Divinity: Original Sin – The Board Game Update #13, $1,461,588 and Counting

The Kickstarter campaign for Divinity: Original Sin – The Board Game is now roughly two days away from the finish line, with a total of $1,461,588 pledged. Which means that the game will likely reach all of its announced stretch goals and then some. With that in mind, the latest update talks about the recently reached $1.3m and $1.4m goals, describes the game’s approach to special enemy attacks and announces an official livestream. Check it out:

Greetings, backers! Thank you so much for your support as we turn the corner into the home stretch! Thanks to your help, we unlocked the 1.3 and 1.4 million dollar stretch goals, which means we’ll be adding a pack of eight miniatures to the game for your enjoyment, along with Nightmare Mode enemy cards for those looking for a greater challenge.

Let’s talk a bit about the miniature pack and how it will be used in game.

First off, we have the chickens. We’ll be including four chickens in this pack, intended to be used with the Chicken Claw Skill from the Polymorph Ability. When you use this Skill, you turn your target into a chicken. You remove the miniature or enemy card, and replace it with this chicken miniature. It serves as a visual reminder of the predicament your opponent is in! So why include four of them? Remember that whatever you can do to your opponents, they can do to you. There’s a chance you will find yourself turned into a chicken if you’re not careful.

Now that the chickens are dealt with, let’s take a moment to talk about the other miniatures included in this pack. These are some very famous characters from the Divinity universe. Malady in particular was highly requested by you in the comments. So we decided to include her, along with Dallis, Braccus Rex, and Sir Lora. All of these characters will be included in the game, but the exact scope of that inclusion is something we don’t want to give away due to potential spoilers. They might be NPCs you run into once, they might become recurring characters, or they might turn into enemies if you’re not careful. After all, much of what they turn into will depend on the choices you make during your game.

Nightmare Mode

This completely optional mode is for players who really want a challenge when they explore the lands of Rivellon. When you play in Nightmare Mode, each enemy levels up and poses a greater challenge. Part of this involves increasing the armor and resistances of the enemies, making it harder to damage them. They also have more power to deal damage, sometimes in the form of more dice and sometimes thanks to special abilities exclusive to these terrifying versions. We want to point out this increased difficulty includes alternate statcards for bosses as well.

The story itself will not change for Nightmare Mode. The choices available will be the same, although you can always choose a different path than on your previous adventure. Not to mention, different choices might be available based on the characters in the game. However, those choices will not be related to the difficulty setting you choose.

To make this more accessible, the game supports changing difficulty in mid-campaign. It’s as simple as swapping out some enemy cards. Since the story and rewards do not change, there’s no need to modify anything beyond the enemies when changing difficulty modes.

Special Enemy Attacks

Some of you have watched the playthrough videos and a few of the lucky ones have had a chance to play the demo scenario. In those cases, you may have seen how common enemies and bosses attack. However, let’s specifically look at the special attacks.

First off we have attacks that can cause status effects such as Burning, Poisoned, Knocked Down, and so on. When a player makes these attacks, they always have the option of turning a critical hit burst into the special status or taking it as a bonus success on the attack. In the case of enemies, we keep this very simple. If the enemies have the chance to inflict a special status, they always do. All other critical hits after the first are taken as bonus successes.

Now there are other statuses which have potentially greater and longer-lasting effects. For example, the often-used and often-feared Dominate Mind. With this Skill, a player gets to take control of the actions of an enemy. However, as I said before, anything you can do to enemies, they can do to you. So what happens when a player is inflicted with Dominate Mind?

In this case, you roll the random die used for common enemies. The enemy using Dominate Mind has a key to indicate what action you must take when it is your turn, provided you have the ability to do so. This is necessary because not all of the faces of the die are appropriate for a player. Depending on the result, players might wind up being forced to expend one-use items or attacking their allies!

Streaming tomorrow!

We’ll be streaming the game tomorrow at 7am PST / 10am EST / 3pm GMT with very special guests Amelia Tyler, the voice of Malady, and Irish comedian MechaGamezilla! Join us for laughs and hi-jinks on Twitch at twitch.tv/larianstudios

We hope that answers some questions. The campaign is coming to a close, and we’re getting close to that last stretch goal so don’t forget to share the campaign with your friends and help us spread the word. Thank you so much for all your support so far and we look forward to the rest of this journey with you!