Very Hard Difficulty

[Skywebz]

So I'm playing a dagger / chakram character, currently level 8 or something, and I'm starting to struggle.
Sprites deal terrible damages, ettins almost one shot, so do Trolls...

I'd love to know how you guys deal with Very Hard, or if I could at least reduce difficulty. (it says it'd cancel achievements, still it's just a supposition sentence...)

Thanks :)

[Lexor]

I made a similar experience with my greatsword melee char. I switched then to a mage build. Struggle solved!
But if you do so, be prepared. There are a few quests or bosses which remain very hard. :)

Edit: you will have to doge the strong attacks of the big guys like ettin shaman, trolls, crudoks, mages, as they still will one shot you.

[WAR]

Currently the Very hard difficulty is bugged and not trigger/ have achievement, only Hard does. Dev is trying to fix it. But yeah, i've fun with Very hard, so that not bother me much.

[Yoinkyz]

Originally posted by WAR:

Currently the Very hard difficulty is bugged and not trigger/ have achievement, only Hard does. Dev is trying to fix it. But yeah, i've fun with Very hard, so that not bother me much.

you have to start and finish the game on hard if ye go from very hard to just hard still no achievement so by the time your play throughs over it could be fixed

[TetchyPorpoise]

First thing I'd recommend is to swap one of your weapons out. You're running 2 low-damage quick-attack weapons. You're also level 8 so you don't have the points to split between multiple destinies yet.

I'd recommend focusing on either the finesse or mage tree for now and start branching out around level 15. You should be able to hit T3 abilities in one tree with full dedicated ability points at level 8.

My personal recommendation would be to swap over to might and equip heavy armor. The enemies you've mentioned (trolls, ettins, sprites) all do primarily physical damage (except for the ettin warpriests) and as such swapping over to might armor will dramatically increase your armor values and increase your survivability. If nothing else I'd advise swapping to finesse as even then the leather armor is better than cloth against those targets.

In addition I'd recommend tossing a ton of skillpoints into mercantile and using the proceeds from a dungeon run to buy 20 to 30 health pots. It'll help a lot at the low levels.

And lastly I'd recommend diversifying your weapon choices a bit for future planning. The weapon groups basically break down like this:
Hammer, Greatsword, Staff, Sceptre, Bow
Daggers, Faeblades, Longsword, Chakrams.

Hammers, Greatswords, Staves, Sceptres & Bows are all high-damage weapons. All of those weapons (aside from the bow) also have low piercing damage which makes it difficult for those weapons to stagger enemies like trolls.

Daggers, Faeblades, Longswords & Chakrams are all piercing weapons as well as relatively mobile weapons with low animation lock on the final attacks. This makes them good weapons for dancing around large foes until you get a stagger and can go to town with one of the heavier damage weapons.

Sceptre deserves a callout here as being a weapon you don't want to use unless you specialize in it with a significant number of points in the sorcery tree.

And lastly: utilize your status effects. Applying bleeding to enemies (2nd cast of shadow flare is the easiest access) will increase all physical damage you deal to the target. Applying poison to enemies will reduce the amount of damage they deal. Ice will slow enemies, Lightning will do a light aoe dot on enemies (excellent for groups of weak enemies). And fire will do a dot with a chance at panic (removing that enemy from the fight for a little while).

[Skywebz]

Originally posted by TetchyPorpoise:

First thing I'd recommend is to swap one of your weapons out. You're running 2 low-damage quick-attack weapons. You're also level 8 so you don't have the points to split between multiple destinies yet.

I'd recommend focusing on either the finesse or mage tree for now and start branching out around level 15. You should be able to hit T3 abilities in one tree with full dedicated ability points at level 8.

My personal recommendation would be to swap over to might and equip heavy armor. The enemies you've mentioned (trolls, ettins, sprites) all do primarily physical damage (except for the ettin warpriests) and as such swapping over to might armor will dramatically increase your armor values and increase your survivability. If nothing else I'd advise swapping to finesse as even then the leather armor is better than cloth against those targets.

In addition I'd recommend tossing a ton of skillpoints into mercantile and using the proceeds from a dungeon run to buy 20 to 30 health pots. It'll help a lot at the low levels.

And lastly I'd recommend diversifying your weapon choices a bit for future planning. The weapon groups basically break down like this:
Hammer, Greatsword, Staff, Sceptre, Bow
Daggers, Faeblades, Longsword, Chakrams.

Hammers, Greatswords, Staves, Sceptres & Bows are all high-damage weapons. All of those weapons (aside from the bow) also have low piercing damage which makes it difficult for those weapons to stagger enemies like trolls.

Daggers, Faeblades, Longswords & Chakrams are all piercing weapons as well as relatively mobile weapons with low animation lock on the final attacks. This makes them good weapons for dancing around large foes until you get a stagger and can go to town with one of the heavier damage weapons.

Sceptre deserves a callout here as being a weapon you don't want to use unless you specialize in it with a significant number of points in the sorcery tree.

And lastly: utilize your status effects. Applying bleeding to enemies (2nd cast of shadow flare is the easiest access) will increase all physical damage you deal to the target. Applying poison to enemies will reduce the amount of damage they deal. Ice will slow enemies, Lightning will do a light aoe dot on enemies (excellent for groups of weak enemies). And fire will do a dot with a chance at panic (removing that enemy from the fight for a little while).

Now that is a complete answer, however I really hate playing heavy things in every game ever, so I'd rather lower my difficulty than playing something I don't like ^^'

So if I switch to hard, it won't block achievements ? Btw I'm pretty sure I unlocked some on very hard, that's weird.

[VeraelHasta]

I am playing with only finesse, bow + daggers since the start. ANd yeah, it is a weird place around this level, where you start to encounter heavy hitting enemies with still limited skills.

I would recommend several things:
- loot everyting you see. If you struggle, potions are your best friend - found or bought, doesn't matter. They last only like 1 battle, not even whole one but are really powerfull.
- ettins and bigger enemies - can't do much but dodge and slowly take them down. And try to save reckoning for bigger groups, like 3 ettins. I also cheezed some of the ettins by fighting them around a campfire, so they didn't attack all at once
- the finesse cloud and daggers skill is pretty good for smaller enemies like sprites. I usually opened or ended with it
- sprites are annoying, especially frost ones. You just have to be patient here, wait for one of them to separate and kill it. Don't jump inbetween them or you will die

Dude above was talking about "Finish the game on hard difficulty" achievement. It is the only one affected by the difficulty change and supposedly doesn't work if you play on very hard.

[LordDeimosIV]

At some point the scales will tip in your favor and you will be doing a lot of damage. I'm lvl 15 Faeblades/Bow and sometime Daggers/Bow. Once you get some nice loot your damage will go up quiet a bit. I think it was around lvl 10-12 where I really started to notice the damage increase.

[Skywebz]

Thanks for your answers guys, marking as solved :)

[Black Captain]

I quit on fitness builds. I was tired of button mashing. Sorcery lets you press 1~4 buttons and be done with most stuff. I still specced in assassination and daggers since you can cheese some tough mobs with a nuke which can save time.

[Umbral Knight]

My only problem with VH difficulty so far is that escort/protect missions are difficult to complete. Especially when a dealing with enemies like Trolls/Jotun that can't are stagger resistant.

[Lawlman Griff]

I'm only on Hard and Crannocs usually destroy me if they have helpers, maybe because I try to dodge too much instead of block?

[Memnarch]

Originally posted by Lexor:

I made a similar experience with my greatsword melee char. I switched then to a mage build. Struggle solved!
But if you do so, be prepared. There are a few quests or bosses which remain very hard. :)

Edit: you will have to doge the strong attacks of the big guys like ettin shaman, trolls, crudoks, mages, as they still will one shot you.

I hate when games are poorly balanced....I know its "just" a singleplayer game but still....I refused to play X build on max setting or else its near unplayable....