The equipment is one of the most important aspects in Baldur’s Gate 3 and in all previous Divinity games. Now the developers of Larian Studios have given a first hint about how they will handle loot in the new Divinity.
The trailer for Divinity, the new game from the creators of Baldur’s Gate 3, was one of the highlights of the recent Game Awards. In a current AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit, several team members behind the game give insights into the current state of development.
This also includes a hint about how they will deal with the topic of “loot” in Divinity. It seems they are leaning more towards the system from Baldur’s Gate 3 rather than the version from the “Divinity: Original Sin” games.
Handcrafted instead of random has proven itself – Here’s how loot works in the new Divinity
During the AMA on Reddit, Nick Pechenin, Head of Design at Larian, responded to a question regarding the upcoming loot system in Divinity.
User “CellistElectrical135” wanted to know whether the loot system would be more oriented towards the random-based system from the Divinity games, or the “handcrafted” system from Baldur’s Gate 3.
Pechenin stated that the approach of manually creating and placing all magical items in Baldur’s Gate 3 has proven effective and is something that Larian wanted to do for Divinity: Original Sin 2 as well.
“When working on random loot for DOS1 and DOS2, we found that completely random loot is often confusing. Therefore, we added more and more rules and predefined patterns to make it feel more targeted. Ultimately, random generation didn’t save us much time,” says the Head of Design,
You can thus expect that most magical items in Divinity will also be created and placed by hand. So, if particularly exciting items stand out after release, you can expect to find them in the corresponding places in each playthrough.
What does this mean concretely? In Baldur’s Gate 3, you receive the exciting, magical weapons always from the same sources. The sword Phalar Aluve, for example, is always in its shrine in the Underdark, the Everglow Blade is always received when you defeat Commander Zhalk, the recurring blade is always found at the merchant in the Goblin camp – and so on.
In Divinity: Original Sin, however, you could not specifically search for weapons. They appeared randomly among various enemies. This could become quite tedious, especially since the weapons were also significantly affected by scaling. A strong weapon you just gathered could feel significantly too weak a few levels later. In Baldur’s Gate 3, however, you do not tend to switch weapons as often.
Additionally, this also allows for the control that significant fights offer suitable loot as rewards. The intentional placement of items also allows for giving them a certain importance.
However, this also eliminates the element of surprise in multiple playthroughs.
What do you think about the upcoming loot system? Do you prefer finding handcrafted items in fixed locations, or would you rather enjoy random loot? Tell us in the comments! And if you want to dive deeper into the topic of Divinity: Here is the big MeinMMO interview with Swen Vincke, Game Director and CEO of Larian Studios.
