Could someone advise what im doing wrong

[majnoon]

ive been playing for about 4 weeks now and find it very hard to progress in the game, I get to a certain point, im level 4 and I just get wiped out in a very fight im involved in, ive tried different things but get no where, im obviously doing something wrong but cant figure it out, im a druid, ive got a fighter, wizard,priest, and another druid with me, one of the things is my fighter always gets wiped out first, once he has gone, that's it, I get wiped out

[abaris]

If you're not telling what you're doing it's hard to say what you're doing wrong.

 

Let's start with difficulty, tactics, encounters, quests .... the lot.

[taeves]

While I haven't beaten the game yet, I've done the first 2 chapters several times now with different characters. I've never been great at Baldur's Gate, Planescape or this game for that matter. But I find having two tanks (main character + one made from the inn) to absorb damage makes the game a lot easier to get by. As you said, when your fighter goes down that is it.

 

You could otherwise get a ranger from the inn and make a Bear pet tank that works in the same way. Of course gear out your fighter with a sword and board and take tanky talents when levelling.

 

I found using the hodge podge mix of companion characters to be too difficult for me on my first character (I hated Kana at the time). Now I generally make two inn characters and have three companions for the side quests and banter.

 

Hope you have more success going forward!

[teknoman2]

ive been playing for about 4 weeks now and find it very hard to progress in the game, I get to a certain point, im level 4 and I just get wiped out in a very fight im involved in, ive tried different things but get no where, im obviously doing something wrong but cant figure it out, im a druid, ive got a fighter, wizard,priest, and another druid with me, one of the things is my fighter always gets wiped out first, once he has gone, that's it, I get wiped out

why not simply go somewhere else and leave that fight for later?

[AndreaColombo]

When I first played the game (on Hard), I got wiped out all the time too.

 

Common mistakes include:

 

• Bringing all members of the party into the fight simultaneously, thus letting enemies surround you. You should send only your tank(s) to the front and make everyone else intervene when most/all enemies are engaged so you can flank them and they must suck up the flanking or a disengagement attack.
• Hitting your men with friendly fire AoE. Very easy to do if you've got a Druid or Wizard in the party and your AoE markers are disabled (they are by default if playing Expert mode.)
• Slapping the heaviest armor on every party member. This slows down your recovery time a lot and makes your DPS suffer. Give heavy armor only to tanks and off-tanks, and use the lightest armor you can get away with on everyone else (naked characters are always risky, though; you need some measure of DR to survive.)
• Disengaging too often. There's an option to stop party members' movement once engaged; you should enable that. Don't disengage unless you are protected against disengagement attacks and/or it is absolutely vital for that character to move. (Alternatively, use the IE mod to remove engagement.)

Edited May 23, 2015 by AndreaColombo

[Crucis]

 

When I first played the game (on Hard), I got wiped out all the time too.

 

Common mistakes include:

 

• Bringing all members of the party into the fight simultaneously, thus letting enemies surround you. You should send only your tank(s) to the front and make everyone else intervene when most/all enemies are engaged so you can flank them and they must suck up the flanking or a disengagement attack.
• Hitting your men with friendly fire AoE. Very easy to do if you've got a Druid or Wizard in the party and your AoE markers are disabled (they are by default if playing Expert mode.)
• Slapping the heaviest armor on every party member. This slows down your recovery time a lot and makes your DPS suffer. Give heavy armor only to tanks and off-tanks, and use the lightest armor you can get away with on everyone else (naked characters are always risky, though; you need some measure of DR to survive.)
• Disengaging too often. There's an option to stop party members' movement once engaged; you should enable that. Don't disengage unless you are protected against disengagement attacks and/or it is absolutely vital for that character to move. (Alternatively, use the IE mod to remove engagement.)

 

 

I'm in my 3rd run-thru of the game, and you make some excellent points above.  Let me expand on them.

 

1. If you're not familiar with this style of game from having played the Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale games, I don't think that it's a good idea at all to play your first party on anything other than Easy or perhaps Normal mode, with Expert mode NOT turned on.  Being able to see where your area affect spells will and won't hit matters .. a lot.  Sure, once you have a firm handle on the game, one can give Expert mode a try, but trying to play the game on hard settings and expecting to succeed without any familiarity with the game is crazy.

 

 

 

2. On your first point, there's more to combat than melee and magic.  There's nothing wrong with using ranged combat.  Please note that I'm not any sort of extreme powergamer here, but I played the BG and IWD games and am familiar with how this overall style of combat works.

 

My personal style is to have two dedicated front liners whose job is to try to hold back the enemy melee mobs. Then I have one or two in-betweeners who can go to the front line or stay behind and use ranged weapons and/or spells.  And I have a couple of backliners who are meant to be strictly ranged combat and spells.  (I don't stick with this strictly.  It's more of a guideline to me...) 

 

I happen to like having a good archer in my parties, even in this game with the presence of guns.  Guns have nice damage, but their slow reload makes them weaker for responding to quickly changing tactical situations.  They're like heavy artillery, whereas a good archer is like a quicker to respond sniper.  A good archer (i.e. rogue or ranger) can be great for when you see a very weak enemy that you want to get dead ASAP without waiting for a long reload.  Or maybe a spellcaster that you want to try to hit asap to interrupt a spellcasting.  This isn't to say that I don't have people using guns.  I do.  I just like having one archer for these reasons.

 

Also, you want to avoid being surrounded and enveloped by the enemy.  Often, you'll be outnumbered, and you only win because of better tactics.  Try not to let the enemy flank you.  And if one enemy happens to sneak into your rear, try to have everyone except your front liners gang up on this leaker to kill him ASAP.   But if at all possible, try to keep the enemy in front of your front liners!

 

 

 

3. Armor:  Agree 110%.  With my current party, I have Eder, my primary hold-the-line fighter, in the best plate possible.  And at the same time, I have my PC, Takka, an Island Aumaua from Deadfire with a raider background (who I'm aggressively playing as a swashbuckling sort of fighter), wearing only leather armor.  She wore chain mail for the longest time, but I found that I could get away with her wearing only leather armor.  She doesn't seem to be taking significantly more damage than before, and her attack speed has increased significantly.  Takka is outperforming Eder offensively by a WIDE margin, wearing only leather armor (a unique suit of exceptional leather armor named Kerdhed Pames with a little extra enchantment, but leather armor nonetheless). 

 

I tend to put Durance in excellent plate armor because I put him on the front lines rather often, and expect him to get hit, since his DEFL isn't particularly spectacular.  But I keep my rogue and cipher in no more than leather armor (and may be "less" as I procure some of the great padded armors and robes that exist later in the game). 

 

 

4. Disengaging:  If you have a character that you'd desperately like to disengage from melee, but are afraid to get hit running away, there's a trick you can use sometimes.  If you're next to a Fighter (such as Eder) who has the Knockdown ability, have that Fighter do a knockdown attack on the enemy you want to disengage from.  And if the fighter is successful at knocking that enemy down, then your other character is free to run away safely.  The fighter knockdown ability can be very useful for situations like this.  I personally don't knock down enemies just because I can.  I save knockdowns for situations like this one where knocking down an enemy can save a team mate's life.

Edited May 24, 2015 by Crucis

[Drath]

Would be good to have more details. Its difficult to comment on things otherwise. For example, doing Raedric's Keep at L4 is going to be rather tough at higher difficulties.

 

I used Eder as tank early in my game. Yes a fighter can be configured as dps but if you're playing with mostly companions, you won't have another good tank for some time. With Eder I got Defender, Vigorous Defense for early abilities and Wary Defender, Weapon and Shield Style for talents. Together with a good large shield (Fine or better if possible) and some minor deflection item, you should have enough Deflection to get quite a few attacks to miss.

 

As mentioned by other forumers, another tank or tankish character can be good too, especially in open ground fights where your less durable party members can get swarmed. Kana can be a bit of an offtank, I suppose, though truth be told, I didn't like his tanking one bit on PotD, compared to say Eder. The other viable tank companion is Pallegina which you won't be getting so early on, so if you don't like Kana, perhaps get a mercenary tank. Itumaak or a ranger's bear companion can make a good fast tank as well for picking up runners.

 

Yea so either beef up the fighter tank so that he takes less damage and/or get an offtank to share the damage. If your fighter is still going down, you probably need more damage output or more disabling spells. For single target damage, I've found Rogue the best class. For AoE damage, you already have 2 druids and 1 wizard so you should be well covered. However if you hate resting and still want spammable AoE damage for every encounter, I would suggest getting a Cipher. If you have passed Caed Nua, you can get Grieving Mother in Dyrford.

[roller12]

"lvl4 with another druid". If that other druid is Hivarias then he is underlevelled for those areas and doing some quests around Gilded Vale would bring the party back on track.

[majnoon]

Thanks for the tips, I can learn from this, many thanks

[dilemma]

I've had less trouble taking on battles "over my pay grade" since choosing a rogue as my chief character and buying a "tank" fighter to do the main battling alongside Edér. But how I take on major battle groups is a method people may find tedious. Once my rogue is at at least 3 stealth (#1 requirement), equipped with a bow (#2), and has that temporary invisibility ability (#3, but I forget the precise name of it), I'm set. I park the party far from the anticipated enemy party and send my rogue ahead, scouting.  As soon as one enemy (only one if possible) comes into sight, my rogue fires--then runs back to my group.  If your party is far enough away, most or all of the pursuing enemies will turn back at some point, and the rogue can attack the last one visible and draw that one away from the pack. Sometimes my rogue finds a sweet spot where one step backward gets the target to retreat. Then the rogue follows, shoots (the target turns and chases), then the rogue retreats to the sweet spot, and repeats these steps until the target is dead. Or the whole party comes forward to pick off the loner. As I warned, it may seem tedious, but it's made my rogue the chief killer of the party and allows you to pick off one-by-one the members of a much stronger force. I'm sure you could do this with a purchased rogue, also, as long as those three criteria are met. Bonus if your rogue is high in Mechanics: you'll rarely meet a chest or locked door that rogue can't conquer.