I am finding myself just sprinting though this game due to the lack of side quests and difficult bosses / areas. No bosses have been challenging what so ever, I don’t think any have even taken more than 10 seconds to kill.
I don’t think I have some broken / OP build (Lv 40 necromancer, full pets). It just seems like no enemies actually do anything. My pets don’t even die fighting story bosses, I would think there would be some AOE effect which could at least take down the skeleton warriors a couple times but no not really.
Comparing this to pet builds in titan quest and grim dawn, I was constantly re-summoning pets because they would die a lot more. Along with finding less interesting things along the way (I feel like grim dawn especially has way higher side quest density), I’m finding I’m not super engaged in the game.
That being said this is beta of course so I’m being critical and enjoy the game very much.
Difficulty scales up quite a bit around level 50 and 70, and monoliths and arena are where things seem to actually get difficult in the current state of the game. I’d highly recommend playing in ‘end game’ some to get a feel for it as it does require optimizing your defenses while maintaining decent damage.
If you want pets that are supposed to stay alive all the time instead of resummoning try out beastmaster.
As long as you don’t post a vid where you exactly do this I doubt this is doable. Maybe I am doing everything completely wrong with all of my different chars or you have discovered a broken build.
Have you played from beginning since the .7 patch has arrived? The progression is slower and the difficulty feels harder.
Maybe I just got lucky with the build then? I have pure pets and marked for death, they just swarm everything VERY easily. I have anywhere between 15 and 30 pets (depending on wraiths and random summons), which are attacking marked targets with -500 armor/protections, +40% damage.
I don’t think I’ve got to that particular void boss yet. I’m on “journey to the acropolis”.
Maybe just this combo of marked for death and pets is insane, have’t rolled another character yet
You’ll find that earlier on pet builds can tear through content and when well geared with synergistic skills are also capable of being top end builds due to excellent passive and item support even with ‘normal’ items. Similarly marked for death is basically an extra damage multiplier coupled with a soft CC for most builds that can fit it in and for early content when you don’t really need to commit to extra survival focused skills you can fit it in fine.
Basically the standard mode is a bit easy for any reasonably put together build if you’ve played a good amount of ARPGs before but it is a story for you to experience while you build and learn a character with endgame content being the actual challenge.
Probably also worth noting the game is curved to ramp up noticeably at higher levels to the point that in the past people will level extra characters to push leaderboards in the sweet spot where power to enemy threat is at it’s best for their build, people tend to aim for key build stuff to be on board for level 70ish though I have had builds that knew exactly what they wanted next up into the mid 80s.
All that said they do appear to have stepped it up a little bit recently as I’m no longer running new characters through at breakneck speeds while half naked so there is clearly tuning going on in the background.
There are several factors that affect the difficulty.
First is knowledge of the game and its mechanics.
Then, there is class selection and the build you do (that is also part of the knowledge).
Finally, there is the fact that you start with a stash with several things to help you make your build, with thousands of affixes ready to be used and more money that you need.
Before concluding the challenge is too easy, try to see how it would be balanced for a new player and even try to see how challenging it is with another character.
It may simply be your character that is a bit overpowered for its current progression in the story or simply that build that need rebalance. Not necessarily that enemies are too weaks.
I can confirm, necro is really OP during all the campaign, I just finished today, full archers and mages, full cold dmg, everything is dying so quickly, and as he said, boss melt under 10s. I really think i explode the last boss in maybe 6.
I don’t mind the easy difficulty right now, the campagn must be rush easy and quick to get the possibility to try a lot of character and build and give more feedback to the devs.
Other wise, i feel the game a bit empty as well like said in the first post, it really need a few side quests here n there, just some npc who ask you to clean some caves or save someone etc, it doesn’t need to be complicated at first, its just good to have option.
Same for the monolith, it become a bit boring after a while, it really need a little something along your way to the bosses, shrines is a good thing in this way tough
Story difficulty is a balance thing that can/will get adjusted as the beta progresses, I know EHG has tweaked exp values from enemies before, and just recently readjusted enemy health/protection values. This is good feedback and something I’m sure they’re keeping a close eye on. I know in 7.7 they added a new enemy affix “Of Focus” that forces the mob to specifically target the player, that might be from feedback that minion classes can steamroll through content.
For the emptiness of the game, we are missing most of the endgame/midgame systems. Lost Memories for example should be something that will be popping up during the campaign from its description. Epoch’s Call’s description on that same page should also start mid-campaign and progress through into endgame. Eternity’s Cache is also something WIP that should fill out side zones and provide more incentive for exploring the world.
Hopefully as EHG adds these extra systems along with fleshing out more of the story content these concerns will be alleviated.
Just finished the last boss(es) of the imperial citadel, the guys that look like Urgot from league of legends. I timed this one, they were the tankiest yet and took 39 seconds. One skeleton mage and two skeleton warriors died.
Yeah, the story is pretty easy. It’ll be harder when you get into arena/monoliths.
Is that really satisfactory though? What if a player does not like endgame type grinding, and prefers to start a new character after the story. They might not find it hard enough for their liking.
Grim Dawn addressed this with the “veteran” setting you could have on the first playthrough.
In other RPGs like Pillars of Eternity 2, lots of players were disappointed with the maximum difficulty setting being too autopilot still. I believe they addressed this after release at some point, but it’s worth considering. I think a lot of players do not want to wait for endgame for a challenge, or might not want to play the endgame at all.
Based on steam achievements, around 5% of players even got a character to the start of the endgame by beating ultimate in grim dawn
Perhaps they make it accessible at the first playthrough. If you want a challenge try masochist once you unlock it.
Ah this is the kind of thing I would use if it was tuned for production and not just some half-joke. I hope they take this “too easy” feedback to make this feature real and available always as an option
