You don’t have to read the entire guide. I’ve made a section called Short Version TL:DR to show you the most abusive way to beat most encounters. The Analyze can be skipped if you don’t want detail explanation why the game is hard. Below that is the detail strategies and tactics to beat any fights.

As long as you have certain skills, party composition doesn’t matter. I’ve beat the game with this party on normal difficulties:

Fighter: Pure Shield and Sword (created)
Archer: Pure (created)
Jahan: Pure Mage (Air, Water, Earth all Max)
Wolgraff: Pure Rogue

Position your party members as close as possible to the enemies without initializing combat. Use one of these three skills on the enemies: Meteor Shower, Hail Attack, or Rain of Arrows. Once combat starts use one of these three skills Meteor Shower, Hail Attack, or Rain of Arrows to finish off the enemies. That’s it.

Divinity: Original Sin is a super hard game if you do not understand the game mechanics. I’ve struggle with the game early on but over time learned how to totally abused it within the games laws, ie not cheating.

The game is flawed in the early levels. It have a very tight level range of 0. It punish the players for fighting opponents 1 level higher than your party. It’s a very bad system limiting the freedom to explore and force you to play a linear progression game. I won’t be surprised the majority of rage quit happen in the first 10 hours of game play.

Use this guide to figure where to go next.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=635229367

D:OSEE promote max/min builts, due to it tight level range of 0. If you mess up your built it only get harder and harder later on increasing frustration which lead to rage quitting. The game doesn’t give you the proper equipment early in the game to handle a lot of the encounters. Respec is a joke. The amount of money need to re-buy skill books is high and the time it takes to find them is not worth it.

I loves playing puzzle games but the amount of puzzles in D:OSEE is unacceptable. D:OSEE is a strategy game at it heart, not a puzzle game. Some of these puzzle just drag on and on especially near the end of the game. Some of the puzzles require lots of running around making it very very boring. Some puzzles are super hard. Some puzzles have both. It is a horrible system IMO.

As of this writing (7-29-2018) only 8.4% beat the game and that include easy difficulties. It’s not something to be proud off as a game developer.

A complete cycle means everyone including the enemies have taken their actions. Most fight will end in the first cycle using the alpha strike strategy. In a lot of cases the enemies will not be given the chance to attack due to your Alpha Strike and follow ups.

The most abusive strategy in the game is Alpha Strike. Alpha Strike in a general sense is attacking first with everything you got in the hope of totally defeating your opponent before he counterattack. In D:OSEE it means using two or more major AOE untarget range skills before the enemies take their turn. The three major AOE skills are Meteor Shower, Hail Attack, and Rain of Arrows. All three skills can get fairly early in the game, long before entering Luculla Forest. That’s good because the early game is very very hard.

The setup is very simple, position your party (unlinked) close to the enemies without triggering combat. Cast one of the three skills which will severely damage them, the attack will initiate combat. Follow it up by another AOE damage skill to finish the fight. If the remaining enemies survived the alpha strike they would be easily mop up by the rest of your party members.

For Example: First I use Rain (Jahan). Than Hail Attack (Jahan) because it also freeze. Combat then initiate, most if not all the enemies are frozened. Archer than use Rain of Arrows. What survive these two massive AOE damage will be finished by my Fighter, Jahan (chain lightning or earthquake), and Wolgraff. Most fights will finish in the first cycle including boss fight if lucky.

Alpha Strike against a bunch of enemies before combat starts.












Leandra is probably the hardest boss fight in the game because she cast invulnerability on minions and herself. The alpha strike strategy will prevented invulnerability and minions from triggering. Cast Rain, than Hail Attack. Leandra is Frozen. The cutscene starts skip it immediately by mashing enter button because it counts toward freezing duration. Combat initiated, I freeze her again to make sure she stay frozen. Over in two cycle. Leandra couldn’t do anything for the entire fight. It was just her and my party. No Leandra minions to fight no invulnerability to deal with. Super easy boss fight using Alpha Strike strategy.

Meteor Shower, Hail Attack, and Rain of Arrows do not need line of sight to be use. That means you can kill bosses and enemies behind the safety of walls. As shown in the picture below.

If you’re starting out and don’t want to be frustrated this is the recommended path built.

An Archer (Bairdotr or your own) and Mage (Jahan or your own). The other two members can be whatever you like.

Go straight to Expert Marksman level 4 or 5 for the Archer. Get Hydrosophist to level 5 for the mage. Don’t spend on anything else until you reach those two goals.

You will get an elemental trader in your homestead early in the game. You have to pick which one. Ice/water is the one you want. Why? Because it contain two of the three skills needed for the Alpha Strike, ie Rain of Arrows and Hail Attack. As a bonus of reaching level 5 Hydrosophist you get access to mass heal which is a time saver.

Ice/Water Elemental trader inside your homestead.













I recommend Air and Fire for the mage after that. Try to get 11 Action Points via speed/constitution/perception attributes for the mage. This will allow Meteor Shower to be cast in the first cycle. For Archer increase your AP to 8 via speed/constitution/perception attributes attribute. This will allow you to case Rain of Arrow on the first cycle. Keep in mind Meteor Shower will cancel freezing. If you don’t think you can kill the boss in the first cycle, don’t use meteor shower. Keep the boss frozen with freezing spells.

Are great. Talents and equipment that give immunities are prefer especially against stuns and burn. You get burn a lot in this game and to a less extent stun (freeze, stun, knock down, charmed, etc). So anything that gives immunities to status effect is always welcome.

I use smoke a lot before I discovered Alpha Strike. What smoke does is prevent line of sight. It does an excellent job of damage migration against range enemies. Range enemies will not be able to attack members inside the smoke or blocked by smoke. The AI in 100% of the case will try to get line of sight which means moving into melee range. Smoke is really really good.

Smoke use in conjunction with a chest to funnel the enemy one at a time.

Before I discovered Alpha Strike, I use these barrels a lot. Place a few of them near enemies (sneak) before the fight to make short work of them. Similar effects as Alpha Strike. Good times.

Before I discover Alpha Strike, I block enemy paths with barrels to funnel enemies in conjunction with smoke (prevent barrels from getting destroy via range enemies) to kill them one at a time. Work great because it acts like a massive stun lock. The AI freezes when the path is block and no attacks are possible due to smoke. Great trick but rarely used after I discovered Alpha Strike.

Alpha Strike wasn't possible in this case (ambushed) so the old block path was used.

I wasn’t sure about this skill. Figure it suck but I picked it anyway. I was wrong, it didn’t suck. At first enemy with 20% health or less get instant kill doesn’t sound appealing. That might be true against common enemies but against boss it save at least one cycle. Coup De Grace always hit and always kill.

Wolgraff the Rogue by far kill more bosses than the entire party members combine with his backstab and Coup De Grace. I usually delay his turn. Once his turn comes up, I teleport behind the boss and finish him off with backstab and Coup De Grace or just Coup De Grace via Adrenaline to get the extra action points. The last two boss were killed by Coup De Grace. Frozen Leandra killed by Coup De Grace. The Void Dragon with 20% health left teleported to my Rogue which just came out of a stun lock (for most of the fight he was stun locked). Coup De Grace finished the Void Dragon on the spot. Coup De Grace can’t miss and always kills is it strength.

Very good Geomancer mastery but not good enough to be part of the Alpha strike. Great as a follow up to Alpha strike. Large radius but the center is always the caster. Knock down and deal damage to all enemies in the radius. Acts like a mass stun. The oil from the earthquake can be use to burn opponent via fire or stun them via electricity.

Very good Expert Marksman mastery but not good enough to be part of the Alpha Strike. At point blank range it can deal enormous damage. It was one of the go to skills I used before I discover Alpha Strike.

Very good. I used it to clean up what’s left of the Alpha Strike.

100% damage migration for a successful block. My max block by the end of the game was 54%. That’s a lot of damage prevented. However with Alpha Strike tactics you don’t need defense, what is needed is the ability to clean up before the end of the first cycle. So duel hand or two handed weapon skills are better.

Very good Aerotheurge Mastery skills but not good enough to be part of the Alpha Strike. Great for cleaning up after the alpha strike.

Got it but never use it. Large radius to provide mass stun but I think it also stun party member inside the storm.

Save a lot of down time healing and was a great help in keeping the NPC alive especially the end fight.

Elessa is the best character in the game. She can be hire at level 6 in Hall of Heroes. She starts of with 15 extra ability points allowing you to mastery all arcanes. To take full advantage of her you need to hire Elessa at the start of level 6.

The Alpha Strike strategy is abusive. With the exception of the end boss (void dragon) it make boss fights super easy. The other tips like smoke, path blocking, etc are helpful if Alpha Strike isn’t possible. Always keep it in the back of your mind as plan B. Hopefully this guide will prevent you from rage quitting and enjoy the game to it fullest.