BS skeleton fight

[Boeroer]

Ha - "Unfair" is a smart choice for a difficulty option.

 

"Path of the Noncomplainer" would also work I guess...

[xzar_monty]

I agree, it's delightful. It's so upfront. "Look, you're not going to survive, but if you insist, just go ahead and try." It's really good.

 

(I'm playing P:K on core rules, which is plenty difficult, thank you very much.)

[Verde]

 

Can't you just choose the escort option to avoid the fight?

You can avoid a lot of fights if you want to.

 

Anyway, the Principi ambush is pretty ridiculous. You start surrounded by eight enemies. You can eliminate one of the mages by blowing a powder keg but the rest will focus your backline to oblivion. Immediately running to the edge of the map and turtling there is your best bet but pistol shots will still hurt not to mention Finishing Blow spam from the rogues.

I mean it's a simple dialogue choice. It's not like much effort is required. If you want to fight it out and not utilize other options, that's on you. Edited February 12, 2019 by Verde

[InsaneCommander]

Can't you just choose the escort option to avoid the fight?

You can avoid a lot of fights if you want to.

 

Anyway, the Principi ambush is pretty ridiculous. You start surrounded by eight enemies. You can eliminate one of the mages by blowing a powder keg but the rest will focus your backline to oblivion. Immediately running to the edge of the map and turtling there is your best bet but pistol shots will still hurt not to mention Finishing Blow spam from the rogues.

 

Anyone who plays the first run on PotD and thinks it's difficult should restart on Veteran. And if it is not the first run, as Wormerine said above, PotD is "for people who played through Deadfire and know what's coming".

 

Ha - "Unfair" is a smart choice for a difficulty option.

 

"Path of the Noncomplainer" would also work I guess...

 

Maybe they should pop up a window forcing you to check a box: "I know this is unfair and there is no guarantee I'll be able to play this"

[prodigydancer]

But it's called "Path of the Damned". What do people expect?

Your post is choke full of the "gitgood" elitism that is ruining modern gaming. It was also called Path of the Damned in PoE1 where it was much better balanced. Is single-player gaming supposed to be some kind of elimination contest these days with each new installment being progressively harder until video games are unplayable for everyone but the select few?

 

---

 

Now for reasonable people: the main issue with PotD in Deadfire is that too many mid-game enemies have 10 or 11 armor when in fact they all should have around 9. Again, I'm talking about regular trash fights, not about bosses. What's funny is that endgame trash rarely has more than 11 armor too and gets completely obliterated. (And before anyone mentions it, no, Grave Calling shouldn't be the "I win" item. Encouraging people to beeline to Crookspur for completely metagaming reasons because other weapons are more or less useless in certain fights is bad design.)

[Verde]

-> Game is too hard

-> Game has difficulty settings

 

 

Hmmm.

[Jayd]

Just wanted to say that I went into the game blind on POTD and have had a grand time. Considered restarting on Vet when I first walked into Gorecci St and the digsite, but after pushing through those I haven't had that tough a time - though it's been a good challenge quite often. My party isn't min-maxed and I've neglected consumables.

 

This is the way I reasoned it: people beat this thing solo. If I can't get through it with a full party I'm just not doing it right.

[MountainTiger]

 

But it's called "Path of the Damned". What do people expect?

Your post is choke full of the "gitgood" elitism that is ruining modern gaming. It was also called Path of the Damned in PoE1 where it was much better balanced. Is single-player gaming supposed to be some kind of elimination contest these days with each new installment being progressively harder until video games are unplayable for everyone but the select few?

 

---

 

Now for reasonable people: the main issue with PotD in Deadfire is that too many mid-game enemies have 10 or 11 armor when in fact they all should have around 9. Again, I'm talking about regular trash fights, not about bosses. What's funny is that endgame trash rarely has more than 11 armor too and gets completely obliterated. (And before anyone mentions it, no, Grave Calling shouldn't be the "I win" item. Encouraging people to beeline to Crookspur for completely metagaming reasons because other weapons are more or less useless in certain fights is bad design.)

 

 

I remember POE POTD as harder than Deadfire. Nothing on the early critical path in Deadfire compares to the Caed Nua Throneroom IMO, and in later fights the combination of unlimited healing and resource regeneration means that falling back on attrition is basically always an option, while the dragons and such in POE called for a more aggressive approach that entailed more risk. Deadfire's systems seem to make safe, grindy parties more viable, and the encounter design seems less willing to throw stuff like teleporting enemies that can stunlock squishies at the player.

[thelee]

 

But it's called "Path of the Damned". What do people expect?

Your post is choke full of the "gitgood" elitism that is ruining modern gaming. It was also called Path of the Damned in PoE1 where it was much better balanced. Is single-player gaming supposed to be some kind of elimination contest these days with each new installment being progressively harder until video games are unplayable for everyone but the select few?

 

Ehhh, like MountainTiger said, I would actually consider PotD on PoE1 incredibly brutal early on, moreso than Deadfire. The Eothas dungeon or the throne room in Raedric (god help you if you don't take a stealthy way in) or even Caed Nua getting to Maerwald are all things that can very quickly obliterate a suboptimal party or under-skilled player (hell, even the cave bears can wreck a suboptimal or underskilled player). And unlike Deadfire you really have no choice to get around most of these - that's pretty much all you can do in Act I, whereas in Deadfire you can skip some of the harder fights (Gorecci St, the risen skeletons at the dig site) and once you get your boat fixed you have the flexibility to do all sorts of things to build up your levels. Eventually I got gud enough to do Act 1 in PoE1 pretty easily with a five (instead of six) person party that is not completely optimized, but it took a while to get there.

 

Now for reasonable people: the main issue with PotD in Deadfire is that too many mid-game enemies have 10 or 11 armor when in fact they all should have around 9. Again, I'm talking about regular trash fights, not about bosses. What's funny is that endgame trash rarely has more than 11 armor too and gets completely obliterated. (And before anyone mentions it, no, Grave Calling shouldn't be the "I win" item. Encouraging people to beeline to Crookspur for completely metagaming reasons because other weapons are more or less useless in certain fights is bad design.)

maybe actually try working with the PEN and AR system...? Also over hundreds of hours in and I've never needed to metagame to get to Grave Calling, early PotD is eminently doable without it.

 

edit: also, there are other difficulty levels than PotD. Expecting everyone to be able to do PotD is a) not the balancing goal of PotD and b) ...entitled? It would be less entitled if people were more willing to admit "maybe I'm not good enough to beat PotD." I mean... what's wrong with admitting that? I will never beat the hardest AI in SC2 much less stand much of a chance on ladder, I'm not going to be great at Overwatch, and I'm really never going to be able to invest the time to do the hardest few difficulties of any of the modern Civs (if I even had the potential to do e.g. Deity)

Edited February 12, 2019 by thelee

[Amentep]

Is single-player gaming supposed to be some kind of elimination contest these days with each new installment being progressively harder until video games are unplayable for everyone but the select few?

In a single player game with difficulty sliders, why would anyone care about any game difficulty that they didn't personally find fun to use? Unless the player finds them all equally unfun in which the problem isn't really with the difficulty so much as it is with the game.

[prodigydancer]

I remember POE POTD as harder than Deadfire.

I'd like you to meet my friend Scroll of Paralysis. Truth to be told, I very rarely resorted to SoP in PoE - once or twice per playthrough maybe. It's just an example. My point is: you were given adequate tools in PoE.

 

In Deadfire most of your tools are heavily nerfed. It doesn't matter that much in endgame because you have more HP which gives your more time to apply buffs and debuffs and heal if necessary.

 

In mid-game a character can easily go down after eating two 70+ crits in a row and there are enemies capable of inflicting such crits with relatively fast ranged weapons (and they have increased range that allows them to attack you from beyond your sight radius). People saying that luck isn't a factor are in total denial mode. Should I go further and mention that enemy casters don't need LoS to apply Arcane Dampener but you need LoS to interrupt them?

 

Stiil, none of the above would be such a huge issue if you weren't asked to beat AR11 enemies while having mostly 9 penetration weapons at your disposal.

Edited February 12, 2019 by prodigydancer

[Boeroer]

 

But it's called "Path of the Damned". What do people expect?

Your post is choke full of the "gitgood" elitism that is ruining modern gaming. It was also called Path of the Damned in PoE1 where it was much better balanced. Is single-player gaming supposed to be some kind of elimination contest these days with each new installment being progressively harder until video games are unplayable for everyone but the select few?

 

---

 

Now for reasonable people: the main issue with PotD in Deadfire is that too many mid-game enemies have 10 or 11 armor when in fact they all should have around 9. Again, I'm talking about regular trash fights, not about bosses. What's funny is that endgame trash rarely has more than 11 armor too and gets completely obliterated. (And before anyone mentions it, no, Grave Calling shouldn't be the "I win" item. Encouraging people to beeline to Crookspur for completely metagaming reasons because other weapons are more or less useless in certain fights is bad design.)

So... you want to be able to play PotD (that's the highest difficulty there is) - but you don't think you have to be good (however beeing good is achieved). Very reasonable indeed...

 

That's like saying: "Hey! I want to play in the NBA - I know it's the toughest league and usually you have to be really good to make it. But here's the thing: I'm not good at basketball but I want to be part of this and this elitism is crap so please will you stop blocking my shots already goddammit?!?".

 

To cite Josh Sawyer (again)

Deadfire has five difficulty levels. At launch, Veteran and Path of the Damned were undertuned, so we progressively increased the difficulty by tuning encounters, first in the early game, then on the remainder of the critical path, and finally in the other prominent areas off of the critical path. Nick and Ryan have been attentive to player concerns throughout the process.

 

At this point, if someone is having trouble on a higher-than-Story difficulty level and refuses to turn the difficulty down, the problem can be found in the nearest mirror.

 

[MountainTiger]

If your problem is being -2 on pen, there are a litany of tools to get to even. Off the top of my head:

• +2 pen weapon modals
• Expose Vulnerabilities
• Hel-Hyraf invocation: -2 AR with effectively infinite duration once you get the PL 3 upgrade! This is probably my favorite option here, especially since a lot of high AR enemies seem to have low deflection.
• +pen martial abilities: Rogues in particular have lots of these, for 1 Guile you can get a +2 Pen full attack at PL 1
• Tier 2/3 Might inspirations: Berserkers get one at PL1, single class monks get them by midgame
• Crits: too many options in terms of boosting accuracy, debuffing defenses, and getting hit->crit conversion to list here
• Swapping damage types: most enemies have significant variation in slash/crush/pierce AR
• Hot Razor Skewers: expensive but entirely within reach as soon as you reach Neketaka
• Combining -1 AR/+1 pen buffs and debuffs: in particular, Flanked is one of the easiest debuffs to apply and gets you -1 AR (plus -10 Deflection, so more crits); lots of things will get you the last point

This is just stuff that came to mind while messing around at work and not looking at any references, I'm sure I've missed quite a bit. The penetration system is definitely important on POTD-a lot of people have noted that it is one of the strongest influences on what weapons, classes, and abilities are most useful at that difficulty. But it's a pretty simple system with a lot of options if you actually use them.

[InsaneCommander]

The highest level of difficulty should be... well, difficult. It is there for those who want a challenge, after all.

 

If PotD is too difficult and Veteran too easy, then I suggest using mods to balance things. For example, the Multiclass Level Cap Unlocked will allow you to

progress two classes as if you were a single class. That would be a huge difference in PotD.

[thelee]

 

I remember POE POTD as harder than Deadfire.

I'd like you to meet my friend Scroll of Paralysis. 

 

 

I mean, that exists in Deadfire too and is still pretty good and easier to get (craft). I'd like you to meet my friend Scroll of Gaze of the Adragan?

 

For your complaint specifically: I'd like you meet my friend "using the weapon modals that grant +2 PEN because that's the entire point of many slow weapons" ? I'd like you to meet my friend Scroll of Expose Vulnerabilities? edit: whoops, got ninja'ed by MountainTiger

Edited February 13, 2019 by thelee

[thelee]

• Hel-Hyraf invocation: -2 AR with effectively infinite duration once you get the PL 3 upgrade! This is probably my favorite option here, especially since a lot of high AR enemies seem to have low deflection.

 

parenthetically, the difference between just the base invocation and the upgrade is one of the hugest such differences in the game in my opinion. By itself it's an alright ability, with the upgrade, I would put it as one of the best abilities in the game. Effectively infinite, blanket -2 AR is just so universally good.

Edited February 12, 2019 by thelee

[gunman78]

What I don't like about PoE2 PotD is the battles feel like a chore. Especially in turn based mode, due to inflated numbers, I think some battles would take forever on PotD, therefor Veteran level seems more adequate.

 

I didn't finish yet PoE2, but having finished PoE1 triple crown and Pathfinder, I can say the PoE2 PotD feels the least agreeable. Yes, there are several difficulties to chose from, but the Veteran mode is still too easy (feels easier than Pathfinder normal difficulty), and the PotD is too unpleasant, so the sweet spot would have been somewhere between the two.

[thelee]

 

 

What I don't like about PoE2 PotD is the battles feel like a chore. Especially in turn based mode, due to inflated numbers

 

one of the TB screenshots is a party fighting Dorudugan. Given how much of a grind that fight is in RtWP, I can only imagine what that fight is like in TB mode. JE Sawyer mentioned some encounter rebalancing (I think he explicitly cited some SSS encounters that were specifically designed to be grindy in RtWP), but I guess they didn't do a lot?

[InsaneCommander]

one of the TB screenshots is a party fighting Dorudugan. Given how much of a grind that fight is in RtWP, I can only imagine what that fight is like in TB mode.

 

This is enough to make Deadfire's "the Ultimate" achievement almost impossible. Eothas time restriction + killing all mega bosses is gonna be hard.

 

But who knows, right? Maybe Noober can do it in level 1.

[merkmerk73]

Re: some of these comments about POTD

 

POTD is supposed to be hard and challenging. Not borderline impossible without metagaming strategies such as

* using dialogue/stealth as your only option (bathhouse street fight, grocery street)

* using the tavern to make a full party on Port Maje

* skipping the drake and all the other engwith pit stuff to sneak into the dungeon and finish the quest there so they're all gone when you exit

 

Or, at least, the game should be consistently that stupid across the board - it isn't.

 

POE1 had some fights like the bear cave or Raedrics hold you needed to skip and come back to later. There was a couple tricky bottlenecks like clearing Caed Nua for the first time but you could have 5 party members (PC, Eder, Aloth, Kana, Durance) by then

 

The vast majority of POTD in Deadfire is very well tuned - highly challenging but not dumb. Most of Port Maje is dumb if you're playing a regular PC that isn't some min/maxed stupid multiclass combo and using story companions only. Grocery street is flat out impossible for many PC classes unless you skip it or use stealth and the sneaky-sneaky 'leave map enter map from outside town' strategy, and the digsite animals can be outright impossible for some classes too.

 

If you decide to do a POTD trial of iron run, especially with level scaling on (which makes some of the mobs even harder even if it's supposed to scale both down and up), you simply have to be aware that there are a handful of badly tuned mobs and fights with regards to the quest level description. The rest of the game is great and very challenging.

 

My ideal POTD would just fix some of the stupidity of grocery street/digsite, some of the yseyr temple skeletons (including yseyr himself who is impossible if you try to fight him at the appropriate level w/ scaling on - 3 red skull boss + 4 or 5 red skull adds), the bathhouse streetfight, and I think that's it

 

You should be able to get thru those areas with any roleplay you choose - including any class as PC, using only story companions. As I said before 95% of the game falls in line with this, there's just a few broken areas where the mobs are way overtuned for their quest lvl.

Edited February 13, 2019 by merkmerk73

[thelee]

Grocery street is flat out impossible for many PC classes

false

 

using the tavern to make a full party on Port Maje

 

PotD rebalancing was tuned for people who like to powergame. The most trivial part of powergaming is to have a full party of five. A casual PotD-er could get away with just one hireling, but otherwise I would assume from beginning to end that you are expected to have a full party, unless it's physically impossible (i.e. Vilario's Rest where at most you just have Eder).

 

In my mind, people who are stubborn about not using hirelings for Gorecci St or the Engwithan Digsite are making the game harder for themselves, intentionally or not. Those encounters aren't balanced for a party of three (though they are imo easily doable with three via pulling and splitting), they are balanced for a party of five. With a party of five, Gorecci St or Engwithan Digsite are challenging, but not really that much more challenging (if at all) than any other PotD encounter.

Edited February 13, 2019 by thelee

[Jayd]

Re: some of these comments about POTD

 

POTD is supposed to be hard and challenging. Not borderline impossible without metagaming strategies such as

* using dialogue/stealth as your only option (bathhouse street fight, grocery street)

* using the tavern to make a full party on Port Maje

* skipping the drake and all the other engwith pit stuff to sneak into the dungeon and finish the quest there so they're all gone when you exit

 

Or, at least, the game should be consistently that stupid across the board - it isn't.

 

POE1 had some fights like the bear cave or Raedrics hold you needed to skip and come back to later. There was a couple tricky bottlenecks like clearing Caed Nua for the first time but you could have 5 party members (PC, Eder, Aloth, Kana, Durance) by then

 

The vast majority of POTD in Deadfire is very well tuned - highly challenging but not dumb. Most of Port Maje is dumb if you're playing a regular PC that isn't some min/maxed stupid multiclass combo and using story companions only. Grocery street is flat out impossible for many PC classes unless you skip it or use stealth and the sneaky-sneaky 'leave map enter map from outside town' strategy, and the digsite animals can be outright impossible for some classes too.

 

If you decide to do a POTD trial of iron run, especially with level scaling on (which makes some of the mobs even harder even if it's supposed to scale both down and up), you simply have to be aware that there are a handful of badly tuned mobs and fights with regards to the quest level description. The rest of the game is great and very challenging.

 

My ideal POTD would just fix some of the stupidity of grocery street/digsite, some of the yseyr temple skeletons (including yseyr himself who is impossible if you try to fight him at the appropriate level w/ scaling on - 3 red skull boss + 4 or 5 red skull adds), the bathhouse streetfight, and I think that's it

 

You should be able to get thru those areas with any roleplay you choose - including any class as PC, using only story companions. As I said before 95% of the game falls in line with this, there's just a few broken areas where the mobs are way overtuned for their quest lvl.

Nothing about the watershaper's temple? When I went there at the recommended level the Naga Marauders were 4+ levels higher than my team, and three bog slimes constantly stunlocked my team and cast plague of insects over and over. That was an absurd difficulty spike to me - way out of line with the other quests I was doing. I had to go back after leveling up significantly.

[xzar_monty]

 

Grocery street is flat out impossible for many PC classes

false

 

using the tavern to make a full party on Port Maje

In my mind, people who are stubborn about not using hirelings for Gorecci St or the Engwithan Digsite are making the game harder for themselves, intentionally or not. Those encounters aren't balanced for a party of three (though they are doable with three via pulling and splitting), they are balanced for a party of five. With a party of five, Gorecci St or Engwithan Digsite are challenging, but not really that much more challenging (if at all) than any other PotD encounter.

 

As you seem to be rather good at the game, I'd like to hear your opinion on whether pulling and splitting tends to be rather hard in Deadfire. In my view, the answer is yes. Fights tend to result in mob combats. Sometimes the architecture allows for other possibilities, but often not. Would appreciate your thoughts on this.

[Boeroer]

I'm playing on PotD. I even started Deadfire on PotD with zero meta knowledge (just because I knew PoE so well).
 

POTD is supposed to be hard and challenging. Not borderline impossible without metagaming strategies such as
* using dialogue/stealth as your only option (bathhouse street fight, grocery street)
* using the tavern to make a full party on Port Maje
* skipping the drake and all the other engwith pit stuff to sneak into the dungeon and finish the quest there so they're all gone when you exit

• I didn't/don't have to do that (neither with Gorecci Street nor with Talfor - but often I sneak through Gorecci Street because that's less of a hassle)
• I didn't/don't usually do that - Edér and Xoti are sufficient
• I didn't/don't do that unless I want some hirelings in the party anyway - but I skip the skeleton warriors from time to time because they can be really annoying and don't give you anything special.

So it's def. not impossible. It is challenging - and that's nice. But I don't have to splitpull or to kite to do it.
 

You should be able to get thru those areas with any roleplay you choose.

I do not agree. This is not supposed to be a bowl of cherries. It's totally ok if you meet foes that are too strong for you. Especially if you are playing on PotD, but also below. As long as one can solve a situation without a fight there's no real problem. One mustn't be hell-bent on getting one's way no matter what.

I also think that it's totally acceptable if you would need meta knowledge to win every fight on PotD. For example it's already meta knowledge if you prefer weapons with higer PEN because you know that PotD raises AR through the board (which I personally don't like about PotD, but that's another topic).

Edited February 13, 2019 by Boeroer

[thelee]

 

 

Grocery street is flat out impossible for many PC classes

false

 

using the tavern to make a full party on Port Maje

In my mind, people who are stubborn about not using hirelings for Gorecci St or the Engwithan Digsite are making the game harder for themselves, intentionally or not. Those encounters aren't balanced for a party of three (though they are doable with three via pulling and splitting), they are balanced for a party of five. With a party of five, Gorecci St or Engwithan Digsite are challenging, but not really that much more challenging (if at all) than any other PotD encounter.

 

As you seem to be rather good at the game, I'd like to hear your opinion on whether pulling and splitting tends to be rather hard in Deadfire. In my view, the answer is yes. Fights tend to result in mob combats. Sometimes the architecture allows for other possibilities, but often not. Would appreciate your thoughts on this.

 

 

yeah, AI in Deadfire is a little smarter than in PoE1 so in my experience pulling and splitting is a little harder, or at least a little less obvious. Noisy things that don't leave persistent effects (sparkcrackers mostly) can let you pull off a few enemies and you can use more to keep pulling them forward until they are far enough away that putting them in combat won't automatically pull everyone else in the encounter. Gorecci St and Engwithan Digsite are easier in this respect because the encounters already start off with enemies separated by some physical distance so you don't need to pull them too far to break their "connection" (so even setting a trap to pull them a few feet will work).

 

Outside of taking advantage of loud effects, it is definitely still doable if you have stride speed bonuses and just run for a while, while picking on the enemy you want to keep pulling. Example: I cleared a lot of BoW encounters in an earlier run by having stride bonus paladin aura active and using ydwin to arterial strike an enemy I wanted to keep pulling. At least back when I tried this, it created a weird interaction where the un-hobbled enemies would pass by the hobbled enemy, but then I would run too far away too quickly, so they would hit their "pull" limit and run back, but the hobbled enemy hadn't yet reached their pull distance limit, so they would keep running (hobbling) towards me. If I needed to hit them again to keep them coming, some of the un-hobbled enemies would pull again, but I'd just repeat. Eventually, the hobbled enemy (if they weren't already dead yet from all the raw damage they were taking) would reach their pull distance limit, but then if you just have a party member close enough they'll keep running (like in PoE1). At that point they are too far away from their friends that you can take them out without pulling anyone else. I mostly did this out of laziness because arterial strike works like gangbusters in this kind of situation.