Please help me to play/enjoy this game

[garanor]

I think I suck at this game and I'm kind of soft locked.
For an explanation: I'm in my mid-50ies and have been playing RPG's since 1985, but mostly tactical RPG's like BG 1-3 (BG3 several times in Honor mode), Pillars of Eternity (on PotD/Trial of Iron), Divinity OS 1 and 2 (Tactician), DA:O etc. This is my first kind of ARGP/first-person shooter games (except maybe Skyrim, if that counts) and I only bought it, because I've loved both Pillars of Eternity games.
But I don't seem to understand how ARPG's work. I find the whole dodging mechanic awkward and suck at it. I almost never succeed in doging: When I see that someone attacks me, I dodge, but he hits me anyway. And this is if I succeed in dodging. Usually I am just too slow and the battlefield is too confusing with enemies rushing to me from every possible and impossible side.
I am trying to play a wizard (as always), but I usually die within seconds, because almost every single enemy attacks me (like 7 of 10) despite Kai's taunting abilities. They just teleport over the battlefield and two-shot me. The only way to survive combat is chucking health potions like crazy. Now, my problem is that I have run out of money to afford health potions, because I need 5-6 of them in every fight and 7-9 in boss fights. I also tried Ranger for a change, but the same things happen.
Is there anything I can do? Or do I just have to uninstall Avowed and stop playing this kind of games? Please help me to enjoy this game!
(P.S.: I'am playing on normal for standard fights and easy for boss fights. I don't really want to lower it to story mode, because I love at least a bit of a challenge in games and it would really suck to go from PotD/Trial of Iron in Pillars to story mode in Avowed).

[Lonlon]

Here are a few tips that may help you :

- One of the best ways to mitigate damage in this game is Heavy Armors. They will nerf your essence pool a bit but early game it doesn't matter that much compare to what they bring to the table.
- Use Arcane Veil as soon as you can. It has been nerfed but is still a very good spell and rank 2 keeps you safe from projectiles.
- Upgrade your armor (and weapons too), it's one off the most important thing to do in this game in order to stay effective/relevant against higher tier enemies.
- Check your endurance bar (the white one). If you find yourself out of endurance quite often while dodging/blocking, consider putting some points into Resolve and/or maybe the heavy armor talent.
- If you chose the wizard route, try to find a Grimoire of Greater Elements ASAP. All the spells it features are very good early on (and even late game actually).
- Also I would suggest you use a gun early on. It's a very nice weapon type that deal tons of damage with headshots, like spells it doesn't scale with crit chance (because headshots), and while it's reloading you can cast spells from your grimoire.. (A very very strong talent to combo with guns is Steady Aim)
- Remember that while under the effect of Arcane Veil, your spells cannot be interrupted.

I'm pretty confident anyone can beat this game in normal/easy difficulty. Just keep trying and learning about the mechanics and eventually it'll work out  
 

[garanor]

Thank you very much for the quick response. Unfortunately I already did most of what you said, except for the heavy armor (I'm using light armor, but I will switch):
- Arcane Veil doesn't really do anything for me. I still get two shot by thrown stones with rank 2 in Arcane Veil. It probably one reflects arrows and bullets, but the melee guys throw stones if they can't reach me immediately.

- I can get off one, at maximum two spells from the grimoire of Greater Elements before 80% ot the enemies rush to me and kill me within seconds.

- Same thing happens with guns: I get off one, maybe two shots before I get rushed from every side and two-shotted.

It looks as if I simply should stop playing this kind of games. Without dodging, they seem to unplayable and I don't get dodging. Very frustrating after playing games like DOS 2, BG3, PoE 1 and 2 on the highest difficulties without any problems (almost finding them too easy, actually).

[garanor]

O.k., just a feedback after some experimentation: I respecced my char from a Wizard to a heavily armored Spellblade with good con, might and resolve. I am mainly using Drawn in Winter together with chill blades and arcane veil.
It's as different as day and night. This guy can take tons of hits and never has to dodge. If at all, I'm just blocking. Playing on normal is a breeze now and I can already increas the difficulty to "hard" in non-boss fights. Still a bit sad that I cannot play my usual wizard, but at least I can play the game at all now.

[saeran]

My wizard is wielding that axe too, it is a great combination with the frost aura and blizzard spells. 

I've found that food crafted from the better recipes you get from the survival perk makes a lot of difference. Helps with managing essence, because of essence regeneration, but also because the different food bonuses seem to stack, so now before tougher battles my wizard has a picnic. :D

[Wormerine]

Well, it is more of an action game and RPG, so skills set from traditional cRPGs won't help you here. I am playing dodging wizard/ranger on hard, and I can't say the game has been hard (I have plenty of experience in action games though). Sometimes dodge doesn't fire off (character jumped before, and now isn't quite grounded well enough) - but in general I found it easy to use. I invested on perk in Ranger tree for dodge to consume less stamina. Some enemies have massive tracking, so it is not only about dodging out of the way, but also dodging at the right time, otherwise they will still hit you with the attack. The only general advice I would have when playing as a squishy character is to prioritize enemies. Healers and ranged enemies first, before tanky melee.

I have been switching so far between light and medium armor - though I have enough essence that I don't find essence penalty to be noticable. Corrosive Syphon is great and regaining health - also gather food and cook recipies at camp - with so much healing I barely touched my reserve of healing and essence potions - I think I have over 30 of each by now.

Edited February 24 by Wormerine

[garanor]

9 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Well, it is more of an action game and RPG, so skills set from traditional cRPGs won't help you here.

It's my first action game and I had to learn this the very hard way. I still enjoy the lore and the build options of Avowed but I guess, I will never really warm up with this kind of games. 

[tecmozack]

20 hours ago, garanor said:

O.k., just a feedback after some experimentation: I respecced my char from a Wizard to a heavily armored Spellblade with good con, might and resolve. I am mainly using Drawn in Winter together with chill blades and arcane veil.
It's as different as day and night. This guy can take tons of hits and never has to dodge. If at all, I'm just blocking. Playing on normal is a breeze now and I can already increas the difficulty to "hard" in non-boss fights. Still a bit sad that I cannot play my usual wizard, but at least I can play the game at all now.

Happy to see you got it figured out. I took me longer than I wanted to get used to the combat but I am absolutley in Love now.

 

Happy Gaming!

[thelee]

On 2/23/2025 at 8:35 AM, garanor said:

Thank you very much for the quick response. Unfortunately I already did most of what you said, except for the heavy armor (I'm using light armor, but I will switch):

this was actually pretty important to use heavy armor.

damage reduction in this game has massive increasing returns, so the difference between heavy armor + arcane veil vs light armor + arcane veil could literally be almost a 2x in damage received.

(it was more insane before arcane veil got nerfed, you could have 0 constitution and face-tank enemies on path of the damned with heavy armor, arcane veil, and a ring of deflection or something)

[Lidelse]

On 2/23/2025 at 5:52 AM, garanor said:

I think I suck at this game and I'm kind of soft locked.
For an explanation: I'm in my mid-50ies and have been playing RPG's since 1985, but mostly tactical RPG's like BG 1-3 (BG3 several times in Honor mode), Pillars of Eternity (on PotD/Trial of Iron), Divinity OS 1 and 2 (Tactician), DA:O etc. This is my first kind of ARGP/first-person shooter games (except maybe Skyrim, if that counts) and I only bought it, because I've loved both Pillars of Eternity games.
But I don't seem to understand how ARPG's work. I find the whole dodging mechanic awkward and suck at it. I almost never succeed in doging: When I see that someone attacks me, I dodge, but he hits me anyway. And this is if I succeed in dodging. Usually I am just too slow and the battlefield is too confusing with enemies rushing to me from every possible and impossible side.
I am trying to play a wizard (as always), but I usually die within seconds, because almost every single enemy attacks me (like 7 of 10) despite Kai's taunting abilities. They just teleport over the battlefield and two-shot me. The only way to survive combat is chucking health potions like crazy. Now, my problem is that I have run out of money to afford health potions, because I need 5-6 of them in every fight and 7-9 in boss fights. I also tried Ranger for a change, but the same things happen.
Is there anything I can do? Or do I just have to uninstall Avowed and stop playing this kind of games? Please help me to enjoy this game!
(P.S.: I'am playing on normal for standard fights and easy for boss fights. I don't really want to lower it to story mode, because I love at least a bit of a challenge in games and it would really suck to go from PotD/Trial of Iron in Pillars to story mode in Avowed).

So, I kinda feel you. I decided to play a wizard build and was real annoyed with the dodge mechanics specifically at first. mostly because i often am moving forward which means back dodge will not work only left or right really. biggest thing is upgrade your armor. find the ones you can get from quests and chests that are higher tiers for uniques to use as stopgaps til you can upgrade the armor/weapon you actually want to wear if you don't have the stuff. 

 

also, your build and weapon loadout. I am going mostly frost/force but I carry 2 wands and 2 seperate grimoire's though the grimoir's and wand's really changed the most over time to just be the best i had but im nearing end game on that and run with a main loadout of whisper of exiles/auroch's skin grimoire and secondary of cruel command/eilara's grimoire I am 26 right now and the plan is to add the last 4 points in the picture of the build to fill out secret of rime and blizzard. I run with yatzli and giatta at this point, but early used kai and giatta for kai's taunt. but, mostly I like to go aoe frost stacked with fire and pull of eora type stuff. plus i have extra aoe damage and frost damage on gear. frost helps with the dodging too because you can freeze stuff. i carried a grimoire for a while while i was leveling that had a bunch of shield spells so i could use them one was a frost but the fire one was nicest as it just ripped them to shreds while i chased them with various magic while the big aoes were on cd.

[ElderSpacer]

Hey, fellow elder gamer here. It can be tough at first for sure. There are things that help a lot later on. Not sure if you're on PC, but maybe you could rebind your dodge button. Seemed a bit off to me at first, but am now great with it. Maybe you could bind it an extra mouse button. There are bonuses to increase your dodge distancing on rings and think I remember having boots that helped with that in the first area. If you find your losing a battle, no shame in running away till you're stronger.  Some other thoughts:

• As some have mentioned, Arcane Veil is great as long as you level it up. If you have two points into it, but are using a grimoire with that in it, it works as the third point, so you can save points that way. Also, if you skills that are in your grimoire vs. on your hotbar, it will use less essence.
• I never used it, but if you are really struggling at the start, you could a point into Shadowing Beyond in the Ranger tree. Going invisible to get out of tough situations can be of great help. Also in getting to and reviving a downed team member.
• Frost skills can be good. You can freeze them and reposition. Blast of frost is good for that.
• Try to find a place you can be elevated.
• If you haven't figured it out yet, this game works differently. You need to upgrade your gear to compete with tougher enemies. If you see 1 or 2 skulls above an enemy's head, they have better gear and you will hit less and they will hit harder. 2 skulls will be tough, 3 will kick your but, at least early on. You leving up is only to add new skills. Make gear is leveled up before going into the 2nd area. Weapons and Clothing(except rings, gloves and boots). I think it found it necessary to upgrade a common set of clothes, but really, try to only upgrade unique items. Some can be upgrade thoughout the game and take you all the way through.
• When you are in came, get used to cooking at the cauldren. You don't keep just popping potions, it's better to have foods you use. Some will give you health and essence, or both and some will temporarily up your stats, like Intellgence, etc. Make lots of Grog. It heals poison, fire, etc.
• Some items, mostly necklaces will give you power to create a creature to join the fight, for as long as the cooldown is. You could get the Bear in the Ranger tree. If you put two points into it, he will roar pulling agro.
• It gets easier when you get your second teammate. Not sure if you have that yet, but all I'll say is, they have an ability to stop people coming after you.
• I don't really level up grimoires. You generally find and upgraded on while looting. I only ever bought one.
• I stuck with light armor. It's just works better with a Wizard if you can handle it. If you get heavy armor, you need to waste points to mitigate using it.
• Look for and target anyone enemy doing magic. They will heal everone and make the encounter tougher.
• Try and synergize your gear as you get farther in the game. I went with a frost mage with the Grimoire of Rime, which is all frost damage, so I only need to add two point to those skills in the skill tree to have the fully leveled.

Other than that, most of what I learned was searching Avowed Tips and Tricks on YouTube. Legacy Gaming has some good videos.  https://youtu.be/TyILIWFKd9s?si=uPzj6lRSwOME0gs9 and https://youtu.be/zG86yLpF9HY?si=QLc2L1inPLR7Y1gu . Get the lighting wand they talk about as soon as you get the 2nd area.

Good luck!