Difficulties

[Cujo]

Does this game allow you set the difficulty or is that something coming out when the game releases on the 28th?

[Bicio]

+1 pls add a difficulty selector in campaign mode.

I'm not much of a turn-based strategy player and so far every fight has been a sweat to win it .. I would like to be able to play in a more accessible and easier mode .. Thanks :)

[Versist]

i felt fine the first 2 missions of the campaign, but once i started the 3rd mission it felt like the difficulty ramped staggeringly. all of a sudden the computer is swarming me constantly from 2 sides, both with full armies w/ tier 3 units. all i can do is is sit in keep and slowly get battered down because there's not enough blood income to sustain me through. I either spend all my starting income on 2 weenie armies that i can't maintain the upkeep for; or I go for tier 2 and one army and slowly lose... I feel like the dev's want specific choices to be made to survive but they don't make it clear what the correct moves to make are; even if thats the case its an extremely toxic design choice to give the player all these options and then make only one line of options viable and keep it a secret from the player which route to go. I don't understand and its too frustrating to continue. if they balance they campaign better or make better guidance for the player in the later missions then awesome, but i think i'm gonna put it down for now

[Duneman]

Originally posted by Versist :

i felt fine the first 2 missions of the campaign, but once i started the 3rd mission it felt like the difficulty ramped staggeringly. all of a sudden the computer is swarming me constantly from 2 sides, both with full armies w/ tier 3 units. all i can do is is sit in keep and slowly get battered down because there's not enough blood income to sustain me through. I either spend all my starting income on 2 weenie armies that i can't maintain the upkeep for; or I go for tier 2 and one army and slowly lose...

I had a similar experience. The first two missions were fine. But on the third I'm more or less in a stalemate. With the way the game is designed there's no easy way to defend territory, so trying to advance towards one of the human keeps sees 2 maxed out armies with tier II and tier III units rushing your base. The second lord, I dunno if it's random or not, but the one I had came with a MASSIVE penalty of -3 army slots. NO amount of personal Lord buffs is worth losing out on 3 army slots, and the ones he came with were a joke given the penalty. 40 turns or so in and my only hope is to max out the bloodline legacy points and hope that gives me an edge to push forward.

[Valdasaar]

In Act 4 it gets even more difficult
Strong armies attack you at regular intervals and you only have a limited number of turns.

[FroBodine]

I wish the developers would respond to posts like this. I have read a few posts talking about the extreme difficulty in this forum and in reviews, yet the developers ain't talking.

[Freeky]

We will discuss the difficulty of the campaign. Of course we still want the campaign to be exciting and challenging. This includes that not every mission is won on the first attempt.
We listen to the feedback and will discuss it extensively.
In particular the increase in difficulty in mission 3. For the time being, other players may want to share the tactics they used to win the missions.

Please stay tuned!

[shinros]

Here's how I beat the third mission, this was during the beta. First thing first. Don't spend time building up the starting point, also don't summon the first general either. You will need the income to build your forces so you can bum rush the enemy up north. Forget about defending the middle, focus on getting rid of a faction to slow the attacks. From there that's when you can begin stabilising. Overall what makes this hard is how Dracul's economy works over the other factions.

For the fourth mission? I have no idea if this has been fixed on not, but when you get to the first keep? DON'T capture it. Instead use blood to build up your forest to get werewolves, when it comes to legacy options? Focus on getting tier 3 and Lord improvements. From there, when you're ready take the keep and rush the boss. Don't bother clearing the map, it's pointless. The strength level of the boss makes that point clear enough.

Now, when it comes to the boss of mission 4 if he has an army buff that buffs his armour? Reload, you won't win. Vlad won't be able to hurt him. For mission 4 you just have to use the werewolves and vlad to carry you to victory. The mission is short but HARD. It doesn't help either that most of the Dracul higher tier units are kinda bad.

I don't know if any balance changes have been done, but the other two factions are far more stronger than dracul which adds further to the difficulty. If you beat the Dracul campaign you can relax and play the cool Nosfernus campaign.

[FroBodine]

Thank you for the response, Freeky. I look forward to your updates!

[FroBodine]

Originally posted by shinros:

Now, when it comes to the boss of mission 4 if he has an army buff that buffs his armour? Reload, you won't win. Vlad won't be able to hurt him. For mission 4 you just have to use the werewolves and vlad to carry you to victory. The mission is short but HARD. It doesn't help either that most of the Dracul higher tier units are kinda bad.

Reload because you won't win? That does not sound like good game balance to me.

[Ogami]

Originally posted by Freeky:

We will discuss the difficulty of the campaign. Of course we still want the campaign to be exciting and challenging. This includes that not every mission is won on the first attempt.
We listen to the feedback and will discuss it extensively.
In particular the increase in difficulty in mission 3. For the time being, other players may want to share the tactics they used to win the missions.

Please stay tuned!

Thats what difficulties are for. NORMAL for the game like your envisioned it, HARD for people that want a real tough challenge and EASY for casual players that DONT want to replay a scenario multiple times till they can beat it.

Its ALWAYS better if the player has a choice of how he wants to experience the game and how hard it will be. Not everyone will agree with what you deem "exiting and challenging".
For many its " frustrating and boring" to play scenarios X amount of times because you cant progress.

You lose NOTHING by giving the player more choices, the players who prefer their games hard and challenging will select NORMAL or HARD, the players who want a casual experience will select EASY.

There is really no downside here.

[Duneman]

Yeah, it took me 60+ turns but I swung the momentum around to me in the third mission as the Bloodline Legacy upgrades came in. A few well-played cards can swing battles in your favor and give you a precious opportunity to push toward an enemy Keep to shut it down. That being said, the Lord I got with -3 army slots was getting killed repeatedly while running defense, but he did his job eventually. After that he was a Card Jockey, running around to Libraries and using the Black Market as needed once the central zone was safe.

I dunno about other players but since the Dracul early economy is 'bad' I tend to rush the bottom of the tech tree to get the upgrades that make it so construction upgrades are free and cost 40% less. This way Villages and Cities can max out their population and see some extra growth(I'll Feed or use Consume cards in Winter just before the population refreshes for the new year). Once you unlock Traditions you'll get +6 Blood for Feeding, so it's the same as a basic Consume card. This way you get a nice 60-120 Blood bonus at the end of the year.

Since the cost of Tier 2 and Tier 3 units is so high, I'll take a break in the middle for the +12 attack and +6 armor for Tier 1 units. After that I go towards the top for the Dracul's Might stuff for extra cards to play(and making them cheaper). Thankfully a fully geared up Vlad is a nigh unkillable monster on the battlefield, especially when running Blood Shield, 4 turn Life Drain, and equipped with an item that has Magic Protection. You actually WANT him to get surrounded, so you can unleash a Blood Storm that hits 3-5 enemies at once. In the later part of that mission I found an item that made him Ethereal and granted +2 Movement. Very beastly.

The 'turn limit' on the fourth and final campaign mission for the Dracul sounds tough. I'll give a shot, or two, or three, and see what happens.

[Valdasaar]

I won the third act like that
I did not take the fortress that is nearby, but I took the fortress further down, so I fought my way from the bottom up.
Due to this approach, there were rarely AI attacks

I hope this is understandable :)

[Duneman]

Originally posted by Valdasaar:

I won the third act like that
I did not take the fortress that is nearby, but I took the fortress further down, so I fought my way from the bottom up.
Due to this approach, there were rarely AI attacks

You know, I noticed some interesting things like that while playing. If you got 'vision' on certain territories it would trigger quicker attacks, but hold back from the area and the attacks would be a lot slower. Eventually I found a 'sweet spot' path that allowed me to break out from the starting area.

If the triggers are coded like that I might have to try unconventional approaches when I first attempt the fourth mission, as folks are saying there is a turn limit. I'm going to assume the limit is shorter than the 60+ turns I took for mission 3.

[Valdasaar]

I also noticed that there are triggers.
How do I work around the trigger in Act 4 I have not yet found out

I don't think you can bypass the trigger in Act 4, because you must to take the fortress nearby because it belongs to the mission.

[UK_John]

This is like Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2. Both games don't have battles, they have puzzles. Like in DoS 1 there is huge fire area, where you just have to you have water spells, that's it. Nothing to do with"strategy". Same with this game, 2nd Ducal chapter, solve the puzzle of negative blood, 3rd Ducal Chapter, solve the "armies coming at you from all directions" puzzle. So Immortal Realms is a puzzle game, not a strategy game, just like DoS 1 and 2 is not a true RPG.