PotD or Veteran with Level Scaling After 1.1

[Cyrus_Blackfeather]

Hey guys!

 

So... I don't know if I'm just very bad at the game or what, but I'm actually legitimately struggling on PotD after completing the tutorial. Enemies hit extremely hard, and I do barely any damage to them. Yes, I know that enemies hitting hard is the point - but if I can only scratch them for two damage or so, combat becomes less a war of attrition and careful management of resources, and more an exercise in futility. The thing is, I'm not sure if this is just me being bad at the game (Likely) or me just not taking quests in their intended order. Am I supposed to progress the main quest immediately after hitting Neketaka and level up that way? Do a few bounties and gear up my party? 

 

That's not even getting into the ship combat. I don't know if this is the same on all difficulties, but boarding actions on PotD are absolutely brutal. I see a ship that has 4 crew listed out of a total of 16. I figure "Okay, easy mark," and pepper it with cannon fire before going in for the kill, only to find that there are now twenty or so soldiers, including five priests (!) waiting for me. I feel like even if I were abusing functionally immortal builds, I'd still struggle with that. 

 

I'm not really sure what the problem is. Level scaling is important, I want the content to be challenging at all parts of the game and I hope that the changes coming fix it on all difficulties. But I'm wondering if something about my approach is just not cut out for PotD and whether Veteran would provide the challenge I'm looking for without the frustration. 

 

The fact that I'm playing a Helwalker Monk accounts for why my main character is struggling so much in the damage department, but not why my companions, who don't have that penalty, are taking so much damage from enemies. Well, the fact that they're poorly optimized probably accounts for a lot, but when I start looking at that, this becomes less a roleplaying experience and more "Video Gamey" if that makes sense. 

 

So... To wrap this all up. Would Veteran mode with level scaling be a better test of my abilities without leading to as much abject frustration as my party gets massacred before they can even do anything? I want a difficulty that punishes stupid mistakes, but that doesn't require five or ten or fifteen reloads, or super cheesy tactics. 

[youspoonybard]

Ship boarding is bugged right now - what should be enemy corpses are being spawned as living enemies, so if you try to board them you can get overwhelmed, especially before you have other party members to assist in the battle. Don't judge difficulty off these boarding fights.

[Mikeymoonshine]

I only found a handful of fights difficult but I did most of Neketaka before getting back on my ship, perhaps that's it? You can find decent gear in some of the dungeons in neketaka and should be able to level up a few times. Are your party members using weapons they are proficiant in?

[Purudaya]

PotD gets much easier after around level 8-10 and is basically a cake walk after around level 14 (arguably earlier). As you get better passives and better gear, it should feel a lot less punishing. In the meantime, use resistance/immunity consumables and summon idols to better control engagements.

 

As for ship boarding, try to find and recruit as many sidekicks as you can in addition to the main companions. They'll appear in the fight against the opposing crew.

[Cyrus_Blackfeather]

I only found a handful of fights difficult but I did most of Neketaka before getting back on my ship, perhaps that's it? You can find decent gear in some of the dungeons in neketaka and should be able to level up a few times. Are your party members using weapons they are proficiant in?

 

They are, but I'm mostly using unenchanted gear, so that probably has a lot to do with it. As mentioned I'm also a Helwalker, so taking extra damage is to be expected, and I don't have my Hasongo bonuses yet. I'm going to be doing a playthrough when 1.1 hits as a Fighter/Nalpazca, so that will probably address a lot of the issues I'm having, I would think. 

 

Though I'm a little concerned, admittedly. Once you finish Hasongo, is that more or less it for side stuff? I know Dunnage exists, but I don't know if that's sort of like a Defiance Bay -> Twin Elms situation, with not a lot of sidequests and sort of a collision course with the end of the game. 

 

I'm going to wait for 1.1 to see if that fixes the issue with the boarding actions. I'd definitely like to do them, but not in the current state. The nature of the bug is kind of funny though. Zombie crews!

[algroth]

Have you been looking at your enemies' armour rating and defenses, and likewise your accuracy and penetration? If, like me, you've selected the game to "only scale up", you'll be missing the difficulty indicators, and so what I'd suggest is to look directly at their defense stats and determine there whether you should be facing them or not. Also I strongly advise you to keep track of your penetration, it's pretty different to the first game and it's *crucial* for doing damage. If you need more penetration, keep in mind that each level in weapon quality adds a penetration point, and several weapon proficiency modals add pen too.

Edited May 30, 2018 by algroth

[Cyrus_Blackfeather]

Have you been looking at your enemies' armour rating and defenses, and likewise your accuracy and penetration? If, like me, you've selected the game to "only scale up", you'll be missing the difficulty indicators, and so what I'd suggest is to look directly at their defense stats and determine there whether you should be facing them or not. Also I strongly advise you to keep track of your penetration, it's pretty different to the first game and it's *crucial* for doing damage. If you need more penetration, keep in mind that each level in weapon quality adds a penetration point, and several weapon proficiency modals add pen too.

 

Yeah, I'm definitely hitting "No Pen" a lot on certain enemies. My next character is also going to be a Sword Devoted in addition to a Nalpazca Monk, so I'll have more penetration there, too. 

 

Honestly I think a lot of my problems came from just picking a subclass I'm not good with. Helwalker takes a lot to manage properly. 

 

I'll be waiting for 1.1 to see where everything settles, and then starting a playthrough that'll be going through all of the DLC. I'm hoping that once I'm on a character that's a little sturdier, and with a lot more penetration, I'll be in better shape. 

 

Thanks guys! Do you think I should keep level scaling on "Only scale upwards" for PotD? 

Edited May 30, 2018 by Cyrus_Blackfeather

[Climhazzard]

There's plenty of challenging stuff before level 10, especially since the all scaling option doesn't really bring enemies down to your level...

 

However if you just do quests around Neketaka and the early faction quests you can get to level 10 easy without anything being excessively hard.  Then you'll have key abilities like Devotions for the Faithful and then challenging fights are the exception, not the norm.  As you level the problem just keeps getting worse.  Fights that you would expect to be hard, like against Dragons, are jokes.  In PoE Dragons were scary, they had hard hitting breath attacks, Terrify aura, etc...  In this game I never see my health bar go down when fighting them.

 

So it's all just a matter of perspective I guess.  I would hardly recommend Helwalker/PoTD for someone unfamiliar with the game though, one or the other perhaps, not both.

Edited May 30, 2018 by Climhazzard

[hilfazer]

In PoE Dragons were scary, they had hard hitting breath attacks, Terrify aura, etc...  In this game I never see my health bar go down when fighting them.

 

Intended!

Obsidian didn't like DR working poorly against big DPH attacks like dragon's breath so they used % damage reduction this time and this is the result.

[Cyrus_Blackfeather]

 

In PoE Dragons were scary, they had hard hitting breath attacks, Terrify aura, etc...  In this game I never see my health bar go down when fighting them.

 

Intended!

Obsidian didn't like DR working poorly against big DPH attacks like dragon's breath so they used % damage reduction this time and this is the result.

 

 

Honestly, I'm kind of in favor of that. I have war flashbacks of trying to do the Bog Dragon encounter on Hard Mode and getting pretty much insta-gibbed even after buffing because the dragons both breathed on me at about the same time. That said, I feel like there are ways around that. Bigger windup on dragon breath, for one thing, and a more obvious onscreen 'tell.' Maybe a magic item that gives protection against breath attacks - like Dragons in the first game resisted/were immune to "Dragon Breath." That'd be kind of a cool progression mechanic. You kill smaller dragons in an area to collect scales and other materials to give you resistance to their breath weapons, so when you fight the big dragons it's still punishing but manageable. 

 

I think I'll just wait for 1.1 and start over. I feel like I'll have better luck with a Fighter multiclass, and not using Helwalker. That might be a little more new player friendly. 

[Cyrus_Blackfeather]

Or rather, I should say that I WANT the challenge - I did PotD on Tyranny and I want to do it here. But I want to make sure it's a legitimate challenge that I can overcome with actual strategy and not just using cheesy builds and line of sight tactics. 

 

I cleared Raedric's first boss fight in the first game by luring all of his guards over to a door after sending Eder in to trigger the conversation and then hauling him back to meet up with the rest of the party. I wasn't terribly pleased with having to do that but it was kind of funny to imagine my Watcher having a shouting match with him from the opposite side of the room. I've read strategies for other encounters on the higher difficulties that basically amount to "Stealth the rest of your party, then run one person out to grab the group's attention, pull them back, bombard them with spells, rinse/repeat." 

 

As mentioned, the Llengrath fight is brutal. I get it, it's supposed to be a challenge, you're supposed to earn that achievement through blood, sweat, and tears. But Llengrath and the Bog Cult Apprentice both love to abuse super annoying spells that gib my party, even defensively buffed. Then the Dragons breathe on me and all of the Corrode DR in the world isn't going to do anything to save me from a wipe. Plus the Endurance/Health system means that I can only pick up my party members but so many times before they get permadead. This is on Hard mode, by the way. I tried turning it down to Normal but since I'd already entered the swamp, it didn't carry over. 

 

I guess I'm having some trouble properly communicating what I want. Challenge with fairness? That might be a good way to look at it. I'll definitely be trying for a Watcher who's a little sturdier this time to see if I can survive a tad better. But at the same time, I don't want to feel like I'm compelled to ditch all of these companions - some of whom I actually really like - to go ahead and create a finely tuned custom party of mutes who exist only to slay monsters. I don't like entering combat only to immediately explode five seconds later because two high level casters used Thayn's Friendly Ball of Sunshine [sic] on my party and then a dragon just... existed in my general vicinity. I couldn't even tell what killed me most of the time. 

 

I'm hoping that once I get some better armor and weapons, I'll be able to tackle some of the more difficult encounters once the patch rolls out. 

[Yosharian]

You don't have to fight Llengrath.  There are other solutions to that encounter.

[hilfazer]

 

That's not even getting into the ship combat. I don't know if this is the same on all difficulties, but boarding actions on PotD are absolutely brutal. I see a ship that has 4 crew listed out of a total of 16. I figure "Okay, easy mark," and pepper it with cannon fire before going in for the kill, only to find that there are now twenty or so soldiers, including five priests (!) waiting for me. I feel like even if I were abusing functionally immortal builds, I'd still struggle with that. 

 

 

Enemies didn't hear about party size reduction.

[Stephen Unsworth-Mitchell]

Very early game can be hard fights as you don't have much to throw at the bad guys and you don't hit hard.

 

As said by someone else once do most city suddenly your higher level and fights are easier. not long after leaving city every fight becomes cake walk.

 

So yes if do lot combat before going city or break city up fights can be hard, but after city goes to easier then very shortly after cake so needs balancing in way doesn't make start more difficult but makes later fights more of a challenge.

 

Giant outside temple lasted about 1.5 secs to my party which was disappointing as thought was going be fun fight. 3 small constructs early game made fight seem like forever and I had use everything. 

[Stephen Unsworth-Mitchell]

Also depending on what spend money on can help or make fights harder.

 

If spend lot early money trying make ship more combat ready you can end up neglecting character and companions equipment which makes fights harder but if spend money early on equipment fights are easier, if not sailing as doing city can hold of on buying things for ship. You can get few ship items from quest to if wait to do ship.