Who is the biggest, baddest, hardest enemy?

[champy]

I'm pretty bummed at the moment. I think I ruined the game. 

 

Beat the Alpine Dragon yesterday with a squad of 5 lvl 13 players and 1 lvl 12 warrior. That was a very fun and challenging fight that required me to do about an hour of re speccing, optimizing gear, items, etc before I beat him. Took about a dozen tries, but now I feel I can waste the boss np. 

 

After that, I took on the master below, which was a cake walk in comparison to Alpine Dragon. 

 

Where does the game go from here? I'm destroying mobs with ease and the element of strategy is gone. 

 

Is there somewhere else I can go that is insanely challenging? What's left in terms of difficulty? 

 

Playing on Normal, beat AP Dragon with increased difficulty. Wished I started this game on hard ... 

Edited January 17, 2018 by champy

[MaxQuest]

Is there somewhere else I can go that is insanely challenging? What's left in terms of difficulty?

There are two ways to look at encounter difficulty:

- v1. by their uhm, absolute difficulty (or rather from a lvl 16 party point of view)

- v2. by their relative difficulty compared to level when you can meet them.

 

By v1, I would list the following as the hardest encounters: (from hardest to easiest)

1. Upscaled Brynlod

2. Llengrath

3. Upscaled Magran's Faithful

4. Alpine Dragon 

 

By v2, I would list the following as the hardest encounters: (from hardest to easiest)

1. Two bears in the cave on lvl 1

2. The Dweller on lvl 5

3. Lighthouse on lvl 5

4. Flissa (from Russetwood) on lvl 7

5. Upscalled Galvino's Cabin on lvl 9

6. Zolla on lvl 3

7. Alpine Dragon on lvl 11

8. Upscalled Battery Sirens on lvl 9-10 (iirc, there was a moment when you had to fight 3 of them)

9. Upscalled WM2 monks

10. Upscalled Elmshore on lvl 11

 

Wished I started this game on hard ...

You can still switch to Hard. And even to PotD (although note: you won't be able to switch from PotD back). Edited January 17, 2018 by MaxQuest

[champy]

 

Is there somewhere else I can go that is insanely challenging? What's left in terms of difficulty?

There are two ways to look at encounter difficulty:

- v1. by their uhm, absolute difficulty (or rather from a lvl 16 party point of view)

- v2. by their relative difficulty compared to level when you can meet them.

 

By v1, I would list the following as the hardest encounters: (from hardest to easiest)

1. Upscaled Brynlod

2. Llengrath

3. Upscaled Magran's Faithful

4. Alpine Dragon 

 

By v2, I would list the following as the hardest encounters: (from hardest to easiest)

1. Two bears in the cave on lvl 1

2. The Dweller on lvl 5

3. Lighthouse on lvl 5

4. Flissa (from Russetwood) on lvl 7

5. Upscalled Galvino's Cabin on lvl 9

6. Zolla on lvl 3

7. Alpine Dragon on lvl 11

8. Upscalled Battery Sirens on lvl 9-10 (iirc, there was a moment when you had to fight 3 of them)

9. Upscalled WM2 monks

10. Upscalled Elmshore on lvl 11

 

Wished I started this game on hard ...

You can still switch to Hard. And even to PotD (although note: you won't be able to switch from PotD back).

 

 

So, there are areas still left that are significantly harder? If so I want to go there *now* lol. 

 

Thanks. re: switching to hard now ... I want to do that on next play through. 

[MaxQuest]

So, there are areas still left that are significantly harder? If so I want to go there *now* lol.

Significantly or a a bit harder, depends on your party)

The thing about Magran's Faithful and Brynlod bounties, is that instead of having one really strong boss with many weak minions, there are many simply strong enemies.

[Crucis]

I think that one problem, though it may not be the OP's problem, is that it's always seemed to me that some people are such hardcore min-max optimizers (of character attributes, skills, equipment mixes, etc.)  that they end up making the game too easy, and then some (not all) turn around and complain about it.  Maybe some people should be less concerned about optimizing the bleep out of everything and just play the game.

 

Please don't think of this is an insult or whatever.  It's more of an observation.  Much as I'm sure that the developers love that people love their game and want to play it repeatedly, they can't design a game around such a small percentage of the game's potential audience.  It's got to be designed for the vast majority of players.

 

 

I will say, though, that perhaps the devs should at least look at the difficulty of the game from the perspective of the completionist player who may not be a hardcore min-maxer, but does want to play as much of the game as possible, though it can cause them to have enough XP and thus  character levels to make the game a bit less difficult than the devs intend.  Of course, I suppose that that's hard to balance as well, because at the same time there may be players who go for the other extreme, i.e. trying to get through the main storyline as quickly as possible, etc., etc.   So I'm not sure how they can balance for both of those extremes, other than perhaps the difficulty scaling they added in after WM1 or WM2 (don't remember which one).

[Boeroer]

The game is too easy even for the usual player after some time if you are doing every quest. This has nothing to do with optimizing the heck out of the game.

 

Maybe some people should be less concerned about optimizing the bleep out of everything and just play the game.

Yes, that's what I did in my first playthrough - on normal - which was too easy. And then I optimized the bleep out of everything when playing "Path of the Damned" which is supposed to be very difficult. Which it isn't. I thought that difficulty setting was made for people who optimize the bleep out of everything. If not, we need another difficulty setting. "Path of the Powergamer" or so.

[Torm51]

The game is too easy even for the usual player after some time if you are doing every quest. This has nothing to do with optimizing the heck out of the game.

 

 

Maybe some people should be less concerned about optimizing the bleep out of everything and just play the game.

Yes, that's what I did in my first playthrough - on normal - which was too easy. And then I optimized the bleep out of everything when playing "Path of the Damned" which is supposed to be very difficult. Which it isn't. I thought that difficulty setting was made for people who optimize the bleep out of everything. If not, we need another difficulty setting. "Path of the Powergamer" or so.

 

I must be terrible at this game. I have beaten a TC run only four times. Most of the times I lose. Wish I had Boer’s Magic.

[dunehunter]

Yeah I tried upscaled Battery Siren at the 1st floor yesterday and get ass-kicked pretty hard for the first a few tries, the tank block strategy usually doesn't work there because the wraith will use dimension shift to transfer your tank into a corner and make your squishy members exposed to these spirits, and different kind of spirit have different on hit effect, some stun some paralysis and Battery Siren itself hit pretty hard. Good encounter tho!

[Crucis]

The game is too easy even for the usual player after some time if you are doing every quest. This has nothing to do with optimizing the heck out of the game.

 

Maybe some people should be less concerned about optimizing the bleep out of everything and just play the game.

Yes, that's what I did in my first playthrough - on normal - which was too easy. And then I optimized the bleep out of everything when playing "Path of the Damned" which is supposed to be very difficult. Which it isn't. I thought that difficulty setting was made for people who optimize the bleep out of everything. If not, we need another difficulty setting. "Path of the Powergamer" or so.

 

 

Well, to be fair, Boeroer, I did mention over-optimization and the XP issue relating to completionism separately. 

 

Another reason things might be "too easy" is that some players may be very familiar with this sort of game, and simply understand how to play them well from the start, once they understand the various spells, etc., while the average player who may have never played an old infinity engine game in their lives may be starting from a very different starting point and may take a lot longer to learn to details, concepts, and strategies that really help in this sort of game.

 

I have to admit that I've never been much of a powergamer.  And while I might plan my PCs before hand, I've never been one to worry about the equipment.  I only think about what skills and talents to take, and just deal with equipment on the fly.  So, from a power gamer perspective, I may not have parties that are all that well optimized.  At the same time, I am very much of a completionist.  Not exactly out of some hardcore desire to find every little shred of XP or every single task.  I just like getting the most of a play through, rather than trying to rush from start to finish.  But I do recognize that this means that your characters can end up being over-powered and make things seem rather easy.  I just don't worry about it as much as others.  But that's neither here nor there.  And if being a hardcore powergamer floats your boat, go for it.

 

It might be amusing to have a Path of the PowerGamer.

 

 

One question:  How  does Path of the Damned compare to the super-hard mode (forget the name) in the IWD games where the enemies got ridiculous amounts of HP, and you often had to summon mobs of your own monsters and animals for cannon fodder and to help grind down the enemy?

[Boeroer]

For me, it's totally ok if people don't powergame. I, for myself, always seek to find a way to justify my minmaxing or gimmiky build ideas with some backstory (see Immortal Martyr or Counselor Ploi or whatever build that has a backstory). I will also pick items that are stylish (in terms of "fit the style of the char") over ones that are simply better (but look rubbish on that character). For example I like Redfield (the shield) because of its looks and will sometimes use it although it's clearly worse than Little Savior. I also really like the looks of The White Spire + White Crest armor and will pick this over Blade of the Endless Paths and so on. So, not 100% powergamer one might say. However, I like to find stuff that's a bit OP and then do a playthrough with that.

 

But even when I use very "non-powergamey" approaches - as for example 6 rogues - the game ist still not very difficult on PoTD. Tedious to play, but not superdifficult. Or if I just use three chars. It's not even the whole difficulty setting that's too easy I'd say. PotD is quite good in the early game. The problem with PoE is more that is gets easier and easier the further you go. Gets better with upscaling, but still...

Like you said: has something to do with XP issues and completionism.

 

I didn't even complain a lot that it's too easy in the past. It's ok for me because the game provides enough fun even when it's a bit too easy. I guess to make a game like PoE really challenging for somebody who likes to optimize and who has meta-knowledge you would need an AI that is smarter and adapts. Just raising the values of enemies is kinda boring after some time and you always find ways to circumvent this - if values don't become too ridiculous.

 

Hoenstly I never played BG, BG2 or IWD more than once or twice and when I did I played on the normal difficulty. At that time I had very little time for games so I focused more on the story than on powergaming. So I can't say.

 

From Hard to PotD is a bigger step than from Normal to Hard though. Especially the early game with grown up wolves, bears, boars, phantoms, shades and also enemy fighters (really, they have Unbending at lvl 2 or so, makes them hard to kill) is really challenging at first.

Edited January 23, 2018 by Boeroer