The combat encounters (not just the bloody beetles)

[Starwars]

I feel an enormous amount of discussion has been going on about the beetles in Dyrford Crossing. Perhaps understandably so. But how do you guys feel about the rest of them? The wolves, the spiders, the shamblerthingies, the wurms, the Skaenites, the lions, the feral druis, the thingies guarding the ruin entrance in the western area, the spectres...

 

I don't have a lot of time right now but overall I think the spiders will be pretty fun to play against once the game gets polished up more. They feel deadly and squishy. The wurms were a bit disappointing. They're obviously only babies but it still felt like they should be a bit more threatening.

 

The spectres annihilated me the first and only time I went down there (want to save something from the beta for later).

Edited September 10, 2014 by Starwars

[IndiraLightfoot]

The spectres and the cultists are my favourites so far, more for the mood and the difficulty than anything else. I'm pretty happy with most encounters taken at face value. But the encounter design in the beta is repetitive, lacking in ranged enemies, and we rarely get varied spells thrown at us, and some of them are bugged, so the difficulty spikes. So, in short, spectres and cultists are the ones that I think will be the most fun when all that is fixed.

[Sensuki]

I've mostly been focusing on the Dyrford Crossing Exterior as I think that focusing on one area for a while and then moving onto another will be more beneficial for me. Also kind of because the combat and questing was severely messed up in v257 so I've mostly restricted myself until the game is more playable as it's difficult to do a full playthrough at the moment. There's also plenty of people playing through like that, and not as many doing focused testing.

 

I think the Wolves are too weak, and that the larger wolves should be more threatening like the Vampiric Wolves in BG1. The wurms are also pretty banal enemies, but I think they're supposed to be.

 

I am avoiding delving into the Dyrford Ruins too much because I only get about 30 FPS in the level and about 10 FPS when I have a UI element open, whereas I get ~100-150 FPS inside exteriors in the Dyrford Village and ~90-100 outside - all of which I am sure will be improved when performance is tweaked but the 2D and 3D animations in levels are not optimized and REALLY slowing the game down.

 

Hopefully they fix that soon to make those areas more playable.

Edited September 10, 2014 by Sensuki

[PrimeJunta]

I honestly don't have a problem with encounter/monster variety in the BB. Quite the contrary really.

 

Fighting the same beetles over and over does get old fast, for sure, even if you mix in the occasional wolf, but there's really a lot of different things here and they do feel quite different.

 

The wolves, lions, and drakes are kind of vanilla, but a game needs vanilla monsters too, otherwise the wack ones wouldn't stand out. Not everything has to have a badass mofo special attack. Not even the wolves.

 

The big swarm of different-sized spiders in the ogre cave are cool.

 

The ogre is cool, although needs more powah badly; kind of anticlimactic as it is.

 

The totes-not-shambling-mounds are cool, with pretty neat specials of their own.

 

The cultists are cool and varied too. The cult boss makes for a nice climactic fight, if you decide to fight him.

 

Medreth and Syfre are both interesting-enough encounters, as are the adventurers next to the egg. (Need better AI of course.)

 

The syllable-soup things in the syllable-soup dungeon are also different and cool. So is the totally-not-mindflayer.

 

Short version is, I quite like the monsters and encounters, although the difficulty does need tuning -- the beetles and perhaps spiders down a notch, the ogre and a few others up a notch. No complaints there, honest.

[HoonDing]

I'll just wait for mod that adds combat xp or removes combat altogether so I can just enjoy the story and writing.

[Sensuki]

Short version is, I quite like the monsters and encounters, although the difficulty does need tuning -- the beetles and perhaps spiders down a notch, the ogre and a few others up a notch. No complaints there, honest.

The beetles will be a walk in the park when Poison DoT is fixed.

[PrimeJunta]

 

Short version is, I quite like the monsters and encounters, although the difficulty does need tuning -- the beetles and perhaps spiders down a notch, the ogre and a few others up a notch. No complaints there, honest.

The beetles will be a walk in the park when Poison DoT is fixed.

 

The stone beetles still take too long to clobber IMO. Too high DT or too many hitpoints. (There are ways of course but IMO a wandering monster like that shouldn't take special tactics to defeat. Brute force should work decently.)

Edited September 10, 2014 by PrimeJunta

[Sensuki]

Really? They don't take that long to clobber ...

 

What are you using to clobber them with? You need blunt weapons or corrode spells

 

Adra beetles (dunno if you've faced them) are even tougher.

Edited September 10, 2014 by Sensuki

[PrimeJunta]

Blunt weapons, mostly. With the beetles I mostly use spells etc for CC rather than direct damage (except Minoletta's Minor Missiles -- crush damage -- on the wood beetles to take them out fast). That may be a mistake in this case.

 

I don't find the difficult to kill, only tedious.

 

One issue probably is, though, that I generally play with only one melee character forward, and if I go straight to the beetles, I don't have any ranged blunt weapons. So it's poor BB Fighter with his hammer or morningstar dealing all the damage. BB Rogue is fairly useless, and the casters keep them immobilized and debuffed, or the party buffed.

 

Haven't tried the corrode spells. I expect they would help.

[Sensuki]

yeah BB Fighter & Morningstar is a good combo. I give the BB Rogue the Arbalest, and the Priest the Morningstar and Light Shield, as the Heavy Shield reduces accuracy which is not good for casting.

 

The Minoletta's Missile Spells do okay damage for the Wizard, and the Web/Fireball trick works quite well too. Priest has an array of awesome spells that protect you very well / heal you too fast.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I try and avoid all the trash mobs. Beetles, Wolves, Spiders, Wurms, Feral Druids, Lions, etc. Beetles have now become easy. Trash mobs that are easy are the wolves and wurms in Dyrford Crossing which you can totally avoid altogether. So I just ignore them. The Lions in the gorge map are a pushover and I try to avoid those as well. The couple of times I went up to the top part of the gorge map and encountered the feral druids were easy to pick off one by one. Now I just avoid the top part.

 

It's also easy when you know there's going to be a fight.

 

The Medreth fight is a breeze when you can position everyone before hand and have the BB Fighter pull all the enemies on him. In this fight I only lost about 15% health while all my nudists were able to kill them quickly. I had my nude BB Rogue in position to flank and sneak attack every round.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the adventuring party at the dragon egg wasn't a problem either. I didn't realise one of the enemy had a knock down ability which knocked down my BB Fighter and he turned on my nude BB Rogue which she sustained some damage. But it was quick killing them as well. Getting used to all the different spells.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 10, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Sedrefilos]

I honestly don't have a problem with encounter/monster variety in the BB. Quite the contrary really.

 

Fighting the same beetles over and over does get old fast, for sure, even if you mix in the occasional wolf, but there's really a lot of different things here and they do feel quite different.

 

The wolves, lions, and drakes are kind of vanilla, but a game needs vanilla monsters too, otherwise the wack ones wouldn't stand out. Not everything has to have a badass mofo special attack. Not even the wolves.

 

The big swarm of different-sized spiders in the ogre cave are cool.

 

The ogre is cool, although needs more powah badly; kind of anticlimactic as it is.

 

The totes-not-shambling-mounds are cool, with pretty neat specials of their own.

 

The cultists are cool and varied too. The cult boss makes for a nice climactic fight, if you decide to fight him.

 

Medreth and Syfre are both interesting-enough encounters, as are the adventurers next to the egg. (Need better AI of course.)

 

The syllable-soup things in the syllable-soup dungeon are also different and cool. So is the totally-not-mindflayer.

 

Short version is, I quite like the monsters and encounters, although the difficulty does need tuning -- the beetles and perhaps spiders down a notch, the ogre and a few others up a notch. No complaints there, honest.

After the D:OS encouters I dont believe in vanilla/trash encounters anymore

[morhilane]

Blunt weapons, mostly. With the beetles I mostly use spells etc for CC rather than direct damage (except Minoletta's Minor Missiles -- crush damage -- on the wood beetles to take them out fast). That may be a mistake in this case.

 

I don't find the difficult to kill, only tedious.

 

One issue probably is, though, that I generally play with only one melee character forward, and if I go straight to the beetles, I don't have any ranged blunt weapons. So it's poor BB Fighter with his hammer or morningstar dealing all the damage. BB Rogue is fairly useless, and the casters keep them immobilized and debuffed, or the party buffed.

 

Haven't tried the corrode spells. I expect they would help.

 

Repulsive seal + Pillar of Faith will crush any beetles problems (both are Priest's spells).

 

And I said it in another thread, BB Rogue needs to be positioned to do sneak attack. It's my biggest damage dealer and I don't even use her abilities. I just flank something with her. PoE rogue reminds me of DAO rogue actually, just less annoying to position for flanking.

[Fiebras]

Beetles are hardy. Even when the DoTs get fixed people forget just how hard Stone and Adra Beetles hit. Its a case of armored enemy encounter. Its fine. The only reason people are finding it repetitive is because its the one encounter everyone does every time.

 

Spiders are fun and a good excuse to use aoe spells. Crystal Eaters have an AOE stun which is fun. Also need to have abilities (DoTs and Petrify) fixed.

 

Forest Lurkers are a nice variety of mob in a "secret" place. The root is interesting. Hope to see them paired with more plant mobs as the root can be pretty devastating to back row fighters.

 

Wurms are Xvart village tier. They are intended this way so its fine.

 

Lions are the same as Wolfs: mid-low/high-low tier enemies that are weak enough to be considered "thrash mobs" but not weak enough that if you agro a large group or two groups of them or you let them get to your casters you arent gonna have a very very hard time. I like it.

 

Pjak or whatever in the adra weapon ruins are interesting but they die too fast for them to make an impression on me beyond "enemy spellcasters".

 

Spectres are fun. The spell that scrambles your party formation is really interesting and forces you to be on your toes. It looks cool too but im wondering if its suposed to look like bones/rock spikes coming from the ground or a gust of wind. The texture may need some clearing.

 

Enemy humanoids are always fun. Cultists are too numerous and not packed together enough imo.

 

Overall pretty satisfied with the encounters. Though I do have a problem with spiders and beetles and spectres having "instant teleport to your back line" abilities. It feels rather cheap. If they want to get to my back lines then they should go through my front line and suffer disengagement attacks like my front liners have to.

The rogue may have a teleport ability but shes squishy, while the spiders and beetles that can teleport, arent by any means. Makes sense for spectres to teleport though so thats ok but I hope its not a common thing.

[PrimeJunta]

I think the spider teleport may be a bug (heh). If it's not, it needs a better animation, like them dropping from the ceiling on a thread or something.

 

I like the burrowing beetles, it makes them more interesting.

 

Edit: Thanks for the beetle-swatting tricks. I get the message, I clearly suck at swatting them. Will try again with the benefit of your wisdom.

Edited September 10, 2014 by PrimeJunta

[Ink Blot]

I'm finding it hard to judge, actually. Until we get some more fixes and tweaks so we know things are working more or less the way they're supposed it, it's hard to really form an opinion on the actual combat in these encounters. I've been doing the Dyrford Village/Dyrford Crossing quests over and over again, and avoiding most combat unless it's absolutely necessary. More because I'm trying various ways to solve quests (choosing different options, doing things in a different order, etc.) just to see if I can break them. So I'm kind of focusing on the quest mechanics and less on the combat other than a few select encounters.

[Elerond]

Beetles need also unburrow animation and there should be also some delay in both burrow and unburrow animations which gives you change to interrupt beetle and/or react in it some other way. Current instant teleportation feel too much AI cheating and it looks bit clumsy. 

[Wombat]

I used to think it's a feature-in fact, there are enemies who go underground even in BG1 but I began to think it's a bug (no pun intended).  For, it's not a good presentation of how combat works since it negates the formation.  Even if there are going to be burrowing creatures, they should have a decent time for moving and animation before appearing again.

 

As for the absurd poison, check out BB Priest spell list-at the second tier, there is a big AoE spell which slows down the effect of the poison.

[Sensuki]

Beetles need also unburrow animation and there should be also some delay in both burrow and unburrow animations which gives you change to interrupt beetle and/or react in it some other way. Current instant teleportation feel too much AI cheating and it looks bit clumsy.

There's a delay but there's some instances where you can remove the delay, such as by pausing or blocking the pathfinding. But yeah, I agree there needs to be an animation at the end as well when they re-appear.

 

Other creatures also teleport around likely due to the new pathfinding changes.

[Wombat]

IIRC, there was indeed a delay the initial build if not animation.  So, even if it may be a conjecture, the possible explanation of it being related with the renewed path-finding system sound to be reasonable.