Telmorial

Yeah I was very excited about Sword Coast Legend until I found out they're using cool downs for spells and abilities. What an awful design decision.

Thanks for the replies. Yeah, my PC is a Druid now, so I'm tempted with the Wizard, probably melee with self buff/CC/some damage spells to make it a bit more interesting. Although I imagine Act 1 will be extremely difficult solo on PotD! Saying that, I am tempted to finish the story with my full party as I'm enjoying that side of the game then maybe do another play through once they've released a couple more patches.

I'm getting a bit bored with the combat. I think I'm near the end of Act 2 with a full party on PotD. I'm thinking about starting a new game as solo on PotD, maybe as a Wizard. I guess I'd have to try a melee Wizard, right? Any thoughts? Any suggestions? Race? Any thoughts on spells? Thanks.

Yep, me too. Maybe massively improving the AI and add in hard counters may help but whatever the solution, the combat in PoE is no where near as interesting and challenging as BG2. One of my favorite type of battles in BG2 was fighting enemy mages. Your whole party would be wiped out if you just tried to damage with melee and magic. You had to strip the mage of their multiple layers of defenses. Then at various stages in the battle, you would get surprised by something (maybe a contingency spell would be triggered or the mage would summon something right next to your casters), forcing to you to change tactics ASAP to win the battle. I rather not have that kind of BS in PoE. You'd rather not have interesting battles which force you to change tactics often? Wow.

Yep, me too. Maybe massively improving the AI and add in hard counters may help but whatever the solution, the combat in PoE is no where near as interesting and challenging as BG2. One of my favorite type of battles in BG2 was fighting enemy mages. Your whole party would be wiped out if you just tried to damage with melee and magic. You had to strip the mage of their multiple layers of defenses. Then at various stages in the battle, you would get surprised by something (maybe a contingency spell would be triggered or the mage would summon something right next to your casters), forcing to you to change tactics ASAP to win the battle. But in PoE, most combat is just lay in with damage and a couple of crowd control spells/abilities then rinse and repeat. Also they need to vastly expand the number and varaity of items. The named items are hardly better, and just as important, hardly more interesting that the non named items.

Past experience tells me when they say "balance changes" they mean "nerfs galore". Rather than crippling existing characters, which people have invested time and effort in (including PotD, Iron mode etc.), by ruining their abilities that are somehow "imbalanced" (in a single-player game, yeah right), how about buffing classes that are currently made of suck and plainly uninspiring (looking at you, paladin)? TL;DR: instead of weakening good classes, how about strengthening bad classes? That way everyone wins! I agree with the general sentiment of buffing bad classes rather than nerfing good ones, but why is it illegitimate to balance in one way, based on the argument that it doesn't need balancing in a single-player game, yet legitimate to balance in another? Your argument makes no sense. If you said that balance didn't matter at all in a single-player game, you'd have a point - I'd disagree and argue against that point, but it'd be there - but first suggesting that imbalance isn't a thing in a single-player game and then call on balancing is nonsense. 1.04 isn't even released yet, so I would not hold my breath for anything even resembling solid information on 1.05 until after 1.04 has hit, and even then it'll probably take a few days at least. I doubt AI improvements would really help you in the "combat is samey"-department, though. Yes, the AI should be smarter, but the samey thing is systemic. My line of thinking was better AI may mean more surprises for us. EG. Suddenly all the enemy ranged (archers and mage) target my Wizard, making me have to change tactics quickly, making combat more interesting. But I do get what you mean re systemic and agree. I really do miss the epic mage duels from BG2, fantastic fun

Any chance we can see tentative patch notes for 1.5? I'm really hoping it includes improvements to the AI to make the game more challenging and more varied battles (most fights are a bit samey for me now, no surprises from the enemies, nothing to force me to change tactics). Plus improved itemization would be nice.

Really? There is only 1 choice of weapon for this quest? Yeeesh. I wish they would have an option to choose which type of weapon for the smith to forge. The Estoc is useless for my fighter.

so? i fail to see your point. does it mean, i have to rush through the game activly avoiding sidequest, in oder to be challenged? shouldnt it be the other way around? if a specific area/fight is too hard -> turn back, get more xp through sidequests and then try again. Nice, someone who gets it It should be balanced so the game is challenging (more so at higher difficulty levels) after you've done most/all of the side quests. If people who rush the game, only sticking to the main story, find it too challenging later on, they still have multiple choices; do some side quests or simple turn down the difficulty level! But as it stands now, for people who actually like to experience the whole game (the horror!), we're screwed - the game is far too easy even on hard level. I had to use the IE Mod to hack the game to PoTD. It's now quite challenging (but it still doesn't feel like a 'nightmare level'), I'm only in act 2 though. Come on Obsidian, you have an epic classic game here. You just need to fix the hard and PoTD difficulty levels so it's balanced throughout all the acts, for people who do side quests. We the community would really appreciate a post from a dev on this subject.

So I have a choice to learn 'Minor Grimoire Imprint', a level 4 spell which allows me to take a random level 3 spell from an enemy caster. Now, I think that means the level 3 spell will be cast-able for 'free' (IE will not use one of my per rest level 3 spells) but what's the point when I just lose a level 4 (by casting the Minor Grimoire Imprint) per rest?

The problem is then if you do not do a bunch of the side quests you will be under level for the end game. Obsidian had to design the critical path for people that would not want to have to do all of the optional stuff. Now for those people the end game fight will definitely be tougher but will still be doable. The main issue is that many of us want to do the side quests because they are enjoyable and we are playing the game to experience the content. Since you can do so many things before continuing the critical path and since you gain levels so easily, just by doing a decent amount of side quests you become severely over leveled halfway through the game. The solution is to either decrease how much xp is given for certain quests or to increase how much xp is needed to advance levels so you do not get over leveled so easily. But like I said, if they were under leveled for the end game because of not doing enough side quests, they still have two options; Do more side quests or reduce the difficulty setting.

The solution isn't to decrease the XP. They have a max level of 12 in the game. That level shouldn't be considered 'over leveled' and too easy for the latter part of the game. I want to get all my characters to max level and still have many very challenging fights, all the way up until the last battle.

FWIW, Sawyer stated in an interview that the game was balanced around the assumption that you would stick to the main path with some side quests. It's by design that you'll be over-leveled for the main path if you do a lot of side content. I think the only way to get around this is with a mod that changes xp values or something. If that's true then it was a terrible design decision! It should have been balanced around the player doing many of the side quests. With that balance, if people who have skipped many of the side quests find the game too hard as they progress through the main story, they still have two options; Do more side quests to level up or simply reduce the difficulty setting. But as it is now, people who like to do a lot of side quests (oh, the horror!), are finding the game too easy, even no hard difficulty! Awful design.

I changed it yesterday and it seems to be working. You can check your bestiary, I think monster's accuracy should be at least 50% higher with PoTD. I'm in Caed Nua now with level 4 chars and it's way harder than before. Now there's actually a sense of danger and I'm loving it. Thanks, you're correct. The couple of creatures I checked do have higher endurance, accuracy and defense stats. I guess I must be a in low level area then.

I've just restarted the app and it's reporting (steam) 1.03.0526