Probably Unpopular Opinion: The Last 20% of Deadfire is an Unfun Grind that Prioritizes Pedantry and Obsessive Micromanagement

[Guest Ontarah]

TLDR: This is a rant.  If you don't want to read a rant, stop now.

I have loved this game up until I hit level 20.  It has been better than POE1 in almost every sense.  They got rid of virtually every unfun pedantic, micromanaging aspect of combat at the Normal difficulty level.  Deadfire's combat had been consistent with random mook type encounters not being too much trouble and bosses and harder fights requiring active strategy.  Some bosses required rethinking strategy and reloading a few times.  But I never got caught beating my head against a wall in vain because I failed to spec my character out in some highly specific manner or because I neglected to bring the exact right number or Wael's Ass potions or whatever.

Now that I've hit max level and basically have maxed out equipment, I am at a point where every single thing I try to fight has armor and defenses that nullify the vast bulk of whatever damage I do.  And sensible strategies like:  Use Sundering blows to lower armor rating, or use Expose Vulnerabilities to lower deflection, pretty much never work because the spells and abilities just bounce off or only last for a few seconds.  Enemies have insanely high concentrations and can cast various "I am making myself impervious to 80% of damage for 30+ seconds" spells and if you fail to land the 5+ needed interrupt attacks in a row fast enough, you are pretty much screwed.   And even if you do interrupt it *that* time and maybe even the second time, too bad because it's just going to do it again once all your interrupt abilities are gone and now all you have is Xoti trying to hit it with a crossbow. 

Basically, if you don't have the exact right esoteric combination of equipment, spells, potions, party members specced in a certain way, and correct weapons upgraded in the correct way, "screw you."  That's more or less the gist of what I'm getting. 

I know the easy answer to this is: "Well lower the difficulty, doofus" but this is precisely the problem that POE1 had.  Roughly speaking, POE1 had two difficulty modes.  2 versions of "you obviously don't know what you are doing and we are just going to let you push the win button over and over" (Story-time and Easy) and various "micromanage or go home, you disgusting RPG plebeian, because common sense with some trial and error is just not good enough" versions (Normal and up) with the only difference being if micromanagement was needed only sometimes or for every single mook fight down to xaurips and wolves. 

I neither want the win button mode or any mode that requires me to scour the game manual for some finely tuned strategy juggling 30 different exactly placed abilities and attacks every time I fight a quasi-unique enemy at high levels.  I want in short what "Normal" mode is supposed to be.  Roughly, something that is Baldur's Gate level of difficulty.  12 year old me beat Baldur's Gate.  12 year old me could not beat POE1 or Deadfire. 

Given that this game is past all development, this is kicking a dead horse, but I wanted my 5 minutes of howling vainly out into the darkness.

[/rant]            

Addendum:  I am not going to waste time defending this position.  It's just an opinion and as such is like a butthole. 

Edited November 10, 2019 by Ontarah

[Blunderboss]

Meanwhile i dont agree about difficulty of the game, i totally understand the frustration about Armor and underpenetration, introducing this system and leaving it the way it is was epic failure by the developers and they never acknowledge how broken DR and PEN system is, basically there are no ways to penetrate enemy armor reliably late game, i mean even my SC assassin build has issues penetrating out of invisibility and assassins have constant +4 penetration...also it doesnt help that there are very few unique weapons to chose from especially when dual-wielding considering you will need to equip more than one character.

[Boeroer]

I didn't have any issues on Path of the Damned. But I am a pedantic micromamanger and synergy exploiter, so...

Somebody enlighten me: what does 

"It's just an opinion and as such is like a butthole."

translate to?

Edited November 10, 2019 by Boeroer

[Waski]

Everybody has one Boeroer

[Wormerine]

I am curious as to what parts are deemed to be so challenging by OP. At level 20 outside megabosses, he shouldn't encounter much resistance, especialy on normal. If he refers to megabosses - then sure. Those are encounters that only people most interested in challenge should take on - they are purely optional.

DLC certainly raise the difficulty as well, though not to a degree were one would need to specialise. Though considering how undertuned most encounters in the base game were on hard and POTD, I can assume one can sleepwalk through them on normal. DLCs do raise things to the level that one needs to pay attention to what is happening. I remember other people complaining about it as well, as some players never learned to deal with concentration and armor. One specific complaint sounds like it may refer to dragon fight in Beast of Winter - though most of the time I wasn't able to interupt her either, and it was fine. 

The difference between BG and Deadfire was that BG was really easy to cheese. That is how I beat the game in my first attempts when I was a teen. Deadfire still has cheese, though it is far harder to figure it out. 

[thelee]

20 hours ago, Wormerine said:

I am curious as to what parts are deemed to be so challenging by OP. At level 20 outside megabosses, he shouldn't encounter much resistance, especialy on normal. If he refers to megabosses - then sure. Those are encounters that only people most interested in challenge should take on - they are purely optional.

Yeah, I'm curious about this too. There have been complaints in the past about megabosses being too hard, but the standard reply was that "megabosses aren't intended to be something that everyone can beat." At level 20, there really isn't that much content for a party to tackle with much challenge, other than megabosses (and possibly FS Oracle or SSS Porokoa).

DLC does significantly amp up the challenge significantly over base game. Frankly, I'm astonished that Beast of Winter has such a low "target" level in your journal because outside of min-maxed parties or exploitive cheese I think Ner and some of the content (Bridge Ablaze) is insane to tackle at that level (at least on PotD). edit - but still, even FS at level 20 isn't that bad.

Edited November 11, 2019 by thelee

[Boeroer]

Well, I think for somebody who didn't really grasp the mechanics (esp. AR/PEN and its resulting double inverted dmg malus) and doesn't know how to use synergies between buffs, debuffs and such even on normal the high level content can be challenging. Not for us of course, but for the more casual players (and I don't mean that as an insult or something).

Remember how people ranted about the Adra Drgon as being impossible to beat (and wizards and priets being useless, too)?

But then on the other hand: how on Eora did they manage Gorecci Street or the Digsite?

[Wotcha]

The variant saying re: opionions and buttholes is: "Everybody finds it a little uncomfortable when their own are examined too closely."

[thelee]

On 11/9/2019 at 6:27 PM, Ontarah said:

I neither want the win button mode or any mode that requires me to scour the game manual for some finely tuned strategy juggling 30 different exactly placed abilities and attacks every time I fight a quasi-unique enemy at high levels.  I want in short what "Normal" mode is supposed to be.  Roughly, something that is Baldur's Gate level of difficulty.  12 year old me beat Baldur's Gate.  12 year old me could not beat POE1 or Deadfire. 

I'm not trying to pick on OP (everyone has different tolerances for difficulty), but I'm just really surprised by this sentiment. Possibly colored by some nostalgia? Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 I remember being very challenging games at the age I picked them up (teens). And not always in a "fair way." In BG, it would be like "enemy gets a critical hit on someone not wearing a helmet and you get instagibbed" or "you fail a saving throw to avoid a hold person spell/effect." In BG2, it's those fricken mind flayers and liches. There were definitely fights that were both hard and "fair" (Dragons, in fact I remember the whole Windspear red dragon dungeon being an extremely challenging (but fun!) crawl, and the red dragon is so hard you don't even have to fight it), but there were just so much random instantaneous ways to die (edit - eegad, forgot about excessive level drain and mind control from vampires - even if i survive minsc beating on aerie, i still have to re-configure my spellbook after each fight post-restore).

This has been litigated a lot on this forum in the past, so I don't want to re-open it. I'm just puzzled by this particular sentiment. I max out Deadfire difficulty. I do not touch the difficulty slider in BG2, or BG2EE even (I even used to leave it at the 2nd lowest notch, where you couldn't permadie and you always got max health per level).

edit - BG gets a lot easier when you realize that Sleep is the most OP spell that has ever been created in any cRPG.

Edited November 11, 2019 by thelee

[Wotcha]

You can pretty mindlessly plow through almost every fight if you have decent sustained healing, even if you're all the way in -75% pen range.  You can live practically forever against nearly all opponents if you have Ancient Memory, Exalted Endurance, and the Two Fingers of Daylight invocation every time you get the phrases.

Unless the enemy has healing.  In which case, you need to outdamage their heals.

When you combine enemies with self-healing AND Llengrath's Safeguard or similar massive-defense-boost spells, it gets nastier.

Neriscyrlas is the first such serious opponent with that combo, and that right there is what makes BoW such a huge step-function check on difficulty.  You suddenly have to start paying attention to your melee stacking up (and thus all getting hit by Corrosive Siphon for both significant damage and enemy healing), getting decent penetration to up your DPS, and being able to reliably interrupt or cleanse Safeguard off.

Or, y'know, just cast Brand Enemy and chill out around the corner for half an hour until she dies.  But you can't do that for every such nasty fight.  I only do it when I want to recruit Vatnir early (he's easily the best offense-oriented priest in the game).

 

[Wormerine]

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Remember how people ranted about the Adra Drgon as being impossible to beat (and wizards and priets being useless, too)?

That's true. I didn't really understand PoE1 mechanics, until I tackled Adra Dragon and got wiped without mercy. Only then I actualy reviewed my builds/equipment and learned basic stuff, like armor, item buffs not stacking and started to use more then three spells. 

[Guest Ontarah]

On 11/11/2019 at 11:41 AM, thelee said:

I'm not trying to pick on OP (everyone has different tolerances for difficulty), but I'm just really surprised by this sentiment. Possibly colored by some nostalgia? Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 I remember being very challenging games at the age I picked them up (teens). And not always in a "fair way." In BG, it would be like "enemy gets a critical hit on someone not wearing a helmet and you get instagibbed" or "you fail a saving throw to avoid a hold person spell/effect." In BG2, it's those fricken mind flayers and liches. There were definitely fights that were both hard and "fair" (Dragons, in fact I remember the whole Windspear red dragon dungeon being an extremely challenging (but fun!) crawl, and the red dragon is so hard you don't even have to fight it), but there were just so much random instantaneous ways to die (edit - eegad, forgot about excessive level drain and mind control from vampires - even if i survive minsc beating on aerie, i still have to re-configure my spellbook after each fight post-restore).

I'm still not really interested in a big argument on my original post (because as I said it is a ranty opinion and as such is really not worth more than the initial calming of my nerves venting it gave me), but I figured I'd address this point just as a matter of clarity.

It's true that BG (and the Infinity Engine games in general) have a whole lot of what you might call "cheap, old game gotchas."  And these mostly aren't fun and it's good that PoE and most modern games have gotten rid of them.

However, every cheap, old game gotcha that I know of in BG has a relatively easy counter: Helmets solve your critical hit example.  Always, every time.  Protection from Petrification nullifies the basilisk's insta-death spam ray.  Always, every time.  Negative energy protection solves spam level draining from vampire attacks.  Always, every time.  Helmet of charm protection solves succubi/siren unending dominate spam.  Always, every time.

Now, you can argue that such things are bad design and I wouldn't really argue with you.  But they are also imminently solvable with usually a reload, a slight adjustment to spell loadout and a rest, and at worse a trek back to town to buy some specific potions or gear.  

I would also classify beholders, illithids, and dragons  as "hard but fair" and moreover "hard but fun."  Though really liches are pretty straight forward and other than Kangaax I wouldn't really classify them as hard unless you are encountering them at relatively low level.  Have some mage with lots of high level magic protection spells and spells that strip the enemy's protections (Khelban's Warding Whip and such) go in first and soften him up.  Then he's downright squishy.  And at high levels, I could basically bait him into casting Meteor Swam, wait for that to clear out, and then just run in guns blazing and not have much issue. 

However, at no point in BG did I ever feel like the only way to beat something was to either come up with some esoteric solution using just the right spell combination, or to happen to have the magical win class build for that particular fight, or to juggle a long, mostly vain process of trying to deal with an enemy's concentration, armor penetration, umpteen types of deflection, and various insta-win spells all at the same time.

Illithids might suck, but they are also squishy as ****.  Dragons might be brutes who cast Protection from Magical Weapons, but you can always hold them with summons and wait it out and they only ever cast it once.         

[Guest Ontarah]

I will add that at the moment that I wrote this, I had just had an unusual strain of bad luck.  The events proceeding it went something like:

1. Try a couple of times to fight the jumped up god imp (can't remember his name) and deciding to come back later with better gear as I was already maxed out levelwise.

2. Find a megaboss and try to fight it.  Realize what it was and go "**** this" and go off to find something else to do.

3. Start the Beast of Winter encounter with the dracolich.  Get it down to bloodied status twice only to run out of things that Interrupt and it getting off Llengrath's Safeguard.  Deciding to also **** off and come back with better equipment and a different party line up.

4. Go off to Forgotten Sanctum and proceed in such a way that pretty much the first thing I fight is that bull**** suit of animated armor that keeps summoning 4 animated swords that always materialize in the middle of your party.

It was at that point where I wrote this post.  Having swapped some people around so I could get the Arcana check to insta-win against the stupid armor and proceeded deeper into the Sanctum without constant agony, it does appear I got an unusual string of bull****ty fights right in a row.    

[Wormerine]

19 minutes ago, Ontarah said:

I will add that at the moment that I wrote this, I had just had an unusual strain of bad luck.  The events proceeding it went something like:

1. Try a couple of times to fight the jumped up god imp (can't remember his name) and deciding to come back later with better gear as I was already maxed out levelwise.

2. Find a megaboss and try to fight it.  Realize what it was and go "**** this" and go off to find something else to do.

3. Start the Beast of Winter encounter with the dracolich.  Get it down to bloodied status twice only to run out of things that Interrupt and it getting off Llengrath's Safeguard.  Deciding to also **** off and come back with better equipment and a different party line up.

4. Go off to Forgotten Sanctum and proceed in such a way that pretty much the first thing I fight is that bull**** suit of animated armor that keeps summoning 4 animated swords that always materialize in the middle of your party.

It was at that point where I wrote this post.  Having swapped some people around so I could get the Arcana check to insta-win against the stupid armor and proceeded deeper into the Sanctum without constant agony, it does appear I got an unusual string of bull****ty fights right in a row.    

So from all those, the only ones which require pendantic preperation are megabosses - as stated before, those are purely optional encounters designed for those who want to carefully prepare for those encounters and test their systems mastery.

Nemnok nor DLC don't fall into this category. However, Nemnok is one of the few end game content encounters from the base game, and DLCs did raise the difficulty. However much of the base game suffers content being too easy to outlevel, meaning one might power through most of it. I am afraid that you simply hit level cap, and you got to the content with difficulty matched to that content (however, Beast of Winter, even upscaled you still should be at advantage,).

None of those require super specialised equipement or builds on Veteran or PotD. However, if you are used to ignoring core mechanics (like interupt or pen, buffs, debuffs), it's time to start paying attention again. Decent healing will be required, as fights in DLCs tend last longer.

[wingedchocolatecake]

I agree that the DLC's can get a little unfair on PoTD — what with their bloated armor rating, 'boss' fights sometimes boil down to your party swinging at an enemy, hoping to graze it to death — but I don't see how Normal poses such an enormous challenge. Unless you hit select all and click on an enemy without abilities/buffs/spells, Normal should be perfectly doable. For Forgotten Sanctum, I'd recommend killing the summoner of the weapons, as they'll all disappear as soon as the caster dies. 

[Wormerine]

On 11/20/2019 at 11:58 AM, wingedchocolatecake said:

I agree that the DLC's can get a little unfair on PoTD

Well, it is called Path of the Damned. It was slightly too much for my personal enjoyment, but I see it as indication that it was finally tuned right - I would consider myself a Veteran player, and I found DLCs on Vet to be just right. 

As to HP bloats, I am afraid it comes with new per-encounter system: you want to make players in late game think about what they cast? Well, you have to send them against waves of enemies, or give enemies enough HP to let them burn through their spell casts. But then there is also Ancestor’s Memory/Salvation of Time to break it anyway.

Edited November 23, 2019 by Wormerine

[UltimaLuminaire]

I don't recall needing too many interrupts against Neriscyrlas. I've completed the DLC 3 times, 2 of them being a solo run, and that fight is usually a staggered DPS check based on what phase the fight is in. I do abuse mobility, so I will regroup to a tower to wait out Safeguard if it manages to get off, but that usually doesn't happen between the handful of interrupt powers I happen to have, spells (I think I even used grease at the time, but that's because I swear by that spell in every D&D game I play, digital or real life), and Barbarian Interrupting Blows 50% interrupt chance. My solo mageslayer attempt was weird, though. I don't recall the disruption stacks ever working on Corrosive Siphon. I think it can't work because it doesn't count as a spell. Ah well. At the very least I recall forcing it to miss by blinding Neriscyrlas through explosives and that dropped the healing to 0.

I do remember needing to use Empower to recover half my class resources on all my front liners and wizard, though. Whether that counts as micromanagement, I don't know. I primarily beat Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 at a very young age by figuring out how to micromanage. Back then I didn't have access to guides (hell, my dial up sucked and my computer could barely run the games), so I didn't know all the cheese. I just had to pause constantly and think.

Edited November 23, 2019 by UltimaLuminaire

[Boeroer]

Indeed. Spell Disruption doesn't work against beasts' abilities. Even if such an ability has the same name as the Wizard spell: it's just a hard copy of said spell. It  gets added to the dragon's portfolio but doesn't get tagged as spell. Stuff like Frighten/Terrified as well as Last Word etc. however do work (if target's not immune in the first place I mean).

Edited November 23, 2019 by Boeroer

[thelee]

On 11/23/2019 at 4:09 AM, UltimaLuminaire said:

I don't recall needing too many interrupts against Neriscyrlas. I've completed the DLC 3 times, 2 of them being a solo run, and that fight is usually a staggered DPS check based on what phase the fight is in. I do abuse mobility, so I will regroup to a tower to wait out Safeguard if it manages to get off, but that usually doesn't happen between the handful of interrupt powers I happen to have, spells (I think I even used grease at the time, but that's because I swear by that spell in every D&D game I play, digital or real life), and Barbarian Interrupting Blows 50% interrupt chance. My solo mageslayer attempt was weird, though. I don't recall the disruption stacks ever working on Corrosive Siphon. I think it can't work because it doesn't count as a spell. Ah well. At the very least I recall forcing it to miss by blinding Neriscyrlas through explosives and that dropped the healing to 0.

the big thing about ner is that there's only one real important ability to interrupt, which is llengrath's safeguard. if you can interrupt that, you really don't need much else in terms of interrupt - you can find other ways to deal with other abilities and ner is likely dead soonish. But especially on PotD accidentally letting a single llengrath's safeguard through can cause the fight to spiral out of control, because then it takes so long to deal with Ner that their cooldown on using llengrath's will expire and they'll use it again (and it'll be harder to interrupt this time because they'll likely still have an active llengrath's safeguard buff up); not to mention that the highly enhanced defenses while safeguard buff is up makes all ner's regeneration effects that much more potent (and more important to interrupt).

 

basically, you either need a few precisely aimed interrupts to get through the first set of concentration and llengrath's casting, or you need an exponentially increasing number of them. because so few other fights actually involve llengrath's safeguard, i could see for many players this coming out of nowhere and being an interrupt-fest/graze-grind.

[wingedchocolatecake]

On 11/23/2019 at 3:08 AM, Wormerine said:

Well, it is called Path of the Damned. It was slightly too much for my personal enjoyment, but I see it as indication that it was finally tuned right - I would consider myself a Veteran player, and I found DLCs on Vet to be just right. 

As to HP bloats, I am afraid it comes with new per-encounter system: you want to make players in late game think about what they cast? Well, you have to send them against waves of enemies, or give enemies enough HP to let them burn through their spell casts. But then there is also Ancestor’s Memory/Salvation of Time to break it anyway.

That's kinda my problem with the difficulty. Even on veteran (which is just supposed to be hard, not damning), there are certain abilities that you simply must have. On PoTD, I can almost justify everything, since it is path of the damned, but regular hard? 

[Wormerine]

8 hours ago, wingedchocolatecake said:

That's kinda my problem with the difficulty. Even on veteran (which is just supposed to be hard, not damning), there are certain abilities that you simply must have. On PoTD, I can almost justify everything, since it is path of the damned, but regular hard? 

Do you though? Perhaps, we disagree on what those difficulty settings means to us, personally. Here are my expectations:

• STORY MODE - I don't want to learn combat, I want to maw my way through encounters with little to no coherent imput from me
• EASY - I want to engage with combat, but don't want to be punished too hard for my mistake. Make me feel when I am playing wrong, but don't stop my progress
• NORMAL - I will have to learn how to play the game to succeed. There will be encounters which will be a challenge, and I will have to learn how the game works to proceed. Building a well optimised party is encourage but not required.
• VETERAN - I am experience player in this genre and in this series. I know the mechanics. I build competent parties, and characters with decend synergy. I know how to customise my equipment. In this setting a well build party will be put to the challenge.
• PATH OF THE DAMNED - I know very well how this game works. I beat and analysed the systems, I know how to exploit systems and like doing it. I know enemies I will be facing. I want to build the most OP builds I can think of, and I want those builds to be challenged.

EDIT: None of those, of course, assume playing solo, or controlling only one character. As this is a party based game, I assume them to be tuned with a party of 5 in mind, with levels NORMAL-PotD assuming I do pay attention to what my characters are doing - either by micromanaging it, or setting up detailed AI systems. 

Edited November 25, 2019 by Wormerine

[thelee]

10 hours ago, wingedchocolatecake said:

That's kinda my problem with the difficulty. Even on veteran (which is just supposed to be hard, not damning),

difficulty is extremely subjective. my sense is that veteran is supposed to target BG2-level difficulty, which means being punished for your mistakes or for not being aware of certain mechanics (much like how i would get screwed by not understanding how mind flayers or vampiric level drain worked). i think it maps pretty well onto that, actually.

normal is where you get more allowance for mistakes or unfamiliarity with the mechanics.

(PotD I put on the level of IWD or IWD2 with heart of fury mode on--basically you have to know everything in and out and be ready to min-max)

Edited November 25, 2019 by thelee

[Wotcha]

A REAL Path of the Damned would change the scripting of the initial conversation with Berath, to make her always reincarnate you as a small animal regardless of your dialogue choices.

To actually progress in the game, you'd have to figure out how to hack around that scripting to get back into your body.

Kids these days, getting coddled by their easy-mode "hard modes", I tell you.

[wingedchocolatecake]

2 hours ago, thelee said:

difficulty is extremely subjective. my sense is that veteran is supposed to target BG2-level difficulty, which means being punished for your mistakes or for not being aware of certain mechanics (much like how i would get screwed by not understanding how mind flayers or vampiric level drain worked). i think it maps pretty well onto that, actually.

normal is where you get more allowance for mistakes or unfamiliarity with the mechanics.

(PotD I put on the level of IWD or IWD2 with heart of fury mode on--basically you have to know everything in and out and be ready to min-max)

I agree that difficulty is subjective, my interpretation differs slightly from yours on a couple notes. Veteran (in my opinion) should be playable for someone who has experience with these types of games. Only PoTD is supposed to test your 'in-depth' knowledge of the game. By that I mean knowing the ins-and-outs of the story, the mechanics, etc. My point above was that even on veteran, some bosses can simply be incredibly beefy, often requiring more 'meta-knowledge' than I believe should be necessary on Veteran. But again, this is only my opinion.

[wingedchocolatecake]

4 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Do you though? Perhaps, we disagree on what those difficulty settings means to us, personally. Here are my expectations:

• STORY MODE - I don't want to learn combat, I want to maw my way through encounters with little to no coherent imput from me
• EASY - I want to engage with combat, but don't want to be punished too hard for my mistake. Make me feel when I am playing wrong, but don't stop my progress
• NORMAL - I will have to learn how to play the game to succeed. There will be encounters which will be a challenge, and I will have to learn how the game works to proceed. Building a well optimised party is encourage but not required.
• VETERAN - I am experience player in this genre and in this series. I know the mechanics. I build competent parties, and characters with decend synergy. I know how to customise my equipment. In this setting a well build party will be put to the challenge.
• PATH OF THE DAMNED - I know very well how this game works. I beat and analysed the systems, I know how to exploit systems and like doing it. I know enemies I will be facing. I want to build the most OP builds I can think of, and I want those builds to be challenged.

EDIT: None of those, of course, assume playing solo, or controlling only one character. As this is a party based game, I assume them to be tuned with a party of 5 in mind, with levels NORMAL-PotD assuming I do pay attention to what my characters are doing - either by micromanaging it, or setting up detailed AI systems. 

My interpretation of the difficulty is this:

• STORY MODE: I either don't want to really interact with combat, I play the game for the story alone 
• EASY/RELAXED: I play the game to have a fun, easy time and enjoy what it has to offer without stressing about combat. This is the 'test-the-waters' difficulty 
• NORMAL: I want to play the game so that there is a suitable challenge that I have to learn to overcome. I like both combat and actively pay attention during it
• VETERAN/HARD: I know/have experience and want a challenge. I read all the weapon and item descriptions and pick them according to my party. I'm flexible and can take on enemies with a variety of different tactics and party members
• PATH OF THE DAMNED: The name says to all. You want a challenge. Now you have one. I understand the game design and mechanics and know exactly how to build my party.

My problem with PoTD is that it is borderline unfair in some occasions. Some fights feel like punching a brick wall as a non-monk. Take a game like Dark Souls (a stretch, I know). Notoriously difficult as it is, it is never unfair. All fights are balanced and are completely doable. Sure, you may need certain items to succeed, but you can succeed. Whereas Deadfire sometimes feels unfair. Most of the time, this unfairness stems from how HP-bloated and how high their armour rating is regarding bosses. Even on PoTD, facing the Oracle of Wael and hurling an empowered Minoletta's Missle Salvo directly at it should do more than shave off a fraction of its health bar. 

Certain elements mentioned above are applicable to Veteran, and that's mostly where my problem lies. SSS was not at all an enjoyable experience on either Veteran or PoTD.

Again, this is just my opinion and thanks for taking the time to write such a long answer.

Edited November 25, 2019 by wingedchocolatecake
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