Any known mods that increase lategame difficulty relative to early game?

[Uni]

The problem with both pillars isnt really the overall difficulty being too low, but rather the games challenge dropping drastically the longer you go on. 

 

Parties just get a lot more from levels than enemies and POTD goes from reasonable(early game) to completely trivial(late game) in both titles, at least if we ignore some optional fights that are huge difficulty spikes from the rest of the game.

 

All the difficulty mods i have seen add flat raw power to enemies and thus do not help much with this major difficulty curve problem. I have relatively heavy difficulty mods and while they managed to delay me becoming OP for a bit now at lv16 my frontliners are practically invulnerable and the party just blenders enemies with no effort/thinking needed even if they are occasionally up to 4 levels over me and have extra hp.

 

I havent played the latest beta, but from what i have heard it has actually made POTD hard in the early game. This sounds good, but im pretty sure it will still become way too easy later on.

 

One way to make enemies become tougher towards the end could be reducing the statgains your party gets from leveling without doing the same for enemies. Id love a simple mod that made party get +2 to stats per level instead of +3 or smt.

 

I know reducing xp gain drastically can make the game be hard even towards the end, but its a really bad solution as then you dont get to use the cool toys at later levels. Id much rather have a high level party with less stats than a lower level one.

Edited June 5, 2018 by Uni

[TheMetaphysician]

This one does what you are looking for:

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/83

 

I haven't tried it, but it seems like it would work pretty well. There are some downsides: it costs you your pet slot, and you have to avoid rests or items that give your active abilities stat boosts, because that's what the accuracy penalties are tied to (as an approximation of character level). But you are right that no other mod does what this one does.

[mrscojangles]

Deadly Deadfire: https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/43

 

I started my 1.1 potd upscaled playthrough with the normal version on V2.1 and it was solid at the start but then difficulty dropped a bit and I decided to try swapping over to the hardcore version(V1.2). With the hardcore version, I just swapped over last night so I've only played a bit but it wouldn't surprise me if it's serious overkill on intro island, since you're going to be lacking gear to deal with the large level differences between you and the enemies, so on a fresh game you may want to start with the normal version until you get a few pieces of gear and then swap over to the HC. Or the HC might be good from the start, but I haven't tried it yet so I couldn't say.

 

Since I've only played a few hours since I swapped over to the HC version, I can't speak with certainty on how it will hold up throughout the entire game. I'm only level 7 or 8 i think, but so far it's making pretty much all non named enemies 2-4+ levels higher than me and I think all the named enemies/bosses are set to 4+ levels higher than the player. Both versions are nerfing XP gain significantly, but with the way some of the high levels spells are balanced, I think XP restrictions are going to be fairly standard on anything thats trying to significantly ramp up the difficulty, at least until some mods start adjusting enemy AI. And I'm guessing if you're a completionist and doing all the side quests, you'll still be hitting cap with time to spare.

 

It's too early in my game for me to give any definitive review of the overall difficulty with this mod for the late game/game as a whole, but it certainly is increasing it significantly over the base game. Whether it will hold up throughout the entire game remains to be seen. It definitely is not going to be for everyone, but it may be worth a shot for people who are looking for some additional means to buff up the enemies at the moment.

[Tigranes]

I think you can play until you hit that point where the difficulty drops (roughly ~lv12), and then install the mod, which will take effect for subsequent newly visited areas & XP gain. That's what I plan to try this playthrough.

[Shadenuat]

I installed DD but not sure if it works or not and how to check if it does. I remember you get about 5400 xp when you arrive to Neketaka and Hasongo. Will see how it goes.

[mrscojangles]

I think you can play until you hit that point where the difficulty drops (roughly ~lv12), and then install the mod, which will take effect for subsequent newly visited areas & XP gain. That's what I plan to try this playthrough.

 

Yeah, you can install the mod or swap between the normal and HC versions at any point. The only catch is that any maps you've loaded into will not change, so you may want to set up a separate save file for when you set up the mod. That way if you go to a handful of maps and find they're all too tough, you could roll back to the previous save, as my understanding is the enemies on those loaded maps would hold their levels even if you removed the mod or swapped from the HC to the normal.

[mrscojangles]

I installed DD but not sure if it works or not and how to check if it does. I remember you get about 5400 xp when you arrive to Neketaka and Hasongo. Will see how it goes.

I think easiest way to check will probably be your quest log. At least when i swapped from the normal version to the HC version, it increased the difficulty skull rating on all my quests. I assume swapping from no mod to the normal version would also be bumping up the skull rating on a fair number of quests as well.

[Guest Psychovampiric Shield]

I installed DD but not sure if it works or not and how to check if it does. I remember you get about 5400 xp when you arrive to Neketaka and Hasongo. Will see how it goes.

You may try to reload a zone with and without the mod and check monsters's stats.

 

Reportedly, 15 point PotD bonus monsters get should be by 1.1 exported and moddable. If so, one could therefore simply increase the value every few levels, because flat bonus does not make sense. By the time accuracy/defenses are ~100, +15 is still relevant, but not as much as +15 when accuracy/defenses are ~30. That is the thing that should scale.

 

Though difficulty is not just stats. Insane stats may make the game difficult, but not necessarily the fun kind difficult. I prefer enemies that attack from multiple directions over enemies who have high stats but can be CCed all at once, because then it is just matter of reloading until one manages to land a few debuffs in a row at the begining of a battle.