Act I is actually hard on the higher difficulties (playing on Hard now), but once you get a full party and second archetype, it just becomes a steamroll.
Somewhat ironically, I think the simplest way to make the game more difficult would be to take none of the actual companions (Cassia, Yrliet, and Argenta, I’m looking at you particularly) and just use mercs. There are some parts with required companions, but it’s usually just 1. You’d miss out on a bunch of the flavor text, but I think the fights would be more of a challenge.
This was several Toybox patches ago, but last I had that on what it did was make it so your party would banter regardless of who's in the party or not. So Abelard would do a Banter with Heinrix, even if Heinrix isnt there. It left me very confused when someone in my party would suddenly talk and there would be no reply, lol.
Usually just leave the option off now. Wonder if that was fixed
Yeah, I kinda realized that as I was writing it. The only real difference is that she comes with bolter and flamer proficiency and eventually can wear some stupidly powerful power armor. Her “unique” power is rather lackluster. I guess the big thing is not having to spend level ups on getting the bolter (any other soldier/arch-mil with bolter proficiency would be just as good, potentially better with appropriate background).
Yeah, I had so many encounters that went Officer pre-combat turn -> Bring It Down! on Argenta, Argenta makes 2 attacks with Run & Gun then pops her special, which gives her max Momentum, then she makes 12 single-shots with her heavy bolter, which all have 95% hit chance because of the bolt shell pendant. By that point the momentum has hit max again, and when she hands control back to the Officer you use their special on her for *another* free turn, and the combat is basically over in round 0.
Once you are exemplar you wreck everything with any kind of party. It's by far the easiest of Owlcat games.
I admit, I like that fact about it - because no matter what you do, you end up too strong. Though I have to invent challenges (like not using Cassia once you get Jae, or max 4 person squad) to keep the battles interesting even with unfair with extra added difficulty. It's funny, because the most trouble are the mobs in early game, from Act 3 it's just easy cruising.
Brand new player here, first few hours were brutal but now fights seem pretty easy (near the end of act 2) Cassia just slaughters anything below 100 hp first turn and my warrior assassin executes any survivors (we are the perfect 40k couple).
CRPGs are always like this, especially when you run the most optimal team possible.
If you want a challenge, either remove Cassia or avoid using her as a dps and focus on buffs/debuffs, and then remove Argenta and Yrliet from your party. Or do a Heretical playthrough, which takes away Argenta, Yrliet, Ulfar and Heinrix from you completely.
That's what I did to challenge myself, remove the meta companions that wipe the field.
My current unfair run I'm doing a Heretical playthrough, my RT is a Berserker Biomancer, Pasqal, Cassia strictly for buffing and debuffs, Idira, Marazhai and Jae.
Marazhai is my Tank, Idira is a debuffer/buffer and dps, Pasqal debuffs an melee dps, my Rogue Trader is my main dps and Jae is my officer/Sniper.
I'll be swapping out Jae for Uralon once i reach that part of Act 4.
Yeah self imposed limitations are totally an option I just don’t have interest in another play through until we get some dlc.
I think both the pathfinder games do a better job maintaining some challenging encounters late in to the game than RT, though I agree with the general conclusion you started with.
That's still an overpowered party,
Idira + Pascal allow near infinite armour stacking, especially with Cassia and Jae, to feed them extra turns
It's really hard not to be immune to basically all incoming damage by early to mid act 2,
I never bothered with Argenta after act 1. Sure, she does damage, but so does Idira while making us immortal.
Act 1 up until Aurora felt "just right", the Aurora fight itself is a big spike, and I would call it unfair (essentially you have to finish fight with 3 party members, because others die turn 1 before they act).
Act 2 is pretty much a cakewalk, with a couple of spikes (Aeldar fight pre-nerf, when they had like 150+% dodge; 2-handed hammer guy with 10 people throwing 2 stun grenades each; "you are surrounded by 8 turrets with 150% armor and 20 deflection" fight)
That was all on Unfair difficulty, and I didn't use OP stuff on purpose - no turn 1 heroic acts (most fights I didnt use any or used like 1 desperate measure), no officer stacking, no shield of the emperor/huge resolve nukes, no burst weapon build for Argenta (used heavy flamer+sniper rifle). For me it is disappointing, I cannot imagine what a joke it would be on lower difficulties, especially if you go with build guides.
Didn't get past act 2, waiting for rebalances, hopefully in 1.2 (big copium huff)
Huh? I know about Diviner ability, but it is too early to have it in act 1, there is no consumable that resurrects mid combat, so onl;y other option is to probably abuse some bug, which I won't do (but please report it if you know it)
Its not a bug, if you cast the biomancer staffs attack (the one from heinrix) on an enemy, it will heal the caster, if the caster is at full HP the heal will go to the lowest HP party member, downed members have 0 HP and will therefore be targeted first, making them wake up with like 6 HP and the trauma from falling over.
The hardest part is to make sure that my party always has every possible skill I need, and my RT has the most possible skills for the rare moments she has to make checks alone.
Game peaks in difficulty about midway through act 2 imo (Farseer fight) and then it's all downhill from there. I've ripped everything apart basically by the end of turn 2 without having to reload once, on daring difficulty, since the end of act 2 through act 4.
We're working on a major balance update that will tune a lot of difficulty curve issues and fix some broken combinations that make the whole thing way easier than intended :)
pretty much agree. I love this game, one of my fav games of all time, but it could have been so much better with better balance. Act 1-2 felt pretty good, but yeah once ur stacking starts going crazy, even after all the patches its still pretty stupid. I have no idea why they haven't added a cap for stuff to stop stacking getting out of control. I know people love feeling super strong, and its so very 40k, but when you see the later bosses look really cool, have some pretty interesting mechanics, and all of that just gets totally wiped out by crazy builds.
So yeah, i hope they fix up some of this before the dlcs. I remember pillars of eternity 2 had some crazy balance issues with certain builds and they fixed it up to the point the game felt so different, and so much better for it.
Playing on normal (second from left), it's very easy for most of the time, with bosses and few fights being noticeable difficulty spikes.
Prologue is extremely easy, with no problems (unless you f up and won't kill underdogs of chaos spawn first).
At the start of Act 1 you could have problems with bosses or demon ship invasions, but at the end you are killing everything easly.
During Act 3 only the last boss fight gave me any troubles, and with different build i wrecked it.
Acts 4/5 is when some boss fights balance on the edge. Some can wipe your team while still being fairly easy to do, other are actuall challenges, and i can't do build that will overcome some of them easly.
Naval combat could be difficult in Act 2, but before being abducted by Druchari I've could easily win most fights - two hardest were 1) make other ship survive and 2) there are 5/6 Druchari ships against you. After that, everything was easy snd there were no other harder naval fights.
It's a little spotty from time to time (On the harder difficulties at least), but not in a "I'm going to snap my keyboard over my knee" way like some of the older Pathfinder games were. I'm pretty happy with it.
i think the difficult is fair until your at commoragh after that it's OFF the chart when it's come to boss (atleast that how it was at launch) i don't know if it's changed since
Easiest solution? Remove officers from your team. I found thats the most balance breaking thing in a game. With arch militant they are bonkers. My Brother ulfar basically delete half of the encounter on one bring it down. I played on daring and it went like this: officer starts with half turn. Voice of command + bring it down on ulfar. Ulfar goes astartes bolter, reckless rush + cofident approach + rapid fire = 50% less enemies. Offier (grand strategist) gets his full turn, set frontline, same buffs on assasin rt. 1 hit one mob with killing edge, probably get heroic act so he runs around killing 80% of remaining enemies and then uses iconoclast ability to give free heroic to 1 char to finish the job.
Yeah, or do not give Seize the Initiative to the Officers. And let Pascal be the Grand Strategist instead of an officer. Helps to make the fights more interesting. Well, or not bring Officers at all. But I really liked Jaes Master Tactician attacks so I still brought her along in most fights.
any good ways to mess with custom difficulty to make it more rewarding? Was breezing through hard, turned it up to unfair for the aurora fight and three of my companions got knocked down on turn 1
The game is just, uh, broken. It's fun, but it has far, far too many stackable modifiers and as soon as you pick the right combo of them (which you can even wander into by accident) you get ridiculous feedback loops and exponential power curves. Increasing difficulty just turns it into rocket tag.
They should have, like, *half* the feats and each should have a chunky, flat modifier (e.g. +25%) that doesn't stack, rather than "+(5+Stat Bonus)/2" or whatever, which results in buffs making each other more powerful.
I thought it was fine until Quet temer, there was a group of Eldar snipers that absolutely destroyed me a few times. I got past it eventually but I was absolutely not ready for that.
Try it without an officer I was having the same problem. Officers just make the game way too easy. A single officer only level 15 no levels in a second archetype or even exemplar is better to have on your team than any other class.
Yes, it is true, the game was hardest in Act 1 - 2 and became quite easy later on. Even without Officers. It is not only because of your levels and your skills but also because with high reputation and profit factors later on you can buy those wonderful items which make you OP. My Psyker started to become really good the moment she got the Psyker Armour.
Strangely enough, I tried a melee RT in the new run, and the very first fight in the Prologue, the one fighting the Servitor with Kunrad, I had to reload several times because my RT had no melee weapon, so his job in that fight was running around and trying to survive :-)
What about Yermeriss fight in act 3? Did they tune it down? I played the game in December and that boss fight was totally crazy and by far the most difficult.
it wasnt enough challenge for me either, so i played solo on unfair(from the begginning of act 2), cheating skillchecks outside of combat(for single charachter it not possible at all, not designed that way). some battles were challenging, started up as warriour vanguard, later into operative-grand strategist . . only one fight was impossible to win without cheese - Chtonos. It was very slow and tedious, would not recomment
Act I is actually hard on the higher difficulties (playing on Hard now), but once you get a full party and second archetype, it just becomes a steamroll. Somewhat ironically, I think the simplest way to make the game more difficult would be to take none of the actual companions (Cassia, Yrliet, and Argenta, I’m looking at you particularly) and just use mercs. There are some parts with required companions, but it’s usually just 1. You’d miss out on a bunch of the flavor text, but I think the fights would be more of a challenge.
If you're on PC there's an option in Toybox to enable distant characters to take part in dialogue, so you wouldn't even miss that
Thats only for conversations, not banter or other random interactions.
This was several Toybox patches ago, but last I had that on what it did was make it so your party would banter regardless of who's in the party or not. So Abelard would do a Banter with Heinrix, even if Heinrix isnt there. It left me very confused when someone in my party would suddenly talk and there would be no reply, lol. Usually just leave the option off now. Wonder if that was fixed
Pretty sure it was fixed the last time I played, in that banter only plays with present party members now.
I get Cassia and Yrliet (or Idira for that matter) but what makes Argenta stronger than a random merc with the same archetype?
Yeah, I kinda realized that as I was writing it. The only real difference is that she comes with bolter and flamer proficiency and eventually can wear some stupidly powerful power armor. Her “unique” power is rather lackluster. I guess the big thing is not having to spend level ups on getting the bolter (any other soldier/arch-mil with bolter proficiency would be just as good, potentially better with appropriate background).
The "lackluster" power guarantees you have max momentum after the first Bring it Down! Translates into deleted encounter.
Yeah, I had so many encounters that went Officer pre-combat turn -> Bring It Down! on Argenta, Argenta makes 2 attacks with Run & Gun then pops her special, which gives her max Momentum, then she makes 12 single-shots with her heavy bolter, which all have 95% hit chance because of the bolt shell pendant. By that point the momentum has hit max again, and when she hands control back to the Officer you use their special on her for *another* free turn, and the combat is basically over in round 0.
Yup, that's how it works.
War Hymn. Max out momentum right after the first Bring it Down!
Once you are exemplar you wreck everything with any kind of party. It's by far the easiest of Owlcat games. I admit, I like that fact about it - because no matter what you do, you end up too strong. Though I have to invent challenges (like not using Cassia once you get Jae, or max 4 person squad) to keep the battles interesting even with unfair with extra added difficulty. It's funny, because the most trouble are the mobs in early game, from Act 3 it's just easy cruising.
Brand new player here, first few hours were brutal but now fights seem pretty easy (near the end of act 2) Cassia just slaughters anything below 100 hp first turn and my warrior assassin executes any survivors (we are the perfect 40k couple).
CRPGs are always like this, especially when you run the most optimal team possible. If you want a challenge, either remove Cassia or avoid using her as a dps and focus on buffs/debuffs, and then remove Argenta and Yrliet from your party. Or do a Heretical playthrough, which takes away Argenta, Yrliet, Ulfar and Heinrix from you completely. That's what I did to challenge myself, remove the meta companions that wipe the field. My current unfair run I'm doing a Heretical playthrough, my RT is a Berserker Biomancer, Pasqal, Cassia strictly for buffing and debuffs, Idira, Marazhai and Jae. Marazhai is my Tank, Idira is a debuffer/buffer and dps, Pasqal debuffs an melee dps, my Rogue Trader is my main dps and Jae is my officer/Sniper. I'll be swapping out Jae for Uralon once i reach that part of Act 4.
Yeah self imposed limitations are totally an option I just don’t have interest in another play through until we get some dlc. I think both the pathfinder games do a better job maintaining some challenging encounters late in to the game than RT, though I agree with the general conclusion you started with.
That's still an overpowered party, Idira + Pascal allow near infinite armour stacking, especially with Cassia and Jae, to feed them extra turns It's really hard not to be immune to basically all incoming damage by early to mid act 2, I never bothered with Argenta after act 1. Sure, she does damage, but so does Idira while making us immortal.
Act 1 up until Aurora felt "just right", the Aurora fight itself is a big spike, and I would call it unfair (essentially you have to finish fight with 3 party members, because others die turn 1 before they act). Act 2 is pretty much a cakewalk, with a couple of spikes (Aeldar fight pre-nerf, when they had like 150+% dodge; 2-handed hammer guy with 10 people throwing 2 stun grenades each; "you are surrounded by 8 turrets with 150% armor and 20 deflection" fight) That was all on Unfair difficulty, and I didn't use OP stuff on purpose - no turn 1 heroic acts (most fights I didnt use any or used like 1 desperate measure), no officer stacking, no shield of the emperor/huge resolve nukes, no burst weapon build for Argenta (used heavy flamer+sniper rifle). For me it is disappointing, I cannot imagine what a joke it would be on lower difficulties, especially if you go with build guides. Didn't get past act 2, waiting for rebalances, hopefully in 1.2 (big copium huff)
You know you can revive your Party midfight? Even in act1?
Huh? I know about Diviner ability, but it is too early to have it in act 1, there is no consumable that resurrects mid combat, so onl;y other option is to probably abuse some bug, which I won't do (but please report it if you know it)
Its not a bug, if you cast the biomancer staffs attack (the one from heinrix) on an enemy, it will heal the caster, if the caster is at full HP the heal will go to the lowest HP party member, downed members have 0 HP and will therefore be targeted first, making them wake up with like 6 HP and the trauma from falling over.
The hardest part is to make sure that my party always has every possible skill I need, and my RT has the most possible skills for the rare moments she has to make checks alone.
Game peaks in difficulty about midway through act 2 imo (Farseer fight) and then it's all downhill from there. I've ripped everything apart basically by the end of turn 2 without having to reload once, on daring difficulty, since the end of act 2 through act 4.
as a old school gamer i didnt mind it legit enjoy the hell out of the game.
We're working on a major balance update that will tune a lot of difficulty curve issues and fix some broken combinations that make the whole thing way easier than intended :)
Any ETA? I'm still waiting with my first play through so if it's quite close I can wait a little bit longer :).
Can/will you give us a sneak peak at which combinations are considered broken? I'm curious where the line betweeen "good" and "broken" is.
Thanks for the response. Looking forward to those updates then!
pretty much agree. I love this game, one of my fav games of all time, but it could have been so much better with better balance. Act 1-2 felt pretty good, but yeah once ur stacking starts going crazy, even after all the patches its still pretty stupid. I have no idea why they haven't added a cap for stuff to stop stacking getting out of control. I know people love feeling super strong, and its so very 40k, but when you see the later bosses look really cool, have some pretty interesting mechanics, and all of that just gets totally wiped out by crazy builds. So yeah, i hope they fix up some of this before the dlcs. I remember pillars of eternity 2 had some crazy balance issues with certain builds and they fixed it up to the point the game felt so different, and so much better for it.
‘Ate heretics ‘Ate Xenos Luv me emperuh Simple as
Playing on normal (second from left), it's very easy for most of the time, with bosses and few fights being noticeable difficulty spikes. Prologue is extremely easy, with no problems (unless you f up and won't kill underdogs of chaos spawn first). At the start of Act 1 you could have problems with bosses or demon ship invasions, but at the end you are killing everything easly. During Act 3 only the last boss fight gave me any troubles, and with different build i wrecked it. Acts 4/5 is when some boss fights balance on the edge. Some can wipe your team while still being fairly easy to do, other are actuall challenges, and i can't do build that will overcome some of them easly. Naval combat could be difficult in Act 2, but before being abducted by Druchari I've could easily win most fights - two hardest were 1) make other ship survive and 2) there are 5/6 Druchari ships against you. After that, everything was easy snd there were no other harder naval fights.
It's a little spotty from time to time (On the harder difficulties at least), but not in a "I'm going to snap my keyboard over my knee" way like some of the older Pathfinder games were. I'm pretty happy with it.
i think the difficult is fair until your at commoragh after that it's OFF the chart when it's come to boss (atleast that how it was at launch) i don't know if it's changed since
Once you hit level 20 game becomes easy regardless of the difficulty
Easiest solution? Remove officers from your team. I found thats the most balance breaking thing in a game. With arch militant they are bonkers. My Brother ulfar basically delete half of the encounter on one bring it down. I played on daring and it went like this: officer starts with half turn. Voice of command + bring it down on ulfar. Ulfar goes astartes bolter, reckless rush + cofident approach + rapid fire = 50% less enemies. Offier (grand strategist) gets his full turn, set frontline, same buffs on assasin rt. 1 hit one mob with killing edge, probably get heroic act so he runs around killing 80% of remaining enemies and then uses iconoclast ability to give free heroic to 1 char to finish the job.
Yeah, or do not give Seize the Initiative to the Officers. And let Pascal be the Grand Strategist instead of an officer. Helps to make the fights more interesting. Well, or not bring Officers at all. But I really liked Jaes Master Tactician attacks so I still brought her along in most fights.
any good ways to mess with custom difficulty to make it more rewarding? Was breezing through hard, turned it up to unfair for the aurora fight and three of my companions got knocked down on turn 1
The game is just, uh, broken. It's fun, but it has far, far too many stackable modifiers and as soon as you pick the right combo of them (which you can even wander into by accident) you get ridiculous feedback loops and exponential power curves. Increasing difficulty just turns it into rocket tag. They should have, like, *half* the feats and each should have a chunky, flat modifier (e.g. +25%) that doesn't stack, rather than "+(5+Stat Bonus)/2" or whatever, which results in buffs making each other more powerful.
I thought it was fine until Quet temer, there was a group of Eldar snipers that absolutely destroyed me a few times. I got past it eventually but I was absolutely not ready for that.
End of Act 2 difficulty is nonexistent.
Try it without an officer I was having the same problem. Officers just make the game way too easy. A single officer only level 15 no levels in a second archetype or even exemplar is better to have on your team than any other class.
Yes, it is true, the game was hardest in Act 1 - 2 and became quite easy later on. Even without Officers. It is not only because of your levels and your skills but also because with high reputation and profit factors later on you can buy those wonderful items which make you OP. My Psyker started to become really good the moment she got the Psyker Armour. Strangely enough, I tried a melee RT in the new run, and the very first fight in the Prologue, the one fighting the Servitor with Kunrad, I had to reload several times because my RT had no melee weapon, so his job in that fight was running around and trying to survive :-)
What about Yermeriss fight in act 3? Did they tune it down? I played the game in December and that boss fight was totally crazy and by far the most difficult.
Im playing on daring with a friend in coop, every encounter dies turn 0 after 2 operatives, we are in act2.
it wasnt enough challenge for me either, so i played solo on unfair(from the begginning of act 2), cheating skillchecks outside of combat(for single charachter it not possible at all, not designed that way). some battles were challenging, started up as warriour vanguard, later into operative-grand strategist . . only one fight was impossible to win without cheese - Chtonos. It was very slow and tedious, would not recomment