What is the difference between difficulty levels?

[Madscientist]

In PoE1 enemies always had the same stats and the number and kind of enemies changed with difficulty. Only PotD had increased stats for enemies.

How is this in Deadfire? In game I can only see a text that it is easier or harder but no number and the wiki says nothing at all.

[thelee]

it's similar to PoE1 in that there are more enemies on as you go up - on PotD notably enemies can get "upgraded" into more elite versions of themselves.

on top of that, on Veteran enemies get +12% health (multiplicative bonus I think?), +8 accuracy, +8 all defense, +1 PEN, +1 AR. This is basically half of what they get in PotD, which is +25% health, +15 acc, +15 all defenses, +2 PEN, and +2 AR.

Edited February 24, 2020 by thelee

[Madscientist]

Thanks

I guess stats go down the same way for easy and story mode. ( I don´t know, classic is easy for me, next time I try veteran)

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What does level scaling do?

I guess each enemy has a default level and they get +3 acc and defenses and some HP per level. Is there more than this?

[thelee]

12 minutes ago, Madscientist said:

Thanks

I guess stats go down the same way for easy and story mode. ( I don´t know, classic is easy for me, next time I try veteran)

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What does level scaling do?

I guess each enemy has a default level and they get +3 acc and defenses and some HP per level. Is there more than this?

I don't think stats go down for easy/story mode. I think the encounters are just simpler.

 

As for level-scaling, it's slightly more complicated than that (slightly). It's not based on enemy level - areas themselves have an "encounter level" and that goes up and down with your mainchar's level. This is important because especially on PotD you'll see enemies with one or more skulls above their head, and even if you were to come to this area a level higher instead, they would still have the same number of skulls. That's because the entire area got one level harder, which means increasing the levels of enemies that were already one level higher than you as well.

Other than that, yeah, it's just +3 acc/defenses/some HP. I think the level scaling is capped to a maximum of four levels up or down (if you don't have "only upscale" enabled). For that reason, level scaling might keep an encounter challenging if you're one level above the target level, but even just two levels above and the difficulty starts dropping off pretty quickly; enemies aren't getting any new abilities, and a Xaurip is still just going to be a Xaurip, just ever-so-slightly tankier.

[DozingDragon]

The lack of documentation for some things in this game is frustrating at times. I am pretty sure that the lower difficulty settings do alter either the player’s or NPC stats in some way, but I cannot remember where I saw it laid out. Maybe it was in some patch notes? 

[thelee]

20 hours ago, DozingDragon said:

The lack of documentation for some things in this game is frustrating at times. I am pretty sure that the lower difficulty settings do alter either the player’s or NPC stats in some way, but I cannot remember where I saw it laid out. Maybe it was in some patch notes? 

i am pretty sure that enemy starts are unadjusted on relaxed, it's just that enemy encounters are adjusted to be easier.

i think story mode actually affects stats, but have no idea how. i gave up video games for lent so I can't test it, but if it's anything like veteran/potd you can figure out some of it by just rolling a new game and mousing over combat rolls in the log to see what modifiers get applied.

[KaInEvIL]

Beefed up sponges come by the dozen. So you can't take them at low lvl without exploiting engagement break and other small cheese. You only have to worry about Port Maje though. After that you could easily reach lvl 12 just by sailing through the whole map. Then you'll get all your skills to make the build work. You can even get to lvl 18 just by doing bounties before taking on any additional quests after Port Maje. All this is up to the player.

Edited March 7, 2020 by KaInEvIL

[Boeroer]