How difficult are the Warden's bounties?

[Katarack21]

You saw the title.  My party is mostly level six, with one level five (the barbarian I made at an inn). I have Eder, Aloth, Grieving Mother, the barbarian, and myself (a damage-focused cipher).

[Voss]

Pretty rough  

I was just in the process of trying them out, and unfortunately borked my party composition in the process as I was heading for companion quest things.

 

The bandit had a big band of a large variety of classes with him, and 'the Dweller' is accompanied by 2 trolls and 3 greater earth blights.

 

So... pro-tip.  Don't drop your custom druid and wizard for sagani and a pike rogue built for the tight corridors of the endless and try to pick up some bounties 'on the way.'

[Whosdriving]

i did sly cyrdel the dweller and the lizard warchief at lvl 5 on normal their all really hard but doable the, warchief has priests, the dweller is surounded by trolls and whatever those tree things are as well as a couple of blights, sly has a party of.. 8 i think, its was a while ago, priest mage rogue a few fighters and a archer or two. so they are at least on par with most of the harder boss fights. although the fights are in open terrain so no choke points good if you have a lot of melee or duel use setups bad if you have squishies

[Katarack21]

Thanks for the info.

[revial]

I guess it depends on your level/gear. I think I was level 7 when I first tried them, and they were pretty tough, but doable. 

[Gallenger]

I went at the ogres at lvl 11 and they absolutely dumpster trashed me a few times lol - but after those there's even more! :D

[Warseer]

I went at the ogres at lvl 11 and they absolutely dumpster trashed me a few times lol - but after those there's even more! :D

The fact that their insect plagues have an infinite duration plays a no-small part in that just so you know. I won those fights by avoiding letting anyone but eder get hit by those buggy bug spells (Get it, cause they're buggy and it's bugs, hoho)

[Ichthyic]

just did the dweller at level 5 on hard.

that's a good matchup; good challenge.

requires good tactics, spacing.  will definitely test your team build, as well as making sure you aren't just doing say... slashing damage....

try to pick around the edges of the group first, and you can probably take out 2 or three of them before the rest go aggro on you.  After that... keep the dweller locked down entirely, through abilities, spells, what have you, or you'll regret it if he gets off a crit doing his aoe attack.

priests come in very handy in this battle, for both offense and defense.

but overall, like I said, decent challenge, but nothing overwhelming really, unless you get really unlucky or make more than one or two mistakes.

I took some good damage, but nothing I felt was going to take my team out  I guess my point is... I don't think you need to wait until high levels before doing some of these.

 

[juggerulez]

I went at the ogres at lvl 11 and they absolutely dumpster trashed me a few times lol - but after those there's even more! :D

I can't say for sure that the game upscales challenges to the party level, but if you got you ass handed to you at level 11, i'm quite confident that you have issues within your party (e.g. tactics, party composition, gear, etc) you should address before adventuring forth.

I went in at level 6 and everything was "sort of" smooth till the last fanpyr (i'm trying to stay vague for spoiler's sake) and i can't go through because his friends like to spam an aoe effect even in the midst of their allies, which harms both ours and theirs (that's where "cannon fodder" is being taken from :v ). rumours suggest that this is meant to be this hard because you need to progress through the main quest in order to ease the encounter, but other rumours suggest that you can actually clear that content, even at level 6, and receive a really nice item which is worth the fuss. Can't say both statements are speculation, can't say they're not. What i can say is that i've now moved on and will go back in in a couple of levels

[Twinsen]

For me at least the xaurip warchief was too much so far. I don't know how to beat him. I defeated relatively easily the Dweller and Cyrdel with a 5 member party (Barbarian, Eder, Aloth, Durance and Kana) but the warchief and his priests heal too fast and have really strong magic. I did not find the Ogre yet. Any suggestions? I don't usually have any problems with any encounters. The stronghold sends some insanely large hordes against me sometimes... Even with 8 additional hired help they trash the place and I have to reload. But I think that must be a bug.

[Climhazzard]

I start doing them around level 6 or 7 on my playthroughs.

Edited April 21, 2015 by Climhazzard

[rheingold]

Phew tough to answer, some are easy and some ridiculously difficult. Easy ones from memory - the ranger, pirate and chanter. Tough, as in amongst the hardest fights I had on hard. The warchief, the cipher insect thingy - always forget what the are, and the ogre.

[Climhazzard]

For me at least the xaurip warchief was too much so far. I don't know how to beat him. I defeated relatively easily the Dweller and Cyrdel with a 5 member party (Barbarian, Eder, Aloth, Durance and Kana) but the warchief and his priests heal too fast and have really strong magic. I did not find the Ogre yet. Any suggestions? I don't usually have any problems with any encounters. The stronghold sends some insanely large hordes against me sometimes... Even with 8 additional hired help they trash the place and I have to reload. But I think that must be a bug.

 

 

Use the gap in the trees before the fight with the warchief as a choke point.  The priests in that fight are a big nuisance, use your casters and ranged dps characters to CC and kill them while your front line holds off the horde, they are capable of using "devotions for the faithful", and will, counter it preemptively with the same spell from your own priest.   With devotions for the faithful up, your CC and ranged dps won't miss their priests, and should help you to take some of them out before they can use their own buffs or healing.

[Ouroboros226]

I found them all easy on hard+expert. 

Except one - the Dweller. The Dweller took me like 10+ reloads lol. Not sure whats up with this encounter but even with good positioning and defensive buffs my party took so much seemingly random damage that people started dying all the time. 

I eventually managed to do the encounter by opening with slicken and unload all my 10 fireballs + lightning attacks from my 2 mages from the side. 

[The Josip]

If you're playing Ironman I would advise doing them.. later.

 

If you're not doing Ironman and want to do this as early as possible you can always use ultimate open space party/tactic that I use which is pretty much 1 Chanter with Blessed chant, 1 Paladin with his own speed chant, and if you have Fast Runner on your characters that's good too (I didn't try it without Fast Runner though but might still be ok). This way you just do hit and run (with bows), and while you can do it with just one chanter you're going to do it faster if you have more chanters because you run until they can summon phantasm, then you summon those and shoot with ranged weapons while phantasm tanks.

 

If you're not doing it that way expect some silly enemy abilities such as druid one-shooting your casters, at least if you're around lvl5 or so. And we're talking about guided missiles here.

[Vasya]

Did first 3 (Sly, Dweller and xaurip) with lvl 5 part on potd difficulty (pc(wizard with talents for minor blights), Aloth, Eder, Kana, Durance). Xaurip warchief forced me to retreat when i ran out of control spells and could not kill last 3 kobold high priests and warchief with their endless healing.

[Exyll]

I would not recommend doing those quests / handing them in at such an early level - the payouts are extreme and you'll be running around act 3 maxed out (and probably bored)

[sucinum]

I found the Ogre extraordinarily hard compared to the other 7 bounties I have done so far. He and his gang have a lot of HP and also the room is very tight and you can't flee.

 

There is no real reason to do them early, their (experience) rewards are quite high and a balancing issue, while the game is perfectly solvable without bounty hunting.

[Exoduss]

Did Dweller as my first bounty at lvl 8 , ran into him on fast move mode , made the fight a bit tougher than it is , 2nd encounter that i did not "over gear" ( lol ) by a mille , first being the drake in Searing Falls , want to do atleast 8 bounties and 10 levels of endless paths before act 3 :D

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I did them all except the ogres (haven't done that yet) back to back on hard at level 6. The Dweller and Xaurips were no problem, but Sly was a rough battle for me. The AI went berserk on my Ciphers and I think even KOed one of them.

[Exyll]

there are 3 tiers of bounties

[mystang89]

I never had to reload them on normal but I did have at least 3 people knocked unconscious in all the fights. If I didn't then I probably would have reloaded lol. I should say I was around level... 5 or 6. The rewards I find satisfying along with the difficulty.

Edited April 21, 2015 by mystang89

[Sanctuary]

I suppose it just depends on the level you decide to do them.  The lower, the harder they might be.  I didn't actually get to start mine on my first playthrough until level 9, and by that point, all of the pre Act 3 bounties were a joke.  At the start of Act 3 though they started getting interesting.  This was also on Normal, so I'm sure it would be even more challenging as you bump the difficulties up.

 

Main issue with bounties is that the XP/reward is really out of balance with the rest of the game.  Doing just a few of them could potentially level you up, and the rewards just make the power creep even faster.  So it's really not very balanced at all in that regard.  Do them early and they are more difficult, yet make you much stronger after.  Do them later and they are way easier (while still getting great rewards).

Edited April 21, 2015 by Sanctuary

[Blovski]

Reasonably tough on Hard, though difficulfty varies a lot. XP rewards are ludicrous and they do have some very good item drops.

[srlapo]

It depends on your party setup. With a party with the default NPCs the Tier 1 fights were a struggle at level 5, with a fully "hired" NPC party (with the same classes) the fights were easy at the same level. The default NPCs aren't very well optimized.