Forgotten Sanctum on PotD Upscaled vs. no upscaling

[Not So Clever Hound]

Hi folks,

Curious to hear what your thoughts and experience are with this.

Upscaled PotD is noticeably more difficult than normal PotD - that's kind of the idea, right?  In most of the game, it means that you have to be more careful about initial approach and positioning, maybe use a couple more abilities or consumables that you wouldn't have needed otherwise. Long story short, it requires to be a bit more hands-on, but it doesn't fundamentally change the balance. But then there is Forgotten Sanctum.

I'm playing a Solo Troubadour/Forbidden Fist who's been cruising PotD Upscaled mostly running on AI frankly, having no trouble with upscaled Nemnok, all the big Fampyr/Lich/Deathguard encounters, the majority of SSS, couple megabosses... Then I entered the library in FS, got bum-rushed by half a dozen level 22 infested librarians, and died in 5s. I reloaded a couple times and tried a couple different non-cheese tactics to get basically the same outcome. Then out of curiosity I reloaded this fight without Upscaling and easily defeated the same enemies just running on AI.

So my point is, you would think that upscaling has more impact at the beginning of the game when you're struggling to keep up with critical path enemies and where a 4 level gap is huge, but actually it seems to have a bigger impact for me at the end of the game, in the highest level area. Do you have a similar/different experience with this?

[Boeroer]

Hm, I tried once with upscaled FS at lvl 20 (normally I don't play with scaling) but it wasn't noticably more difficult so I assumed - since most enemies are of same/higher levels as/than me - that not much was scaled in the first place. Maybe I was wrong and it was just the build that was overpowering everything anyways (SC Nalpasca with dual mortars, heavily relying on  Resonant Touch + party).

Maybe some of the encounters there are again set as lvl 1 internally for the purpose of scaling - instead of their actual level? There are some other encounters that have this problem as well (see one late thread about the upscaled Talfor fight). If that's the case the scaling would be adding a ton of difficulty. 

If not I don't really grasp how a few levels should make such a huge difference like you reported.

[Not So Clever Hound]

48 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

If not I don't really grasp how a few levels should make such a huge difference like you reported.

Exactly that’s what I’m struggling to understand as well. If I’m not mistaken, the standard enemies there should be at level 18 then upscaled at 22 (I’m lvl20 and they have 2 skulls). So the bump should have much less impact than when you encounter early on some low level boar upscaled to lvl 7 or 8… 

Or maybe that situation is very specific to my char and there’s just a fine line crossed there that’s specific to my build… curious to hear if anyone had this kind of experience. 

[NotDumbEnough]

The librarians get tier 9 abilities, so of course it's going to be rough. I remember being shocked at one of the librarians one-shotting my fairly tanky Watcher from full hp. Turned out he had Inner Death.

[Not So Clever Hound]

21 minutes ago, NotDumbEnough said:

The librarians get tier 9 abilities, so of course it's going to be rough.

I agree, but there are many other fights where enemies get bumped from PL8 to PL9 with upscaling and I’ve had no trouble with those. Would that be specifically because librarians are monks and that the PL9 tier of monks is beyond OP? On the other hand, when they exploded me several times I didn’t notice them abusing PL9 abilities…

[Boeroer]

Inner Death might be an explanation. It's pretty devastating when it lands properly - and you're only 5 so they don't need to spare Mortification.  

[Not So Clever Hound]

47 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Inner Death might be an explanation. It's pretty devastating when it lands properly - and you're only 5 so they don't need to spare Mortification.

Well, all the more as I’m playing solo

[Noqn]

7 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Maybe some of the encounters there are again set as lvl 1 internally for the purpose of scaling - instead of their actual level?

7 hours ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

If I’m not mistaken, the standard enemies there should be at level 18 then upscaled at 22 (I’m lvl20 and they have 2 skulls).

I think what's happening is that the hand-placed enemies scale depending on the map's "ExpectedPartyLevel" property.

The FS maps are all at lv18, so for a lv20 party all enemies would increase by 2 levels. However, all the Librarians are already lv20, so they reach lv22 with upscaling.

 

[thelee]

10 hours ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

I reloaded a couple times and tried a couple different non-cheese tactics to get basically the same outcome. Then out of curiosity I reloaded this fight without Upscaling and easily defeated the same enemies just running on AI.

i was under the impression that upscaling doesn't take effect in places that you've already loaded into - is that not true?

 

either way, +6 acc/def can be a huge swing. It can make an (unlucky) run of events much more likely, which may be what happened. The monks in FS in particular also love to use skyward kick, which even works on a graze, which suuuuuucks, and will suck even more if they have +6 acc on that (i could easily see it turning into something you have virtually no chance of avoiding being chain-knocked-up)

 

10 hours ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

So my point is, you would think that upscaling has more impact at the beginning of the game when you're struggling to keep up with critical path enemies and where a 4 level gap is huge,

true, but maybe this is more like a bell curve where the scaling is effective at the beginning and effective at the (very) end, with a flattening out in the middle. at the SSS/FS level, the enemies already have powerful abilities and the power curve isn't nearly as much in your favor (e.g. if you come back 2 levels higher against a mid-game boar level encounter, you are just way more powerful than they can imagine with all your new stuff, whereas coming back 2 levels higher against FS vithrack, they could already use death of a 1000 cuts and minoletta's missile salvo, did you really gain that much of an advantage in those 2 levels?)

Edited December 1, 2021 by thelee

[Elric Galad]

Remember this time when some dude summoned Dorudugan out of console command, which resulted in an upscaled Dorudugan 

[Not So Clever Hound]

On 12/1/2021 at 5:57 PM, thelee said:

i was under the impression that upscaling doesn't take effect in places that you've already loaded into - is that not true?

Aye, 'tis true. but I loaded a save just before changing zones. I agree with your thoughts, thanks for this. +6 ACC/DEF at this level have increasing returns for the most powerful enemies, so it would make sense as you say to consider the difficulty curve bell-shaped.

So just to close this loop, I made a few adjustments that made this encounter and so far the rest of FS PotD Upscaled MUCH easier. I think my issue was, as often, hubris . For fun I wanted to follow through with a counter-intuitive Solo Chanter that dumps INT, doesn't use any Summon Invocations and no Eld Nary. Multied with Forbidden Fist it worked really well until FS but it showed its limitations in FS at max difficulty. I respecced simply to get Animated Weapons and I steamrolled this encounter and the next ones.

Edited December 5, 2021 by Not So Clever Hound