Help an old gamer dad out? (DOS2:DE)

Same situation as me. Here’s what I’ve chosen

Ifan - Bows & Lockpick

Lohse - Summoner and healing, wand and shield, focus on Luck

Sebille - Daggers, scoundrel & necro skills since there is a perk that makes necro skills cost less AP if your standing in blood as sebille always is. Focus on Lore.

Red Prince - 1 hand and shield, warfare skills and fire, focus on persuasion

I'm in the same situation as you (old gamer dad). I would recommend you simply play through without thinking too much about what are good stats to pick.

You may choose to play the game again once you've finished it (you can only play with 4 of the 6 characters after all) and, anyway, you can change all your stats on the boat after the end of Act 1.

You'll know better what you're doing by then so won't have to take so long making decisions

For the specifics you mentioned, you'll want persuasion on your main character and high wits on any of your characters (for discovery) and thievery on a (preferably an undead) character to pick locks.

I'd suggest using a build guide to help with your first couple characters to especially help with your choice paralysis. Using two characters with Lone Wolf perks will help tremendously too, although on Classic difficulty the game will be a breeze that way. I personally searched up build guides from 'Sin Tee' on the steam forums. Some of his builds are a little dated but they are incredibly good especially for min maxing.

If you don't want to use a guide, my personal advice would be to choose two characters as physical damage (two handed warrior, ranger, or necro), two characters as magic (pyro/geo, hydro/aero, any of those/summoner), or two hybrid builds (rogues, ranger, sparkling strikes builds, and mages that dabble with necromancy are all great for hybrid builds). Ideally though you should probably focus on just physical or magic for your first playthrough. If you do go physical, it's still smart to have some skill points spread out for utility. For example, aero unlocks teleport, evasion, neither swap, hydro gives you some healing skills and magic armor replenishment, geo gives armor replenishment, pyro gives haste and stat buffs. Necro is a magic class that does physical damage (and has great utility too that no one should ever sleep on). Each character can utilize having points in polymorph as well, which unlock some amazing skills. You have the option to craft spellbooks too, which is always one magic spell book and one physical (necromancy and polymorph spellbooks count as physical). For example, one pyro spellbook and one necro spellbook makes corpse explosion, one source spell book of either of those plus the other makes mass corpse explosion.

Generally speaking, stat distribution should go to your primary damage stat (intelligence for mages, strength for warriors, finesse for rogues/rangers), then wits, and points into memory as needed. Gear progression, I typically only let gear be two levels lower than my characters (until the last act, then it's one level). I always have one character with max thievery and the other maxes bartering and goes into persuasion. Usually I only steal from a merchant when I'm close to leaving an area (because you can only pickpocket a character one time with one character).

Hopefully this helps. I could literally recite how I would build certain characters for you if you'd like or if you have specific questions on spells/items let me know. One tip I will give you is if you go the physical route, you'll always max warfare even on a ranger, rogue, or even necro. Warfare raises all physical damage.

You can also enable the fort Joy respec mirror to change your stats up at will by just taking a short trip down to the arena. After Act 1 the mirror is present on the ship you escape the island on. This game offers a lot of freedom. Don't worry about min maxing or avoiding making decisions. Try everything. If you go for the perfect setup the first time around (there isn't one, it's very open ended) then any subsequent playthrough will feel cheapened and this game was MADE to be replayed. Just explore and do what feels natural to you and what you would do in your characters shoes, don't worry about most effective classes or interactions, you'll see what works and doesn't as you play and can always adjust

One of the best pieces of advice I got was... Choose a damage type. Physical or Magic and then build your party around that.

I did the same thing my first play through. I ended up over tuning my party so much that the game became dumb easy and took some enjoyment out of it. This was in classic mode. Looking back I wish I just built what I thought was cool and just theory craft my own stuff. Tbh you can get away with most stuff in classic mode.

Also this is definitely a game with a lot of replay value so if you miss stuff in your first play through it just makes your next one all the more Interesting.

You can also change your character once you finish the first Act. You will be on a ship and in the hull is a mirror that you interact with.

You can't go far wrong with the defaults that each companion recommends when first talking to them. Others are talking about min-max, or allhphysical/all-magic.... Don't do that. Take it from another middle aged father, with this game you should just play it, especially at a lower difficulty level. Don't research stuff beforehand, almost everything is skippable and even at the last act if you have horribly inefficient builds you can either change your builds freely or cheese the fights with equipment you can obtain in the last act. The first fights should very quickly get you used to how armour works, and just keep a look out for ways to crowd control (stun or otherwise disable enemies), which you will quickly learn by seeing enemies use them on you.

From your preferred playstyle description, just make sure to max persuasion on your main Ifan. You would likely want to get one companion's theivery skill up too to deal with locks and possibly thieving if you enjoy that.

It can be a lot of micro managing equipment and stats for 4 characters sometimes. If you pick up the lone wolf talent you can just run the game with 2 characters. But then you will miss out on some of the characters storylines. But then you just get more replay ability out of the game so up to you.

Make whatever group you are playing either all physical or all magical damage classes if you’re having trouble with fights. There’s a learning curve but once you get over it you can win just about any fight with whatever party make up you have. So don’t worry about it too much and just enjoy the story.

When you play the game and you meet your other potential team members they have a default option. You can start with that. As the game progresses you can see what attacks or skills are fun and then u can lean your character and team members to those skills. Also you can re sepec your characters and team members stats and skills if you wish to completely change the style of play.

Tick the difficulty down to Explorer, then play whatever you want to. If you still have trouble deciding, only choose a build for your main character, and just take the defaults for all your companions.

If you're not on at least Classic, build viability essentially doesn't matter, so turning the difficulty down takes that weight off your chest. There is zero shame in it, too - I highly recommend Explorer for ANY new player. This game has so much to learn in it, and managing 4 characters is so much, that starting on a hard difficulty is just impractical for a brand new solo player.

You could also consider doing the Lone Wolf talent for your first playthrough, which would mean you probably play with 2 characters instead of 4, but those 2 get a ton of buffs to even it out. For some people, it's worth it to do Lone Wolf in their first game so they have less to manage.

Other advice - turn on a bunch of the Gift Bags. At bare minimum, you want Endless Runner (saves tons of your precious time) and Fort Joy Magic Mirror. You give up achievements to turn them on, which sucks, but it's way better than playing without them imo.

If you want your build decisions actually made for you, here you go:

Ifan as a Wayfarer is fine. He will use bows and occasionally fire magic Arrows, so hold on to those.

Take someone on as a Fighter. This will be your tank/frontliner. They can use either sword and shield or a two hander, up to you (and what you find).

Take someone on as a Rogue (the story character who's a Rogue is Sebille, but you can choose anyone). They will use daggers, probably dual wielding.

Take someone on as an Enchanter (the story character who's an Enchanter is Lohse, but you can choose anyone). They will use magic, combining water with electricity to keep enemies frozen or stunned so they skip their turns. Buying this character extra skills like Rain, Restoration, and Armor of Frost, can be key and really turn the tide in some fights. Rain is great because it makes people wet, which sets you up to freeze or stun them more easily (as long as they're out of Magic armor after your attack does its damage).

you can choose whatever characters you want, based on who's personality you like and who's story you want to see play out. as for the classes, you basically need a dps, a healer, a tank, and a controller. this is what I did and I found it both fun and effective:

Sebille as dual wielding rogue. get a high crit chance and multiplier. she was the dps and she made mad backstab damage

Lohse as aero/hydro staff wizard. lots of powerful healing and some nice aero spells to deal damage and control the battlefield. she was also my main and I loved it

Ifan as ranger with warfare, crossbow. from high ground he will deal a funkton of damage. you want the warfare in so that his basic (the ones without special arrows) attacks do even more harm. with the special arrows you can control the crowd like a charm. mind you I didn't really care for the wolf, I would use him as bait many times but overall with ranger/warfare approach wolf will be quite weak

Red Prince as warfare/geo shield & sword tank. pack him full of HP and make him fortify and taunt the hell out of everything

on my first playthrough I learned that unless you know exactly what you're doing, if you try to multiclass too much and spread yourself too thin you will have some trouble on the harder encounters. so don't really do that too much, rather try specilizing in things. when you get the hang of things you can always respec everybody.

get lore & leadership on some side characters and make sure to save the cat in fort joy - again hewill help with crowd control and is great bait.

enjoy!

If I was just starting out I'd stick them with their default classes and just try out various skills in those classes. You'll get a feel for both the characters and the classes, and then you can respec once you leave Fort Joy and have a better sense of what works and what doesn't.

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If you're running a custom character as your main, spec that character in whichever way sounds cool to you. Pyro necromancer? Go for it. Summoner warfare? Why not. If you just build your characters according to other people's advice you'll steal one of the most fun aspects of the game away from yourself - exploring and learning the various classes, how they synergize, how cool unexpected combos can be, etc. Check out the race abilities and think about how they can help classes - humans get 5% bonus critical chance and 10% extra critical multiplier, which would be great for rangers or scoundrels, or maybe a mage build with Savage Sortilege. The elves have Flesh Sacrifice which is absolutely wonderful paired with the scoundrel's Adrenaline, but the 10% damage increase is also wonderful for any DPS characters, etc etc. You have a lot of freedom - take advantage of that and play around with classes!

The only thing I'd make sure to do is to grab Pet Pal on whichever character you put Persuasion on.

I had the choice paralysis too. Put the game down for a couple of years before I just finished my first playthrough. It really is something you just gotta push through.

What I’ve found is that the only real way to cripple a character is to spread them too thin. You have 23ish points combat skill points to assign over the course of the game. Any character that has a single 10 in any of the skills is going to be viable late game (at least in classic) Other than that I wouldn’t worry.

My personal recommendations would be to put 1 point of wits into your wayfarer per level to discover hidden things and have at least one undead (fane) with max thievery civics for unlimited lockpicking.

I'm in the exact same spot as you. Small child with limited free time and I suffered from the exact same choice paralysis. There's a lot of great advice here, and I'm gonna distill how I played the first time.

We're going to create a party that focuses on physical damage. This is the most straight-forward way to play the game. You stick them with the pointy end until they die. This group will be made up of the following four weapons (not roles). You can use any character you like for any role:

1. Two-handed - Put 2 skill points into Necromancy and all other points into Warfare. Put your stat points into Strength and Wits at a 2:1 ratio (12 Strength 11 Wits, 14 Strength 12 Wits) with points into Memory as needed for more skills. Grab the more defensive and healing Necro skills
2. Dual Dagger - Put 2 skill points into Scoundrel and all other points into Warfare. Put your stat points into Dexterity and Wits at a 2:1 ratio (12 1. Dexterity 11 Wits, 14 Dexterity 12 Wits) with points into Memory as needed for more skills. Grab Warfare skills like Bull's Rush and Battle Stomp to knock down enemies.
3. Bow/Crossbow - Put 2 skill points into Huntsman and all other points into Warfare. Put your stat points into Dexterity and Wits at a 2:1 ratio (12 1. Dexterity 11 Wits, 14 Dexterity 12 Wits) with points into Memory as needed for more skills. Use all Huntsman skills with knockdown arrows.
4. Support/Necromancy Mage - Put 1 point into Necromancy, Pyromancer, Hydromancer, and Warfare. Put your stat points into Intelligence and Wits at a 2:1 ratio (Intelligence 11 Wits, 14 Intelligence 12 Wits) with points into Memory as needed for more skills. This character will be mostly support and utility and doesn't really come online until mid-Act 2. Give them buffs and heals and the attack spells from Necromancy.

Your first three characters will all do physical damage to quickly break down their armor so you can deal status effects, while our Necromancy mage will mostly be support until later in the game when you get your collar off.

Hope this helps you enjoy your limited time to game!

Here are some decent skill combo suggestions:
Melee - Warfare and necromancer (beefy frontliner with lifesteal and some debuffs)
Melee - Warfare and geomancer (heavy tank with decent debuffs and some neat combos like reactive armor)
Ranged - Huntsman and scoundrel (bow damage skills and utility from scoundrel)
Casting - Hydrosophist and aerothurge (lots of healing, cc, and battlefield control)
Casting - Pyrokinetic and geomancer (Set up oil and poison and explode it for big damage)

The main caveat to that is I probably wouldn't try to do offensive water and fire skills in the same party, since their debuffs cancel each other out (fire removing chilled/frozen, and vise versa). If you do a fire mage I'd have a hydrosophist for healing but rely on something like summoning for their offense.

You can do pretty much whatever you want, but these are some of the more straightforward builds. Summoning is pretty great for pretty much any role if that's something you're interested in, and polymorph gives a lot of mobility and utility if you feel like you want more of that. Whatever you choose to do, you can reallocate all your points for free later on, so don't feel like you're locked into a build if you feel like you're not enjoying it!