What does hard difficulty actually entail?

[Malignacious]

From normal, what are the things that hard difficulty introduces or changes?

[Matt516]

Encounters are different. Two bears instead of one, additional minions with a leader, that sort of thing.

[dukefx]

Easy: three young wolves

Normal: four young wolves and a wolf

Hard: fifteenmillion direwolves in god mod... J/K, but you get the idea... five wolves I guess.

 

It's a matter of amount and quality. Stats only change in PotD

[Malignacious]

Easy: three young wolves

Normal: four young wolves and a wolf

Hard: fifteenmillion direwolves in god mod... J/K, but you get the idea... five wolves I guess.

 

It's a matter of amount and quality. Stats only change in PotD

 

So basically, it emphasises AoE classes...I guess that's better than just boosting HP.

[RevBlue]

It seems very strange to me that the only difference between normal and hard is only enemy numbers.

I mean I started on hard and after maybe ~15 hours or so switched to normal. I loved the challange and feeling of accomplishment when winning a hard fight, but I had to redo every fight like 4-5 times, or exaust all my resources on a normal mob fight that should be "easy".

 

Yet in normal mode im blasting through enemies. It seems like in hard mode enemies were inherently more difficult to fight, not just a numbers change

[sparklecat]

It's not just the numbers; it's also what enemies show up in an encounter.  Some of them will be tougher than you get a difficulty level down.

 

So on easy I get a baby wolf, on normal I get the wolf and its big brother, and on hard the mom shows up too, for example.

[Mortal]

I think you also get a higher camping supply capacity on low difficulties. You can only carry 2 camping supplies on hard, so you can't just fire all of your spells every encounter and camp afterwards. i typically try to solve encounters with just the "per encounter" powers and maybe one or two lvl 1/2 buff/debuff spells and only fall back to mass "per rest" powers/spells for the harder "bossfight" encounters or in emergencies.

 

(well, technically you can still spam all your powers in each encounter if you are willing to run back to town to replenish your supply and/or use the free camping in an inn, but IMO that's against the spirit of playing on the hard difficulty setting - might as well play on easy if i have to "cheat" to beat hard)

[Althernai]

So basically, it emphasises AoE classes...I guess that's better than just boosting HP.

For some encounters, yes. For others, it's a straight replacement (e.g. Forest Troll -> Forest Lurker) so having more AoE powers doesn't help. And yes, you are restricted to 2 camping supplies, though so far, most places have one lying around somewhere or other so you can rest once, pick up the free supply and keep going at max capacity.

[TheUsernamelessOne]

On hard mode, many of the townsfolk are replaced by elder wolves and, later in the game, vampires and mind flayers. I thought it was a strange design choice, but it actually works out pretty well, as long as you're interested in dialogue, using merchants, or resting at inns.

[Mungri]

Potd is better.

 

Normal 1 bear.

Hard 2 bears.

Potd 3 bears with +50% all stats.

 

And all the hordes of mobs are so much more massive that you def need two tanks. On Potd that is, 1 tank is still sufficient on hard.

[Maquabra]

"Hard" is not really hard for me. Yes, if you go too deep in a place that should not be named in a spoiler-free environment, you'll get overwhelmed if your level is too low.But if you pay a little attention to strengths and weaknesses of your foes and your team was mustered with some basic foresight, or consists of characters pre-made by Obsidian, only awful errors of judgement will force you to replay battles. 

 

Scout the terrain and deploy your people properly, use simple area spells and ranged weapons to strike a decent first blow and most importantly, don't try to burn dragons or freeze snowmen.

 

Mungri's description of difficulty levels is accurate so simply make sure that when attacked by a group of 15 little wankers, focus on weak ones that deal a lot of dmg, and only then proceed to the tougher ones. Most characters also have skills that debilitate groups of enemies at once, so it's really not that hard.

 

Imo, on "hard" difficulty there's a little too many encounters with cannon fodder. They are no threat but they just suck unbelievable amounts of time if you want to deal with them without wasting all of your magic and skills.Therefore if someone is struggling on hard, I'd suggest moving to normal. The game will be much faster and you can always build yourself a wizard with high perception or an exceptionally intelligent warrior if you want to increase difficulty a little.