Beyond Divinity is by far the most insane PC game I have ever played. Erm... no, actually it only made number 2, Sherlock Holmes Mystery of the Mummy CANNOT ever be replaced in that respect... (if you've never been there, you'll never know... lucky you...)
Insane how?
Insane as in the following statement (by me about an hour ago) sums up the game in a nutshell:
"Beyond Divinity is an experiment in glitches and gamer patience testing, with a few monsters and quests thrown in to distract from it's main theme."
Basically, it's an experiment in RPG glitching.
Please, I beg you, don't ever play this game. Really, I mean it. It quite literally got to the point where I was having more fun lolling at the glitches than continuing on with the whacked out plot. I could list every glitch I encountered, but it would cover the entire game - and judging from searches to try and solve my bugs, it seems every single person has a completely different set of bugs completely independent to their game. It's a new RPG drive called "the infinite glitch engine", providing a platform where no two games ever glitch the same!
As I say, I was generally laughing along with them, and by the end of Act III (3) I was pretty bored of the game anyway and just wanted it all to end. And the Gods read my mind, as I got no cut scene to Act IV and am now stuck on a teeny island with nothing but a locked door and a thankful sigh of relief. My last save was ages ago, so I can't just reboot an old save... thank heavens.
This game pretty much dies at the end of Act II anyway - bored of minor quests, bored of Battlefields, bored of 'unique' weapons, bored of necro's increasingly more and more boringer 'questlets', etc etc etc.
For anyone attempting this game for the first time, here are two or three bugs from the very first map in the game which quite accurately determine how the entirety of the rest of the game will follow:
1. A guy runs from his prison cell and jumps into the lava, leaving you an interesting manuscript that suddenly appears as he does so. - You don't know who he is, why he did it, you never find out and the manuscript plays no part in the game whatsoever.
2. The major 'quest' in the level requires that you prove to a ghost that he's dead by showing him a random leg bone which he somehow 'knows' is his - and in order to do this you have to kill some rats who have eaten it (!!!) in a cell you had no reason or intention to ever again step foot in.
3. The DeathKnight informs you that the whole point of the game is to get to Rivellon in order to talk to his witch, who is the only person in the universe who can break the Demon's spell. - As the game wears on, you realise that you will never see any gameplay in Rivellon and the Witch plays as much a part in the game as the guy jumping into the lava.
4. The means of escape from this potentially tricky 'locked in' typical RPG scenario is simply to find the right object to move. No puzzling, no clues, no hints, just moving something that's moveable that you would only think of moving because it's moveable. - creating from the offset an obsession with moving every movable item in the game (and there are 10,000s).
Anyway, this is all still on the first map of 1000s of maps and I've stopped the list rather than got everything of my chest.
So, yeah, thank-you God for glitching me out the game finally at the start of Act IV (4) !!!!!
I'd like to replay this game one day, simply to experiment with how many bottles of ale I can collect. To quote Necro: "My, but you have amassed a huge amount of junk haven't you!" - I was still using a level 1 sword at the start of Act 4 after shopping over 2million GP worth of goods...
Great time killer though, kept me quiet and Looooolling for about 2 weeks heavy playing.
More pointless than a chocolate teapot though.
& BTW, you'll die at the hands of a random chest more often than fighting monsters/bosses - by a ratio of about 5/1...
Beyond Divinity - Death by Glitch - (spoilers!)
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LastDanceSaloon
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LastDanceSaloon
- Posts: 270
- Joined: Sat Jan 24, 2009 3:59 pm
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So much to say, forgot to say:
Re: Your walkthrough,
Re: No reward for solving the 'break the all seeing eye machine' quest for a Ranaar in Act III.
I did indeed get a reward - I got a skill book with a couple of wizard spells in it (soz for not memorizing what they were, I was ignoring all wizard stuff).
So, yeah, that must have been one of your personalised glitches, lol.
Re: Your walkthrough,
Re: No reward for solving the 'break the all seeing eye machine' quest for a Ranaar in Act III.
I did indeed get a reward - I got a skill book with a couple of wizard spells in it (soz for not memorizing what they were, I was ignoring all wizard stuff).
So, yeah, that must have been one of your personalised glitches, lol.
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LastDanceSaloon
- Posts: 270
- Joined: Sat Jan 24, 2009 3:59 pm
- Contact:
OMG! How have you managed that???? Can I borrow your copy...lol.
Of course, I'm delighted at the chance to take the opportunity to list some more though... lmao, as I say, even the bugs become comical.
A quick little batch off the top of my head from my adventure:
1. Difficult to accurately determine, but Luck seemed to have no effect on drops whatsoever. The main game provided very little beyond lame unique weapons and potion drops for major tasks and battles, whereas the battlefields dropped magical items and charms all over the place for zero hassle and stunningly easy kills (the Blood Knights in the main game for example took about 20 hits, but in the battlefields they died in 2 quick chunks). Equally, you pay 200gp for one arrow in the main game, but have them given to you in hundreds in the battlefields etc etc. At one point I had a luck of 60, and at another a luck of only 17 and I noticed no change at all in drops.
2. The 'Repair' skill did not work. My deathknight had repair to level 5 skill, his shield required a level 5 repair, yet the option remained greyed out.
3. I actually completed Act two before I'd even stepped foot in either the spider forest or the little mushroom wood - I had to reload an old save just to actually do act 2! So i didn't even find the gorgeous pyramids until the very end of act II, used them for the battlefields in act II (where once I had to use them to remove my deathknight from being stuck inside a wall) and then lost them immediately at the beginning of Act III. They just vanished. I bought the house, put down a pyramid, then next time I looked they'd gone. This apparently gets mended in patch 1.47 (?), but I slugged on without them.
4. In almost every battlefield dungeon monsters were stuck inbetween walls, firing at me, but with no means to fire at them. No problem as they did no damage they were so puny, but quite funny and ludicrous none-the-less.
5. Quests sometimes got logged in the questbook and sometimes didn't, it was pure luck. Sometimes they would go in the questbook and then never leave, even after completing the quest perfectly. Sometimes they would vanish on completion and then come back if you spoke to the NPC again and they even sometimes then repeated the quest dialogue. Sometimes you got no points or reward for quests, sometimes you did. Sometimes you had to drop the quest items and pick them up again in front of the NPC to make them realise you were carrying them.
6. Every dealer in the game who sold charms sold USTR charms and virtually nothing else. USTR charms are bone resistance - the most useless charm available. At one point I had 20 charms in my inventory with all my items fully charmed and 75% of those 20 would be USTR charms. I was still adding light blue agility or constitution charms to items in act III because all I was ever seeing better then this was USTR charms.
7. No dealers sold anything remotely magical other than the odd ring or amulet or boots/gloves. I came across a grand total of 1 magical Bow and 1 magical one-handed sword across the entire game up to the end of Act 3.
8. You are playing a paladin, but almost every other quest involves you being forced to kill innocent creatures - with no alternative reward for trying every available option to avoid conflict, and in some cases just having to duff the entire quest. Samual complimented me on my trick of getting the guard drunk to get the key - but I never even had this option, he charged at me and I killed him! Same with the critter in the rebel camp, the Ranaar thanked me for finding a peaceful solution - peaceful as in I just walked in the cave, it attacked me and I killed it!
9. By the end of act II I had amassed about 10,000 special arrows of about 10 different varieties, but by the end of act III normal arrows were still killing monsters in two or three hits and I was never called on to really find use for any of the varieties. Then in one necro quest (the salt mine) a dealer had 'exquisite' spirit arrows with greater damage costing 2,000 gp each. I bought 3 and when I placed them in my inventory they simply merged with my regular spirit arrows - what a waste of 6k! I'd like to have used splitting arrows the whole game, they seemed to kill everything instantly, but you get in the habit of hoarding them, not realising you'll have 2,000 of them by the end of act III and could have used them like normal arrows (in the main game at least - in the battlefields it was almost a waste using a normal arrow!)
10. The first time I got to the middle of the teleporter forest my characters froze. I could teleport in and out of battlefields but couldn't move anyone anywhere, nor talk to any NPCs. Re-load and re-trawl!
Anyway, there's a brief to 10.
11. (for the road) The game suggests you look at your trophies to find out how to prepare to fight monsters - which is good for choosing which arrow (though normal ones often did best anyway) but it doesn't tell you what they use to attack - the important bit - and this information flashed past so quickly and unusefully while you're fighting monsters that you never really figure out which monster requires which crystals in your crystal bag. Basically, this was just another aesthetic feature of the rucksack which caused more fiddling and hoarding than use - same as arrows, dolls, USTR charms, unsellable gems, unique/set items and random notes, manuscripts and books.
I agree though, act II was the best level by far, and probably the closest the game will ever get to Divine Divinity - though I do advise going to the small mushroom forest first, falling for the obvious trap that I nearly didn't fall for because it was so obvious, but decided to 'play along' and see what happens, and discovered this is how you get the pyramids (which is the one element which made Divine Divinity such an enjoyable and different game in the first place!!), then leave the fire elemental forest till last or you'll be shot to act III before you even know talking spiders exist.
12. Oh, and there was this great minor glitch I lolled about for ages when I killed the shaman the first time, only to walk towards the body to collect the loot and be met by his cut-scene telling me he was going to kill me for sure in his domain! WTF? Not too dissimilar to the deathknights in act I who you have to 'avoid' and 'sneak around' as your deathknight keeps interrupting the game to tell you - even though these deathknights all run at you from the pitch black before you've even seen them, you kill them relatively easily and still get the cut scenes long after they are all stone cold dead!
Of course, I'm delighted at the chance to take the opportunity to list some more though... lmao, as I say, even the bugs become comical.
A quick little batch off the top of my head from my adventure:
1. Difficult to accurately determine, but Luck seemed to have no effect on drops whatsoever. The main game provided very little beyond lame unique weapons and potion drops for major tasks and battles, whereas the battlefields dropped magical items and charms all over the place for zero hassle and stunningly easy kills (the Blood Knights in the main game for example took about 20 hits, but in the battlefields they died in 2 quick chunks). Equally, you pay 200gp for one arrow in the main game, but have them given to you in hundreds in the battlefields etc etc. At one point I had a luck of 60, and at another a luck of only 17 and I noticed no change at all in drops.
2. The 'Repair' skill did not work. My deathknight had repair to level 5 skill, his shield required a level 5 repair, yet the option remained greyed out.
3. I actually completed Act two before I'd even stepped foot in either the spider forest or the little mushroom wood - I had to reload an old save just to actually do act 2! So i didn't even find the gorgeous pyramids until the very end of act II, used them for the battlefields in act II (where once I had to use them to remove my deathknight from being stuck inside a wall) and then lost them immediately at the beginning of Act III. They just vanished. I bought the house, put down a pyramid, then next time I looked they'd gone. This apparently gets mended in patch 1.47 (?), but I slugged on without them.
4. In almost every battlefield dungeon monsters were stuck inbetween walls, firing at me, but with no means to fire at them. No problem as they did no damage they were so puny, but quite funny and ludicrous none-the-less.
5. Quests sometimes got logged in the questbook and sometimes didn't, it was pure luck. Sometimes they would go in the questbook and then never leave, even after completing the quest perfectly. Sometimes they would vanish on completion and then come back if you spoke to the NPC again and they even sometimes then repeated the quest dialogue. Sometimes you got no points or reward for quests, sometimes you did. Sometimes you had to drop the quest items and pick them up again in front of the NPC to make them realise you were carrying them.
6. Every dealer in the game who sold charms sold USTR charms and virtually nothing else. USTR charms are bone resistance - the most useless charm available. At one point I had 20 charms in my inventory with all my items fully charmed and 75% of those 20 would be USTR charms. I was still adding light blue agility or constitution charms to items in act III because all I was ever seeing better then this was USTR charms.
7. No dealers sold anything remotely magical other than the odd ring or amulet or boots/gloves. I came across a grand total of 1 magical Bow and 1 magical one-handed sword across the entire game up to the end of Act 3.
8. You are playing a paladin, but almost every other quest involves you being forced to kill innocent creatures - with no alternative reward for trying every available option to avoid conflict, and in some cases just having to duff the entire quest. Samual complimented me on my trick of getting the guard drunk to get the key - but I never even had this option, he charged at me and I killed him! Same with the critter in the rebel camp, the Ranaar thanked me for finding a peaceful solution - peaceful as in I just walked in the cave, it attacked me and I killed it!
9. By the end of act II I had amassed about 10,000 special arrows of about 10 different varieties, but by the end of act III normal arrows were still killing monsters in two or three hits and I was never called on to really find use for any of the varieties. Then in one necro quest (the salt mine) a dealer had 'exquisite' spirit arrows with greater damage costing 2,000 gp each. I bought 3 and when I placed them in my inventory they simply merged with my regular spirit arrows - what a waste of 6k! I'd like to have used splitting arrows the whole game, they seemed to kill everything instantly, but you get in the habit of hoarding them, not realising you'll have 2,000 of them by the end of act III and could have used them like normal arrows (in the main game at least - in the battlefields it was almost a waste using a normal arrow!)
10. The first time I got to the middle of the teleporter forest my characters froze. I could teleport in and out of battlefields but couldn't move anyone anywhere, nor talk to any NPCs. Re-load and re-trawl!
Anyway, there's a brief to 10.
11. (for the road) The game suggests you look at your trophies to find out how to prepare to fight monsters - which is good for choosing which arrow (though normal ones often did best anyway) but it doesn't tell you what they use to attack - the important bit - and this information flashed past so quickly and unusefully while you're fighting monsters that you never really figure out which monster requires which crystals in your crystal bag. Basically, this was just another aesthetic feature of the rucksack which caused more fiddling and hoarding than use - same as arrows, dolls, USTR charms, unsellable gems, unique/set items and random notes, manuscripts and books.
I agree though, act II was the best level by far, and probably the closest the game will ever get to Divine Divinity - though I do advise going to the small mushroom forest first, falling for the obvious trap that I nearly didn't fall for because it was so obvious, but decided to 'play along' and see what happens, and discovered this is how you get the pyramids (which is the one element which made Divine Divinity such an enjoyable and different game in the first place!!), then leave the fire elemental forest till last or you'll be shot to act III before you even know talking spiders exist.
12. Oh, and there was this great minor glitch I lolled about for ages when I killed the shaman the first time, only to walk towards the body to collect the loot and be met by his cut-scene telling me he was going to kill me for sure in his domain! WTF? Not too dissimilar to the deathknights in act I who you have to 'avoid' and 'sneak around' as your deathknight keeps interrupting the game to tell you - even though these deathknights all run at you from the pitch black before you've even seen them, you kill them relatively easily and still get the cut scenes long after they are all stone cold dead!