Talents in Divinity Original Sin 2 are passive abilities that can change player Characters in subtle or drastic ways. Some talents have requirements in order to be unlocked, often tied to leveling or investment in specific Skills. Some talents are incompatible with others, so plan accordingly. These can be reset on the Lady Vengeance when you reach Act 2.
You gain a talent at level 1, 3, 8, 13, 18, 23, 28, 33.
Undead main characters have an opportunity to get an additional 2 talent points via The Covenant.
New Gift Bag Talents
These talents were released in a free update and can be toggled on from the in-game menu.
| Talents | Name | Description | Requirements |
| Gladiator | Every time you are hit with a melee attack while wielding a shield, you perform a counterattack. Can happen only once per turn. | None | |
| Greedy Vessel | Every time someone casts a Source Spell in combat you receive a 20% chance of gaining a Source Point. | Level 6 | |
| Haymaker | Your attacks never miss but cannot deal critical strikes. (Note: can still backstab with normal weapon attacks, but not with skills, even weapon based) | None | |
| Indomitable | You gain immunity to stunned, frozen, knocked down, polymorphed, petrified, crippled for 1 turn after being affected by one of these statuses. Can happen once every 3 turns | Incompatible with Glass Cannon | |
| Magic Cycles | At the start of an encounter, you gain one of two statuses: Cycle of Fire and Water or Cycle of Earth and Air. Cycle of Fire and Water increases your Pyrokinetic and Hydrosophist combat abilities by 2. Cycle of Earth and Air increases your Geomancer and Aerotheurge combat abilities by 2. Statuses swap each turn. | None | |
| Master Thief | You become Invisible while pickpocketing. | None | |
| Sadist | Melee attacks deal additional fire damage to burning targets, poison damage to poisoned targets and physical damage to bleeding targets. | None | |
| Soulcatcher | When an allied character dies, a Zombie Crawler is raised at their corpse, under their control. Zombie crawler lasts 3 turns or until character is resurrected. Range 12m. Does not affect summoned creatures. | None |
Divinity Original Sin 2 Talents
All Skilled Up
Grants 1 additional Combat Ability Point and 1 extra Civil Ability Point.
Requirement: Level 2
Ambidextrous
Reduces the cost of using grenades and scrolls by 1AP if your offhand is free.
Requirement: None
Comeback Kid
Once per combat, if an enemy lands a fatal blow, Comeback Kid will help you bounce back to life with 20% health. If you die and are resurrected in combat, Comeback Kid will be available again.
Requirement: None
Demon
Gain 15% fire resistance and 15% water weakness. Max fire resistance also increases by 10. Cannot be used with Ice King.
Requirement: Pyrokinetic 1
Elemental Affinity
Lowers the Action Point cost of spells by 1 when standing in a surface of the same element.
Requirement: None
Elemental Ranger
Arrows will deal bonus elemental damage depending on the surface the target is standing in.
Requirement: Huntsman 1
Executioner
Gain 2 AP after dealing a killing blow (once per turn). Does not work with The Pawn.
Requirement: Warfare 1
Far Out Man
Increase the range of spells and scrolls by 2m. Does not affect melee and touch-ranged skills.
Requirement: None
Glass Cannon
You start every combat round with Maximum AP, but Magic and Physical Armour do not protect you from statuses.
Requirement: Incompatible with Lone Wolf.
Hothead
While you are at maximum Vitality, Hothead grants you an extra 10% critical chance and 10% more accuracy.
Requirement: None
Ice King
Grants +15% Water resistance and +15% fire weakness. Max water resistance is raised by 10. Cannot work with Demon.
Requirement: Hydrosophist 1
Lone Wolf
Lone Wolf provides +2 Max AP, +2 Recovery AP, +30% Vitality, +60% Physical Armour, +60% Magic Armour, and doubles invested points in attributes - up to a maximum of 40- and combat abilities (except Polymorph ability) - up to a maximum of 10, while you are adventuring solo or with at most one companion. This bonus is temporarily removed while there are more than two members in the current party.
Requirement: Incompatible with Glass Cannon
Savage Sortilege
Gives all magical skills a critical chance equal to your critical chance score.
Requirement: None
Stench
Decreases everyone's attitude towards you by 25, but melee combatants will find you less attractive.
Requirement: None
The Pawn
Permits your character 1 AP worth of free movement per turn. Does not work with Executioner.
Requirement: Scoundrel 1
Torturer
With Torturer, certain statuses caused by you are no longer blocked by Magic or Physic Armour, and their duration is extended by one turn. Burning, Poisoned, Bleeding, Necrofire, Acid, Suffocating, Entangled, Death Wish, and Ruptured Tendons are affected by this talent.
Requirement: None
Unstable
You explode upon death, dealing 50% of your vitality as physical damage in a 3 meter radius.
Requirement: None
Walk it off
Reduces all status durations by 1 turn. This also affects positive statuses.
Requirement: None
What a Rush
Increases your recovery and maximum Action Points by 1 when your health is below 50%.
Requirement: None
Spider's Kiss
Spider's Kiss gives you -2 CON and +2 to another Attribute. (depends on your choice in quest)
Requirement: A Web of Desire
Ingenious
Gives you 5% bonus Critical Chance and 10% extra Critical Multiplier. (Was +2 Initiative and +5% Critical Chance )
Requirement: Human race
Rooted
Gives you 3 extra points in your Memory attribute.
Requirement: Sebille talks to Elven Scion after The Mother Tree Quest
Anonymous
- Anonymous
Does anyone know if Soulcatcher from the gift bag scales with Summoning?
- Anonymous
Those wishing for an extra talent on one of their chatacters can do so in the Past Mistakes quest. initially free Karon from Arx sewers, then kill him when he reappears after the Trial of Blood. Talking to his spirit and passing a persuasion check will grant that character (only) an additional talent point.
Opportunities to use the extra talent may be limited due to being very close to the end of the game however better having than not!
- Anonymous
Decided a newer write-up of best general talents was needed from someone that plays Tactician/Honor Mode.
If you're not using the Gift Bag Pet Pal, give it to at least one character by level 3 for extra quests/exp.
After deciding on Lone Wolf/Glass Cannon or not (I prefer Lone Wolf myself), the most important talents are AP efficiency related:
Elemental Affinity for mages, Opportunist (AKA 0 AP attacks) for melee, and Gladiator (from Gift Bag) for melee w/shield.
Executioner works for everyone that does damage, give it to your primary finisher early, and add it to others when you've eliminated the better options. (It also triggers on Opportunist attacks, Reactive Shot, etc. when you get a kill and applies the AP to the start of your next turn!)
For Fire/Earth mages, Torturer in the early game is also the equivalent of extra attacks, plus it makes Worm Tremor an unblockable CC and Spontaneous Combustion more powerful. It also means extra healing when you poison undead.
And Ambidextrous for those that want to take the time to craft and abuse scrolls.
You'll want at least 2 of the above by level 8.
By level 8, you'll also want Living Armor for tanks, Parry Master for dual wielders, and Savage Sortilage for mages.
By level 13, you are probably pumping crit, Hot Head is great for everyone as it's easy to maintain max vitality.
Your build's talents should be mostly done by level 13. Late game, you may want to throw Living Armor on non-tanks as well. You should also be able to afford giving mages Executioner around this time. And Sadist (Gift Bag) can top off your melee types.
Other Notes:
Given the amount of fire surfaces and damage you'll see in game, Demon is a reasonable defensive choice as well.
Fire-Star Diner has some (ab)uses as well if you have the stomach for consumables, pun intended.
Mnemonic is an okay choice for non-Lone Wolves when you can't remember what else to go for (yay, more puns).
All other talents are either class/build specific or trash:
Low vitality/revival talents are essentially saying you are planning to fail. The Idol of Rebirth is far better insurance.
Unlike many, I'd argue against The Pawn. Most ground/cloud effects make movement skills the better option. Being an executioner is a far better choice than being a pawn. (Hah, executed one last pun for the road!)
Far Out Man isn't as useful as being on higher ground. So again, it's better to give your ranger/mages movement skills to take the high ground and make better use of the talent point.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Those saying Lone wolf is bad/a trap is just wrong. The only issues with early lone wolf is you'll have 2 allies rather than 4 but that is also a pro. With only 2 allies you stack best equips on them and don't spend money/spell books on twice the amount of people. By the time you're really attacked the Fort Joy guards you should be much stronger than a 4 party. It's important to have focus either on phys/magic damage depending on the foe. Knights/Rogues with some spells or Mages with Summon/Witchcraft do that nicely. I did a Knight/Rogue lone wolf and cleared it on Tactician with a fair amount of ease - Living armor doesn't get enough praise here either. It's amazing with the passive heals from witchcraft, soul bond, etc. there's just a dozen ways to keep magic armor on which is hugely important.
- Anonymous
Glass cannon on all 4 characters (bad idea for lone wolf, due to much lower relative AP gain). Surprisingly powerful. It is very rare that the AI actually CCs one of ur characters. Spreading out is quite important though, as certain aoe knockdown skills can ruin ur day (such as tremor grenade, or the warrior knockdowns). Eventually ull have some spells/means of removing CC from ur party. Few times i ran into fights were the "boss" had some aura like vacuum. Just gotta chug one of those strong will potions and continue to stomp everything into the dirt. The advocate fight was particularly amusing. Boss cast madness on my entire party, and it was entertaining to have no control for 2 full turns. With heavy con summoner build everyone still survived, surprisingly. I see little reason not to take glass cannon, as with experience, u can prevent CC from taking place entirely (CC them b4 they CC u with the extra AP), or just cure the CC on ur next character (CC curing is nice to have around regardless, so not losing out on much tbh).
- Anonymous
Does guerrilla work if character is invisible as well or do they have to be sneaking in sneak mode?
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
The formula for generating what levels give new talents is:
f(x) = (3x^2 + x + 1)/(x - 1)^2
- Anonymous
The combination of elemental affinity and glass cannon gives you an insanely strong frost mage team. I straight up went 4 frost mages. 1 mage casts rain on the party and freezes the water with global cooling to trigger elemental affinity (and protect from the AI freezing/shocking you). All of your characters start each round with max ap and 1 less ap cost on frost skills. You pretty much get off all your abilities in a single turn doing as many as 4 hard hitting abilities. Not to mention all the cc you have at your disposal. I could keep 5 enemies permenantly frozen and brutally nuke them, felt unfair.
Frost resistance enemies are a problem tho. Frost immunity is gg and required a respec whenever I encountered it.
- Anonymous
All skilled up is almost a must for summoners. They get very good increase to their Incarnate summon on level 10 of Summoning. And this talent let's you achieve this one level earlier. Combined with the fact that summoners don't need a lot of the other stuff, it means that choice even easier. For the same reasons Pet Pal is good on summoner because it doesn't take place of anything really important.
- Anonymous
Just a bit of commentary on the better talents:
Morning Person is more or less the strongest talent in the game, as far as allowing you to beat tough fights. The game's mechanics are extremely generous to resurrection: a resurrected character gets a turn at the end of the current round, even if that character acted before getting killed. This means that, if you use a Resurrection Scroll on someone and then Fortify or Magic Shell them, you spent 4 AP and got 4 AP back for it, while healing someone to full health and placing armor on them.There's not a whole lot that the enemy can do to deal with a full team of Morning People with decent stacks of resurrection scrolls on hand, and the scrolls' cost quickly becomes insignificant.
The Pawn is extremely valuable to any character, essentially giving one free AP on any round where you need to reposition.
Get Pet Pal on at least one character, especially if it's your first playthrough. Animals tend to give very helpful hints.
Elemental Ranger is pretty strong. An archer's first shot will cause the target to bleed if it can bleed, and any subsequent shot will get a strong physical damage boost from the blood surface, without the need to actually set up anything.
Elemental affinity is good for mages who create surfaces everywhere -- mostly fire and earth mages.
Glass Cannon can be good in some cases: the AI --absolutely loves-- to tunnel vision on a character with Glass Cannon, so you can use it to set up a tank of sorts, or at least someone who'll draw all the aggro. It's also usable offensively on an archer character, but you'll need to be meticulous with positioning and status effect removal (try starting fights with your other three characters, and then sneaking the GC archer in), or your GC wonderboy will spend the entire fight under crowd control.
If you're going to play Lone Wolves, you'd better know what you're doing. Like in Original Sin 1, it makes the early game significantly harder, and the mid-game onward significantly easier as your Wolves turn into total wrecking balls. Just pick a game plan and one type of damage, and stick to them. I used dual-wielding lone wolves who stacked initiative and each put one enemy out of the fight from the outset with Backlash -> Rupture Tendons -> Chicken Claw. They had zero magic damage, and only had 1 point into each school of magic for the support spells.
Parry Master is pretty good. Combined with the passive Dodge chance from the Dual Wielding skill and a party member with a high Leadership score, your dual wielder will be seriously hard to hit.
Comeback Kid will usually force an enemy to spend an extra 2 AP to kill a party member, which is pretty good. Like most strategy games, DOS2 is won on AP economics.
Picture of Health is okay to have for anyone who'll get a lot of points into Warfare, but you should wait to pick it until later on, as the increase is too marginal early on.
All Skilled Up is worth taking after you've grabbed everything you need. It's especially valuable to Lone Wolves, who get two combat skill points for the price of one and have a serious dearth of civil skill points.
In my view, the other talents are either of marginal utility, too situational to help much, or entirely useless.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Spider's kiss gives a -2 CON, only the bonus depends on your quest choices
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
lone wolf is a trap when you first start. you really need to plan ahead if you take it.
also, i love the +3 memory one, it is extremely useful if you plan to use a lot of magic that takes more than a round to refresh. the wands don't seem all that helpful except for creating niche situations
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
"You gain a talent at level 1, 3, 8, 13, 18, 23, 28, 33"
I've played completely through DE dozens of times, and (I think) squeezed out every drop of XP that I could, and the highest level I've gotten is 21 (maybe 22?).
How the heck do you get 23, 28, and 33? Is that just in the game's files or something, but there's no way to get that much XP?
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