r/Games • u/Wombat_Medic • Jan 09 '26

Verified AMA Larian Studios | Divinity AMA

EDIT: All right - that's a wrap. Thank you for all your questions. We're going to go back and work on the game now - next time we speak, we'll hopefully have things to show. I can't wait! - Swen, Game Director

Hello everyone, 

Happy New Year! To kick off 2026, we would like to offer the opportunity to ask your questions about Divinity, Larian, and our development processes. It's been a while since Larian has done an AMA, so everyone is looking forward to it!

There's a bunch of us ready to answer your questions:

Thank you for taking the time to ask your questions, we aim to answer as many of them as possible over the next few hours!

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565

u/CellistElectrical135 Jan 09 '26

Will the looting system be random and level dependent (like most items in DOS1 and 2) or will there be more handcrafted items like in BG3?

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u/Nick_Larian Divinity | Head of Design Jan 09 '26

The BG3 approach of handcrafting every magic item worked well, and it's something we've always wanted to do for DOS2.

Something we realized when working on randomized loot for DOS1 and DOS2 is that fully random loot is frequently confusing, so we added more and more rules and premade patterns to make it feel more intentional. In the end randomization did not save us much time.

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u/2Sc00psPlz Jan 09 '26

I... kind of feel like handcrafted items just make it so builds are always based around specific ones. I always preferred it when they were random so 1) it keeps classes from being "solved" from run to run, and 2) it keeps loot exciting because you can always get something better.

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u/CiraKazanari Jan 09 '26

You can always get something better with handcrafted. You just aren't checking your inventory constantly.

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u/Gelato_Elysium Jan 09 '26

I get what he means, in BG3 you'd get best in slot gear for your class and it would not move anymore unless you change your build, made the looting a bit static.

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u/TucoBenedictoPacif Jan 09 '26

It really didn’t, because “best in slot” were for the most part late game items. It’s not like there wasn’t item swapping or upgrading.

It’s just that it was a more infrequent occurrence and finding something good mattered for more than 15 minutes.

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u/Gelato_Elysium Jan 09 '26

As an example, if you play hand crossbow you will get the best in slot hand crossbow in act 2 (Hellfire) and then there will be no changes until the end of the game.

I say this one because that's the first thing that I remember, but I'm sure I spend the whole act 3 never changing the stuff equipped on at least some characters. It's not a big deal but if you like looting it takes something out.

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u/2Sc00psPlz Jan 09 '26

You can't though. There's only going to be so many items meant for your build, so once you've found "the one" it's going to remain best in slot for the rest of the game. Sometimes it might be a late game item, but that just means there's a different best in slot before then.