The level of customization possible in Divinity: Original Sin 2 is staggering, whether you want to focus on a smooth-talking teleporter with a ton of skills, an undead soldier who knocks down all enemies, an archer who summons corpses, or nearly anything else you can imagine.

• Divinity Original Sin 2 Character Creation Music
• Divinity Original Sin 2 Character Creation Guide
• Divinity Original Sin 2 Character Creation Online

In this guide, we're going to go over four epic Original Sin 2 builds with vastly different focuses, from a stealth assassin to a masochistic necromancer who revels in taking damage. With any of these builds, you could either co-op or even potentially solo your way through the game.

Welcome to the Character Creation Screen! Select an Origin Character or create a Custom Hero. Give your hero a name, change appearance and select one of the many Classes to start with!

Rogue Assassin Build

With this build, you always want to be positioned behind an enemy for backstabbing and generally avoiding detection. On the attribute side, Finesse is probably a better idea than Strength. Don't discount Wits though, as you get a bonus to initiative and critical chance. For your ability points, you want to put your points into Scoundrel for the critical bonus, and of course Stealth for the sneaking.

On the skills, Adrenaline is a must for getting enough action points to kill with a backstab in one turn. Throwing Knife and Backlash also lets you deal backstab damage, while Chloroform can knock out an enemy at the end of your turn without breaking stealth.

If you go for a secondary ability beyond Scoundrel, oddly enough Polymorphing can be helpful, since it lets you fly around and avoid terrain or remove all negative status effects quickly. The Polymorphing skill Chamelon Cloak gives you two turns of pure invisibility without breaking stealth. Warfare isn't nearly as useful as you'd think, since many of the associated attacks aren't helpful for backstabbing and Scoundrel already gives you a bonus to Finesse-based attacks.

Pros

So long as you pick skills that don't break stealth and you have a weapon that benefits from the high Finesse, you can essentially cheese your way through any combat by staying hidden and then quickly backstabbing or knocking an enemy unconscious before they react. Getting items early that provide teleportation abilities will be a must so you have maximum mobility.

Cons

You will generally have lower armour ratings, since you are focused on staying hidden, meaning that status effects will hit you more often. The game is also a good deal slower and more tense if you are always sneaking and having to pay attention to line-of-sight cones.

Rogue Assassin Build

Solo Masochist Necromancer Build

Put either two points into the Necromancer skill, or one in Necromancer and one in Warfare for the bonus damage. When you level up, place your combat points into Retribution. For your weapon, you probably want a big two-handed weapon that does the most base damage possible with devastating criticals.

From the Necromancer side, you absolutely want the Bloodsucker ability, which lets you heal from the ever-present pools of blood on the ground. You may also want to invest in the Leech talent to automatically heal from blood sources if you aren't going the solo route. Mosquito Swarm is another one that both deals damage and heals. If you are mixing Necromancer and Warfare instead of straight necro, either Crippling Blow or Battle Stomp is the way to go.

Pros

Your idea here is to always be healing yourself while reflecting damage back to the enemy. Every point in Necromancer means you automatically heal damage when you deal it, and each point in Reflection increases the amount of damage you automatically deal back to anyone who hits you. In other words, just walking around getting damaged in combat lets you both kill and heal.

Cons

With the Necromancer skill, your vitality only heals when dealing damage directly to enemy vitality, so any enemy with high physical / magical armour will prevent you from healing.

It also takes several levels for the bonuses from Necromancer and Retribution to actually hit useful levels (starting at a measly 10% and 5% with only one point each at first level). However, this can be overcome by taking the Lone Wolf talent instead of Leech.

With Lone Wolf, each skill point is effectively doubled, which halves the amount of time for those skills to reach useful levels. Despite the name, Lone Wolf actually lets you bring along one companion in addition to your main character while still retaining all the benefits of the talent.

Necromancer Skills

Paladin Build

Your archetypal holy knight, this build revolves around battlefield control. You should be dealing out decent damage, knocking down opponents for control frequently, and then healing your party when necessary.

Hydrosophist and Warfare should be your ability picks, giving access to healing and armor boosting spells, in addition to the bonus to straight damage. For skills, your starting picks should be Restoration and Armour Of Frost (which removes negative status effects) -- and your Warfare pick should probably be Battle Stomp, since it gives battlefield control and doesn't affect allies like most area effect spells.

On the weapon front, either sword and shield combo or a two handed weapon focus compliment the build.

Pros

The Paladin build is excellent for your main character because it overcomes a lot of the weaknesses of the five other origin companions. While you won't be flinging fireballs and creating poison clouds, you can gain easy battlefield control and ensure the rest of the party doesn't go down in flames. There are a lot of combos you can do with other party members as well by first creating wet conditions using your Hydrosophist abilities and then creating electrified areas.

Cons

Outside of combat the build isn't nearly as useful, since a simple bedroll you can grab directly at the beginning of game in the ship prevents the need for healing items outside of battle. You also won't be the stealthiest.

Building a Custom Paladin

Elemental Mage / Summoner

Taking the Lizard class for this fire build is a decent idea, since you get the Dragon's Blaze bonus ability to breathe fire. However, you may want to go with Undead instead, since they heal damage from poison, and you will frequently be creating poison clouds.

Your attributes should be focused on Intelligence for bonus spell damage and Memory so you have a broad range of spells to use and are never in a situation with all your skills in cool down. For abilities, of course you want Pyrokinetic and Geomancer.

On the skills, Ignition is less useful than you'd think because it does damage around you, which can hit allies and of course set off oil puddles and end up hurting yourself or other friendlies. Fossil Strike pairs well with Searing Daggers to create a fiery battlefield -- and for maximum map controlling damage, don't forget Poison Dart creates a poison cloud.

For a twist, instead of Pyrokinetic, switch over to Summoning but keep Geomancer. Now pick Conjure Incarnate instead of Searing Daggers. If you summon your Incarnate in a poison cloud, he will deal tons of poison damage to your enemies for you, essentially acting as a bonus free companion.

Pros

AoE is the name of the game here, as you set large swathes of the battlefield on fire or fill it with poisonous vapors. Dual-wielding elemental wands is a great idea so you can deal bonus damage to fleeing enemies who are on fire or poisoned. Even when you aren't hitting, you will still be dealing damage due to everything being on fire.

Cons

It's incredibly easy to end up damaging your own team here with all the area fire and poison effects, and you don't have much of anything in the way of healing or physical armour.

Undead Wizard

These are the four best Divinity: Original Sin 2 builds we've had the most luck with playing through the campaign and dominating in combat. What's your favorite build, and what combos would you recommend for getting through different acts of the game?

If you're looking for more tips on this huge fantasy game, be sure to checl out our full list of Divinity: Original Sin 2 guides to get the most out of your roleplay.

The below chapter provides a detailed description of the character creation process, using the in-game character creator. Individual steps have been described in separate sections. Of course, you do not have to follow the order presented here, but the pattern I suggest allows you to define your character accurately and take full advantage of the system.

Step 1: Race and personals

The first action that you have to perform is gender selection[1] and entering the name [2]. There are no negative consequences to those choices, so you are free to do what you want here. Your Gender determines only your looks.

The most important choice to make at this stage is race selection [3]. If you are not too familiar with individual skills and parameters, see the chapter of this guide dedicated to that topic. It is important to view the race from the perspective of the entire game, so do not hesitate to try and work out compromises here. Especially if you are going to play in the multiplayer mode.

Step 2: Class selection

Lass selection is the first step to defining a complete character, which will be compliant with your playing style and will prove highly efficient in the battlefield. Class determines some factors, such as race, so familiarize yourself with benefits that come from playing as a given race (see the dedicated chapter) and perform a selection of classes that may harmonize with the race that you pick. You can verify skills that come with your class using the arrowheads shown in the screenshot [1].

As soon as you have made your choice, progress to the class customization window [2].

Step 3: Character appearance

Look at the above window. Using it, you can customize the appearance of your character. There are not too many of the options, but this may change, considering the fact that this is still the Alpha build of the game.

Using individual arrows, you can change: skin color [1], facial features [2], haircut [3], hair color [4] and facial hair [5]. If the armor shown preview annoys you, you can disable it [6].

After you have selected the parameters, do not exit the window and do not save anything. The window shown in the screenshot appears on the right-hand side of the screen. Now, let's take a look at the one on the left.

Divinity Original Sin 2 Character Creation Music

Step 4: Analysis of factors

For the purposes of this guide, let's assume that your selected race is Human and you decided to play as a warrior.

Note the screenshot. Parameters highlighted in the screenshot can be additionally customized and the ones that have been shown in the screenshot are the default ones for the class. However, keep in mind that the current build of the game does not allow you to change the starting abilities, which is why the default ones will be used.

Apart from that, you can change attributes [1], abilities [2] and talents [3] that you start the game with. After you have familiarized yourself with your starting abilities in this panel, you can still change your class [4] to match it with your playing style. If you decide on your current selection, you can move on to the rest of the customization options, using the button in the bottom part of the panel [5].

Step 5: Skill selection

Before you make your decision, take a look at the chapter of this guide dedicated to this topic.

While creating your character, you can pick three skills that will reflect your playing style. One of the skills is determined by the race of your character and you cannot change it. This is a good moment to pick skills in the way that complements racial predispositions of your character, or work better basing on his starting abilities.

Step 6: Attributes

Divinity Original Sin 2 Character Creation Guide

Before you make your decision, take a look at the chapter of this guide dedicated to this topic.

In the case of attributes, you can allocate three points, to further develop natural abilities, or spend them in the way that grants you with better modifiers for the class you have selected. It is a good idea to pay attention to which modifiers are connected with individual attributes.

Step 7. Talent selection

Before you make your decision, take a look at the chapter of this guide dedicated to this topic.

In the case of talents there is only one point that you can spend on anything you want. In the above screenshot, you can observe that some of the talents have been provided in red, which means that your character has to meet additional conditions for those talents. To a major extent, this is determined by abilities, but you may be able to select specific attributes only after you have attained a specific experience level.

At this stage, you can match attributes by switching between two tabs, but it would be best if you picked one of the talents on which there are no further restrictions, because this may have a negative effect on the beginning of the game and your character's effectiveness in the battlefield.

After you have performed all of the above actions, you have to accept them.

If you click the 'Back' button, all of the changes that you have made will be rolled back i and you will have to start over.

After you have accepted the changes, you will be back to the appearance and lass selection window. Do not change your class and perform final changes in the appearance, if you want to.

As soon as you are ready, press 'Accept' again.

Step 8: Tags

After you have performed all of the above, you will be back to the main menu. Right now, you should focus on selecting tags that will determine additional dialogue options in conversations with NPCs.

Two of the six tags are default for your gender and your race, but you can pick two additional ones. Press the button highlighted in the screenshot, pick two tags from the list and accept your choice.

Throughout the game, you can use six tags, but right now you are restricted to using four.

Step 9: Music instrument and finalization of the process

Divinity Original Sin 2 Character Creation Online

As soon as your character is ready, you have to pick the music instrument.

Instrument selection has no major effect on the game mechanics, but it will be included in the game's soundtrack, while you are playing.

As soon as you are done with all the character creation steps, click 'Accept' buttonshown in the above screenshot and you can start the game as the character you have just defined.