Very cool. My turn to bump for sticky.
Your posts in this forum are fantastic, Stuff!

I'm surprised there aren't any mods for this game. If you had the know-how, (I don't) I wouldn't think it would be that hard to extract and modify the character portraits.

Since we have a sticky now I thought I would put some of the other basic threads into this one. I have moved the first post in this thread to this post and added input from others to this post to make it easier to find. This may take a while since I must wait to make separate posts. BTW, I am not affiliated with GOG or Larian Studios in any way, simply a community member who played DD into the ground and want to share some of the things I learned. Please post corrections if you find any errors . . . =)
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Basic Buy / Sell / Repair / Identify

The two attached images show the basic use of the Trade, Repair and Identify windows. I did not show haggling.

I assume that you have clicked on a NPC to get the top left image shown in the first image. Also, some NPCs cannot repair or identify items, their repair / identify icons will be grayed out.

You can buy and sell at the same time by selecting the items to buy and sell and than pushing the scale icon for yourself and the merchant.

Offering the merchant items without clicking his scale icon is the same as giving him the items at no cost which can improve your standing with the merchant. The higher their opinion of you the lower the cost for items will be. Up to 100%, after that, cost stays the same.

You can haggle by entering less than the merchant wants after pressing his scale button.

********************************* Early in the game, you are a stranger and merchants don't give much discount. As you gain more reputation and interact with the characters . . . the prices will come down. There are one or two quests that give you better prices from merchants when completed as well.

The number shown on each character is not your reputation but indicates the characters opinion of you, usually starts out neutral and goes up or down as you interact with the characters. I believe it 0 to 100 with zero being hostile and 100 being "admiring". You can raise their opinion by your interactions and by giving them items for nothing and by increasing your reputation. Enter the trade mode and click something from your inventory as if you were going to sell it. Don't press the scale button for the merchant but do press the check mark at the bottom. Click yes and you will "give" the item to the merchant which will increase their opinion of you . . which, along with reputation, will bring the prices down.

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HereForTheBeer added this -

Thought I'd add a little bit here after playing for a bit. Hopefully this hasn't already been covered....

You get more money for the items you sell if they are repaired. With one level of repair (60% fix), you can turn a 3/19 item into a 'repaired' 11/19 item and will receive a bit more money for doing so. You get more money still if it's fully repaired, so it may worth it to have the shopkeeper repair the item before you sell it, especially if the item is already worth a lot of cash. I tried it out with a plain sword. At 3/19 it was 583 gold, 11/19 was 795 gold, and 19/19 was 1008 gold. It wasn't worth it to have the trader repair it from 11 to 19 since the repair itself cost more than the gain in selling price;

Basic Repair Skill Usage

Image describing the use of the repair skill. Suggestions for improvement will be appreciated . . .=)

carlosjuero added _

As a note - at lower levels you won't be able to get 100% repair and, because of this, some items you will not be able to repair - namely ones that have a total durability of 1 (1/1 for example). I have noticed a few of the 'starter' items have 1 durability, so repairing them doesn't work.

I know that is probably a 'duh' for some of y'all, but it kind of confused me the first time I played when I tried repairing an item only to see nothing happen. I then took the time to read the skill description carefully and looked closer at the item that was broken.

Hot Key Linking

LInking F keys to your potions and skills can help speed up your actions during game play. I linked the F1 key to my potions and my Lightening skill to F2 and Poison weapon to F5. If I have Poison weapon as my active skill simply pressing F2 makes Lightening my active skill. When I need to poison my weapon again, pressing F5, right clicking does the job quickly. Pressing F2 makes Lightening my active skill again. F1 causes my character to drink a potion. (BTW, you can't drink potions or run away while the CTRL key is pressed)

Should note here that the potion linking is size specific i.e. if you are linked to a small potion the link will stop working once you are out of that size even though you have plenty of the larger sizes. I suggest you update your links to the larger sizes as they become more available. Click on your Browse Potions icon (top row, far right on the UI), hold the pointer over the larger size and repress the F1 key (or the one you use) to assign it to the larger size.

Herbs and Mushroom Collecting

To make a potion, you need alchemy skill of at least 2. Walk up to a patch
of mushrooms or herbs. Open your inventory up. Drag an empty flask over the
herb/mushroom. ( The "X" will disappear when the flask is over the right spot)

Note that not every patch of mushrooms / herbs will make a potion. If one patch fails to produce a potion go to another patch. I have found a patch of several mushrooms that would not produce a potion but a single mushroom a foot from the patch would give a potion.

Herbs:
Purple = Healing
White = Stamina
Blue = Magic

Mushrooms:
Red = Healing
Blue = Magic
White = Poison
Orange = Stamina

Flasks:
Small Flask = Minor Potion = Alchemy skill: 2
Flask = Potion = Alchemy skill: 3
Large Flask = Super Potion = Alchemy skill: 4

Also eat to raise health: meat, bread, cheese etc Open inventory and click on the food item, you can do this till you're full which can be before your health is fully restored.

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sblack162 asked "What does it take to make invisibility potions?"


I don't know how to make shadow potions directly form herbs but you can drop a "Magic" potion on a "Stamina" potion to make "Shadow" potions. Shadow potions make you invisible. (As long as you don't left click, Warriors can do damage with their right click special move without becoming visible.)

You can also make "Restoration" by dropping a "Heal" potion on a "Magic" potion, an "Elixers" potion by dropping a "Stamina" on a "Restoration" potion and a "Strength" potion by dropping a "Stamina" potion on a "Health" potion.

Dropping multiple potions on the same amount or greater of the other will create the number of potions equal to the smallest quantity you drop. i.e. dropping 10 "Magic" potions on 20 "Stamina" potions would give you 10 "Shadow" potions with 10 remaining "Stamina" potions.

So . . . you can make the other potions but you need to have or make the base potions first . . . =)

If anyone knows a mix of herbs to make shadow potions please post the ingredients.

Honey

Honey will temporarily give the following +50 Hit Points, +50 Magic, +5 Strength, +5 Agility, +5 Intelligence. There are only so many honey racks and empty jars in the game, and once they’re gone, that’s it. I gathered it without any alchemy skills at the time IIRC.

You will find everything you need to gather honey at Mardaneus's house early in the game. It is scarce after that and rarely found. I used it in the first catacombs. You will find a few jars later in the game but not often enough to make it useful on a regular basis.

Some food items are bad for you, Look here for food info

Sound Static / Crackling

This seems to be a problem on some dual / quad core systems. Setting the affinity to a single core fixes the problem on most system. You can set it manually first to see if it helps by starting the game, ALT -Tab to the desktop, open the Task Manager (CTRL - ALT - DELETE), click on the Processes tab, find the div.exe. Right click the div.exe process, click Set Affinity and uncheck all but the CPU 0 box. See attached image.

If that helps I suggest using RunFirst as it will set the affinity for you every time you run the game.

RunFirst is a small program that automagically sets the Affinity to the first CPU. Worked for my static as well.

The trick was getting the command line right - mine is as follows (see attached image)-

"C:\Program Files\GOG.com\RunFirst\RunFirst.exe" "C:\Program Files\GOG.com\Divine Divinity\div.exe"

Note that both paths are enclosed in quotes with a space between the two paths.

You can put the RunFirst.exe anywhere, I just created a directory under my GOG install directory called RunFirst and added the path to the beginning of the shortcut target path.

Basic install tips for Vista / Windows 7

Are your video drivers up to date?
Click here for ATI
Click here for Nvidia
Click here for Intel

Like other games, DD is sometimes not happy with Intel graphics . . . =)

I suggest turning UAC off when you install as it can interfere with disk writes leaving you with a partial install. (Turn UAC off on Vista by going to Control Panel, User Accounts, Turn User Account Control on or off. On Win 7 move the slider to “Never Notify". Turn back on after your game install. ) See attached images.

Also I recommend (especially on Win 7) installing in a directory outside of Program Files. I create a directory named Games on the C drive. After creating the directory, right click the setup.exe and click "Run as an administrator" on the resulting dialog. On the first dialog of the GOG installer, click the Options button on the lower left corner and point the install to the new Games directory.

After the install you should right click the game shortcut, click Properties on the resulting dialog, click the Compatibility tab and check "Run this program as an administrator". I also suggest check marking “Disable visual themes” and “Disable desktop composition”. I usually leave the compatibility mode unchecked until I play the game. If there are problems I try the newest compatibility mode first working backwards to the oldest until a problem is gone.

Some Anti-virus and firewall programs can interfere with disk writes and may need to be disabled during the install. If you have not had install problems due to these programs in the past I wouldn’t worry about disabling them. If you do disable them don’t forget to enable them after the install. I use Comodo for a firewall. It was throwing up “Allow” dialogs behind the game start page. When I closed the game the dialogs closed as well. Only ALT – TAB’ing out of the game allowed me to see the dialogs. You can check Allow on each one but it was simpler for me to make the div.exe a trusted program in Comodo.

Resolution

You can set resolutions by going to the menus Programs - Gog.com - Divine Divinity and clicking the Configuration icon which will allow you to set your res. IMHO, resolution around 1280 horizontal res give the best game play as higher resolution make the character and text hard to see. Going to the DD install directory and double-clicking the configtool.exe will give you the same results.

If you need to set your resolution manually, go to the DD install directory and find a file name config.div. Open the file with Notepad and look for the following lines –

// display width
Width 1280

// display height
Height 1024

Change the number values only to your monitor resolution. Make sure you put the right sizes in as reversing the inputs will cause problems. Save the file and restart DD. If your default res does not display correctly, use a nominal resolution. i.e. A res of 1366 x 768 may not allow the game to display properly, setting to 1280 x 800 will sometimes fix that particular graphics problem.

With the 1.005A patch (GOG version), 16:9 wide screen support was added. AFAIK, the wide screen support will not work on retail boxed releases. (version 1.34 / 1.0034)


DD only has two start screen resolutions (as best I can tell). At higher resolutions the start screen will appear small and surrounded by black areas (see attached image). This is normal and will only be seen on the start screen as the in-game res will be whatever you set it for. Any resolution with a horizontal res greater than 800 will use the 1024 x 768 start screen.

Netbooks

DD seems to run on most netbooks with graphics cards being the most common problem, some just will not run the game. Another important consideration is the screen size. If your vertical resolution is greater than 768 this is not a problem. If it is less than 768 and your horizontal res is greater than 800 you can only play the game at 800 x 600 due to menu clipping. Any horizontal res greater than 800 causes the game to use the 1024 x 768 start screen and internal game menus. You cannot see the menu buttons on the quest log, maps, etc. because of the clipping. Running at 800 x 600 causes the game to use the small 800 x 600 menus which allow you to see the menu buttons on a netbook.

Saves

The save process can be aggravating until you get used to it, see attached image for explanation of the save process.

Where are my saves

By default they are in C:\Program Files\GOG.com\Divine Divinity\savegames but Windows can sometimes move them to the following depending on whether or not UAC is on or off or if you turned it on after starting and saving a game -

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\GOG.com\Divine Divinity

If you have installed outside of Program Files it would be C:\YourGameDirectory\GOG.com\Divine Divnity\savegames

Edit: If you don't see your saves in Divine Divinty check the location above. If the saves are there, move them back to your Divine Divinity install directory and DD should see them again.

User Interface disappeared

The UI will minimize if you right click it . . . anywhere. The small lines will allow you to see your health, stamina and mana with minimal interface visible. Running at today's high resolutions makes the minimized UI almost impossible to see leaving you with the impression that it is gone. The minimized UI no longer gives you info on your stats but it does help with game immersion.

Usually the first time it happens is when you are using a skill and your right click is on the UI. Very disconcerting if you don't know why or what happened . . . =)

Right clicking the lines will restore the UI to normal.

Basic Leveling

Attached image show the steps for adding points to your skills and stats. Click image to enlarge.