Let's talk about: Game Difficulty!

The devs have said that they are tracking a lot of stats, including the win % for each adventure module down to the individual maps. If a lot of people are having problems then I have no doubt that they'll spot this and make some changes. That's exactly what this Beta is for finding out!

 

That's not the only way to do it. My team did it well loaded up on penetration.

One thing I've learned: if a mob is dangerous and you can kill it before it acts, kill it fast. But if it will live whatever happens, lean towards delaying your attacks. Just be sure not to pass if the AI may be ready to pass and you have stuff to do - you can manoeuvre or heal a bit instead.

Against spearmen, step back or step forward. Run them out of moves if you can. It doesn't matter if you are also quite stabby yourself, you generally can't beat the monsters facing off at two squares distance, because you will be outnumbered.

The final battle was funny; I was left with just my priest who had one hit point, hiding from Strench who had about eight. The priest kept hiding out of LOS and built his health up to full over about five rounds, then came out and finished Strench with a long-saved Violent Overswing. Take that you *#?%!

 

Path of Knives has a hilarious interaction with Crude Plate. Whenever unit affected by Path of Knives moves, they're hit for 2 damage. However, whenever Crude Plate blocks damage, the unit using it is forced to move backward, resulting in another trigger for Path of Knives, which triggers the Plate again... see where this is going? I literally watched a goblin wearing Crude Plate being knocked all the way across the map by a constant series of Path of Knives triggers, the combo only ending once the Crude Plate failed to block the attack. It's essentially a guaranteed 2 damage, see eventually they'll miss a block, or else they'll being jumping backward in perpetuity.

As far as game difficulty goes, I loathe monkeys. I was challenged up to that point, with several fights requiring reloading or restarts and several more only resulting in victory by a hair's thread. But those monkeys, man, they were the first time I just raged. I eventually beat them, but only after many successive attempts and much trial, error, and luck. After grinding out some better gear with a new group, my second run in with those annoying simians went much better. Loading my healer down with as many Greater Heals as I possibly definitely helped, too.

 

Maybe, but making them easier isn't only option. One would be to prevent people selling any non-treasure loot. Other would be to allow reset of single adventure after every failure (more loot). Removing level based pricing from shop would be my favorite.

Like I said earlier, campaign was about just right. Only had to replay 1 advanture twice and 5-7 once. Without club, shops or grinding.

Problem with normal/hard mode will be that there should be more loot in hard mode, making them very hard to actually balance. More loot -> easier. And no, there is no point of having two difficulty modes with same loot. Challenge is fine and dandy, but in game based on grinding easier/faster way usually wins for me, untill I get bored atleast.

 

Oh, and make getting Multiplayer started pack mandatory or automatic. Those high level items are invaluable, especially when SP group starts getting power tokens. And some people might miss them making campaign unnecesserily hard.

 

Loot does make it easier, but something like I suggested (an Easy mode with 30% less enemy hit-points, and remove half the loot at random) would yield the same loot if you played it twice. So it would be a way to progress, without being overly tempting to those who think they can beat it at Normal.

At the end of the day, there is plenty of loot anyway IMO. I've played every campaign up to Throne of Strench, plus the first treasure hunt, exactly once each, and bought one treasure chest. I *think* I got something for trying multi-player, even though I ran out of time and lost both battles. I did buy some things in the shop but I have about 300 gold left, so I could go on a shopping spree if I wanted, but I haven't needed to so far.

Maybe I got lucky, but I think a lot of the game is about creatively using the stuff you have. When I needed penetration in my last mission, my wizard went back to early arcane items like Zapping Headband, which I think is level one. [My feeling is that you can sell most of your boots, robes etc. but there are things like staffs and arcane items that your wizard should keep a roomful of, even if some of them are low-level or strange items that you might never normally use. Just like a real wizard would do ;-) And of course you don't sell duplicate arcane items until you've got more than four!]

 

It (basically) already is. After you finish one of the level 6 Kobold dungeons, Gary invites you to MP and sets the price of the Adventurers to "free". I suggest having him do this the first time a player enters MP, so they don't accidentally buy that one early (as I almost did).

 

Lord Batford final level is ridiculous. Three tries in a row and I have people dying on turn one. TURN ONE? srlsy? Not my mage either, my warrior. Dying on turn one repeatedly. Ridiculous.

When four guards and a dog can cross a room, over two movement halting obstacles and kill a warrior before you can even draw a second set of cards, there is something very wrong. I don't think any module should have six battles but especially not when five are reasonable and then the sixth is utterly ridiculous.

Then when you're wiped out instantly three times in a row without any opportunity for strategy you get "INSERT COIN" waved at you. I've been enjoying the beta so far but that is taking the piss, imo.

 

It's the bell from the lord coupled with the high number of enemies I think. He rang it repeatedly and my party just sucked it up as 30-40 melee damage came at them each turn in a cramped room. Party wipe in 2-3 turns each time with nowhere to maneuver and too much damage to soak up or avoid. I guess the strategy is "keep paying 15 gold until your get multiple platemail cards in your opening hand". Not good.

EDIT: So I did the adventure again and on the 6th try I started with enough platemail in my opening hand to cope with the crazy damage output of the enemy team. Then when it was down to just the Lord, my mage and my cleric, the game crashed trying to resolve a card at the start of the round...

 

I have issues with Lair of the Yellow Dragon. I have come close a couple of times, but I cannot defeat Xanthicius. This is made more frustrating by how easy the previous three encounters are. The battles with the Ogres have safe spots on the map where the Ogres cannot fit due to their large size. Then after easily clearing the first three stages, you encounter this thing.

Xanthicius is a draw Five monster so it gets Five cards and a Fly card every turn. This means it quickly cycles through its deck in a few turns. So it easily gets a hold of its many long range mass aoe attacks (Rock Fall and Corrosive Breath) which it can hit you after one movement. There is almost no cover on this map and practically not enough for entire party to take advantage. This is worsened by the fact the Rock Falls (which I have seen spam three in one turn before) litter up to 25 squares with rough terrain. Corrosive Breath has such a huge cone that there is not much you can do about it after the area is turned to rough terrain. The attacks themselves are not bad but the utility is killer (did I mention the Breath attack melts your armor?).

Oh then there is melee. The melee is to be expected for a large dragon. Really powerful attacks including some reach attacks and penetrating. By themselves, this is not that bad. Problem lies in the fact your party will most likely not have any armor by the time you are in melee range and the fact the dragon draws so many cards, giving it tons of attacks per turn.

The only 'weakness' the dragon seems to have is a lack of defenses. It has Shimmering Auras which defends well against magic but that is it. Of course, this is not much of a weakness when you have 75 health and possibly 5 attacks per turn.

I know this is a pretty significant part of the plot of the game and kinda of a major quest. I would not mind grinding for this encounter but this is Beta and there may be more resets in the future (and I am not going to grind a second time). My only suggestion is maybe make Xanthicius draw Four cards a turn rather than Five. This would limit the attacks a bit and also lessen the rate the dragon cycles through its deck which refreshes its many aoe attacks. Besides that, toning down the mass range aoe attacks would not hurt either.

As for changing the party setup for the fight. Block cards are nice (though I seem to roll ALOT of 1's during this fight, not kidding, have it recorded). Maybe setting up illusionary walls and walls of stone may help deal with the ranged attacks for a bit. But at this point in the game, your party has 40+ card decks. Not being able to draw the card you need at the right time has never become so apparent as it has in this fight (well besides Multiplayer, ^.^).

*flops* Sorry for rant.

 

Dont' feel bad, they just recently changed things that made Lair of the Yellow Dragon a lot harder. IMO at least. I play it daily and since the change my level 20 party gets killed 3-5 times before beating him. Honestly, most of the times I beat him now are due to stupid passes by the AI. I'll have lava under him and he'll pass. He simply puts out a stupid amount of damage to deal with.

I like using encumber to slow the dragons flight, try to thrown lava under him. Spread your guys out so he can't kill you with his cone breath attack or cave in cards. And I like to pack a lot of cards that make him discard too. But he still kills me alot, so it's not a perfect strategy.

 

Just put like 10 Parry in your deck and some Martyr Blessing or Impenetrable Nimbus that might help. He tends to hold his position when you tank him. But once he uses this Rockfall to often i have serious problems as well.

 

No, there shouldn't. Each mode would have the same amount of loot. The point of the hard mode would be for people who prefer a challenge. If those people felt like they weren't getting a fair amount of loot for their efforts, then like I said earlier, they could go through each module on hard mode, for the challenge, then repeat those modules on normal mode, for the loot.

I'm sorry, but this would be a bad idea. Taking away loot from players just because they have trouble beating a module? That's a punishment.

 

Well like I said, I won't grind for more cards (I do not have 10 Parries) as it will all be reset eventually and then I will have to do this whole hell all over again.

My almost wins have been with Walls of Fire which I seem to have trouble drawing during this fight despite having tons in my deck.

Spreading out works only kind of as the Cone of the breath attack is absolutely huge and there is little cover to hide behind. Pretty much it is either take cover and get hit with rocks until it decides to go into melee to finish me off or spread out and get breathed on over and over again.

Thanks for the advice though.

 

I've done absolutely fine so far, and am now around level 9. Nicely balanced difficulty with a few single fails and a few close calls....until Lord Staffords treasure. The Golem is no problem. I just keep out of range and blast him, but the final level is tricky as hell. The enemies have some pretty strong attacks, and I dont have time to keep them at range and pick them off. Am I doing something wrong here?

Also I'm not feeling the love for my cleric - he generally seems much less useful than the wizard or warrior, though maybe that'll change.

 

That took me several tries too. I eventually beat it by giving my party as many move cards as I could. The distance isn't as important as how many you have; I even left a racial skill empty so I'd get the 3 Walks. Then I killed the merc and dogs as quickly as I could and had my warrior step attack through the difficult terrain to flush Stafford out of his corner and back into the center of the victory area, so my wizard (standing in the corner of the hallway) could electrocute him. A Whirlwind Enemies could have made it much easier, but I never drew it in time.

 

Well i understand that because i have similar feelings but its not so complicated. You could keep an eye one The Goblin Bazaar because it sells one off the items you might need Blocking Mace it costs only 5 gold and shows up there quite often. So you don't have to grind at all. You could also keep an eye on the Kyburz Market because they sell very good parry shields from time to time. Or you could just spend your 120 pizza on gold and buy a bunch of random chests, maybe you are lucky. As everthing will be reseted some day it shouldn't matter to spend your pizza this way of you want to have a fast result. Well i don't think it is worth it but if you don't like to grind at the moment which is completly understandable, these are some options you could use.

 

Temple of Terror part 3 is such a pile of unfair crap. Not only does it have the worst, most annoyingly irritating enemy in the game (those @#$%ing monkeys), but it adds in Zaius, who's a monkey with POLEARM and LUNGE attacks. On top of that, you get one of those giant, slow units that have really heavy hitting bashes. Mix this all up and it just becomes an exercise in frustration. All the maps up to this point, I've been able to beat after several tries. But I can not for the life of me get past this one.

I give my warrior a helmet with Warcry, which forces the monkeys to discard their block cards. But whoops! They all have too much health for me to burst down, mostly because the game decides to hand me nothing but movement cards. So the turn ends, they redraw all their block cards, and I'm back in the same crappy position I was at the beginning. I've tried different combinations, with a Priest and two Mages, a Warrior and two mages, a Warrior, Mage, and Priest...I've tried giving them different items, I've tried different strategies... the stupid monkeys get the better of me each time because of their bullcrap tactics. They have a ton of Free Move cards which lets them dance around as much as they like so moving away from them is impossible, attemp to engage them in melee and they just flip you around or Duck, and even when you do attack, Simian Reflexes gives them an extra card more often than not. Forcing them to discard one or two cards does nothing when they have 8 in their hand from and then draw even more.

I just don't see a tactic that works. If I try to maneuver behind one so it can't block my attacks, two more move behind ME, steal my cards, and shank me.

 

I don't get very much time to play, but I've basically flown up to level 11 without ever needing to spend 15 gold to retry an adventure -- and suddenly, now, I'm facing down Goblins in one adventure and Black Oozes+1 Armored Skeleton in the other adventure, and I'm suddenly quite stuck. I can't seem to figure out what I need to get past either group.


I don't know how feasible it would be given the number of adventures, but maybe there could be some sort of battle-specific hint given at the Defeat screen? Something that would be relevant but not too obvious, like "When faced with enemies that have multiple immunities, don't forget that armor-destroying cards take those immunities away" for the Skeleton/Ooze battle?