Heya,

 

Crpg vgeteran here. I previously finished the game with a cipher on normal difficulty, version 1.06.

Enjoyed it, and definitely planning another playthrough at a higher difficulty.

(Game gets especially easy when you hit mind plague)

 

I want to play a barbarian, and my debate is if I should play on hard, or skip directly to potd. This is also considering that 2.0+ already added some improvements that are suppose to make the game more challenging.

 

Any advice/opinions?

 

TIA!

PoTD.  If you are a CRPG vet Hard isn't very different from normal.  I am a CRPG guy too and started on hard.  Did not die on my first play through.  Once I started playing PoTD its a lot more of a challenge and I have had one Trial of Iron play through ended because I made the wrong decision.  Its good.

Depends on how hard you thought Normal is. I'd say POTD is great for challenging you to play more tactically.

Definitely PotD for crpg vets. I regret my first play through on hard on account of so many encounters being too effortless.

Definitely POTD if you are an infinite engine veteran, 80's-90's CRPG veteran, or a newer player who like tactical challenges. Hard difficulty if not.

 

POTD significantly increases the number of enemies you face, requiring a much more tactical approach to combat.

 

 

Note that even POTD will most of the time after the early game feel fairly easy if you are an accomplished veteran CRPG player, but you'll have to stay sharp because things can quickly turn pearshaped if you don't. In many ways that's the biggest difference over hard: how quickly things can go terribly wrong if you commit tactical mistakes. If that doesn't sound attractive to you, hard difficulty may be more suited.

Path of the Damned. I just finished the game on hard with a cipher and restarted with a barbarian on Path of the Damned. I'm currently running a party with two front-line paladins, a back line barbarian with a reach weapon and a priest, wizard and chanter and I have to say, the extra challenge makes it way more fun than hard. Path of the Damned really makes you think about tactics, spell use, use of camping supplies, food and potions and party build. I love it.

Hard difficulty feels a bit like Nightmare difficulty in games like Diablo -- everything is the same except it takes a bit longer to end each encounter.  Some people like that, I suppose, but others (myself included) just find it dull.  PotD, on the other hand, changes some encounters in a fairly significant way and requires players to think more carefully about their strategies if they are going to survive.  That's the difficulty level to choose if you want a genuine challenge (with no offense intended to people who play PoE for its story and aren't interested in PotD). 

Thanks all

 

I think that on normal difficulty the only encounter I remember being difficult was The Champion of Berath one, though I didn't fight the master below.

 

Also, didn't mention that I'm still planning on using the story NPCs and not min/maxing my character, as I do like to roleplay a bit

Not a problem; POTD is perfectly doable with the story companions.