So I love the concept of Trial of Iron, and I've even tried it a few times, but there are a few things that I think keep it from being that enjoyable.

 

1.  You can't con MOBs/encounters to see how difficult they are.

 

2.  You can't escape once you engage an encounter.

 

The combination of these two things mean that you essentially have no idea how "beatable" an encounter is when prior to starting it, and if it turns out to be too hard, there is no escape, GG.

 

The only way I see right now to do Trial of Iron is to have foreknowledge of how difficult every encounter is in the game, and plan your run down to the last detail based on a certain sequence of events.  Because if you do not have foreknowledge of every encounter, you will inevitably run into an encounter that is too high level for you, and since there is no way to escape, you will wipe.

 

This...doesn't seem very fun to me.  It actually removes a lot of the danger and uncertainty that I think makes Trial of Iron fun because you literally have to know every nook and cranny of the game to not get stuck in an inescapable, unbeatable encounter.

 

If they added the ability to con encounters/MOBs, and allow you some way of escaping an encounter (probably with losses to permadeath), then I think Trial of Iron would be a lot more fun, and not feel like something that you need to follow a meticulous list of instructions to accomplish.

 

Thoughts?

I'm not playing Iron now but I want to in a future run.  I like the idea too.

 

I agree with you that the lack of any way to determine relative difficulty (without out-of-character knowledge from a previous play through) would make it hard.  But I also think a pure "con" system would break immersion too.  I'd rather see some more subtle and story-appropriate ways to get this information from the game world.

 

In another thread I posted this, which is the spirit of what I mean: Or maybe even just in-world hints, like villagers you can talk to who might say, "Sure, the woods east of town are a little dangerous, but you look capable of handling the local wolves.  But we sent 5 other guys kinda equipped like you into that cave behind the waterfall last summer, and they never came out.  We don't know what's in there, but I'd stay out if I were you."  If you come back in 5 levels, they might change their tune to, "You look a lot tougher than the last bunch who went in that cave.  Maybe you'll fare better than they did.

Trial of Iron is usually something suited for seasoned players, whatever the game that features it. Going Ironman on the first playthrough is quite the challenge, but you're potentially doomed from the start. I don't think your problem really needs any fix, you should expect to fail while trying to go ironman without knowing much of what lays ahead.

Trial of Iron wasn't made for a first, or even a second playthrough. It was made for those kinds of people who play a game over and over again until they know the game inside and out to give them an official challenge, since there's a not too insignificant number of people who do that with games anyway. It's for the absolutely masochistic gamers who enjoy memorizing an entire game and then flawlessly executing delicately laid plans. I fully expect the percentage of people who get the achievement on Steam will be less than one percent.

We have existing threads on exactly this topic, continue there.

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/73022-we-need-to-be-able-to-con-mob-levels/page-5?hl=+con%20+mobs