Let's talk about: Game Difficulty!

I think another thing that would help is adding to the game a flaming sword (popular in fantasy, especially D&D which inspired the game) for the warrior and a few cards that let the priest call down pillars of fire for when you really want fire damage. If these items exist I haven't found them yet (highest level party is 9th).

 

On the other hand there are lots of armor removing cards even at low levels. It may be that the items don't seem to be as powerful and so they aren't taken, but their utility makes them useful to overcome challenges.

I do wonder if not having the right items comes down to people just not want to use sub par items. I know I am resistant to change the items on my party but have found it's important to do so. Make sure you have armor removing items (or at least difficult terrain creating creating ones like acid spray) or blunt attacks for skeletons etc.

Going through all of the adventures with my characters again doing the only items with disadvantages quests. I have limited items and very few with disadvantages and so I don't have a lot of choices. All of the adventures are still quite doable -- that is if my priest doesn't spontaneously combust the first round from trait disadvantage damage!

 

Another thing I've noticed is that a lot of maps are too small, which adds to the difficulty of keeping priests/wizards safe.

 

Hard, yeah, but not impossible. Given a bunch of warriors it would be easy, but things like the demon portals with warriors would be super difficult! That's the way the game works. It's more of a puzzle game than an RPG where you should always be able to handle something (and I'd argue if that was true for your RPG it's being run wrong! ). It's made to make you think, react, and adapt. That's not valued in the current video game culture though so a lot of people may be put off by it at first.

Certainly the adventure where you are placed face to face on the victory squares with 2 trogs and a slime at the start is harder for wizards. My two Wizard one Priest group was able to make it through though. In fact I had a harder time with my balanced War/P/Wiz group.

 

Then I can say this:

I, like you, have gone on to higher levels, and I come back to the Troglodytes because now I find victory "easy."

"Insane"? "Considering the cards you are given," literally every attack of yours works well if you attack the Crude Plates-wearing enemies from behind. Likewise, you possess Penetrating cards: literally every Penetrating Attack works against them. And, of course, you can take advantage of the fact that Crude Plates knocks your enemies back, deliberately hit their Armor, and force them to waste their Move cards. Then they are sitting ducks at range, waiting for Terrain effects (Acid Blast would be ideal), or even the small 2 damage Penetrating Zap.

Yes, I have gone into multiple threads on these sorts of fights and seriously suggested hitting enemies with a 2 damage card. And, no, I don't take 100 rounds to earn my daily gold and loot: the game is designed (like many games) so that you do less damage than the enemies do but you still win. Because you are smarter than them.

Once again, every player has different expectations, and with different strategies (and loot) people find different things difficult. Here's further discussion of what is "insane":

http://www.cardhunter.com/forum/thr...ture-its-unfair-its-impossible-et-cetera.2171

And my previous list of places that were "insane" in this very thread:

http://www.cardhunter.com/forum/threads/lets-talk-about-game-difficulty.1249/page-5#post-16973

. . . Consisting of almost every adventure.

 

I give. I'm just gonna stick to playing MP.

 

Maybe there's something to be said for adding an Easy mode (with less loot) so that people who are stuck at a level can get through it. [A quick and dirty method would be to take 30% off all enemy hit points, and remove half the loot.]

 

I think the idea is that you won't have the 'right' gear for every situation, but can kludge together a combination of what you've got that can handle the scenario after some fashion.

 

I just finished that - I thought it was easy enough except for the last battle which I had to fight twice. I did get a bit lucky the second time as I was able to one-shot the servant on the first turn with a blast from my Sorcerous Staff. Killing the servant reduces the number of cards they can get. After than I retreated the wizard behind the other two in the starting area and let the enemy come to me. Don't let the wizard die, both dog and warden are vulnerable to zaps. Kill the dog first. Don't keep bashing the warden in melee, he will parry and draw more cards. Just block him from touching the wizard.

 

I personally feel like some of these modules need to be nerfed. Someone yesterday said some of them have been, but maybe that wasn't enough. Look, I'm not the best strategist out there, but I shouldn't be having this much trouble getting through the campaign. So much trouble, that the game isn't even fun for me. It's ridiculously frustrating. I actually gave up on the campaign yesterday. I plan to only play MP for the rest of the beta. And if no changes are made before the game launches, I'll probably skip the campaign again.

 

Not really. I already understand how to play the game, it's just too hard.

 

Person after person has complained about the difficulty, so there must be something to it, even if you don't think so. I'm glad you don't find the game too hard, but some of us do.

I didn't mean to sound snarky, just stating my thoughts is all.

 

Having reached 11th level yesterday I have to say that I find the difficulty curve to be odd. Until level 6 I found the game actually rather easy. After I beat Compass of Xor it got easy again. For some reason the level 6-8 adventures seem to be an odd bottleneck of difficulty. I don't think the somehow beating Compass of Xor suddenly made me such a better player, I don't even think I'm using anything that dropped from it.

 

I didn't say "Just nerf it", I said I think they need to be nerfed. You're making seem more rude that I was. But yeah, nerf because, what else can they do? They could do like other games and make a 'normal mode' and 'hard mode', but they probably won't do the extra programming for that.

 

I disagree with this, although this is of course only my opinion. I completed the campaign without playing any of the treasure hunts and without ever going back to replay an adventure that I had already completed for more loot, and the only adventure I found too difficult was "The White Star" which has since been nerfed. I don't feel like I'm a particularly skilled player; maybe I just got lucky with items the first time through.

What I did do was make extensive use of the shops, buying cheap items that I thought would really strengthen my decks for specific adventures. To people who are having trouble (or maybe everyone out of curiosity), how much use are you making of the shops?

I do agree with this. Level 6 ramped up the difficulty and the level 8 adventures are definitely hard, after which it feels like the game eases off a bit. But as Sir Knight's other thread shows, everyone appears to find different bits of the game to be "the most difficult".

 

I was using the shop as much as I could. I think I bought at least 5 items, probably 3 of which were the more expensive ones that were there. I also came across a few good uncommon items while going through the modules, as well as 1 or 2 rares, and even an epic. They helped, but I still had trouble.

By the way, this "trouble" I keep referring to, isn't game-breaking, just annoying. I mean, I'm sure I could beat every single module if I play them enough, that's just odds. Having to play a module 1-3 times before beating it, that's normal to me. But what's not normal to me, is when it takes 4,5, or even 6+ tries to beat one. That just isn't fun for me and that's what I consider "too hard".

I know I'm not the best at this game, especially since I'm new to it, but I'm not a noob. I've played tons of games, much of which were RPGs. I get how to play games, I get how to play Card Hunter, it's just simply too hard, IMO. At least, the 6-8 levels. Maybe it's just these specific levels that are too much and it gets back to 'normal' later, I don't know.

Solution? Well, if the devs feel the need to come up with one in the first place, I suggest doing like other games and adding a 'normal mode' and 'hard mode' for the campaign. Before even playing the campaign, you could be asked which mode you'd like to play. Whichever one you chose, that would become the default mode for all modules. However, there could be an option to change both the default mode at anytime you want, or change each module's mode individually. This way, there wouldn't be any complaints about people playing normal mode being able to get easy loot because everyone could play normal mode. You like a challenge? Then pick hard mode and have fun. When you've beaten the campaign, you could then choose to replay the modules on hard or normal mode. If this would be too much programming or whatever, then the only other realistic solution I can think of would be to nerf some of these modules in the 6-8 level range that people are complaining about, even more if they've already been nerfed. That's if the devs even feel the need to make changes, though...