Pillars Is Easy on... er... Easy? Help the New

[Azrael008uk]

I love RPG's and this looked great and my experience so far is a good one.

 

Looking into this game before I picked it up for the XBox ONE I was warned that it was hard... at times unforgiving and complex.

 

So, on the advice of the difficulty prompts, new at Real Time RPGs, I opted for Easy and am noticing the following issues.

 

1.  It's easy.

 

It's also early.  Is the game lulling me into a false sense of security?  I've heard people say "the game started pretty easy and then the diffculty suddenly spiked".

 

2.  My party do stuff without me telling them.

 

To be fair, this is a handy feature.  Upon entering combat the game will pause and I can direct everyone's initial actions at any time.  If I'm caught out of formation I'll sort that first and then get to the business of attacking.

 

Unfortunately the A.I. are handling their roles so well that combat usually consists of my party kicking the crap out of an enemy, said enemy dying... and then my Wizard casting "Slicken" on the corpse.

 

So I'm after the Community's advice on the following:

 

1.  Do I up the difficulty?  I'm new to this game but I have been gaming since Pencil, Paper and 20 sided Dice.

 

My builds are competent.  I am not obsessed with "L33T Stats" as like every decent RPG parties of reasonable builds should be able to complete the game.  So should I pop it up a notch or is Pillars slyly luring me into a false sense of security before I'm mauled by a flock of giant pandas or worse?

 

2.  Do I just need to keep hitting that pause button and micro-managing my entire party?  

 

It's handy that they get to work with a sense of purpose but by letting the A.I. manage its self I feel I am missing out on experiencing how these different character types play.

 

Maybe I've pretty much answered my own question there so how do I gain complete control of my characters?  i.e. Someone wants to throw their Level 2 spell as their first act of combat... but I want them to throw something different.  How do I usurp the A.I.'s control of actions completely so I'm controlling them for my entire party.  Is it a case that I have to watch all of them and pause after each action has completed or are there Game Settings I am able to adjust to give me that full control?

 

This might seem a bit of a long post for a couple of simple questions but let's face it... if you didn't like reading reams of Text you wouldn't be playing "Pillars Of Eternity"!

 

Thanks in advance for your help with this.

 

Az

 

 

[ManifestedISO]

You should have no problem on Normal difficulty, by the sound of it. Turn off party AI by clicking the head/brain icon button thing glowing blue next to individual character portraits. I believe you can adjust AI as well in the menu, but I prefer to manage each member's actions individually. 

 

The height of difficulty spikes depend on how prepared you are with a variety of offensive and defensive capabilities. Battling Shadows, for example, drove me up the wall until I realized fire and other tactics make it easier. Although some battles simply cannot be won until higher level, even if you can access them now. 

[Heijoushin]

Actually, the game gets easier in late stages, so I definitely think you want to up that difficulty. What's your party configuration like? If you want more micromanagement, why not play more casters etc?

[Azrael008uk]

Thanks guys.

 

That's exactly the sort of advice I was after.  I'll pop up the difficulty and thanks especially for the tool tips to take full control of the characters.

 

I've hired a dwarf (why does this sound so wrong) who's currently fulfilling Tanking duties and then there's the first 3 characters you'd meet in a standard playthrough and my Wizard self.

 

They all form up with the "hit me please" people in the front and the "wow... please don't hit me... ever" people in the back when we're going into combat.

 

I did manage to unleash Pillar of Fire against a Troll before everyone else dropped him.  That was pretty cool.

 

Again thanks for the tips.

[Fenixp]

First of all, take note that the difficulty will only increase in areas you've not visited yet - changing difficulty changes how many monsters in which composition spawn, not their stats, damage etc. Well that's not strictly true for story-time and path of the damned difficulties, but still - when a map is already seeded, monster composition will remain the same regardless of changed difficulty (I ... believe?)

 

They all form up with the "hit me please" people in the front and the "wow... please don't hit me... ever" people in the back when we're going into combat.

Not sure how much it'll do that on Normal, but the game tends to punish that strategy quite harshly later on :-P The AI tends to be smart enough to go after your mages when it notices they're far too easy to take down. Edited September 7, 2017 by Fenixp

[Torm51]

Just play Triple Crown and you wont complain about difficulty.  False sense of security indeed.  Screw up a fight 80 hours into a play through cause you forgot that certain bad guys teleport.  Take mass paralyzes and watch yourself crumble and cry.

[Sidmus]

I settled on Hard difficulty for my first play through, and that feels kind of right for me - I could get through most of the trash fights on cruise-control, but had to pay more attention to the bosses. Mind you, I am pretty familiar with this kind of game (played all the Black Isle games)

[Torm51]

^{TC for life.  Do it!}

[Piero]

I haven't play a RTwP or any crpg before, settled Medium at the start, changed it to Hard after the attack to the caravan, had problems just in a few encounters while learning mechanics(first encounters with inmunities and things like teleporting enemies) and getting used to the combat. if you plan to manage all your actions, read descriptions and think (i mean, maybe you don't want to worry to much and that is fine) i recommend you to try Hard.

Edited September 8, 2017 by Piero

[Elric Galad]

This game isn't that difficult, but to be honnest, the rules need a bit of pratice for something like first act.

 

Understanding how the game works is basically the only not-so-easy task for a beginning.

 

Then, for a good gamer you won't have any difficulty until :

- a couple of endgame bosses

- Path of the Damned. So you can freely raise difficulty up to hard, even if you started as Easy. And even Path of the Damned is not so difficult if you build your characters properly and understand the skills.

[JerekKruger]

How much difference is there with the XBox version? I ask because almost everyone who plays the PC version would agree that the early game (act I and early parts of II) is the hardest, and the game gets easier after that (barring the really tough fights). Might it be scaled differently in the port?

 

In any case the difference between easy, normal and hard is minimal since enemy stats don't change. On hard you'll get more enemies and/or tougher variants (elder lions rather than lions say) but it didn't make the game noticeably harder in my opinion. Only PotD and story mode really change things significantly.

[Torm51]

TC for life!

[pillarplayer]

For me Normal was the way to go.  I'm not into all the micromanagement when it comes to combat, I'm in this for the storyline and NPC interaction.  When it comes to combat I mostly just hope my party is big/strong enough to win lol

[champy]

I wish I played on hard. 

 

Normal tough on first run at first, but man, later, you can start cheesing anything at your level. I find myself most often looking for places with higher level enemies. 

 

Also, I would totally make my own character, but much earlier. Barbarian way better tank than Eder. 

[champy]

 

I love RPG's and this looked great and my experience so far is a good one.

 

Looking into this game before I picked it up for the XBox ONE I was warned that it was hard... at times unforgiving and complex.

 

So, on the advice of the difficulty prompts, new at Real Time RPGs, I opted for Easy and am noticing the following issues.

 

1.  It's easy.

 

It's also early.  Is the game lulling me into a false sense of security?  I've heard people say "the game started pretty easy and then the diffculty suddenly spiked".

 

2.  My party do stuff without me telling them.

 

To be fair, this is a handy feature.  Upon entering combat the game will pause and I can direct everyone's initial actions at any time.  If I'm caught out of formation I'll sort that first and then get to the business of attacking.

 

Unfortunately the A.I. are handling their roles so well that combat usually consists of my party kicking the crap out of an enemy, said enemy dying... and then my Wizard casting "Slicken" on the corpse.

 

So I'm after the Community's advice on the following:

 

1.  Do I up the difficulty?  I'm new to this game but I have been gaming since Pencil, Paper and 20 sided Dice.

 

My builds are competent.  I am not obsessed with "L33T Stats" as like every decent RPG parties of reasonable builds should be able to complete the game.  So should I pop it up a notch or is Pillars slyly luring me into a false sense of security before I'm mauled by a flock of giant pandas or worse?

 

2.  Do I just need to keep hitting that pause button and micro-managing my entire party?  

 

It's handy that they get to work with a sense of purpose but by letting the A.I. manage its self I feel I am missing out on experiencing how these different character types play.

 

Maybe I've pretty much answered my own question there so how do I gain complete control of my characters?  i.e. Someone wants to throw their Level 2 spell as their first act of combat... but I want them to throw something different.  How do I usurp the A.I.'s control of actions completely so I'm controlling them for my entire party.  Is it a case that I have to watch all of them and pause after each action has completed or are there Game Settings I am able to adjust to give me that full control?

 

This might seem a bit of a long post for a couple of simple questions but let's face it... if you didn't like reading reams of Text you wouldn't be playing "Pillars Of Eternity"!

 

Thanks in advance for your help with this.

 

Az

 

 

I've beaten Dragon Age: Origins on Nightmare. Beat that game so many times. 

 

Came into this thinking it was harder. Played on Normal. Great challenge when I first started. Later in the game, though, you become very powerful if you optimize correctly. 

 

Start on Hard is my advice.