What difficulty are you playing on and how do you fare? (Poll)

[Azeot]

I'm playing on hard, expert mode on the first playthrough (I HATE all the bloody bars and dots and whatnot they added), and all in all it is going pretty smoothly. Sometimes I fucked up and reloaded, a couple times I just gave up on a fight and went somewhere else to gain some more power, but that is the normal experience. Now that i am at the beginning of act 3 though I have the suspicion my party is a little bit overpowered. At level 10 I'm just breezing through all encounters... which is not good, I quickly lose interest without some degree of challenge.

 

[TheEntitledOne]

My Hard-Expert game started being quite step (thinking on rerolling), but became trivial after the first 1/3. Didn't bother with Adra Dragon (KOed half my part in one attack) but rest of the stuff was easy even if I really didn't bother optimizing equipment or tactics.

 

[jagged-jimmy]

Also did you kill the Ogre bounty in Elmshore? This is the first fight i did not manage after several tries (and actually needed a re-try). Went on to Twin Elms.

It was one of the toughest fights I've run into so far. But I managed it on the first time. Unfortunately one of the last two ogre druids hit me with the insect plague bug. So reload anyway...
Now I'm doing other stoff and waiting for the patch to become available or for my chars to become so powerful that I can reliably take them out before the ogres cast insect plague.

Shit, i had the effect on after the fight, but it did not do any damage. After save&reload the visual effect is gone but the statistics still say:
": 8 Raw damage"
": -20 Concetration" without effect name...
But does not seem to do anything... i hope.

 

[Mazisky]

I hope someone will mod difficulty, i'm not a modder but i guess it can be done

 

[Shannow]

Also did you kill the Ogre bounty in Elmshore? This is the first fight i did not manage after several tries (and actually needed a re-try). Went on to Twin Elms.

It was one of the toughest fights I've run into so far. But I managed it on the first time. Unfortunately one of the last two ogre druids hit me with the insect plague bug. So reload anyway...
Now I'm doing other stoff and waiting for the patch to become available or for my chars to become so powerful that I can reliably take them out before the ogres cast insect plague.

Shit, i had the effect on after the fight, but it did not do any damage. After save&reload the visual effect is gone but the statistics still say:
": 8 Raw damage"
": -20 Concetration" without effect name...
But does not seem to do anything... i hope.

Well, with the patch now out on steam and soon coming to the other platforms, you should be ok in any way.
Was the same for me. While I was clearly not taking damage, I wasn't sure about concentration. And since one bugged effect just might generate others... I wasn't going to take chances

 

[sser]

Dropped 10hrs on Hard. Got some gamebreaking bugs so I went ahead and put the game on hold. Returned, remade on Path of the Damned and am 10hrs into that.

IMO, it is the right difficulty. Hard isn't really that hard and lets you faceroll a little too much for a game with little combat-creativity to begin with. Path of the Damned has some hard segments, but it's very dependent on what enemies you're facing and a little bit of RNG. (Oh, the Shade teleported to your caster? Might as well reload because they'll be dead after you unpause and blink your eyes. - that sort of thing)

I think the Shades/Phantoms warped people's sense of difficulty, as did the starting areas that have many spots you shouldn't tackle as soon as you come across them. For example, the Shades, Phantoms, and Will-o-Wisps sitting in one side of the Ethoas temple, all of them insta-gibbing you presumably the first time you step down there, and the mumbly bumbly which-boot-shall-you-go-beneath spiders in literally the next room over offer a fucking weird dichotomy of difficulty like right off the bat. I'm sure a lot of these people complaining about difficulty were probably having a, "Wait, am I supposed to be here or not?" dilemma. Meanwhile, I roll up to Raedric's Castle pumping Alothas' Slick-Soundtrack a few hours later, eventually returning to that docile little village with its human-ornamented tree to dump off 500 blood-caked chest plates. Say what. Also I'm drunk.

 

[mutonizer]

Well, first run completed on PotD, so a couple comments:

Spoiler

- Never reloaded anything apart from total party wipe game overs. Over the entire game, that happened 6 times before end boss battle (see below). Think that's decent enough for a PotD blind playthrough, bit low actually since this is it, there is nothing more challenging.
- Difficulty is there early on when you lack companions, gear and specialization. Past Act 2, most battles were more trivial apart from a couple here and there where mobs had just stupid auto attack abilities (ie dominate mainly, where it wasn't hard, just boring). Wiped only once after Act 2, on Skaen boss in Dyrford, mainly because: stupid. After that, was pretty easy, until the last boss...
- Haven't really fought any dragons (talking seemed more logical most times) but the last boss battle was just crazy and I simply cannot win mathematically unless I constantly land 90+ rolls or something. My characters are all level 9-10 and wiped the floor with everything up and until THAT fight. I tried about 30 times and just said fuck it. Could have loaded previous save (hours before last area), go and grind all the side quests and whatnot, but didn't fit the run I was doing, so I just went "fuck it" and accepted defeat, using instant kill command to just get closure with the ending slides since I was recording everything. Don't really care personally but the stats on that last boss are just stupid on PotD considering the entire content of the game up until that point.
- Main quest was too "urgent" and therefore I missed quite a bit of content I think. It just didn't feel right to go and help someone with their cats and whatnot, while your character is going completely batshit crazy and you're constantly chasing after some big bad. It lacked a quiet moment to allow me to enjoy the side quests, while respecting the story, which was disappointing.
- Encounter design sucked balls most of the time but that was already clear in beta. They need to hire fucking designers with knowledge of what an encounter is. Monster design is also a problem but the system's new, hopefully they'll polish the edges with extension and sequels.
- Overall, pretty cool experience, good challenge as a whole and really felt like a good old BG/BG2/IWD game, with better combat (personal preferences I know), but I used self imposed rules to enhance my run as well as respected the character's motivation and the urgency of the main quest. A completionist and min-maxer will just wipe the floor with everything very early on I think and roll through most content after Act 2, apart maybe for dragons and the final boss.

 

[Old Hans]

hard mode/iron man: I really started to lose my fighting spirit during act 2 when I entered the deaths door dungeon and came face to face with the same old slimes, trolls and mushroom men that were total push overs at the START OF THE GAME.

 

[Anthedon]

I played on Hard. It was pretty easy all the way through. Two fights aside, which both represent a huge difficulty spike compared to the rest of the game.

Spoiler

Adra Dragon and Thaos

 

[Morkar Left]

Which attributes are getting altered with +50% in PotD? Fatigue and accuracy? I would prefer when enemies with classes have the same values / level progression my party has instead of just getting +50% of stats or something. Instead I would prefer when they could just get another level or something.

I'm playing on hard and I'm not using any potions or food so far, rarely resting and no cheesing whatsoever but it looks like it's too easy for me.

Is PotD the new Normal? Is it possible to play on PotD without it feeling like I have to cheese and completely min/maxing through it to beat the game?

The game needs some rebalancing. The ghosts at the beginning are fine. They are (too) hard for beginners but it's no urgent quest (it's even optional), you can come back later and they are perfectly beatable. Wildlife in general (boars, lions etc.) seems a lot harder than fights with actual humans, trolls and the like. The should be made easier.
Normal enemies like soldiers, guards, wizards and what not need to be harder. In the city are constantly interesting setups for good party vs party fights but they are soo easy on level 4/5 with 6 partymembers that I don't even need to use active abilities or spells. Just autoattack and watching till its over. I suppose these fights should be a challenge and not some easy pushovers to show how proficient you already became.

 

[mutonizer]

Which attributes are getting altered with +50% in PotD?

+15ACC, +15DEF, +25-50% ENDURANCE, max of all mob types from all other difficulty levels.
That's it.

 

[Zetor]

Playing on hard, I'm still pretty early (started playing post-patch... just got to Od Nua after finishing up all of the early maps incl. the castle), and so far the only enemies that caused more than a minor headache were the shadows (and especially shades). Those teleporting fuckers with their non-standard damage types forced me to make a heavy armor+1h+shield set for Aloth, and he STILL gets curbstomped every other fight no matter how much I babysit him and crowd control the shadows as they teleport to him. /angryface

Enemies that charm or confuse (like the shroom things) are also a pain, but those are much easier to manage than the shadows. Since my cipher can fire off two of those level 2 paralyze + aoe immobilize abilities right off the bat (assuming I get the opener) and get enough focus from damage to keep refreshing it indefinitely due to paralyzed enemies having 0 DR, boss-type enemies aren't a problem.

 

[Cadmus]

I'm playing on Hard/expert and it's definitely not hard, in the sense that I reloaded only a few times when I royally fucked up, like running into an encounter without any spells or scouting with exhausted characters, etc + the Roedric fight which I cheesed by initiating the dialogue with my weakest char, letting him lie on the ground and pull the enemies one by one to the entrance, but fuck that, the game didn't play fair, wanted me to stand like an idiot in the middle of the enemies so it deserved to be cheesed.

The only IE games I finished were IWD and PS:T, so I'm no IE grognard or anything and I didn't bother reading most of the rules until halfway through my playtime because I hate getting overwhelmed with information at the start of the game. The lore dump doesn't help, either. I made 1 barbarian custom char, too.

I'm honestly sick of this shit, no game has been even remotely challenging on Hard in the past few years and I don't like the obvious cheat difficulties where your chance to hit is nerfed etc.etc.

 

[hell bovine]

Playing on PoD, but only arrived at the first village with my chanter. So far the only real obstacles were the bears in the cave (which ate her, so had to concede defeat) and the bugs (though they might be game features, hard to tell sometimes). Wasn't really my first choice, but for some reason my druid would randomly deactivate the shapeshift at the start of combat, despite not being shifted in the first place.

 

[jagged-jimmy]

There should be another poll about how the certain someone was defeated.

Spoiler

THAT MOTHERFUCKING DRAGON. Killed it first time with a petrification trap - 6 seconds to unleash justice, but then Adragans raped me, cause Eder already died. Second time Aloth managed to hit with Petrification and i sorted it out from there... This one-shotting of his is kind of unfair.

Petrification seems like cheating, but then again, if the "bosses" cheat by sky-high defences and whatnot... I could do the 2 hardest battles in the game only with the use of petrification and it's 4x damage. Sure you have to hit with it, but Aloth has 75/80 Accuracy and requires one lucky roll to do it.

 

[Wizfall]

If hard is too easy, a solution could be to play with a party of 4 (or even three and without any custom).
I'm actually playing with a party of 3 (PC included and no other custom) on normal and it's quite enjoyable but i'm not too far in the game right now.
Not ideal if you like much better big party though.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I played on Hard. It was pretty easy all the way through. Two fights aside, which both represent a huge difficulty spike compared to the rest of the game.

Spoiler

Adra Dragon and Thaos

Why did you have any problems with

Spoiler

Thaos?

Were you playing without a Wizard or a Cipher? What level were you?

 

[mutonizer]

Going for another PotD run with a full custom party.
Paladin tank (main), Fighter Tank, Fighter melee DPS, Paladin melee DPS, Priest, Priest.
Both paladins are Bleak Walkers and Priest are Magran, going for full Aggressive Cruel mercenaries, hire by Aedyr Empire to cause problems in the Eastern Reaches and fuck up their governments while gathering intel.

Spoiler

Going for more complesionist route this time and holy shit, I'm already swimming in cash and didn't even reach Cad Nua. Cleared entire Raedric Castle but the Throne Room, piece of cake so far. Only wiped once when doing temple of Eothas with level 1 crew and level 2 main character (that was stupid really) but been really cruising since then.

 

[Irenaeus]

I play on Normal (first playthrough, haven't played IE games in a decade) and I'm learning, just about the right difficulty. I play to play on Hard next playthrough.

 

[Kaldurenik]

Once i have all the latest patches i'm going to go with PoTD

 

[Brotherman Bill]

Those of you who killed Nalrend the wise (bounty Ogre) how did you do it? What chars and levels and shit did you have?

My peeps are just getting raped by the infinite insect swarms

 

[Phage]

Playing on normal. Going to get the story companions, which, from my understanding are very shittily optimized. If I end up actually really loving the game for some reason, then I could just replay it on path of the damned with my own created adventurers.

 

[Durante]

I'm playing on hard, and the beginning of each new act so far was somewhat challenging, with the game getting progressively easier through the act. That seems almost unavoidable though in a non-level-scaled game with a lot of optional content.

Overall, I think the difficulty is quite balanced.

 

[Minttunator]

I'm playing on hard, and the beginning of each new act so far was somewhat challenging, with the game getting progressively easier through the act. That seems almost unavoidable though in a non-level-scaled game with a lot of optional content.

Overall, I think the difficulty is quite balanced.

This mirrors my experience - I think Hard is a good difficulty as the game feels challenging enough most of the time without being too annoying. I'll definitely go PotD on my next playthrough, though.

 

[Mazisky]

My Thread on the official forum about the game being too easy is one of the most viewed and commented, i hope devs will notice that game is crappy unbalanced and maybe they'll nerf xp gains and buff enemies stats