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

[Kayerts]

one thing ive noticed playing on Trials of iron is if your current fight is going HORRIBLE, you can just quit the game and it starts at the last save.

Ahem:

"Bushido is realized in the presence of death. This means choosing death whenever there is a choice between life and death. There is no other reasoning."
- Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

Anyway, I'm playing (slowly) on PotD with a fairly stupid "armor is for girls" party config. (It's definitely not optimized for survivability, but it does clear most encounters very quickly.) I'm level 11, and I haven't been really challenged since I figured out that PoE is not secretly a MOBA. I think for people who have IE-ish intuitions about the relative merits of debuffs versus direct damage abilities, it's pretty easy to select a kit of overpowered abilities as you level; the objective difficulty curve isn't designed around that, so the effective difficulty curve takes a nosedive as the game goes on.

Overall I'd probably agree with Bubbles' comments earlier: median difficulty is harder than the modded IE games, but there aren't spikes of the sort you see when e.g. some modder with a chip on his shoulder decides that it'd be funny to have an encounter where the entire enemy team gets an autocast Time Stop every other round. ("You're twice as smart, right?")

I might try this on Ironman, if only to give myself an excuse to try out goofy degenerate custom party builds. (E.g. 3 ciphers + 3 fighters; goal is to kill everything with laser matrices made of ectoplasmic echoes.)

 

[Shadenuat]

Spoiler

PoTD Thaos-mole got popped, love them 6 traps per party
Look at him flying around in pieces
Only thing was missing is a part of Sarevok vo shouting something like "muhahaha I am god of murder"

Somewhat agree with mutonizer about 150 deflection and aoe 1-shotting stuff but my party was melee oriented so it wasn't best party for boss fights anyway. I don't think I ever got anything better than crappy graze on Thaos while I managed to bring down both giants easy compared to him. Well until he ran into traps I strategically placed.

Spoiler

Thaos dialogue has 0 rep or stat checks, so don't rush the map with bonuses from Twin Elms rest thinking you can talk with him about something interesting

So yeah PoTD... it's kinda like hard but sometimes better. Not by a lot but I should have played PoTD day 1.
Otoh, maybe Hard with only 4 characters would have been optimal. Would make summons important too.

P.S. I know some people didn't like Wael quest in act 2 but I liked what happens if you do it, so I

Spoiler

sent them souls into mYstary for lulz

He's like Hermaeus Mora from TES.

I also took the baby and made special companion elf named Aerie and she would carry it in her backpack

AND I DEMAND PARENT QUESTS AND WALKING DEAD ORLAN CLEMENTINE IN EXPANSION I WANT MY CHOICES TO MATTER

 

[AetherVagrant]

Normal mode.
Its not terribly challenging in that Ive never had to reload a battle more than once to prepare, except raedrick and even that wasnt bad with a little forethought.
BG1/2 are some of my all time favorite games and I still replay them, but Im glad POE isnt like BG1. I hate restarting that game as a level 1 sorcerer with minimal party members, even with the advantages of foreknowledge and 17 years of playing.
I feel like the Normal difficulty is perfect for most players who want to make smooth steady progress while still making sure you cant just click n forget battles.
I enjoy the challenge of hard, but I dont like it all the time. Sometimes ill replay an interesting battle or quest on hard just to see if i have the balls to make it through, but so far Normal has been the perfect combination of risk/reward for a 31yr old gamer without 40hrs a week to devote to gaming anymore.
I do feel like I could cheese the system if i went with 1or2 fightes and 4 wizards, or gave everyone guns and high stealth. but then i would probably get bored and quit before the end of the story.
So far Im enjoying Eder, Kana, Durance and Aloth, along with my custom ranger and wizard pc. Eder is such a tank hes never gone under 50% endurance yet.

 

[Mexi]

Nope, playing on hard now. Umm... these shades in the temple of Eliothas or however you spell it are kicking my ass. Damn, my paladin is just a tank, Eder doesn't do enough damage, and Aloth keeps running out of spells or outright missing when they teleport too quick. I finally beat one room with like 5 of those bastards (with the 2 sarcophagi), but I go into the next room and it's another level full of them. The white phantoms are the worse because they keep knocking me unconscious. I'm thinking of coming back because it's too much. My paladin isn't a damage dealer. Aloth's fire is working really well, though, but he either misses, is too close to my party and burns everyone, or he gets knocked out.

 

[RK47]

Nope, playing on hard now. Umm... these shades in the temple of Eliothas or however you spell it are kicking my ass.

Go to the tavern and hire adventurers.
Your team doesn't even have a support priest.
Yes, it's do-able but it's painful without a complete party, I honestly find the challenge was in understanding when can I take on a fight, because you cannot retreat ever.
Realizing that Rayrdrick is not an early game, I moved on past Gilded Vale and picked up Durance, I finished the 1st Act with a party of 5. That's when I did a U-turn and fought Raydrick.
It wasn't easy, until I rolled a cipher and laugh at the outrageous paralyze spams.

 

[Carrion]

For me the challenge on Hard pretty much ended after Act I. The temple was challenging, but even that was probably because I cleared most of it with just Aloth in my party almost straight out of the tutorial, recruited a custom barbarian to help me out a bit with one tough room and only grabbed Edér later on after already finishing the quest to clear the rest of the temple. There were a few tough fights in other quests,

Spoiler

Raedric

being the most notable one, but the drop in difficulty was huge after getting a more fleshed-out party. After that I've been pretty much invincible, and even encounters that have initially looked really difficult (like the bounties) have rarely required more than one try, at most two, and tactics-wise pretty much the most advanced maneuver has been luring the enemies into a doorway. Even that isn't necessary anymore since the vast majority of enemies can barely even deal damage.

Might be that the game was balanced with non-completionists in mind, but new types of enemies should still be able to pose a threat if you're a bit overlevelled, maybe having some tough resistances or protection spells that need to be bypassed somehow, or unique abilities that might get an unprotected party in serious trouble. Now you can just hack everything to pieces without having to change anything about your tactics, at most casting an additional buff or two if you feel like it.

 

[Cadmus]

I finally found a challenging fight

Spoiler

the bounty ogre in Elmshore, the stupid druids just *kill* my casters with the insect swarm. I hate that spell. I didn't have full HP where I attempted the fight like 4 times so they always killed my characters. I'll go back soon now that I've rested and cut their heads off.

What tactics did you guys use for

Spoiler

the Roedric fight? I found it impossible to do by initiating the dialogue with full party so I let my guy get knocked out there and the rest of the party draw them 1 by 1 from the far end of the room (I think I wrote it here already) How the fuck can you do it normally?

 

[RK47]

Cadmus what difficulty level? And what level are you?

 

[Cadmus]

Cadmus what difficulty level? And what level are you?

Hard + Expert, now I'm around lvl 10 I think.

 

[RK47]

You mean to say your Cipher fail in CCing a few dudes in Raydrick fight? While the rest of your alpha strike couldn't hit his wizard fast enough? What is actually wrecking you?

 

[ZagorTeNej]

You mean to say your Cipher fail in CCing a few dudes in Raydrick fight? While the rest of your alpha strike couldn't hit his wizard fast enough? What is actually wrecking you?

Probably:

Spoiler

The vampires, I assume he's talking about undead Raedric fight. I think protect from charm buff is bugged which makes the fight more difficult then it should have beeb

Cadmus

Spoiler

Use the chokepoint on the far left (send just your tank up the stairs to initiate dialogue then pull him back as well).

 

[Cadmus]

You mean to say your Cipher fail in CCing a few dudes in Raydrick fight? While the rest of your alpha strike couldn't hit his wizard fast enough? What is actually wrecking you?

I think you're talking about something else. I meant the end of Act 1 in the castle.

 

[AN4RCHID]

I'm level 9 near the end of Act 2 on Hard mode now, and I've gotta say I'm having an easier time on this playthrough than I had on Normal. A big part of that is because I skipped a lot of side content last time, and I'm trying to do a completionist run now. Where in my first playthrough I was at or below the correct level for most of the crit path, now I'm overlevelled for basically everything I've come up against besides some of the bounties.

My conclusions are, 1) Hard mode is only marginally more difficult than Normal, and 2) there is a hugely disproportionate amount of low and mid-level content vs. high-level content.

 

[Keshik]

Played on Normal, tried running with all companions and was getting pretty wrecked, Thaos was impossible, so I guess I just found my level

 

[MF]

I finished the game on Hard. I had a bit of trouble with the Raedric fight because I was level 4, but the rest of the game was a breeze. After doing The Endless Paths my party was overpowered for the rest of the game. My main character was a Cipher and after getting the Chanter I had two options for dominating enemies. Alternating between them after debuffing with Durance meant I could always dominate every foe. I had Edér as a tank but he wasn't even necessary.

One fight that was particularly annoying was with the Fampyr on level 8 of Od Nua. He dominated my guys before I could dominate his and then Edér had to slaughter everyone. He and the fampyr were the only ones left so when Edér was dominated, they were in a stalemate until the effect wore off. I got one or two swings in each time before Edér would be dominated again. And again. And again. It was intense at first, but it took almost half an hour before the fampyr was dead. I played Iron Man so I couldn't reload and that was fucking tedious.

 

[lurker3000]

Nope, playing on hard now. Umm... these shades in the temple of Eliothas or however you spell it are kicking my ass. Damn, my paladin is just a tank, Eder doesn't do enough damage, and Aloth keeps running out of spells or outright missing when they teleport too quick. I finally beat one room with like 5 of those bastards (with the 2 sarcophagi), but I go into the next room and it's another level full of them. The white phantoms are the worse because they keep knocking me unconscious. I'm thinking of coming back because it's too much. My paladin isn't a damage dealer. Aloth's fire is working really well, though, but he either misses, is too close to my party and burns everyone, or he gets knocked out.

I was grinding through that temple on hard with Eder and Aloth at the beginning of the game as well. Finally said screw it and left to pick up more companions (Durance, Kana) and get to level 4. Once you hit lvl 4 the game becomes significantly easier in general and the temple is much less of a pain.

 

[Orma]

Beat the game(for the second time) in PotD-Ironman yesterday. And i have to say, it was pretty easy.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

I'm playing on normal and all the fights were easy then I just starting fighting some shades at the stronghold area and I just keep dying, I'm probably going to quit RPGs for life until Witcher 3 comes out.

 

[AetherVagrant]

I don't get all the complaints about shades.
kill em with fire, whether chemical or holy...keep a fighter/tank near your ranged peeps so they can nab engagement when the shadows teleport overr to your squishies. The tanks- in -front and- spellfags- 20ft-away-never taking damage -on their lonesome that works in 90% of the POE battles just gets disrupted temporarily.
boost fire resistance on your tanks and blast away with AOE, while durance keeps some healing auras going

 

[Hatred]

Mostly I thought people bring up shades as one of the only enemy types which require you to do anything differently. Hearing that someone is going to

quit RPGs for life untill Witcher 3 comes out.

is pretty hilarious. Why no just play on easy and or try something a little different and or ask for some advice is beyond me.

 

[Carrion]

It's also likely that the first shades you encounter are before you even meet Durance, and when using fire mostly means Fan of Flames which is effective but somewhat challenging to cast without Aloth getting exposed or the rest of your party being fried after casting it. After getting a full party shades become a cakewalk like almost everything else in the game, although they do occasionally appear out of thin air and can therefore cause more problems than your average trash mobs.

 

[ArchAngel]

It's also likely that the first shades you encounter are before you even meet Durance, and when using fire mostly means Fan of Flames which is effective but somewhat challenging to cast without Aloth getting exposed or the rest of your party being fried after casting it. After getting a full party shades become a cakewalk like almost everything else in the game, although they do occasionally appear out of thin air and can therefore cause more problems than your average trash mobs.

The bottom floor of Lighthouse was a nice surprise and made it a fun encounter.

 

[Shadenuat]

I played through act 1 on hard (I want meh symmetrical combat) with 4 characters, murdered everything including every living being in Roedrick's castle, but it's still not very hard - even with one of my spellcasters, a wizard, specced into a tank and fighting with a mace in the front (that worked "well" first bear he met did a 37 crit on him, KO'ed and left him with less than half Health, while barb had x3 health by just being barb... but once you get more Deflection & full plate it becomes more viable).
The good thing is that every ability I have (I stick to melee) matters now and I micro every character (hybrid barb, druid and rogue with two hander being other characters).
The bad thing is - spellcasters are still just too damn powerful. With nobody being immune to anything even with 2, but maybe even with 1 spellcaster you can CC whole battlefield. The cast rate is too fast, and recovery rate even in light armor allows to unload spells very quickly onto the enemy.
After enemy gets one or two blind spells from druid or mage, he is basically done.
But at least there is that good thing. Playing with less characters makes you micro more. The damage by the party also spreads more evenly, since you want everyone to pull their weight, and back row doesn't rack in kills much more.

Stil can't believe how poorly enemy spellcasters are protected and how dumb they are. After you gun down another guy in a robe with initial opening from stealth, or a priest who runs to you up close because priest spells don't have range, can't but laugh "yeah mages rock in this game lol".

 

[ArchAngel]

I found the encounter at the bottom of the Lighthouse to be quite shit. In general I find enemies teleporting in out of thin fucking air to be quite shit, especially in this case when the encounter consists of ghosts in a game where you see fucking ghosts when you take a walk through the park.

Walk through park are not ghosts but your past life memories. Shades and Shadows are something different.

 

[Gord]

After starting on Normal to get to know the system, I switched to Hard early in Act 2. Overall the difficulty felt ok for me, but I would rate Hard at what I would Normal expect to be.
There have been a few encounters I found pretty challenging, especially in Act 3 (Ogre groups with Matron and Druids, large numbers of Gwen-somethings with Shades) and the lower levels of the paths (larger groups of high-level spiders with the antropomorphic spider dudes, Gwen-somethings, the Adra Dragon).
While trash mobs didn't affect my experience too much, I do think that the AI needs an overhaul, at least on Hard and up - there's a lot of unlocked potential in the game from making the AI use more spells and abilities and making use of it more smartly, which would also elevate many encounters from the trashmob-tier to "needs some strategy".
Sadly so far the AI is not very good at it and I think that this is big part of why e.g. enemy wizards feel underwhelming most of the time.

Btw.: There still seems to be an difficulty bug where difficulty resets to easy for some people. Don't know how common it is, though.