r/DivinityOriginalSin • u/Number1Bg3Fan • 10h ago
DOS2 Help Honour Mode help
Hello everyone, I am going to be attempting HM in DOS2 very soon and would love really in depth help for how to get through it.
I’ve gotten all the other trophies except HM and one of the endings which I will choose with this playthrough. I’ve completed two runs, one balanced and one tactician and vastly improved on my tactician run so feel confident enough.
However I would still like as much help as possible (feel free to leave super long, in depth comments). Ideally I would love advice on what build to run not only for my character but for my party and which skills to acquire and best combos to use; any cheats/cheeses for bosses or specific encounters; and any general advice and things to remember. Thank you!
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u/Ok-Badger5056 9h ago
Teleport cheese to pull enemies away from what would otherwise be a larger combat. In my opinion, the hardest fight in the game is the Knives fight under the cathedral.. sneak and teleport a couple fringe enemies away to fight them 1 on 1 before initiating the fight with the main guy.
At the very least you can dispatch one before the others can get close
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u/onlyforthisno 9h ago
When I completed my honour run my strategy was simply "if the enemies never get their turn, they can't kill me."
So I did a lone wolf duo where my main was an elf enchanter that slowly transformed into an elementalist, as some encounters have enemies with high Air and/or Water Resistance. My companion was Ifan for the Encourage (and since I needed the Deal with the Devil achievement) and I made him a summoner that would make an electric incarnate for more CC. Then he too became an enchanter for maximum CC at all times.
Strategy was pretty simple, my main always had more initiative so that their first turn was used to set up an electrified surface, CC as many enemies as possible, and haste Ifan if he had 4 infusion spells. Then during Ifan's turn he'd summon the Incarnate, do all the infusions and Encourage. After that it was just ensuring that all or at least the worst enemies never got their turn.
Personally I dislike using cheese, like the chameleon cloak strat, pre-buffing, and fleeing and re-engaging. Only thing I really abused was the Green Tea in Act 4 and of course getting two Idol of Rebirth so they each had one.
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u/NikWih 10h ago
Obviously I would reccomend a pic where you have many chars that could win a fight on their own. While Lone Wolf is stronger, I would reccommend for the first playthrough a four char party, because it is somewhat more stable. What kills you in a honor mode run is the unexpected. Healing Fane through missclicking, getting teleported into deathfog, lava or running through an active shreeker etc. If you do this in a lone wolf run it can get critical rather fast. It provides you with more options to play cheesy if you want to.
Get a specific plan when to do what always prepare ahead of anything. No funny experiments and not doing things the first time. Plus take your time - especially in hard siutations AND consider bailing out.
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u/Number1Bg3Fan 9h ago
Yeah I did HM in BG3 and the stress was unreal. I was way too scared to attempt anything new and crazy so I’ll definitely continue that trend. Yeah I was really debating between lone wolf or a full party but what you’ve said makes complete sense and it does seem safer to have a full party. I won’t be attempting HM more than once I just want the trophy but yes, thank you! You got any cheese strats?
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u/NikWih 9h ago
4 Physical is for sure the reccommended strategy. 1 Ranger, 1 2H-Warfare, 1 Dual-Wielding Scoundrel, 1 Summoner switching to Necro - would be an example. It depends e.g. if you play vanilla (no respec until you reach Lady Vengance) and how often you want to respec. Choose the race and person for your roles carefully OR respec!
Use crafting and scrolls adn ensure that you have enough money. Focus on fights and (especially in the start) consider using potential ex-change members to get certain abilities that you do not need for your core team in the long run.
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u/SherabTod 10h ago edited 9h ago
I'm currently doing a solo lone wolf tactitian honour run and I found playing an undead like fane help avoiding doomed fight with play dead. Then I also added a lot of survival skills like invisiblity, armours and evasion to avoid damage wherever possible alongside some CC. Warrior, summoner and necro mage all felt very viable.
Also the purists don't want you to know this but you can go into the safe folder and make manual backups of your (dis-)honour mode safe files
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u/Number1Bg3Fan 9h ago
Ahaha I play on console unfortunately so can’t do any of that sort of tinkering but thank you!
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u/SherabTod 9h ago
Another neat little trick you can do as an undead btw, is to start with some points in strength (I like to play Act 1 as a warrior) and grab one of the deathfog barrels from the ship. If you rush at them right away once you enter that room, you can usally grab one and sometimes two. These badboys can cheese so many fights early. I like starting taking the side ladder into fort joy so I dont trigger the Alexander event at the gate, grab the teleport gloves and then teleport one deathfog barrel right onto Alexander. Killing the Gheists gives a ton of exp and it forces Dallis to drop you a little gift on her escape.
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u/Number1Bg3Fan 9h ago
Ooo thank you for this!
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u/SherabTod 8h ago
No problem, have fun! Btw if you want to play an undead, I recommend playing Fane and doing an evil Fane run... You'll see in Act 3...
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u/the_brytt 9h ago
Yeah I like solo honor runs as fane (or any undead), I then like to wear the mask and become an elf for the flesh sacrifice point/standing in blood. Best of both worlds! And neither poison nor deathfog can hurt you!
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u/Might-Die-alone08 9h ago
Barrelmancy if you're only after the achievement is the quickest way imo. Duo lone wolf just so you have a way to store your bag/ornate chest while you run around. Comeback kid with idol of rebirth to ensure you never die(unless you step on lava or deathfog)then other talents like executioner. the other ones don't really matter
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u/Sarenzed 8h ago
Don't try anything new. Trying out new tactics, new decisions during quests or new dialogue choices that you don't know the outcome of is one of the easiest ways to lose your run by accident. As long as you're confident in your ability to beat Tactician without getting your party wiped out, just doing things that you know will work is enough to comfortably beat honor mode.
It's a good idea to actually try and compete for highest initiative in honor mode. Taking the first turn is not only powerful for combat, but also prevents you from getting wiped out in round 1 without even getting a turn. Here is a link to a list I once made that details the highest enemy initiative for every relevant fight in the game. To win initiative consistently, you want to be 1 higher than that number.
So choose a character that isn't super hungry for attribute points (like a summoner, or a warrior who can get away with low memory), level some initiative, pre-buff with Peace of Mind before every fight (and keep it up during the fight) and collect as much equipment with +wits and +initiative as you can. Target 16 initiative for Act 1, 34 (without PoM) for Mordus in Act 2 (assuming you reach level 12 before him, otherwise you need 35), and try to climb towards 40 by the end of Act 2. Some enemies are very hard to beat in initiative without potions, so consult the document. Some enemies can't really be beat in initiative. If the combat starts directly from conversation, you can use cryo stasis from Act 2 forwards to skip their first turn. Otherwise, you'll simply have to endure their first turn, although a good chunk of those enemies uses their first turn on some kind of scripted event.
Make sure you always have some good safety measures for defense. Every character should run Evasion or Chameleon Cloak, or both. Carry invisibility potions or Chanterelle mushrooms, have a character with 5-Star-Diner to turn 50% resistance potions into 100% immunity, have some skills spread around your party to clear CCs, give everyone mobility skills, and so on.
On the topic of utility skills, other than the ones mentioned before everyone should have Adrenaline, and most (or even every character) should have Teleport. Win initiative, start with an overwhelmingly strong round 1 where you teleport enemies together, end the turn with a 1-AP Evasion or invisibility if you can't ensure that all enemies are shut down by CC. On top of that, apply buffs and take good positions before every fight. All of that together is a simple formula to make combat easy.
Also, make sure to plan a good route through each act. By now, you should be aware which fights are especially hard. Just delay those fights until they're the easiest fight left, fight enemies in order of ascending difficulty, and make sure to get all non-combat XP from exploration and quests early. With all of that, you should be able to consistently be one level higher than any enemies you face.
What builds you run doesn't really matter. As long as they're good builds and a proper party composition, it'll get the job done. If you lose in honor mode it's because of bad decisions, not because your builds are not perfectly optimized. It's all about choosing the safest and most efficient approach, and knowing exactly which fights you can or can't handle safely. A player who is able to do that perfectly can trivialize honor mode with any decent team.
That being said, playing as LW duo instead of a 4-man party makes the game easier. It's well-known that Lone Wolf is strong and gives you a lot more leeway to make mistakes. The maximum power you can gain from perfect optimization on a 4-man party exceeds that of an LW duo, but any player who can build and play such a party can already trivialize honor mode and wouldn't need advice from anyone. Also, running at least one undead can be a good idea to reduce the chance of any mishaps with deathfog.
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u/Mindless-Charity4889 8h ago
Cheese eh….
Well, you can use Flaming Crescendo(FC) at lvl16 to one turn kill many bosses or tough enemies such as the Advocate, the Sallowman (although just teleporting him into lava is easier), the ambushing demons in Arx, the Doctor, the Devourer dragon etc. but you need a situation where only one of you is frozen in conversation so it won’t work for the final battle or the battle in act3 against the gods because the entire party is locked in conversation.
Let’s consider the ambushing demons as an example.
1) you send a team mate into the school grounds to initiate conversation
2) during conversation, you switch to your guy with FC and have them cast it on the demon who is talking and is thus also frozen in time.
3) it turns out FC counts as a buff so it doesn’t make neutrals hostile. It also stacks so after it cools down, you cast it again.
4) and again, and again and again. You cast as many times as it takes to guarantee enemy death in one turn. That can be as low as 4 or 5 or (in the case of the Doctor) several dozen times.
5) if necessary, you can buff the bomb demon with Peace of Mind to ensure they go second after you.
6) when combat starts, use teleport and teleport scrolls to gather the other demons around the bomb, then strip his armor and knock him down. Skin Graft scrolls are useful here.
7) on his turn, he gets up and explodes, killing himself and all the other demons in the blast.
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Note that FC is bugged in that the damage it does is higher than the tooltip says it does. It does the same damage as Supernova whereas the tooltip has it do the same damage as Fireball. Also, be sure to consider the effect of enemy resistance to fire. You can decrease this resistance by putting a fire lamp near them. This drops their resistance by 10% or so. The fact that you can cast it on neutrals makes it a good way to get targets that would otherwise run away too fast to catch, such as the messenger elf or the toy under the stairs by the beach.
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u/Mindless-Charity4889 7h ago
Cheese strat 2….
Not that cheesy really, but you can win any encounter with sufficient Skin Graft scrolls. Since they cost 0AP to use and restore Adrenaline, they basically give 2AP per use, or 3AP if you are an Elf and can use Flesh Sacrifice.
Let’s consider the Dallis fight on the Lady Vengeance (LV). You can collect Animal Scales in Act 1 from Exeter and you can also buy them from him on the ship. You have an oven on the ship and if you brought a barrel of water, you can use your wood chips to make paper. Finally, Tarquin sells 4 source orbs. After an hour of real time (go have dinner or watch TV), he will have more to sell. In this way, you can create a dozen or more scrolls assuming you have sufficient cash. It helps to bribe Tarquin to get his attitude to 100; after all, he will be with you through Act4. You can get unlimited cash via literal farming drugs if you use the gift bag Herb Garden but the easiest way is probably Unnis’s Pouch cheese.
So let’s say you have 12 scrolls and you have Sebille as a high INIT glass cannon Ranger with 6AP. The battle goes like this:
- jump to the rigging, teleport Dallis to the deck of LV
- jump to Lord Dread (LD) teleport chest into fire
- jump to LV, teleport enemy minion to LD to keep them safe
- jump to rigging, teleport different minion on top of Dallis, put arrow into chest
- from here, just keep teleporting minions on top of Dallis and using Ricochet to damage them
- when Dallis has no more physical armor, drop her with a knock down arrow.
- at this point, you can end your turn and let your team handle things. Remember that due to accumulated fatigue, you will miss your turn on turn 2.
- whoever goes next teleports a minion and uses Battle Stomp to knock down the group around Dallis.
- you bide your time, killing a minion here and there and making sure Dallis remains knocked down until turn 4 or so and the chest opens. Note that you will have to endure various attacks by Vredeman.
- after the chest opens, you kill off the remaining minions (except the one who’s safely on the LD), then reduce Dallis below 300 HP at which point she flees, ending the battle.
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In this way you get the chest, Dallis’s gear, and max XP by killing as many minions as possible (if you kill them all, it prematurely ends the battle).
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u/Mindless-Charity4889 7h ago
Cheese strat 3….
Again, not that cheesy but it can be if you combine it with retreat.
Let’s use the battle at the gates of Arx as an example.
1) your entire party is off to the side of the gate where the dying Magister was. There’s a ladder leading up to the ramparts.
2) ranger Sebille heads up alone, sneaking.
3) she gets a surprise attack off, then tries to keep safe by attacking, then going invisible via potion or chameleon cloak
4) if she was attacked and damaged, send up another char to buff her. If they stay sufficiently far away, they can buff her in realtime mode without being drawn into combat. Some skills, like First Aid, will draw you into combat though. If this happens, use their turn to jump off the wall as far away as possible to return to realtime mode. This is the cheesy part.
5) keep this up until all of the voidwoken reinforcements arrive.
6) now it begins. Sebille goes first and does her attack, then goes invisible.
7) next turn, she goes first but delays. Enemy moves but don’t attack her as she is still invisible.
8) at bottom of turn, she has her move but you switch to different party member.
9) this party member enters the gate under stealth. Since the enemy is frozen and you can see the red cones of sight, it’s easy to get behind an enemy, especially if you use Cloak and Dagger (which everyone has).
10) once behind an enemy, you hit them with a high AP attack like Onslaught (4AP, 2 source). Since it’s a surprise attack, it costs 0AP although you do pay any relevant source. You then move to the end of the turn order.
11) repeat with the rest of the party until they’ve all done a surprise attack and are in good position. So now, at the bottom of the turn, your entire party has full AP, the enemy has no AP, they’ve suffered multiple surprise attacks and are near death in many cases. You simply finish them off.
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u/Mindless-Charity4889 7h ago
Cheese strat 4. The barricade….
Again, not too cheesy. Pots and pans and gold chests are indestructible and can be used to block enemies. I carry around a pile of these items for the purpose. You can trap trolls on their bridge or golems in their cages. Here’s an example from the Black Pits.
1) head up to the quartermistress and block the entrance of a nearby tent with a chest (there’s one buried conveniently close by)
2) go to the stairs closest to the magister gate. Make a giant corral of pots, pans and chests. It has to be big to contain several large blobs. That location is far enough away from the hanging platform that the big blobs can’t hit it, yet close enough that with height advantage from the tower, you can teleport enemies to the corral.
3) optionally block off the stairs and ladders with chests. While you are at it, move all the oil barrels into the corral to reduce the amount of fire on the map. Or collect them on the LV for later.
4) when battle starts, let Gwydian summon the blobs, then teleport him into the tent to keep him safe
5) teleport all your enemies into the corral. Teleport scrolls and Skin Graft scrolls are useful here. A character with Ambidexterity can use a teleport scroll for 1AP.
6) priority is big blobs because once in the corral, they are out of the fight as they can’t jump. Small blobs can jump but have a cooldown so before they jump again, you kill them or teleport them back into the corral. Magisters can also jump, but usually won’t and will attack the blobs.
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u/popeleo22 1h ago
Unlike bg3 act 1 is not the hardest part of the game, act 2 is. Mainly because it is massive and is level gated in a strange way, so much so that I’d look up a level map.
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u/keldondonovan 10h ago
Leave your buffer out of the conversation, every time. Buff everyone who is in the conversation, their timers will not run down while in convo. Add nails to all shoes. Quicksave after every fight. If the first round goes bad, and it looks like they will kill someone, quick load, as a character death will overwrite the quicksave.
Do not be afraid to use a bit of cheese.
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u/Number1Bg3Fan 9h ago
Any cheese you got in mind?
But thank you for this!
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u/keldondonovan 7h ago
Aside from the buffing everyone in conversations, there is also the "flee and return to combat" technique. It's aptly named, you just have a character run away, bedroll, let skills cool down, then come back into the fight with a heavy hit that doesn't cost ap because you aren't in combat.
There's also tea, in the final act you can buy a lot of it that can basically make you go infinitely by giving you AP, can't remember the exact sequence but it involves adrenaline and skin graft.
Some people like to leave one character on the boat as a failsafe. And of course, if someone is stuck on the boat anyway, you can always go the ultimate cheese: barrelmancy.
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u/Fishak_29 10h ago edited 10h ago
Sebille necromancer/summoner is usually my go to MC for honor mode, gives you a lot of tools and versatility from the jump. Then I’ll add red prince as a knight/fighter, fane as a rogue, and Ifan as an archer for a full party the moment I enter fort joy. Having an all physical party really helps you blitz down damage and keep enemies knocked down or chicken clawed. Fane can also get in close for backstabs and then play dead to survive for another turn. You can also kill vendors once you hit lvl 4 to collect a lot of nice skill books for free.
More generally, save constantly and never think you’re too safe to reload if you’re a bit nervous about a given situation. Don’t think you’re too good to spam buffs and set up positioning before every fight.
Specifically, in Act 2 do not fight the possessed dwarf on Bloodmoon. Do not finish bring Peeper back to his papa while Dayena is nearby.