Divinity: Original Sin 2 can be tough and unforgiving despite the comical facade and even in the lowest difficulty setting. When it’s not giving players hell for their reckless decision-making, it’s usually punishing them for sub-optimal character builds and skill choices. Speaking of skills, there are so many of them, it’s dizzying which ones to pick for the most optimized character.

Why would the players want to do that especially if it can limit gameplay freedom? Because while being a brash free-spirited soul can be fun, losing and embarrassing the gods who chose you certainly isn’t. As it happens, certain skills are more powerful than others and should provide a good alternative once players are tired of getting their Godwoken posterior handed to them on a platter. So here are the five best and five worst skills in the game.

10 BEST: TELEPORTATION

It’s hard to miss this nifty little Swiss Army Knife of a skill—the main quest tends to shove it down the players’ throats. However, from early game to endgame, Teleportation deserves a skill slot in the hotbar.

It’s only the best way to control the battlefield and a great way to circumvent physical and magic armor. The best part is that it doesn’t even need much of an investment, sometimes items give it away for free, too bad enemies also know just how good is this skill.

9 PRETTY USELESS: FAVORABLE WIND

No, this isn’t a euphemism for a neutral non-stinky fart, it’s a practically useless skill in Divinity: Original Sin 2. The caster casts it on themselves and they will then get a small aura that gives their allies movement speed bonus.

The problem is, clumping up together to reap the benefits of Favorable Wind is a good way to get party-wiped and chain-stunned given just how common AoE skills are in Divinity 2. It’s like doing the enemy a favor by using Favorable Wind.

8 BEST: BATTLE STOMP

Speaking of widespread and brutal AoE skills, warriors and bruiser-type classes can have this one quite early on, the Battle Stomp. It’s pretty much a short-ranged AoE stomp skill that travels in a broad cone and knocks anyone without a physical armor prone.

Against enemies that love to stay together—probably because of Favorable Wind, this is a good skill to dish out some stunlock torture. More than that, it also deals respectable damage and ignores or even clears elemental terrain effects.

7 PRETTY USELESS: BREATHING BUBBLE

One unique mechanic in Divinity: Original Sin 2 is the elemental effect which is deadly and tactically rewarding or oppressive. Some of them are safer than others, of course, such as the steam clouds produced by dousing fire effects.

That’s why its rather surprising that Breathing Bubble exists as a way to counteract cloud effects. Not only are cloud effects uncommon but they’re also not threatening enough to warrant a specific counteractive skill. It does prevent Death Fog damage, but that’s easy to avoid anyway.

6 BEST: TACTICAL RETREAT

Rangers and ranged classes in Divinity: Original Sin 2 would have so easy to dispatch if not for one specific skill they keep abusing: Tactical Retreat. It turns ranged classes from sitting ducks to slick murderers capable of repositioning anytime for critical damage.

Tactical Retreat functions as a self-teleport that allows the caster to pretty much go anywhere visible—usually a higher ground in order to rain down volleys of hatred on anyone below them. Other times, it’s great for making melee enemies waste their AP on moving to a target that keeps retreating.

5 PRETTY USELESS: APPORTATION

Apportation is like Teleportation but worse since it only has a range of 8 meters and it can only teleport pickable objects into the caster’s inventory. Teleportation can already do this well enough and with much less annoying results.

Moreover, Apportation is just not useful in combat situations since it only works one way and only on objects. It managed to be both redundant and impractical at the same time—serving only to bloat up the skill count.

4 BEST: CONJURE INCARNATE

Ironically in Divinity: Original Sin 2, going solo and Lone Wolf makes the game easier since the characters become overpowered walking everymen. One skill that makes them unstoppable as a Lone Wolf would be Conjure Incarnate.

It allows players to summon fiend whose type and skills depends on the elemental surface on where he’s summoned. Once players get their summoning level to 10, the incarnate becomes a giant that can easily wipe out Fort Joy on its own and still serve as a formidable bruiser until Act 3.

3 PRETTY USELESS: MASS OILY CARAPACE

For a source skill, this one’s pretty embarrassing. It’s pretty much a full party version of Oily Carapace and allows players to absorb any oil surfaces and remove the slowed status effect. It sounds good on paper except there are already better ways of dealing with oily surfaces.

By the time players have access to this skill, they would already have Tactical Retreat, Phoenix Dive, and Teleportation—skills useful in getting out of sticky situations. Those also don’t require source points, unlike this clunky mass skill.

2 BEST: ADRENALINE

As cliche as it seems, the best defense is a good offense in Divinity 2. Every fight is a race to whittle down enemies’ HP to zero. Anything that can speed up that race is power and damage mitigation at the same time. Adrenaline grants both.

It costs no AP to cast and lets casters borrow 2 AP from their next turn. It may seem small but it allows players to kill a threat faster in a single turn, thus reducing enemies’ overall damage output. Adrenaline is hitting three birds with one stone.

1 PRETTY USELESS: GLITTER DUST

Glitter Dust looks like a standard ranger tool but it’s not really that practical in most fights. It merely gives enemies less change to dodge and prevents them from going invisible. That second part is wasted since enemies that usually go invisible tend to follow it up with an attack that dispels their invisibility anyway.

That means Glitter Dust is just a small benefit to accuracy, not something that’s worth an AP over damaging skills or just using tools from the inventory. Hopefully, this knowledge helped players become better-equipped to deal with the Voidwoken.

NEXT: Baldur’s Gate 3: 5 Similarities It Has To Divinity: Original Sin 2 (& 5 Differences)