (if not read the part about it in this very guide). Traditional games invite you to lower the amount of damage incoming thanks to tanks and then heal yourself thanks to healers. In this game, it is best to be proactive and prevent damage to happen at all. Yes being defensive means healing your team so they are not too low on health but it mostly means to check at all time the level of armours of all your party members and make sure that there is no big weak spot for your enemies to exploit (the AI will always use your weakness against you). This explains why you may always have the same character dying on your team. Aside from adding armours to your team don't neglect buffs and status effects. Slowing your enemies can make it harder for them to kill you. Knocking them down can get rid of them entirely for at least a turn and so on. Lastly, use your environment wisely to avoid as much damage as possible (cf other parts of this guide). Don't let ranged enemies get higher ground than your team, try to use clouds, walls and such at your advantage to break enemies lines of sights, try to spread out your team as much as possible to avoid being killed by big area of effect attacks.

Obviously, this is all theory and when it comes to real battles you can't always have everything going perfectly well. So what to do when a party member dies?

The first thing important is to not resuscitate party members instantly every time they die. If you do so you will end up using 3 action points at the very least and end up with a target with very low health and no armour at all. Be very careful with the timeline and identify when enemies will play their turn before trying to resuscitate. Try to wait for your defensive cooldowns to resuscitate a party member and eventually save 2 action points during a turn to resuscitate and then heal/shield your ally with your 6 stacked action points. In most cases, you will be safer finishing the combat with 3 party members rather than trying to resuscitate the 4th fallen member. Also, resurrection scrolls are far from being free so try not to waste them over and over during fights or you will end up have no money to get items and skills (that would make you avoid death entirely by being stronger).

Your characters whether they are custom made or origin stories all are sorcerers which means that they all have access to the Source. The Source is essentially the energy behind the creation of life in Rivellon and as you can imagine gives access to great powers to whoever has access to it. In terms of gameplay, the Source is not only connected to the previously mentioned effects Bless and Curse as you need access to the Source to use those but also gives access to special skills much stronger than the others. Those Source skills cost you a Source point to use on top of the normal conditions such as Action point cost and cooldown. Source points can be acquired by different means such as walking in a Source pool that you can find regularly around the world, by draining the Source out of corpses or by draining the spirit of the dead thanks to your Sorcerer ability to talk with spirits. But beware as draining the Source from the deads may lead you to become dark and have terrible consequences ...

As you can imagine using the Source is not something you do often and should be done only in the toughest encounters or you may regret being out of Source points during the direst situations. You start up with one maximum Source point per character as soon as you remove your Source collar during the Prologue on Fort Joy's island and then as you become stronger may eventually get access to up to 3 Source points stored at the same time.

As general advice aside from not randomly using Source skills, I would recommend you to specifically wait for the right window to do so. Always use your Source skills when you know the correct armours are removed on your targets (or that your skill will remove them in the process as most of those skills are very powerful) to maximise its effects. Or wait to be able to target as many enemies as possible if you use a big skill that can impact several targets.

Here is a comparison from the same character of a Fireball regular skill and Epidemic of Fire, a source skill. At first, they look not so different in terms of damage but Epidemic of Fire can bounce up to 5 times and also leave a cursed fire field instead of regular fire making it a very deadly weapon melting down your opponents.




























It may sound a bit trivial but try to use only Source skills that really take the best advantage of your strengths and strategy, don't use a Source skill just because you can use one. For example, if you have a mage with particularly good fire damage and very average access to other elements try to mostly (if not only) make use of his fire Source spells because those bonus damage can really quickly ramp up and decimate your foes.

At first, Source skills may look a bit underwhelming considering their cost, but if you use them at the appropriate time and have a build that makes good use of it they can be really devastating and turn the tides of battle in your favour with one Source skill only.

This section is all about your adventures outside of battles because yes DOS2 is far from being combat-only and has very deep adventuring whether it is through conversations or exploration.

Exploration is a big part of the game and can be easily overlooked. Yes, you can go only from point A to point B but by doing so you will miss out a lot of things including very interesting things (both in terms of rewards and entertainment). Overall I recommend you to turn every stone and to go everywhere (and I mean physically bring your cute little happy characters there, not just the camera you lazy nerd!). First of all, by doing so you will often find things you wouldn't have found otherwise and secondly hidden treasures and interactive things (lever, traps, you name it) are not rare to find (so get a shovel in your bag!). Also you will want to display interactive items pretty much all the time when you discover a new location (by default the key is Left Alt on your keyboard) not only it shows the items you can collect but also sometimes interactive things you may have missed (what appears in red is things that belong to someone so don't click on it unless you want to steal it obviously). The AI should normally naturally avoid walking in hazards but sometimes it will just happen, try not to let your character run around too long without you looking or a BOOM could happen without you even noticing.
There is technically a million other details I could put here but in-game tutorials are there too to help but know that you can do a lot of other things like sneaking, pick-pocketing and staring at your stupid character falling all by himself on a tiny ice pool.

As with the rest of this section of the guide it is very highly recommended to talk to EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING (yes, even animals, especially if you have the Talent Pet Pal, and yes, you want the Talent Pet Pal on at least one of your characters). Every NPC in this game has something to say and even the ones with a very few lines of dialogues you often can get something useful out of them (like special discounts when you trade because you said something they liked). You should ALWAYS check what each NPC has to trade (I suggest you do it at the very start of the conversation before you forget because the conversation was so fascinating). It's rare to find NPC with nothing interesting to trade as most of the time each NPC will want to trade a specific type of items (for example one will sell Geomancer skill book, another one Scoundrel skill book etc.). I very very very VERY strongly suggest that you open right away your map and place a marker on it where the NPC is to write what type of items it sells so you can easily remember where is that one Hydrosophist vendor when you need it hours later.
Dialogues are pretty big in this game and important so please take the time to read them and if you start to feel you are skipping a bit too much dialogue, just take a break and come back to play later, trust me you will enjoy the game a lot more that way. First of all, the dialogue is very interesting and secondly there is so much hidden content that you can only find through select dialogue options; even kids can lead you to secrets in this game (dogs, pigs cows, you name it!).

There's not a whole lot to say about quests aside from the fact that the game won't ever hold your hand to do them. It's good to open your Journal often (L key by default) to check what quests you forgot about and could easily tackle right now. I heavily suggest you always keep a very close look at your companions Quests (in some cases you need to talk to them or other things to activate them or make them progress) as they are going on throughout the course of the game and you love your companions that want you dead so badly right ?
Again don't forget you can place markers on the map, those can be handy for quests too.

If you find something particular such as this really captivating piece of art, write it down on your map with a marker!

Inventory management in a videogame is typically to organize your inventory in order to make sure it is tidy and convenient to use so you don't spend forever to look for a specific item. Typically you would see such activity in an MMO where players carry on their characters for hundreds of hours and naturally pile up items along the way. Modern RPG tends to simplify inventory management as much as possible for practical reasons, it is always more enjoyable for the player to have a clean and easy to use inventory right? Well, Divinity Original Sin 2 goes all out on the old school when it comes to Inventory (with a few modern ideas here and there still). This part of the guide is not only for people that underestimate the comfort of having a tidy inventory but also to show you much you can benefit from making good use of your items in general.

It is worth noting before going into details that in this game each character has its own inventory instead of having one big inventory for the party. "Magic pockets" allow for characters to automatically gain access to key items from allies' pockets when they need it such as a shovel, keys to open locks or quest items.

Lastly, each character has a limit of weight he or she can carry around depending on his or her Strength attribute. It is recommended to have your dedicated Strength character to carry the most.

This part of the guide is probably the most subjective and is a reflection of my strategies to keep my inventories tidy. Just like you would for your own house or anything else we all have our own techniques, the idea is simply to give you new ideas that can make your time easier. There is no need for you to apply everything literally.

First I highly recommend specialising each character's inventory to satisfy one purpose.
As said before your highest strength attribute character will do most of the lifting while the others will tend to carry the few but interesting things you particularly like.
There are at least 3 types of inventories you can distribute across your characters: the crafting inventory, the wares inventory and the interesting items inventory.
The crafting inventory will be the one where you throw all the items you can use for crafting. If you tend to gather everything for crafting all the time you will very quickly have a very heavy inventory so it may be good to put this inventory for the Strength character. However, this inventory is also by default the one with the most items in it so for comfort reasons you may want to make it your "Avatar" inventory (i.e. main character) in solo play as it will be with this character you pick up items most of the time if you play "classically". If not you can either switch to your strong character to pick up the items or gather the items with a drag and drop motion onto the strength character's picture in the party screen which will indeed gather the items with your Avatar but automatically transfer the item to your other character thanks to the magic pockets.

I will throw it here half randomly but I can't stress enough that you will want to take your time to gather items rather than dumping everything you find on your main character, it will make your game much better (including for combat! see the crafting section as for why).

Your second type of inventory is the "Wares" one. This inventory is meant to be used for Bartering with the various traders in the world to get good items and sell yours in exchange. If you go often enough to traders this inventory should never get too heavy so it doesn't matter the strength stat the only thing that matters is that it is your character with the best Bartering stat so you can buy at lower price and sell at higher price (it quickly ramps up and items start to get pricier and pricier as you go through the game making its effects even more interesting).

What is "Wares" you may ask? Wares in the game specifically is the term for all your "trash" items you want to sell right away when you see a trader. You can right-click any item you can normally sell in your inventory and click "Add to wares" which will tag the item as Wares. Then click "Send to XXX" (XXX being your character with the best Bartering) so the item goes in your "Wares inventory character". When you are trading at the top of the screen an icon allows you to add all your wares from the inventory automatically in the sell window, this will save you a lot of time and make your inventory so much tidier. I strongly recommend you "add as wares" immediately all items you plan to sell later on. This will most of the time be pieces of equipment, eventually skill books (don't learn all spells you come across if you don't plan to use them much, they are quite expensive and are a very solid source of money).

The last inventory being the "interesting items" is straightforward. You usually will have good pieces of equipment you can't equip yet, alternative stuff you don't always use, maybe quest items etc.

Containers in this game not only logically allow you to get items when you explore but you can also use them for your inventories. You can indeed pick containers and add them to your inventory directly (you can add many things including useless items like flower pots). In order to do so hold left click on the item and drag and drop it in your inventory (like you would move an object in the world basically). What is important about containers is that they are all bottomless meaning that you can add an infinite amount of items in them and not just the basic 24 slots shown by default.
I STRONGLY suggest that you gather many light containers (bag, pouch etc. as opposed to crates and such) and specialize each of them for one purpose. Each of your party members should have one container to stash all his/her consumables (you can then drag the container in your hotbar to open it quickly in combat and use the item, just right click and press use on the item then and voilà!). Then you can use a bag for all the keys put on a character on your team, you can also put all the books in another bag and so on. Containers will make inventories so much tidier and if you are clever with which containers you use you should easily remember which contains what. Good containers are pretty rare to find so whenever you see one grab it!

Below is an example of a pouch being one of the best type of containers as it is very light so doesn't encumber you.

Crafting in this game is not particularly original and can seem a bit underwhelming and tedious to some. This part of the guide is meant to make you change your mind and come to like crafting for its benefits and find it less tedious and actually practical to use.

If you skipped the part on inventory management you should read it if you are interested in crafting as inventory management is particularly connected to crafting.

Crafting in DOS2 works by combining from 2 to 5 items to create a new item. You can craft items as long as you have the ingredients for it, no recipe is necessary. That being said whenever you do craft a new item you did not have the recipe before you automatically learn that recipe for later uses. You can also gain new recipes by reading the various crafting books all around the world (they often are pretty colourful and have "funny" names). For that reason (and also for quests and secrets) I recommend you read everything that is readable as you adventure, you don't necessarily need to carry the books with you since you can simply read them in the environment by using right click and read.

While at first crafting may seem like something you will never do because you don't have much recipes and they are not the easiest to guess (seriously why a tooth and an arrow stick creates a shocking arrow ?). Keep piling on crafting items as you will eventually get interesting recipes that will naturally make you guess other similar recipes and from there you will start to fully exploit the potential of crafting.

Crafting serves several purposes. The first being that you will save money by crafting your own items rather than buying them. For example, it is cheaper to craft your resurrection scrolls, potions and other consumables you use very regularly. Crafting can also give you access to stuff you wouldn't have otherwise such as new skill books or even very special skill books and parchments that are source powers without any source cost associated to it! (basically, you enter god mode)
Lastly crafting is also particularly interesting for your characters that like to use consumable items such as arrows, grenades or parchments quite often as you can start to quickly refill your stocks when you get the hang of crafting.

Just a quick word on runes while I am at it as it is in the same menu. Runes can be inserted and extracted for free in any rune slot (you can have slot only on the rarest items, you will find plenty eventually). You don't even lose the runes when you extract them from an item so be crazy with your rune slotting and try many things. Each rune gives a different bonus whether it is inserted in a weapon, in a piece of armour (shield included) or in a piece of jewellery (ring, necklace). Bonuses can be very varied and even give you access to new skills which can be particularly interesting since runes can be moved around from items to items easily.

Skill-crafting is a type of crafting that basically combine an elemental school of skill with a non-elemental school to create a combination of the two in one skill. There 2 results possible per combination one obtained with regular skills while the other is obtained if one of the skills used for the combination is a source skill (the result will also be a source skill as you can imagine).

So try to combine any Water, Fire, Air of Earth skill-book with any other skill-book not from those 4 elements and enjoy the surprise (you can quicksave before doing so if the result doesn't excite you).

Note that in order to use the skill you will logically have requirements in both schools used to make the skill (such as Necromancy + Hydroshopist lvl 2 for example).

Throughout the course of the game, your companions will regularly intervene and ask if they can handle a situation. This can lead to very diverse results depending on the situation such as new information on a topic or someone dying. Letting your companions intervene is a good way to raise their attitude towards you. The attitude your companions have towards you impact how their appreciation of you and it has much deeper impacts that you may first guess.

First, it will change the dialogues with them. Generally, a companion with a good attitude towards you will agree more often and go in your direction while companions with a bad attitude towards you will have to be convinced to follow your plans more often. Even though it seems not having much importance for a good part of the game it actually has bigger and bigger consequences throughout the course of the game leading to moments where you can lose forever your companions simply based on a disagreement that could have been avoided by having good relationships.

Without spoiling why all other companions that are not in your active party can die and be "lost forever" on several occasions choose carefully your main party. The first choice happens at the end of the first Chapter of the game when you escape Fort Joy. The game is quite subtle about this and warns you that you should choose your companions carefully, so please do it or you may have regrets dozens of hours later on.

If you happen to lose one or several companions you have the possibility to replace them with (which are essentially here mostly for combat and eventually civil skills but never have impact on story) or if you are in the position where your party is of only 2 people you can use the talent Lone Wolf on both your characters and turn your party into a deadly overpowered duo (which can be quite sweet RP-wise as it can be because your duo is actually now a couple in a cute romance).

And lastly a quick list of tips for adventuring with the smile:

• Keep a shovel in your bag, obvious but just do it (Lizards don't need one actually they have claws for that)
  
• Grab a Bed Bag as soon as you see one and keep it in your inventory (you can find some at the very beginning on the game on the boat actually). This holy grail item instantly heals all party members at full around you and can be used infinitely as long as you are not rested and not in battle. It's a lot more convenient than spamming healing spells after every fight right? (also gives a sweet little bonus if you use it right before a fight).
  
• Don't forget the Pet-Pal talent, animals have so many secrets to share!
  
• Quicksave (F5 by default) and Quickload (F8 by default) are your friends. Press F5 anytime you did something that would be a pain to do over again such as a fight, a big session of trading etc. Trust me you will save a lot of time doing so. (you can choose how many Quicksaves are being kept as a backup in the options by the way!)
  
• You can rotate objects you are about to move around in the environment (By default by using the mouse wheel as you hold left click when you move the item around). It sounds silly but some very heavy items that block your way can be moved more easily by being rotated than moved entirely somehow (barriers for example).
  
• You can change your party formation in the Menu which not only changes how your characters move around as a group but also at the start of the fight.
  
• Saving the black cat in Fort Joy gives you a unique reward that can be pretty useful in some situations so I strongly recommend you do, it's a good tutorial to use quicksave often and keep track of what is happening by itself anyway.

Your best friend the bedroll, pick one up and your life will be easier!

Here is a list of random but useful tips that should help you out to get better in combat:

• One character = One strategy
  It's best that each of your characters does what it is supposed to instead of trying to do everything with every character.
  
  
• Be ready, be adaptive
  It's good to specialise your characters but doesn't rely too much on the same strategy or you may have serious troubles in some situations. You will face very varied encounters and if for example, your main source of damage is fire any Magical armour heavy or Fire resist heavy team will completely destroy you. It's also good for each of your characters to do a tiny bit of what it's not supposed to do such as having one Magical armour CC on your heavy Physical Damage character (and vice-versa) for that moment where you can only that one type of CC.
  
  
• Synergy is the key
  The synergy between your characters but also within each character's build will get you anywhere. If you feel your characters lack synergy try to figure out why, sometimes it can be because of their Initiative Score (you often want to put Poison before Fire for example), sometimes it can be because they are doing too much of the same, sometimes it's another reason entirely. On a team-scale try to make the count of how many CC you have, their armour type and which character holds them, the count of your defensive options, what mobility options each party member has. On a character-scale make sure that your damage-dealer character has good skills to get rid of armours fast and decent CC options that are cheap enough to use and with cooldowns that allow them to be used when needed to make sure you keep the upper hand.
  
  
• Creativity is your best friend

Not only is it good to mix it up a little for the sheer fun of it, sometimes you'll find, if a particular strategy isn't working, that a complete mix-up will suddenly yield surprising results!

This section is just starting to be created so expect more tips to come in the future as I uncover any new quality of life tips, tips that make your adventure smoother.


In the Lady Vengeance, you can find two Teleporter Pyramids. Those items are small colored pyramids that allow you to teleport from one to any other by using it (it costs 6 AP in combat). The easiest to find is on the table in front of Tarquin in the private quarters of Dallis. The other one is not complicated to find since you can simply use the teleporter to get to the second one (or find it in the boat, you can find the access to it in the same room).

The yellow one is located in Ryker's mansion in his basement. The best way to obtain it is simply by doing what he asks and then no matter the final conversation goes with him you will have access to it. It is located in a tenebrium chest in the closed room (entrance open with the lever in the big room).

The green one is located on Bloodmoon Island in the archives, just like the yellow one it is in a tenebrium chest, you can't really miss it when in the archives. If you can't find the entrance to the archives use your spell to see the ghosts and go all around the island you should end finding the way to get inside.


When you acquired at least 2 Pyramid Teleporters (look above how to get them) you can set up a trick to easily get Source whenever you want. Simply go through the story with the Meistr in Driftwood and when you get access to her basement place a Pyramid Teleporter there and keep the other in your inventory. Whenever you need simply use your pyramid to get instantly teleported to the basement in front of the Source distributor and voilà!
The best way to do that trick is to have at least a 3rd pyramid as you can then place the 3rd one on the ground wherever you come from to teleport back to this place instead of having to go back to the nearest waypoint and walk back. If you are in multiplayer simply put a teleporter on two different characters and the third in the basement and make players go one by one in the basement quickly and then teleport back to the other player.

Obviously you can do that for anything you like (specific trader etc.).

Your feedback about the guide (and to some extent the game) matters! Feel free to put comments (constructive ones of course) on the Guide whether it is missing parts, things you really liked or disliked. I will make sure to update the Guide according to feedback but also to eventual updates to the game.

I hope you enjoyed this guide and that it will help you have a good time in Rivellon!

Hi everyone.
I hope you found this guide both informative and easy to follow.
I will now be editing this guide to the best of my ability. This will mean hopefully mean all past grammatical oddities or difficult to read sections will be easier to read. I will not be changing anything that pertains to gameplay, unless the Definitive Edition has altered it in some way. Generally, I have tried to keep everything in the tone of the original authors intent, so you shouldn't be able to tell who wrote what unless I want you to.

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