Something changed, game is super difficult suddenly

[Vaneglorious]

Hi.

 

Just wondering, but did anybody else notice a huge difficulty spike in PotD lately? Did they update something? Or did I simply somehow break my game with Deadly Deadfire (difficulty mod from Nexus) ?

 

Because I remember removing it, because some encounters were straight up impossible or way too much hassle.

 

Should I reinstall or something? I cleared out my override and started a new game, but the enemies seem to be brutal even when I do everything I possibly can to overcome the challenge.

 

Let me check this real quick: after Port Maje before when you free the animancers and Aloth, what kind of enemies do you people encounter? Because for me it's about 4-5 panthers, 2-3 boars and a young drake. Is that how it's supposed to be?

[anathanielh]

That is the encounter in regular PotD. Deadly Deadfire doesn’t add or remove enemies, it just makes it so that the same mobs are stronger and have more health.

If you’re having trouble with the fight, you can refer to others in the strategies and builds forum and ask how they got through it.

I made sure I was at least level 3 before attempting this fight and I got through it just fine, albeit with eder being knocked out (he was my tank). I just had to use a few bombs and not forget about poisons and defensive potions I had.

Edited July 20, 2018 by anathanielh

[Waski]

4-5 panthers, 2-3 boars and a drake sounds about right, even on veteran is like that just lower stats??

[Vaneglorious]

Humph. So they increased the difficulty. That fight was basically impossible with only me, Edér and Xoti. I used Hylea's boon food, a lot of potions and bombs...still couldn't survive long enough. I had to completely avoid the fight and sneak into the ruins, then they were gone.

 

Right now I'm having trouble in general encounters, like with Xaurips that constantly paralyze my party and stuff. I find myself having to use literally everything in my arsenal to come out of certain fights that were cake walks before, and I find myself resorting to cheese tactics like pulling and abusing chokepoints.

 

Maybe I shouldn't have made Edér F/R and only Fighter. Idk. Aloth literally can't touch mostly anything, with having about 37-40 accuracy on spells vs 70-80 defenses..

Edited July 20, 2018 by Vaneglorious

[Gregorovich]

Hello,
Well, the game difficulty has changed after one of the patches, without the deadly dedfire, but the patch was quite a while ago. 1.1, I think, but not sure
Yeap, at Port Maje the amount of panthers, boars and one drake is correct, I have never installed any mods for PoE 2. The boars are with three skulls (for 4 level) character, as I remember.
Well, I have managed to deal with all them having only Eder and Xoti in the party. (I am not the good player and never tried solo)
Well, I have the tactical solution for this:
1) There are two groups of enemies: on the bottom of the arena with drake (Group A) and in the upper corner of the arena (Group B)
2) Get onto the arena through the ladder in the right upper corner - you go down the small area with narrow enter, from the place you may aggro the boars from Group B by one and murder them in order, as well as small dragons
3) There is a nice way to deal with drake: you may aggro one boar and four panthers from the group, take your tank and go to the stairs, leading to the bottom of the arena where the group B is. Stay right on the top of the stairs or few steos lower. When anybody see you, run away to the other stairs, that are a bit higher: there is a narrow place, where you can meet the enemies, if you do right, only 4 panthers and a boar withe no drake come. It's a good idea to have a pike or a bow for the main character to hit from behind. Then you may deal with the drake easier.

It's worst guide, you've ever seen but I hope it helps.

4) Used no bombs only one potion such way

And you're free to ask more) 

Edited July 20, 2018 by Gregorovich

[1TTFFSSE]

the first island is rough basically even on vanilla potd and you have to really put heavy armor on your tank, use charm/cc spells and pull enemy packs separately, try to split them. But after the first island game gets easier as you level up/eventually out-level encounters. 

 

like catacombs bellow temple of barath for instance - it is a hard area if you are sub level 8 or so to do. If you are over 10/12 it is pretty straightforward.

same with storm of poka kohara quest - at level 8-9 it is a challenge, but above lvl 10 it is not bad. 

[Vaneglorious]

the first island is rough basically even on vanilla potd and you have to really put heavy armor on your tank, use charm/cc spells and pull enemy packs separately, try to split them. But after the first island game gets easier as you level up/eventually out-level encounters. 

 

like catacombs bellow temple of barath for instance - it is a hard area if you are sub level 8 or so to do. If you are over 10/12 it is pretty straightforward.

same with storm of poka kohara quest - at level 8-9 it is a challenge, but above lvl 10 it is not bad. 

I know it's difficult mostly because I lack any cc, but even Aloth has big trouble landing spells :-/ . Edér dies very fast, too.

 

My MC is a dual-wield (swords) Devoted/KindWayfarer, and by far the only character in my party who can actually do meaningful damage and also stay alive long. But some encounters seem very hard without cheese tactics.

[Dorftek]

Well, the first island doesn't really represent the difficulty of potd right now. It is harder then anything else u will encounter simply because u are stuck with very few options. Once u get out into the open world and u can make choices on where to go and what to do the game suddenly becomes a a lot easier. Port Maje is a teaser of what POTD should have been. Although I do not really agree with how the difficulty of port maje is achieved here or in any other game (giving AI more stats to screw with ur dices) it seems to be the only way for obsidian to increase difficulty. Because the AI is world class stupid!

[jww]

 

the first island is rough basically even on vanilla potd and you have to really put heavy armor on your tank, use charm/cc spells and pull enemy packs separately, try to split them. But after the first island game gets easier as you level up/eventually out-level encounters. 

 

like catacombs bellow temple of barath for instance - it is a hard area if you are sub level 8 or so to do. If you are over 10/12 it is pretty straightforward.

same with storm of poka kohara quest - at level 8-9 it is a challenge, but above lvl 10 it is not bad. 

I know it's difficult mostly because I lack any cc, but even Aloth has big trouble landing spells :-/ . Edér dies very fast, too.

 

My MC is a dual-wield (swords) Devoted/KindWayfarer, and by far the only character in my party who can actually do meaningful damage and also stay alive long. But some encounters seem very hard without cheese tactics.

 

 

To do Maje Island on PotD without cheese tactics, you might try grabbing a couple hirelings, say a tank (maybe Pale Elf Goldpact Paladin/Troubadour or /Priest) to help out Eder and also someone to stand in the back and do a lot of damage (say, Rogue/Ranger with an arquebus or dual pistols) (or cipher for crowd control, of course). Though if I get hirelings, I like to wait until Watcher, Eder, and Xoti hit level 4 first (right after reaching the digsite, if I've done everything else), because adding extra characters delays that level. Without extra hirelings, I so far haven't been able to do the digsite on PotD with just Watcher/Eder/Xoti unless I pull smaller groups of enemies (which can take a few tries), and that's including Berath's Blessings.

 

In relative terms, Eder should be able to tank fine as a Fighter/Rogue if you left him with a shield, but.... not the full groups of digsite enemies by himself. You'll want to create custom AI scripts for your companions if you aren't controlling their every move -- many of the default AI scripts aren't very good, particularly for multi-classed characters. Be sure to include Second Wind and other healing abilities in the AI scripts.

 

As a dual-wield Kind Wayfarer, you get two free AoE heals with each FoD (if you hit), so you can try holding those until you and Eder need healing.

 

There are a number of threads about digsite and Gorecci Street tactics with advice from people who know the game much better than me, so you might check those out.

Edited July 20, 2018 by jww

[mant2si]

Well, the first island doesn't really represent the difficulty of potd right now. It is harder then anything else u will encounter simply because u are stuck with very few options. Once u get out into the open world and u can make choices on where to go and what to do the game suddenly becomes a a lot easier. Port Maje is a teaser of what POTD should have been. Although I do not really agree with how the difficulty of port maje is achieved here or in any other game (giving AI more stats to screw with ur dices) it seems to be the only way for obsidian to increase difficulty. Because the AI is world class stupid!

Yes I agree. But even if AI is very stupid obsidian can make each fight unique, I assume that they can summon/put more enemies on some condition, they can use different game mechanics ... I don't understand why they work only on Ukaizo fight and skip everything else

 

 

Edited July 20, 2018 by mant2si

[mrcuddles]

I Don't know if anybody has said this already but you can skip all those fights outside the digsite by sneaking around the bottom of the circle ring. When you come out after finding oderisi the enemies are gone.

[no1fanboy]

@op

 

Research “ kiting”

 

This will be the answer to all your difficult POTD bottleknecks

[baldurs_gate_2]

Humph. So they increased the difficulty. That fight was basically impossible with only me, Edér and Xoti. I used Hylea's boon food, a lot of potions and bombs...still couldn't survive long enough. I had to completely avoid the fight and sneak into the ruins, then they were gone.

 

Right now I'm having trouble in general encounters, like with Xaurips that constantly paralyze my party and stuff. I find myself having to use literally everything in my arsenal to come out of certain fights that were cake walks before, and I find myself resorting to cheese tactics like pulling and abusing chokepoints.

 

Maybe I shouldn't have made Edér F/R and only Fighter. Idk. Aloth literally can't touch mostly anything, with having about 37-40 accuracy on spells vs 70-80 defenses..

You can do the fight with a Herald or Shadowdancer solo, at least i did. Up on the stairs, only one can attack you at the same time. With shadowdancer you can just smokecloud out, herald is much more durable anyway, just be sure not to lure every of them to you.

[Verde]

4-5 panthers, 2-3 boars and a drake sounds about right, even on veteran is like that just lower stats??

It's the same on Veteran upscale. Highly recommend custom Adveturers including a Cipher.

[Haplok]

Well I landed on Sayuka early (level 9, wanted to do Serafen's quest ASAP) and really struggled with the attack there as well. Tons of animals with 3-2 skulls and durable druids which have 14 AR when shapeshifted.

[no1fanboy]

Well I landed on Sayuka early (level 9, wanted to do Serafen's quest ASAP) and really struggled with the attack there as well. Tons of animals with 3-2 skulls and durable druids which have 14 AR when shapeshifted.

go straight to crookspur and get legendary equipment for free behind mechant

[Vaneglorious]

So reading these replies, basically everyone's advice is to just cheese the fights. I did Gorecci by pulling and separating them as much as I could, and I had to skip the conversation with the gang leader dude because I wanted the violent option, but the moment we stop talking I instantly get killed in under a second lol, and again my MC is pretty decent stat-wise. Decently tanky for a dual-wielder while also doing respectable damage (compared to my companions it's more like almost the only source of damage heh) .

 

With the panthers, boars and the young drake at the dig site I had no other option but to sneak past them. I'm at Neketaka now, level 10, difficulty is again back to the regular cakewalk. Maybe I should reinstall Deadly Deadfire.

[anathanielh]

I beat that fight with Deadly Deadfire on. I just made sure I had traps n bombs and made defensive potions before the fight for Eder to use. Maybe it’s because I fought them on the incline so they were bottlenecked and couldn’t all attack at once.

[mant2si]

Solo G. Street strategy L2, no blessings. All other fight pretty easy, if you have problems just take at least 1 cipher guy

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/103648-strategies-gorreci-street/

Edited July 22, 2018 by mant2si

[knownastherat]

So reading these replies, basically everyone's advice is to just cheese the fights. I did Gorecci by pulling and separating them as much as I could, and I had to skip the conversation with the gang leader dude because I wanted the violent option, but the moment we stop talking I instantly get killed in under a second lol, and again my MC is pretty decent stat-wise. Decently tanky for a dual-wielder while also doing respectable damage (compared to my companions it's more like almost the only source of damage heh) .

 

With the panthers, boars and the young drake at the dig site I had no other option but to sneak past them. I'm at Neketaka now, level 10, difficulty is again back to the regular cakewalk. Maybe I should reinstall Deadly Deadfire.

 

What you call "cheese" for reasons beyond me is called strategy. Obviously, against overwhelming odds walking in and expecting to just press few buttons to win is, frankly, stupid.  

[Sifjar]

I dont know why that place is so hard. I do it always the same way. Sneak in from north stairs avoiding boar. Then i take my walk near west wall to the south. There ll be 2-3 barrels with gunpowder or smthg. Pull enemies in. When they are near barrels i use that amulet wit h fireball charges so it will hit em and barrels. If you are lucky only wywern will survive. If not, well it's not that hard to finish half dead animals

Edited July 23, 2018 by Sifjar